“Get it, Ellio!” Jule ran behind a hog, threatening it forward with a pitchfork in hand.

  The hog squealed, younger and inexperienced than the few others already caught, and fell for Jule’s bait easily. She tossed the pitchfork to Taiga as he sprinted past her. He caught it, and barred towards the hog.

  It looked back, seeing him catching up, and zoomed between two trees. As it passed the treeline, Ellio jumped from behind the tree and wrapped his arms and legs around the hog. It honked confused and scared, writhing around in an attempt to free itself.

  Ellio held tight, locking a forearm around one of its arms and yanking back on it. He threw all his weight into his back, pulling the hog off its feet and slamming himself and the hog into a tree.

  Mouse secured rope around three sections of it before Ellio let go. The hog ran forward, only to be yanked back by Mouse’s leash. It panicked, sprinting and jerking in every direction while Mouse dug his feet into the ground and steadied himself with every pull.

  Once exhaustion or defeat overcame the hog, it settled, squealing and whining. “Yeah, that’s right, make some noise!” Mouse laughed a little more maniacally than Taiga considered normal.

  “Bring it out of the trees, it’ll be easier to see the leader if we keep the bait in the field.” Taiga waved towards the field between the forest and the village they currently worked their mission for.

  Mouse nodded, slinging rope over his shoulder and pulling the hog along behind him. It squirmed, rolling onto its back. Mouse continued pulling regardless, and the hog gave up after a minute. They’d keep this young hog alive, as the village didn’t want full eradication.

  The new leader of the hogs, however, took to terrorizing the village at night by driving through fences and killing their sheep. The village requested help to stem the problem before it worsened when food would be in shorter supply in winter. Taiga and them caught three earlier already that the village would use for meat to get them through the end of the year. Once they caught the leader, they’d finish the mission and could head back to Winolin in the morning.

  The sun began setting at this last hog’s capture, and soon the temperatures would drop enough to chill Taiga to the point he’d need to retreat into the barn the village lent them for the night. For now, he drew his cloak’s buttons tight and flicked the collar up. He dove his nose beneath his scarf, breathed in warmed air, before turning attention back to the task at hand.

  “Bring it here.” A soft wind blew the grass against his legs. The leader approached. “It’s coming, get ready. When it nears us, let the young one go, Mouse. We’ll all focus on the leader.”

  Mouse nodded as a snarled roar trembled the air. From the treeline, a giant, five or six meter high boar ran towards them. The beast dropped its head, baring its tusks at them, and barrelled towards the captured youngling. Taiga rushed forward, whistling.

  Sweet Bun galloped from afar, running ahead of him and darting in front of the boar. It overpassed her in size, but Sweet Bun struck her talons at it, catching its attention before darting back towards Taiga.

  The boar chased after her, and Taiga whipped around her, coming up from behind and unsheathed his sword. With the boar’s focus entirely on her, Taiga swept past, swiped his sword at its legs, and struck both right legs with precise strength.

  It squawked in surprise and pain, collapsing over the injured limbs. Mouse hopped atop it once it landed, tossing rope over it to Taiga, and they pinned the giant boar to the ground. The little boar squealed away, running back into the forest where the rest of its group awaited safely.

  Once the ground calmed and the dry grasses swayed cooly, Taiga stretched his back and cracked it. The boar roared at them in warning, but Mouse simply hopped off it without fear. He yawned, walking up to Taiga while pulling spare rope back into its rounds.

  Something caught Mouse’s attention behind Taiga and he burst into a fit of laughter. Curses drew Taiga’s attention around to see Jule sprawled in mud. Taiga sighed, jogging to them as Ellio held out a hand for her to grab. She took it, and ellio heaved her from the mud.

  “I swear, you chose this mission on purpose, knowing I’d fall into mud again!” She yelled at Mouse, who still laughed.

  Jule flicked her braid back, for it to only swing around and slap more mud onto her neck. She yelled out in garbled Monx before swatting Ellio’s hand away as he tried to help. Taiga bent down, looking her over and picking plant bits off her robe and boots.

  “It’s not my fault you’re clumsy.” Mouse continued laughing the whole way to meet her. “This time is all you.”

  She shot him a glare. “There better at least be a bath in this damn village.” She stormed back towards the houses, muttering to herself, “not even an inn. What kind of place is this?”

  Ellio followed behind her. Once Taiga and Mouse made sure the boar was secured to the ground, they trailed after the siblings to report their success. What the villagers planned to do with the leader was up to them, though he suspected it would likely serve as food stores in place of the lamb they’d lost to it.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  When they caught up to the village head’s house, they found Azhar sipping tea with the head’s wife on the porch. Yellow billowed from her in ways Taiga knew wasn’t natural. Her magics fled her, spilling from cracks and breaks in her shell. He’d never seen such a thing himself, but he knew only one thing which could cause such fractures.

  “Are you kidding me??” Jule snapped as Azhar smiled upon their return. “You’ve just been sitting here drinking tea this whole time??”

  “Oh,” the village head’s wife cut in, “please don’t be mad. I had her keep me company. Such a sweet girl, keeping someone as old as me entertained.”

