A few nights later, Yaosen awoke to realize that those demonic howls he was hearing weren’t in his nightmares. He rose from his straw bed and flew from the cabin to find a dozen or more hulking dark shapes snorting and squealing and snuffing with delight.

Sometime after sunset, the pack of razorback wolfboars had moved into the valley.

Yaosen’s mind went immediately to Grunt, and he looked to where the once-alpha of the pack normally slept, in his barn beside the pile of mushrooms Torun had trained him to carry back to camp.

Yaosen saw a few of the biggest members of the pack clustered around the barn and the monk immediately summoned a blade of fire. Those same challengers had once thought to turn on their alpha for the sole crime of failing to maintain his status against a newcomer.

But Yoasen let the fire die in his hand.

Missing forepaw or not, the members of the pack still gave Grunt a wide berth.

They moved up to the barn, feeding on a few of the collected mushrooms before an indignant snort from Grunt sent them on their way, and the next member of the pack moved up to feast. He was keeping order, rationing the food amongst the pack and giving every member a turn.

“Nice to see him back on top,” said Torun, coming up alongside the monk.

Yaosen nodded, “Have they followed us all this time?”

Torun shook his head, “We would have heard them at least once.”

“Maybe they smelled that bounty from a long way off,” said Yaosen.

Torun’s face was a line, “Or something bigger and badder pushed them out of the mountains.”

“Then did they come down for his protection…” said Yaosen gesturing to the alpha of the pack, “…or yours?”

“Something tells me its yours.”

“Mine?”

“Like I said, you don’t fit into their heirarchy. They don’t understand you, the way they understand me and Grunt. Could be that something else they don’t understand was what threatened them. I like the idea of another bender scaring them a whole lot less than I like the idea of a natural predator.”

Yaosen pictured the Earthbreaker city and how quickly they had tamed the river delta to establish a foothold on this continent. He had thought how quickly that city had gone up, and how many things that had once called the delta home would look upon that city as an abomination and shun it.

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“Seem like he’s got it well in hand,” said Torun, “I’m going back to bed.”

***

That night, Yoasen dreamed he walked the meadows alongside his cabin. Torun wasn’t there, and neither was the cabin or the barn, but everything else was the same. The meadow and the river was just as he saw them in the daylight, and the wolfboar pack even slept in heaps around Grunt.

In Yoasen’s dream, Grunt had all four hooves, but the missing one glowed a spectral blue.

The earth shook beneath his feet and Yaosen turned to face a mountain of a wolfboar. Its granite gray fur was dusted with snow atop its shoulders, like some spirit of a mountain. Its tusks were the curved trunks of pine trees and the hunks of crude iron along the ridge of its spine wre seamed with what appeared to be gold.

“You are the protectors my children spoke of,” rumbled the mountainous wolfboar.

“Are you the spirit of the mountains?”

The boar inclined its massive head.

“What can I, um…” Yaosen remembered his monkly dignity, “How can I be of assistance oh spirit of the mountains?”

“My children are hunted,” said the giant razorback, its voice shaking the earth beneath Yoasen’s spectral feet, “The mountains are thrown out of balance.”

“By the Earthbreakers?”

“I don’t know these Earthbreakers. But the one I speak of walks alone. He has no pack and kills without honor.”

A sick feeling rose up in Yaosen as he formed a suspicion. Even as he asked the question, he hoped he was wrong. “How does this one kill?”

“Metal flies from his hand like a hornet. Where it stings it cuts flesh and bone like soft mushroom. He tears the razors from the backs of wolfboar without touching them, and fashions weapons and armor from their shame.”

“I know the one you speak of.”

“Your ally?”

“My mortal enemy. He tried to kill me and my friend. You’ve come to me to ask me to stop him?”

“I’ve come to warn you that you cannot.”

Yaosen could only blink at that. “But I’ve trained by entire life to lightbend. The last time we met, I was able to lightbend. If I could just do it again I could end it before it starts.”

“The coastal spirits spoke of your duel, and I’ve come to tell you that you are not ready. You have only begun learning the ways of the wild. A forest cut down will grow back stronger, but it is vulnerable while it is new. You will not be able to call upon the utmost of your power until you’ve learned all that the wild has to teach you.”

“I will train harder. I will prepare our defenses.”

“I only ask then, if you choose to stand before you are ready, that you send my children away. They have come to you because they believe you can protect them. They will remain if you do not convince them otherwise.”

“But what if I can?”

The great wolfboar bowed its head, “Think on what I have said, human.”

***

Yoasen slept late the next morning and awoke to the sounds of a hammer. He stumbled from the cabin and squinted against the noonday sun.

“What are you doing?” asked Yaosen.

“They’ll stamp out the grass if they stay here long,” said Torun, hammering a wooden post into the earth with the large mallet Yoasen had forged from Grunt’s spine shavings, “They need a corral.”

Yoasen made no response. He simply wandered down the riverbank, seeking solitude to focus his mind.

He would master lightbending before Lu Gun got here. And if the Earthbreaker assassin threatened all they had built, Yaosen would cut him in half.