Thundertail stood on the bank of the lake. In his hand was a handline and in the other was a metal bucket. He desired to fish upon the waters of this rather deep lake. It would be best for him to fish in a boat in the middle of the lake, but considering that he was made of solid metal, it was inadvisable for him to be in any water vessel. And so he had to make do with fishing on the pier.

Thundertail stood on the pier's edge and began removing the fleece jacket, gloves, and bonnet. It was to protect others from cutting themselves on his sharp edges. Wearing them irked him. He'd rather have the awesomeness that was his body in full display to the world, but he swallowed his pride for he'd rather not cut up any of the things that had become dear to him.

Like the line in his hand. The fishing line was a simple length of string with a hook on one end. The instrument fascinated him, and consequently the activity in which it was used. He had touched many tools in his so-far short life, and only this did not elicit innate knowledge of its use to him. He'd been instantly familiar of all the tools that he had touched beforehand, and he became almost an instant expert the moment he had held them, but not the fishing line. No experiences came to him to dictate to him its potential for violence.

He held it carefully in his hand, carefully between his razor-sharp blade-like fingers. He gently wrapped his fingers around the comparatively fragile string. He took on one of the many katas he'd developed just for this activity. While he found fighting way more exciting than fishing, he simply found fishing to be spiritually stimulating. He liked to meditate on fishing. He liked to keep all his edges sharp at all times, even edges that couldn't be found on his body.

He cast the line to the waters and waited to catch a fish. He stood still on the pier as he kept a vigilant watch on the hook on the other end of the string. He waited patiently for any unwise fish to bite upon his hook. He didn't have to wait too long for the lake before him had a wealth of fish.

There was a tug on his line, and he reacted immediately. The glow of his eyes intensified as he firmly pulled the fish out the water. He carefully pulled the line and made sure that he didn't pull it hard enough to rip the hook off the catch. The fish was dragged out by the line, flying out of the water and landing right in front of his feet.

Thundertail smiled. He was satisfied.

He spent the next couple of hours fishing. The bucket he brought had been filled with seven wriggling fish. Some fish he released back into the water for being undesirable, but he released some, even though fat and delicious, when his fishing discipline faltered. Thundertail was a proud creature, and he had out stringent obligations on himself.

As some sort of magically animated metal statue, he didn't actually need to eat. He mostly fished for sport. However, the fish that had been put into the bucket was to be cooked and eaten by the villagers. The villagers had endeared him to themselves. He had made it customary for him to fish at the lake and cook a meal fit for a family.

He was worn back his outfit and began to return to the village. The morning sun was already halfway up the sky. The people expecting his fish should be hungry now. He sometimes wondered how they could be hungry when they did not do anything in the entire night. He could understand the need for stimulation and meditation, but he'll admit that he couldn't fully wrap his head around the concept of hunger.

The village of Thernburke was a nice place. The people there primarily traded their wool with the rest of the kingdom. This wasn't the first village he stumbled upon. He had first stumbled upon the village of Goatsend. There, he challenged the villagefolk to battle. They had called him Thundertail for his explosive personality and his distinctive bladed tail. He had decided to keep it after finding it very awesome. Heh, Thundertail.

He was feared in that village, that the villagers shook as they hid in their cellars away from him. There was no one in their village that could match his prowess in combat. The herders would hide in the pastures, unable to return to their warm homes because Thundertail stood in wait on their doorsteps to challenge them. Many of the folks had sported scars and burns from his onslaughts of blades and lightning, and some even having lost limbs against him.

He had terrorised them for quite a bit and only left them alone once he heard of a ferocious beast called a crocodile. He had heard that they lived in the tributaries and harassed rivergoers with their fierce bite. They were apparently armed with dagger teeth and wore green leather armor. He wanted to test himself against their might.

He had followed the river upstream for several days, but even as the river grew narrower and the forest grew thicker, he didn't encounter any crocodiles. There were many water birds and forest creatures, but no crocodiles whatsoever. He was mightily disappointed. In fact, he was livid. He had thought he had been lied to and began blindly punching everything. He subjected the forest in raged strikes and set a portion of it on fire. He jumped into the river and challenged the very waters themselves into a battle where he swiftly sank to the bottom. He discharged much electrical power that it killed many animals living in the river.

