As the pine-clad hills took Yaosen and Torun further inland, it also took them further up, where the incline of the land increased, the trees thinned out, and bare boulders or impassable walls of rock grew more frequent.

Yaosen realized he had been unwittingly climbing a mountain, and shot frequent searching looks toward his gruff companion. Torun appeared to be deliberately steering them toward the highest ground.

Only when the forest grew thinner did Yaosen realize that they were being followed.

“Followed? Or hunted?” Torun retorted, when Yaosen voiced his concern.

Torun did not take his eyes from the path ahead, so Yaosen did his best to do the same. But he could not help stealing glances to either direction, when a thicket rustled or scree tumbled.

He caught flashes of dark fur, white teeth or horn, and something else he couldn’t quite believe: the flash of gray iron.

The snick of Torun loosening the blade in its scabbard told Yaosen that the hunt was about to come to a head. The Meteor Knight still would not drop his heavy pack carrying all his armor, nor did the graying man take his eyes from the path ahead.

Yaosen followed his gaze and saw that the forest was winding around a stand of pines, then opening onto a mossy clearing.

Yaosen had no weapons to prepare other than his mind and his body, and he saw to those as they approached what would be their battleground.

The beasts waited until they had made the center of the clearing and then charged from all directions. Yoasen had only the barest moment to register the stamping hooves, the black manes, and the tusks bristling from the toothy maws.

With a gust of fire Yaosen blasted back the first to come for him, while Torun’s blade speared another, toppling it and driving it to the ground.

Three more came for them even as Torun was freeing his blade, and Yaosen no longer had the luxury of watching only one side.

With a sweep of his leg a wide arcing flameblade toppled the three beasts and then a flurry of fire fists sent them smoldering and careening back the way they had come, whining in pain but alive.

Torun pulled his blade free and looked down at the one he had killed. It seemed his blade had snagged on a crest of crude iron lining its back.

“What are they?” Yaosen asked.

“Some sort of razorback wolfboar.”

The thickets exploded with activity again and this time, they came at them from too many angles for Yaosen to block all of them.

“We can’t face them on this ground, there are too many,” Torun snapped, readying his blade, “Go find us a bottleneck. I’ll hold them off.”

Yaosen looked at the single blade the man carried and the many closing foes.

“But-”

“Go!”

Yaosen launched an arc of flame to one side then took off running up the mountain, hearing roars and squeals behind him in answer to Torun’s grunts of effort.

A part of the wolfboar pack had split off to give chase, and Yaosen could only hope that Torun knew what he was doing.

Yaosen scanned the possible tracks ahead of him, choosing not to run straight uphill, but at an oblique angle. After a moment he heard Torun jangling along not too far behind.

There would be flurries of activity and terrible squeals from the pack of razorbacks, but each time he would hear Torun running again.

Yaosen bent around a boulder, lashing out with a whip of flame as a razorback charged him, seeking to turn him away. Even so, the monk allowed himself to be redirected, feeling the wind pick up around him as he rose higher, then feeling the ground level off as they twisted parallel to the mountain’s face.

Another squeal from the thicket nearby and Yaosen altered his course.

Ten more thundering heartbeats and Yaosen hesitated, facing a clearing where cliff walls blocked them on three sides. He launched himself over a series of fallen pines and landed in the clearing, skidding to a halt.

A grunt, a squeal, and then Torun was clinking up over the deadfall and landing beside him. His eyes were wild as he surveyed the new battlefield they found themselves in.

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“You let them herd you,” snapped Torun, “You’ve killed us both.”

Yaosen smiled, “And I thought you had the mind of a bender.”

The light monk lifted his arms into a summoning stance and fire erupted on all sides.

The wind overhead smashed into the cliff face, spinning and howling and lifting the flames higher. The fallen pines had been there a while, long enough for their bark to have fallen away. Some were rotten, but some rested atop their fallen brethren, staying off the earth to dry.

Yaosen lowered his hands, relaxed his posture. The wall of flames remained, as hot as if he were maintaining them himself.

“Hmph.” Torun lowered his pack and began assembling his armor.

Yaosen could only assume that was a grunt of approval.

As the monk sat and sipped from their waterskins, the frustrated howls and squeals of the razorbacks sounded like those of enraged spirits. When Torun finished donning his meteorite armor, he looked for all the world like a demon himself, the glittering black metal soaking in the firelight as if Torun were before the Fire Lord’s own throne.

