When Yaosen awoke, Torun was already gone. Where, Yaosen couldn’t say. The first thing he did was add a log to the smoldering embers of the fire.

Last night had been one of the worst nights of his life. He was still cold, dirty, and wet, and while drowning was his new worst nightmare, those three things were not far behind. He huddled beside the fire for an hour before he felt the chill receding from his bones.

Feeling some sort of life returning to his bruised and battered limbs, he set about attempting to restore his dignity.

He took off his sooty, bloody gi and did his best to scrub it clean in the waves. For the first time since washing up in the Farwilds he was glad that they had landed on what appeared to be a deserted strip of coastline for as far as the eye could see, because the way he got tumbled and tossed in the waves was extremely undignified.

Nonetheless, by the time he strode back out of the water, he had all of the grime out of his clothes, and even some of the blood that hadn’t fully dried.

The gash in his shoulder, though, burned horribly in the saltwater, and he knew enough to consider cleaning it out, lest it fester.

Whenever he was injured during training in the Light Temple, one of the monks would wrap it with something. But Yaosen had no idea what that something was, much less where to find it or how to make it. So the most he could think to do was run some warm water over it.

But now that he got back to the campfire, he found that despite all the freshly cleaned wood he had added, he had somehow put the fire out.

“How could more wood mean less fire?” he kicked at the embers and set about trying to recreate the exact formation that Torun had done last night. Like magic, the clean dry logs caught and burned happily once they were stacked just as Torun had done.

When Torun got back around midday, Yaosen made an effort at looking like he wasn’t studying the logs and trying to figure out why they burned when they did.

A firebending prodigy, on the verge of mastering lightbending, trying to figure out how campfires worked? It was preposterous.

Torun looked from the logs to the monk and grunted before beginning to butcher a brace of furry animals he had apparently shot with the bow from his warchest.

When he was done skewering them, he placed them in the fire to cook. Again, for the sake of his pride, Yaosen held out as long as he could. But they smelled so delicious after a day and a half of not eating anything, and Torun seemed so happy chomping into one, that Yaosen eventually reached for one that looked like it was done.

He got another iron hard gaze from Torun and withdrew his hand.

Torun mowed through the next two without looking up, and when there was only one left, Yaosen eyed it hopefully.

Torun picked it up and was about to bite into it, when he looked up and caught Yaosen’s desperate gaze.

Yaosen quickly applied a dignified, unbothered mask.

Torun relented and held the skewer out to Yaosen.

Yaosen appeared to look confused.

“Hmph,” Torun grunted and shook the skewer.

Yaosen nodded his thanks and took it. He tried to maintain the air of dignity as befitted a Light Temple monk, but there was no official etiquette for eating meat from a stick, and his manner devolved somewhat after a few bites.

With the most immediate needs met and encouraged by the prospect of sharing, after the meal Yaosen picked up a metal bowl that Torun had salvaged from the wreck. Without looking at the Meteor Knight, he filled it with water from their skins and set it directly atop the fire.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Yaosen looked up to see Torun giving him a flat stare, but Yaosen simply sat straighter and continued waiting for the water to boil.

He knew enough about survival to know that if his deepest wounds weren’t treated, he would die. He couldn’t afford to be precious about borrowing a bowl. The bowl didn’t even belong to Torun. It belonged to the Fire Lord, and Torun had simply picked it up from the beach.

Yaosen dipped a finger and found the water was just hot enough to bear. He plucked the bowl from the fire using his sleeves and slipped his shoulder from the gi, preparing to wash the wound.

His gaze flicked to Torun and the Meteor Knight was still staring at him impassively, unwaveringly, confrontationally.

Yaosen took a deep breath and dumped the water on the wound. As soon as it made contact with the black-scabbed flesh Yaosen howled in pain and lept to his feet. Torun for his part, fell flat laughing and didn’t stop the entire time Yaosen jumped around the camp waiting for the pain to ebb. Finally, Yaosen managed to sit back down beside the fire and dribble a few cool drops of water from the waterskins onto the throbbing gash. Torun was still chuckling at the lightbending monk’s misfortune.

Airs be damned, Yaosen had had enough of it.

“You don’t seem to like me very much, Torun,” he said, “Why is that?”

“You’re arrogant, elitist, not to mention useless.”

Yaosen was stunned into silence. To not only hear Torun speak more than a word at a time, but to speak with such cutting clarity and clear distaste was… shocking. Yaosen was just about to attempt to mount a defense, but now that Torun had broken his silence, he seemed to have a lot more to say.

“All of that I can forgive; I’ve been surrounded by people like you all my life. What I can’t forgive is that you don’t seem to have any respect. You have no respect for the rules of your temple, no respect for the laws of your nation, not even for the lives of the people beneath you. And now that you’ve been punished for it, you don’t even have any respect for yourself. Which is to say, you have no honor left in you. It’s pathetic.

“When I saw you at your trial, I thought you were everything your master said you were, and that the Fire Lord was wise to make use of you. Don’t get me wrong, I would have been happy to see you sent far away. But still, no wise man casts off a sharp sword.”

“Is that all?” asked Yaosen, when Torun settled back into his place beside the fire.

“Hmph.”

As Yaosen recovered, and felt Torun’s words sinking into him like boiling water into a wound, something about the Meteor Knight’s speech struck him.

“Sharp, eh?”

Torun looked up at that, a dangerous look in his eye.

“Oh I’m still sharp, Torun. I fought off an Earthbreaker Elite not two days ago. Without me, we’d all be drowned a dozen or more miles out to sea, or worse, blown to bits. But I cut a match out of a man’s hand without even setting it alight to give us a chance at making it ashore. Where were you during all of this, Torun? What were you doing when the ship was sabotaged?”

Torun didn’t answer.

“You were on that ship for a purpose. You were charged with protecting me. The engine was sabotaged, the ship was ripped to pieces, and then I had a fight with a metalbender. Yet you were nowhere to be found.”

“I was preserving my strength.”

“What does that mean?”

“Resting.”

“You mean you were sleeping!? While the ship sunk? You fell asleep while you were supposed to be protecting me?”

“Even the sharpest swords need daily honing.”

“Oh and you wonder why the Fire Lord shipped you off. It seems to me that a bodyguard who needs his regular eight hours makes an assassin’s job very easy, Torun. No sharp sword, indeed. You’ve grown dull and the Fire Lord knew it. That’s why you’re out here, not because I broke a rule in a temple.”

Torun got up and unsheathed his sword, strode over the nearest tree, and cut it down. He didn’t chop it down, hacking away until the tree broke and fell. He cut it down, with a single stroke, clean through. And it was no sapling or shrub, but a full grown tree, as thick around as Torun’s shoulders were wide.

Birds launched from the upper branches and it ripped through the canopy of the nearby forest as it fell crashing to the sand less than a few feet from where Yaosen sat, shaking the earth and bouncing once before coming to rest.

Yaosen hadn’t been able to scramble to his feet in time to get away, and he looked up, aghast as the knight sheathed his meteorite sword.

Torun didn’t seem angry enough to be murderous, nor abashed at having nearly killed Yaosen by accident. Yaosen was left with no alternative but to believe that Torun had not only cut the tree down, but cut it in such a way, at such an angle, to have dropped the tree just close enough to Yaosen to make a point.

Whatever else the Meteor Knight was, he had not grown dull.

Torun flipped a dagger at Yaosen and grumbled, “Make yourself useful, and do something with that.”

Then the knight strode off, back into the forest.