He was sulking at the bottom of the river, miffed about the missing crocodiles when he and a fisherman named Barth crossed paths. He had found himself in a lake that time when saw a strange thing floating on the surface of the water. It was a wooden boat, from which a length of string hung. He had never seen or known a weapon or tool with a shaft made of string. It had some sort of metal at the end, so he figured that it was some sort of spear, but when came close to touch it, he gleaned nothing.

His sense came up empty. No inexplicable familiarity bubbled up from his soul. The object before his eyes was was completely unfamiliar. He didn't have any passing knowledge of what kind of implement he was looking at. He tried to forcefully yank the thing down, but all he did was cut the string short with his fingers. The tool was mightily intriguing to Thundertail.

He went ashore and called to the man on the boat. He demanded to the man, who he later learned to be named Barth, to teach him of his unfamiliar tool of trade. Barth was mighty confused when Thundertail referred to his fishing line as a weapon, but complied when he threatened him with violence.

And the rest was history. Their relationship simply bloomed afterwards as Barth thought him the basics of his trade. Thundertail had learned of sharpness in dimensions he had never realized before. He had been focused on the physical aspects of weaponry and ignored things that didn't seem important to the matters of the combat. He had learned of edges he never realized before like the edge of patience and the edge of knowledge. This man with his unfamiliar tool had led him to this realization.

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Ah. Good memories they were, retreading through all the things that had happened to him were also meditatively relaxing. It helps him sum up how far he'd come.

He was in a good mood that day. He liked to hum and sing when he was in a good mood, but he'd been told numerous times that his singing sounded like rolling thunder and metal scratching against each other, so he refrained. His good mood would be short-lived however when he sees smoke rising from the distance. This wasn't good smoke, smoke that rose from fire pits and kitchens. This was a thick column of black smoke that only signaled a blaze that burned more than firewood, like the houses of the village.

Thundertail rushed to the scene and saw a massacre. The bodies of men were strewn about the grounds of the village and the houses around were set afire. He saw strangers, in bandit garbs, carrying sacks of plundered belongings, and some even carrying upon their shoulders shrieking women and children.

Anger boiled within being. Sparks began jumping from his hands as his blade-like fingers splayed open. The bucket of fish clattered on the dirt; its contents spilling onto the floor, and the catch within would soon join the bloody corpses that lie on the dirt. The red glow of his eyes intensified, now very noticeable under the bonnet covering his head.

The raiders moved about like they owned the place. They walked around relaxed, as though nothing terrible was about to happen. They even laughed as they made merriment of the misery of the surviving villagers. They had the once peaceful people of this village tied in thick ropes, ready to be carted; their eyes had been red from all the crying they had done in their binds.

"Ey, look at this boss," one of the raiders commented, noticing Thundertail. "Is that a sorcerer child?"

Thundertail kept silent but turned to the speaker. He glared with hatred that burned like the houses they razed.

"Might be," another raider replied. "This one has expensive-looking stuff beneath all the fleece. Better strip them clean before taking them away."

Raiders began to circle around Thundertail. Thundertail considered each and every one of them and all he felt was contempt. He began removing his garments, revealing his edgy body beneath. The dull black surface of his form belied the sharpness of his edges and points. He adjusted his position to ready for the upcoming battle. While their swords, daggers, and spears posed no danger to his solid metal physiology, he can't be sloppy and let their weaponry graze his surface.

"Woot. That looks like fine armor," a raider remarked. "That's gotta cost a pretty penny."

Soon the skirmish began, and the bandits charged to attack Thundertail. They tried to not give the thing the chance to get away or do something funky, however, Thundertail deftly dodged their strikes. Thundertail had a sore spot over his height. He stood at half the height of an adult, and he found it undignifying to have to crane his head up to look at others eye to eye. More undignifying was the need to step on stools to reach high places and the propensity of adults to kneel to his eye level or refer to him as a child. Still, he had to admit, being small on the battlefield had amazing perks. Warriors of greater proportions than him often had difficulty getting the best angles to him.