“Are you ready?” Yaosen asked, rising.

“Hmph.” Torun lowered himself into a heavy metal fighting stance, sword out to one side.

With a furious punch, Yaosen blasted out a section of the burning pines, leaving a path through which dozens of eyes, tusks, and razorbacked manes glimmered.

No more sounds from the razorback wolfboars.

Yet none approached.

“Why aren’t they attacking?” Yaosen asked. In his mind they would have jostled through the small gap, and Yaosen and Torun could take them a few at a time until the pack gave up the fight.

No response from Torun, who just stood there, armor glimmering in the firelight like the dark iron on the backs of the wolfboars.

“We’re no longer prey,” Torun said finally, “We’re challengers.”

Did Yaosen think he heard a smile in Torun’s voice?

Suddenly the wall of tusks and iron parted, and one boar strode forward, bigger than all the rest, with a gray tipped mane and a forest of tusks protruding from his maw.

The iron from his razorback glimmered high and bright in the firelight, grown over decades of survival in this wild land, honed and sharpened by countless challenges.

The wall of tusks closed behind the alpha razorback, and Torun waved Yaosen back.

“There is honor even among beasts it seems,” said the Meteor Knight.

Yaosen retreated to sit beside their pack.

The razorback pawed the ground and Torun lowered himself further, sword to one side.

The wall of razorbacks began snorting in time. Yaosen found that their cadence matched the thumping of his own heart.

If Torun lost, would Yaosen be afforded the same challenge, or would he have to rush to close the gap, fighting alone to hold it even as the alpha boar rampaged within their fortification.

He kept his face impassive, unmoving but focused.

The wolfboar lowered its tusks and charged and Torun did the same, dragging his sword behind him to lead with his shoulder.

Yoasen’s eyes went wide as the two met and Torun never brought the sword around. He smashed his armored body directly into the wolfboar’s brow and for the briefest of moments Yoasen thought that they had stalemated, both straining with the effort of moving one another. But Meteor Knight or not, the wolfboar was thrice the weight of the man and Torun skidded in the dirt, then crumbled as the boar charged over him, stamping hooves and bucking its tusked head.

Yaosen could hear the scrape of hoof and bone on meteorite iron.

Yoasen jumped to his feet, ready to face whatever came next. But then the alpha stumbled, chin crashing to the earth and skidding to a stop.

It neither squealed nor howled, but snuffed and panted from its huge nostrils.

In its eyes Yaosen could see pain. Pain and defeat. Torun rose, muddied and bloodied, but unbroken. And blood trailed from his sword.

Yaosen looked back to the alpha wolfboar, unable to understand what had happened, until he noticed the razorback’s missing forelimb. The monk struggled to mask his amazement. Torun had foregone an immediate killing blow, choosing to fight on the boar’s terms. And at the very moment when the boar sought to cement its victory, Torun had risked being trampled for a mere maiming blow.

The pack of wolfboar, seeing their alpha down and their new leader standing, began hooting and snuffing to the sky. Then they streamed into the ring of fire.

Yoasen stiffened, ready to call up whatever final firebending he could muster before the pack overwhelmed him, but Torun watched and made no move, so neither did Yaosen.

When the pack began to close on their fallen leader, however, Torun roared.

The beasts backed away.

Torun held out his sword to Yaosen and said, “Fire.”

Yoasen nodded his approval and sent a focused stream of fire across the meteorite blade, until the blood on it blackened and burned off.

Torun hesitated, placing a hand on the massive beast’s flank, then pressed the heated blade to the stump of the forelimb.

The fallen alpha howled, as did the rest of the pack.

Yaosen hadn’t quite understood the beast’s code of honor, but he knew a ceremony when he saw it. Yaosen just wished he knew what the ceremony meant.

***

Somewhere far below, in a wooded saddle between mountains, the concerted howls of wolfboars split the night. Lu Gun lifted his head to track the sound bouncing from one peak to the next and finally found its origin.

An orange glow flickered halfway up the peak. It was stifled so quickly, Lu Gun wasn’t sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.

It had been so long since he had had the comforts of a fire, so long since he had dropped the weight of his armor. But his mantle had grown. The speckled fur of owlynx on his shoulders kept him warm, and in this land, you could not afford to let you guard down.

Foolish firebender.

Lu Gun smiled and started walking.