Yashi was lost in thoughts of Rudra as she walked towards her town, Hope Cottage. Her thoughts were all over the place. It would soon be four years since his smiles had brightened her life and just a year before Siyah would take him for his “trials”. He had grown from cute to mischievous. She was happy, worried, proud, torn and afraid. Everything was good but nothing was right.

She didn’t notice the Humped Stone Boar that started stalking her as she left the forest. The town was a few hundred strides from the forest, the ground covered with nothing but short grass. She did notice Rudra running towards her. A little over four and a half strides tall, well defined muscles, clean face. At times like this when he moved with purpose and fury you couldn’t tell he had not shed his baby teeth. She sensed the boar now but kept moving. It was a base stage 3 beast, difficult but not impossible for her to handle. The boar sank into the earth, ready to pounce at her. Rudra was close and she could see his eyes narrow. She turned to the side and stepped back. She had seen the white wolf sitting at the far edge of the forest, watching. This was not her fight.

With his next stride, Rudra bent his legs a bit more and jumped high. The boar lunged just as Yashi moved aside, it tried to adjust mid leap, when Rudra’s foot slammed into its head. Hard. As he then landed in front of the boar, he caught its tusks and flipped the beast over his head, pinning the boar to the ground on the spikes running down its back, leaving the boar squealing in pain, confusion and anger. Rudra rained kicks and blows on the boar’s face and neck, making the squeals get louder. In desperation the boar blasted all its spikes into the ground, allowing it to roll on to its feet. Rudra smiled as he saw the stumps running down its back and assumed a defensive stance.

He could feel the boar’s fury in the air as he looked it in the eyes. The boar’s nose flared and a light brown haze spread around it. It stared beating the ground with its hoofs, throwing up clumps of dirt in the air that shot suddenly towards Rudra. Some of the clumps turned into stone spikes and others into dense mudballs twice the size of Rudra’s head. They reached him in an instant leaving shimmering trails behind them.

Rudra’s smile had turned into a grin as he felt Stage 3 shakti surge through him. He could also feel his attributes rise to match the boar and the corresponding improvements in his elemental affinities. He turned into the attack, deflecting and dodging the stone spikes. He palmed the mudballs, pushing them away. But they never left his hand, instead losing form the mud started flow across his hands and body, adding layers to an earthen armor forming over his body. Neither was enough. The shift in his speed and strength had thrown him off a bit and he missed one mudball which slammed directly into him, sending him flying back. He curled up in pain and an attempt to roll out of the zone of the followup attack. Two stone spikes still struck, slamming into his left hand and leg.

“Stop fooling around.”

Rudra growled at Yashi’s words. He could sense the boar charging down at him and flipped to the side, narrowly avoiding being gored and trampled. The boar’s tusk still managed to connect and opened up a gash in his sides. The boar grunted at having missed and overshot its target. As it turned around it used the dirt kicked up to launch spikes at him. Rudra was ready. He used his own earth energy field to spin the spikes back at the boar, with increased size, hardness and speed. The boar presented a huge target and all of the spikes struck it. Hard. Only a few broke through its stone skin, but the rest still did damage. Rudra could see a trickle of blood at the corner of its mouth.

The attack made the boar slow down and then it sank into the ground. Rudra knelt, touching the ground with has hands, using his enhanced earth affinity to sense the boar’s movements in the earth. Suddenly the whole ground started shaking, masking the vibrations of the boar moving in the soil. He could only sense the occasional blip. The boar was circling underneath him. He tried to work out where the next attack would come from, when he realised - it was a spiral not a circle. He jumped straight up as the boar burst out of the ground under him, pulling in his legs to prevent the boar from skewering him on its tusks.

He fell on the boar’s back thankful for the stumps. The fall made his wounds flare up. His whole left side was different shades of blood and going numb. Straddling the boar, he decided to try a combination technique. Eight stone pillars spiralled up from the ground, while eight ice pillars spiralled down along the stone pillars turning the other way. The eight stone-ice pillars locked the boar down - four front, four back, in between the legs, with two crossing over it and four under it, raising it till it was not touching the ground. All eight were slowly growing in thickness. The ice caused the temperature of the stone to drop, creating a mix of earth and ice shakti making it difficult for the boar to manipulate.

Rudra stepped away from the growling and roaring boar. As much as he wanted to he couldn’t kill it. He turned to Yashi when he saw the wolf padding away. He walked up to the snarling boar. The boar grew even more angry, lunging at Rudra, snapping at his head, doing everything it could to kill him. He caught both of the boar’s jaws and slammed them shut, looking straight into its eyes. After a few minutes, the boar slumped in defeat. He dismissed the stone-ice-pillars, letting the boar run back to the forest.

“Are you fine?”

“The wounds are healing and should be fine by the second moon set.”

She waited.

He squirmed, then blurted out, "I lost 60% of my health".

She kept waiting.

"I lost 45% combined after the first hits, and 30% with the second. But the healing had already kicked in, sped up by the boon and I can handle it.", he started soft and finished even softer, "I should have started an armor technique immediately."

“Why didn’t you use shakti techniques immediately as the boon powered you up?”

“The barrage it sent was a useful practice in building the foundations of my Dance.”

“Amita, Isha, Ronn and Satt would be glad to shoot arrows at you. To help you train your foundations.”

“Nooooo… they aim the arrows!”

Yashi smiled, “Did you learn anything new?”

“No. It was a regular Humped Stone Boar, two gaz^ at the shoulder, four and a half head to tail and weighed around 2 maund^^. It did not have any Stage 3 techniques, was just feeding more power to its Stage 2 techniques, all similar to the Stage 2 I’ve fought earlier.”

“Why didn’t you kill it?”

“Mmmm… the experimental technique worked. I started seeing it as a guinea pig. Guinea pigs are cute. Can’t kill them.”

That stumped Yashi. They continued in silence towards the town. After a few steps, “Was pinning the boar at the start deliberate?”

“Yes. As I learnt, very painfully, from the last Humped Stone Boar, they can shoot their spikes and then control them in flight. Taking them out of the fight quickly was very important.”

“And why was your Companion not with you?”

“She couldn’t …”

“He tripped me. Glory hog.”

Rudra put on his best baby face, innocent, don’t be angry at me, cute five-year look as he faced Amita’s fury.

------------------------------------

After letting Rudra get an earful for 5 mins, she turned Amita and Rudra to the town. Amita went first, her sulk slowly giving way to her usual sunny self as she started up about the month’s feast and dance coming up at week’s end. Rudra followed warily, even as Amita kept asking him to hurry so they could make plans while making them, anyway. Yashi followed both of them.

After a while she asked Rudra, communicating privately through their units, “Why?”

“There is no why. It was an accident, I didn’t trip…”

“No. You know what I’m asking.”

Rudra was quiet for a while. Then he spoke slowly, “It was pulling its punches. It could have hit harder, moved faster, put more shakti into its techniques, but it didn’t. I may have been at Stage 3, but I was yet to settle into it. My speed, precision, accuracy were all off.”

“They sent it for your training, an opportunity to get over those shortcomings.”

He sighed, “I know.”, then his voice gained an edge, “I didn’t like the pretence. It should have made me work for it. The boar was a poor choice. That’s why I ended it quickly.”

He turned and looked at her, letting her see his resolve, his pride.

^ 1 Gaz = 1 Metre

^^ 1 Maund = 1 Tonne