Lightning sheathed his claws as he raked them through the flesh of his foes. The unfortunate man who happened to run up to his front had found their waist opened up and their bleeding entrails slipped out. Those outside the range of his raking blades were just as unfortunate as his strike exploded upon impact and sent arcs of lightning forking into their direction. Their limbs convulsed as their systems were flooded with electricity. All of those that had come close to him had fallen to the ground, dead and smoking.

Those fortunately standing just outside the secondary effects of his strike were made hesitant as many of their numbers had been felled in a single strike, but their leader ushered them forward. The raider leader became very interested in Thundertail from the feat he just did. Presuming that Thundertail was untrained, he could see great potential in getting the hedge sorcerer's talent. Even if they couldn't get him on their side, they could always kill him and get the swick armor off his corpse.

The raiders charged once again at him. They wished to overwhelm them with their numbers, but they were no match to the magnificent Thundertail. He expertly dodged their strikes, and the few strikes that could connect barely left any blemishes on his metal surface. Try as they might, but they could not match the metal warrior in combat. He moved as fast as lightning, literally blurring before their eyes in streaks of white and blue. The air stank like a storm incoming, filled with noxious ozone from the electric strikes he employed.

There were some that tried to sneak behind him, but his bladed tail slashed them in half. In their dying breaths, they filled the air with horrid screams fueled by the pain of lightning coursing through their veins. The grounds upon which they had held their battle were now turning into a mud pit dyed red from all the blood that had been spilled. Their crushed corpses were mixed into the softening dirt, and their organs and lopped limbs were thrown about. They were all fresh, some of the corpses could conceivably be still alive although in great misery. Among the heaps of flesh were a few pitiful brains and hearts that continued to think and beat, yet to be freed from life.

The raiders eventually stopped jumping for him. Thundertail looked upon the massive mess around him, the big red battlefield of entrails, tattered linen, and broken weaponry spread all around him. The smell of cooking flesh and of fresh spilt blood permeated his surroundings.

Thundertail frowned. He was not satisfied.

He looked into the dying flames of the burning village and saw the raiders that had not joined in the battle mayhem. A squad of raiders trained their crossbows onto him, fully loaded. The leader was among them, wielding a much more spiffy crossbow than the rest. The bolt loaded in the crossbow glowed with magical fire, ready to explode into a fireball on impact. The leader smiled.

The bolts were launched as fast as Thundertail could move. They moved almost too fast for Thundertail to dodge. He ran across the grounds as the volley of bolts launched in his direction. Most of the bolts simply missed him, but many also hit him (and bounced on his surface). His hands had been coated in a carpet of electricity as he sprinted, however, directly in his path was the magical bolt that had been launched in his direction.

The glowing bolt filled his vision as it came dangerously close dangerously fast. It flew through the air far too fast for him to jump aside. He did the next best thing and crossed his arms before him and braced himself for the impact. The bolt struck, and it exploded. A ball of fire had been summoned, centered upon the Thundertail. The mud beneath his feet was baked and hardened in the blast of heat. His vision wavered before being fully consumed by the fire.

The raiders covered their faces to shield them from the hot draft the fireball had created. The leader looked to the blast with a smile. The shot had flown true and struck bullseye on the target. Not many, even those in magical armor, could survive a shot like that. Too bad the fireball's going to ruin the armor.

They looked into the fire with much anticipation. As the flames dissipated, the figure of Thundertail resolved. It had stood there in a pose that was distinctively not the one it had when the fire exploded. The metal that had comprised him was glowing red hot, and the edges that of his form had been warped by the liberal use of heat. One of his fingers had fallen off, laying on the now dry ground.

They were utterly shocked to see the figure still able to move. Despite parts of the "armor" having melted, the figure beneath the metal seemed unaffected by it. The raiders had felt weak at the legs, and some had chosen to leg it already. The leader however seemed to be rooted in place, his feet nailed to the ground by invisible spikes of terror.

Thundertail's eyes glowed with menacing intensity. He felt hot, hotter than he had ever felt before. He was truly incensed, like his soul had been lit on fire and emerged from the flames like a hound of the underworld. They had earned his ire.

Thundertail scowled. He was verily not satisfied.