  Jule forced a calm over her outburst. “Fine.”

  Taiga smiled, cutting in before Jule blew up again. “Do you have somewhere we can bathe? A few of us got rather dirty.” Taiga himself had zero plans to bathe. He’d need to wait until they returned to the guildhall, where he could take a heated bath before retreating to a warmed room. Here, a warm bath would still freeze him once he went to the barn they’d stay in for the night.

  The village head’s wife let Jule bathe in their home while she cooked a meal for them. Ellio helped her, and the wife took great pleasure in asking Ellio to do all sorts of menial tasks she was plenty capable of. When the stew simmered, the wife asked Ellio for help reaching something off a cabinet.

  “It’s so nice having company do little favors for me. My husband used to, but it got harder as he got older.” The wife blushed a little, watching Ellio. Taiga only nodded, but took over cooking duties in Ellio’s place to give him a break.

  After eating and retiring to the barn for the night, Jule recounted a story of swimming in the Lake of Wonders in northern Monx to Mouse around the firepit. She revelled in his expressions, making exaggerated claims of sentient seaweed and water gremlins trying to convince her to stay underwater with them. Well, Taiga assumed they were exaggerations until he considered the kikaua. Perhaps the possibility of truth in her tales was what drew Mouse to them.

  Sweet Bun laid behind Taiga, letting him snuggle against her stomach and use her as a warmed bed. He watched the fire dance from its man-made confines, the smoke streaming out of an opening in the roof. While the cold chilled him, at least the worst of it and the wind would be kept at bay for the night.

  Azhar settled near him, her eyes never leaving the fire. Yellows plumed from her like smoke from the fire. How much magic could spill from her before she had none left? It would kill her, without a doubt. Beings of magic could only exist with magic. Without, and they’d fall apart.

  And Azhar already crumbled to nothing.

  When Mouse, Ellio, and Jule fell into slumber on the other side of the firepit and only he and Azhar remained awake, he ventured a conversation.

  “Tell me Azhar,” he started, unsure how to bring this up delicately. He thought the options too vague and decided on a direct approach. “What could bring a shifter to join a mercenary group?”

  Her head swiveled to him, her eyes stern with reproach. They were the eyes of the boar when Mouse pinned it to the ground in rope. Her body tensed, her hand immediately reaching for a knife secured to her leg. Murder and ferocity overtook any semblance of whimsy she’d carried earlier in the day.

  He put his hands up. “Before killing me for knowing what you are, you should ask how I know what you are.”

  She blinked, bloodthirst temporarily pulling back. “How, then?”

  “I am a Ganakri. Your people are no enemy of mine. And I will not reveal what you are to them.”

  Her hand released the handle of her weapon. Any hint of caution vanished. “Ganakri still live?”

  “Only one in Anu,” he answered, a twinge of sadness tainting the words.

  “So you see it, then?” She crawled on all fours to him, eyes wide in wonder. “My magic?”

  He nodded. “You’re breaking.”

  Shifters were unique in their own ways. Independent loners who traveled the world based on their whims. They were once allies of the fairies until the hunts began. When the fairies faced discrimination and persecution for harboring shifters in their homes, fairies turned their back on the shifters. It marked the only species to have no ally.

  Except the Ganakri, the safe haven to all.

  Unfortunately, the shifter’s nature of paranoia and reclusiveness drove them into hiding; dressing as humans or animals, blending into the background and disappearing entirely. He knew little of shifters, aside from what he learned from a shifter who stayed in their village a while.

  Shifters could supposedly take the form and flesh of any living being, though Taiga learned some were capable of even more than that, melting into shadows and sinking into the earth as rain.

  But there was one thing forbidden to the shifters’ ability; to change into a hybrid of beings.

  And doing so would break a shifter’s magic and soul, scattering their magic through the holes they created. A fracture to who they were. They would leak their magics and mind until they were nothing. A mess of insanity and shattered flesh.

  How long, Taiga wondered, did Azhar have until she faced such a fate?

  And more, what drove her to commit such an act?

  Her fate let Taiga agree to her joining. And the Ganakri in him would give her the sanctuary she needed until her passing. However long it would be.

  “What did you do to give yourself so horrible a death?”

  Azhar shrugged, smiling lightly despite the conversation. “I don’t remember. I don’t really remember anything anymore.”

  So, she was already far enough gone to have lost her memories.

  “Why did you join our group, then?”

  She turned towards where Ellio lay. “I only remember one thing. It’s the one thing I’ve never forgotten. I don’t know why, or even when it happened. Snow. A child crying. He was dressed in oversized clothes. Someone told him they wouldn’t be gone long. But he cried anyway.”

  Taiga followed her gaze to Ellio. He was nothing like a child. “You’ve met them before?”

  Azhar laughed. “I don’t know. I just remember his face. And I remember thinking I needed to make him not cry anymore.”

  “So you… joined to make Ellio not… cry?”

  “I joined,” she turned to Taiga, her eyes now focused on her goal, “to make him happy before I forget.”