The Domain that Elder Beolkyax had pointed Kese to was far away from the Spanheart, far enough that they had to land on a sub-Mortal-stage Domain to rest their wings before continuing on. After their First Forging they would be strong enough to fly for days, though it wouldn't be until the Wayfinder stage that flying would become as easy for them as standing.

  In the end, the Currents brought them to a passing Domain that was inhabited by a Wayfinder stage dragon, who let them rest for the night.

  "Won't they be worried that we've just...vanished?" Raan asked, as they looked up at the dark sky.

  "We're adults now, Raan," Kese reminded him. "The Tenders aren't going to be looking after us all the time. My mother used to vanish for years, before the manabond weakened her." She fell quiet for a moment. "I suppose she'll leave again now."

  "You'll still have your father, won't you?" Raan asked.

  "I will, but..."

  Raan knew Kese didn't get on with her father, didn't see what her mother saw in him. She decided not to think about it too much and instead gave an idle shrug as she curled up in the warm grass. "Besides," she said, returning to Raan's original question, "Elder Beolkyax sent me this way, and I told him I'd take you too."

  "What if I'd said no?" he asked, sleepily.

  She giggled as slumber began to take them. "You expect me to believe you would spend your life sitting in your lair whining?"

  They arrived at the Domain that the Elder had directed Kese towards the next day. It was easy to see why it was a place well-suited to growing the Fire-Petal Roses; heat radiated from it long before they touched down, landing on the far side of the Domain from the volcano that was spewing lava infinitely. Kese sighed contentedly as she dug her paws into the hot dirt. Raan, lacking her latent affinity for Fire, was less enthusiastic.

  "The Elder told us there are three Mortal stage monsters on this Domain," Kus murmured to him, consulting the notes she'd been given from her storage bag. He'd learned the previous night that all the young dragons had been given one to store the resources they would need for their Forging, since they couldn't yet manifest their Will to store them. He'd left before Archivist Dilphoge had had the chance to give him his. "First, Redscale Alligators - technically they're near the peak of the Mortal stage, but their power is focused entirely around being able to live in lava. Their bites can sting, but they're not really dangerous as long as you don't let them get you near the lava, and out this far from the volcano, the ones we find will be weaker anyway. Too cold for them. Then there are Obsidian Tusk Boars. Their favourite food is the Fire-Petal Roses, so we're pretty much guaranteed to run into them. They're as big as a dragon and their tusks are nasty, but they're stupid and just charge headlong at anything that moves." She noticed Raan pawing at the ground subconsciously. "At least break their tusks off first if you want to try wrestling one," she sighed, rolling her eyes at him.

  "I wasn't thinking about fighting them just for the sake of it!" he protested, unconvincingly. "You said they go for the Fire-Petal Roses. We need to fight them if we want any of the petals for you."

  "Of course. Anyway," she continued, growing more serious, "the last thing in this Domain is the one that's the real threat. They're called Flamewinder Pythons, and they're big enough that one could completely wrap around either of us. A big one could probably crush us both. And they can rub their scales together to generate fire."

  "One to avoid, then."

  "Except they prey on the Obsidian Tusk Boars, and hide near the Fire-Petal Roses to catch them. They look like boulders until they attack."

  Raan sighed. "Why do I get the impression that Elder Beolkyax-Tahi sent you here to test you?"

  "I'm inheriting a Bloodline that can directly trace its provenance to the Flame Calamity Bloodline one of the seven Eternals used. Of course he's testing me."

  They fell quiet as they advanced deeper into the Domain, funnelling into ravines that were barely big enough for the two dragons to walk side by side. A perfect environment for a creature that defends itself by charging headlong into its target...and for one that looks like a boulder until it crushes and burns you.

  He'd already lashed out at a genuine boulder, ripping it in half with a crash of stone that had had them both running for the nearest side path before anything came to investigate the noise.

  By unspoken agreement, they were still going to give any other potential Pythons in disguise the same treatment.

  It was late that day when they finally found the Roses - a clump of beautiful orange-red flowers that shimmered with heat, pride of place in the centre of one of the wider parts of the ravine.

  They were not, however, the first to find them. A group of Obsidian Tusk Boars - Raan guessed a mated pair and their second litter, along with a juvenile on the precipice of adulthood from the first litter - were tucked around the plants, bathing in the Fire mana they gave off. Kese growled, a low, menacing sound. "If those walking slabs of meat have wasted some of the Roses' energy..."

  "How many do you need?"

  "Nine. And I only count seven from here." She looked back over the boars. "I'll deal with the two boars closer to the Roses," she hissed. "You deal with the big one."

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  Raan nodded. He and Kese might have been evenly matched when it came to fighting each other, but he was well aware that his fighting style tended to lead to more collateral damage and uncontrolled movement than hers.

  They scaled the wall of the ravine and circled around to avoid the wind carrying their scents to the boars too early - and to check for any other monsters in the area - before taking up position above the boars.

  Then they stepped over the edges of the ravine, tucked in their wings, and dived.

  The boar matriarch, like any other monster, had no more intellect than a beast. And it had never seen a dragon before. But even a beast's intellect, when coupled with decades of experience, was enough for it to see the descending shadow, assume it was a Flamewinder Python slithering down from the cliffs above and heave its bulk up to meet the descending dragon tusks-first.

  Raan cursed and snapped out his wings, adjusting his trajectory just enough that instead of slamming directly into the vicious black tusks, he flew over the boar close enough that the tips of its fur brushed against his belly. He grabbed the boar with his hindlegs, claws sinking into its back - or rather, into the tough fur that protected its back. He was no Kese; he couldn't lift something heavier than he was with his wings, and the momentum of his glide only dragged the boar a dozen feet away from the roses before he was forced to release it or fall out of the sky.

