Laeknir did not know what to do with the boy. He tied him up for safety, as he knew well enough how dangerous a short-one could be. Then he took the branch from where it rested beside the fire and used it to cauterize his shoulder. Thankfully, what hit him had not directly penetrated his skin, only grazed him. Once he closed the wound he sat by the fire he took a long look through the boy’s satchel.

Most interesting was the weapon he’d fired. Laeknir had never seen anything like it but knew well enough that it was an evil thing. Short-ones were good at making evil things, especially those designed to hurt others. But still, he’d never seen anything like it before. It was such a small thing in his palm considering the damage it had done to him. Laeknir thought for a long while about that.

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Furthermore, the thought about the etchings on the boy’s skin. Had he not been marked, Laeknir would have done to him what he’d done to all the others that had come before. He would have crushed his skull, or smashed his body against the base of the mountain; then he would have feasted on his bones and flesh and left nothing but his clothing.

But this boy was marked. Laeknir had only ever seen one like him before and it had been a corpse. Years before a party had come looking for him and his family. His mother and father had crushed them like flies beneath their feet, and one of the corpses had these same etchings.

“A terrible thing,” his mother had said. “To kill one marked by the Sculptor.”

Ever since, Laeknir knew to consider such a thing sacred. So he sat beside the fire and weighed his options, as the boy shifted in and out of a restless sleep.