  He landed awkwardly, spun, and sprang back towards the boar before it could regain its balance, catching it by the neck with his forelimbs and smashing its head into the cliffside, shattering one of its tusks and giving him more freedom to fight it head-on.

  It squealed angrily - and when it managed to get all four feet under it and heave, Raan found himself lifted off the ground, his efforts to claw and bite at the thing defeated by its fur, forcing him to release it and jump away before it crushed him between its bulk and the cliff-face, jabbing at its eye on the side with no tusk with his tail as he did to forestall it from immediately trampling him.

  That only bought him a second or two, but that second or two was enough that when it charged towards him he met its charge squarely, taking advantage of his smaller size compared to it to dodge its remaining tusk and slam into its shoulder on its less-dangerous side.

  For a moment neither of them moved.

  Then Raan's hindleg slipped slightly. He snarled, hooking his wing-talons into the ground, and redoubled his efforts to hold the boar still, but it was too strong for even him to challenge directly.

  A savage grin split his muzzle.

  He brought his tail around to jab at its eye again, but it was ready for him this time and tilted its head, his tail slapping harmlessly against its head - but that movement exposed its neck to him and he lashed out, fastening his jaws around the underside of its neck and biting down with his full strength.

  It let out a howling squeal, thrashing hard enough that he could barely even slow it down, never mind hold it still, and pain blossomed in his shoulder as its wild bucking brought its remaining tusk into contact with his body, making him yowl in pain and release it instinctively, jumping away with a beat of his wings and glancing down at his foreleg with a wince. A half-dozen obsidian shards protruded from his leg and shoulder, splintered off from the main tusk and still burning hot.

  The boar had come off far worse from the exchange, though. Its fur had deflected the worst of the bite, but blood pooled beneath it and it staggered as it tried to stay upright - but its eyes were still focused on Raan.

  And, in so far as he would ascribe emotions to a monster, filled with rage.

  It charged again. He didn't try to block it this time, not with only three legs to brace himself when he hadn't been able to hold it back with all four.

  But although he might not have been used to fighting an opponent that could overpower him, he'd learned plenty of moves from having Kese use them against him in their duels.

  He jumped to the side, stumbling as he tried to catch himself with only his hind leg on that side working properly, but regained his balance quickly enough that he was able to slam his wing into its side, talon-first.

  It felt like his wing was almost wrenched out of its socket, but the addition of the boar's uncontrollable momentum did what his blows alone had failed to, and his talon dug through the fur and into the flesh beneath, ripping down the boar's flank and leaving it crashing to the ground, blood spilling into the dirt.

  As the boar kicked once and then stilled, he heard the squeaking of the young boars as they cowered away from him, flicking his tail at them irritably. "Go on, shoo." He had no particular compunctions about eating young monsters, any more than he had young beasts, but they had been taught it was preferred to leave the young ones alive after a hunt where possible, so the Domain's mana could replace the adults that had been hunted more quickly.

  Of course, if the boarlets wanted to deliver themselves to him as a snack, he wouldn't complain in the least.

  They didn't, turning and fleeing down the ravine. Raan ignored them and hopped awkwardly back towards the Roses - Kese, naturally, had dealt with her two boars without either of them taking so much as a step towards the Fire-imbued plants.

  He thought she was completely unharmed at first - it wouldn't have surprised him - before he heard her cursing. "Damn thing stamped on my tail," she grumbled, before seeing his own wounds. "What happened to 'break the tusks before charging it?'" she sighed, flicking out her claws and carefully plucking the shards of obsidian from his shoulder. The wounds began to bleed as she did, but the flow of blood began to slow almost as soon as it had begun, and with each shard removed he could more easily move his leg.

  "Things got a little complicated," Raan admitted, through gritted teeth as she pulled the biggest shard from his shoulder. "Its fur was tougher than I expected. How are the Roses?"

  "Five of them are usable, I think. But I'll let the Elder review them when we return to make sure." She awkwardly pawed the storage bag from her neck and held it near the bush, where the plants were roughly uprooted and sucked into the bag like water going down a plughole. "I need to find a more mature one, as well," she sighed. "The Elder has offered to provide me with a substitute for the mature one, if I cannot find it. But..."

  He nodded in understanding. To rely on Elder Beolkyax-Tahi's generosity to procure a Mortal stage item would be, for all intents and purposes, to fail. Even if the Forging ritual itself worked, she could hardly prove herself worthy of the Bloodline if she was not capable of gathering the materials that her predecessors had in their days.

  "Well, we've been here barely an hour and are more than halfway through what you need. That bodes well."

  "Yes, this one requirement of dozens," she commented, drily. "And only half of them are ones the Elder knows a source for." She paused and realised who she was talking to. "I'm sorry. Thank you for doing this with me despite...everything. I couldn't have beaten all three boars alone, especially not while trying to keep the Roses safe at the same time."

  He leant over and nudged her on the shoulder with his muzzle lightly. "You can pay me back by helping me find the reagents for my Forging i...when I find a Bloodline that I can use. Besides," he sighed, "right now being able to just hunt without having to care about anything else is exactly what I need." He knew that was the whole reason Kese had brought him here, of course. That didn't stop him being grateful for it.

  "Well, speaking of hunting..." Kese grinned. "How about we find out how good our first Mortal-stage prey tastes?"