Both monsters screamed at each other, both seeking to intimidate the other. Yet neither felt like letting the other go.
And if the wyvern was bigger, the winged deer hardly feared it.
So they fell on each other with a newfound rage. The wyvern's claws ripped into that beast to see it turn to clouds, reappear to the side and strike the flank. Scales cracking under the antlers' shock.
Both of them opened their wings wide to lift themselves up in the air. They had parted, rushed back to clash and once again the deer's shape vanished in clouds under the beast's maw.
So the wyvern inhaled and let out a vast flow of fire that streamed all over the woods, trailing the deer that escaped to plunged back on it.
Charge broken by the claws, and then the next, after which the wyvern let out another stream of flames that missed once more.
They were circling madly around each other, flying always higher, seeking the altitude as an edge.
It was the deer's turn to belch out its deadly flow of white smoke that rained down fading, disappearing before it met the growing wildfire. Where it didn't fall the flames were extinguished.
So they circled once more.
But this time when the wyvern let out its deadly fire it hit the deer's wing. fire spread on those feathers before they could turn to clouds.
The monster plummeted down.
And Tunu realized he was winning. Tunu realized he was flying high above the plain, towering over that monster that was about to crash on the rocks. Tunu realized he was alive and flying.
He plunged, fell on the deer to pierce its flank with both hind legs just before bursting the flames on its whole body.
White smoke flew up to meet that wall of fire.
In that instant their breaths clashed, the power of life against that of death. Life had no chance, the flames faded and a freezing touch turned half of the wyvern's head to ashes.
That breath would have then turned and annihilated the rest had the wyvern's tail not struck. Cut short, the deer escaped to reform further away, panting, while the head it had destroyed was reforming once more.
It was almost over.
The winged deer looked at its burnt wing, snatched it between its flat teeths and pulled. It fell on the ground and slowly broke down into mist.
So only one could fly anymore and only one could regenerate. With no way to win anymore the monster charged regardless, dodged the claws and struck that wyvern straight at the chest with enough force to make it stumble back.
That was all it would get. Tunu felt its wings open wide to bring him back airborne where that beast could not reach him.
He himself poured flames down on it, only to see the white smoke answer and stream through, well past, so high as to miss the lizard by nothing. Higher! But its whole body felt heavy, weighed down by that invisible touch.
A second time the smoke nearly touched it.
Suddenly the sky felt like a deathtrap.
So it plunged. The wyvern plunged and fell on that winged deer to rip it apart, only to have it hop close and strike with its hooves, then move like the wind and to the beast's back where it struck again.
The tail whipped and chased it away.
And now the wyvern was heaving. Tunu was heaving. Never had his heart beat so hard, so madly. It was reaching its limits, or so it felt. Far from done, it accelerated instead, lifted that whole body to pursue this insufferable prey.
The claws sliced and sliced but could not catch it. Again the antlers struck on the flank, making the lizard shriek.
So for another short second both monsters faced each other at a distance.
Then the tail pierced the ground and not an instant later it pierced through the deer at that distance. It should not have reached so far, it should not have dug so quickly but it did.
And when the deer tried to turn to cloud to escape it, it could not do it anymore.
Tunu could not tell what was happening. No creature could. None but his beating heart, his exhausted heart that still pushed further to build up a last breath.
The flames poured, engulfed the whole rocky clearing and past it, burst into the trees, reducing them to nothing but melting coal, then to lava. The flames poured for several seconds and several more, even after the monster's last painful bleat was gone.
When it finished, the deer's body remained there, not even steaming, intact.
Inert.
The wyvern approached. The wyvern's tail cracked free from the ground, most of it blackened and dead. It approached its dead prey, towered over it and then, snatched it.
Two bites or three. Morcels fell back on the grounds that it went to snatch and swallow as well.
It roared, it roared for the whole plain, then staggered, then fell.
It took hours for the wildfires to die down. Without any wind, against a moist forest the flames had struggled to expand. Still they had devoured large parts, left the soil charred, even threatened the hill for a while.
When it was over, the kobel warriors rushed to the site of that battle.
There the ground was still rocky, still jagged and cut by shallow ravines. Eventually earth and soil would fill those holes, slowly recover that wound but for now it would remain exposed, a wound inflicted on the realm.
They found him reeling.
Tunu had not been able to fall unconscious. His heart would just not stop. His heart was still beating blindly, beating mad as if the fight had never ended. And so his consciousness would not fade, maintained by that impossible power.
He was back to a kobel. And when they saw him it wasn't just how broken his face was or his scales but just how few were left.
His horns were gone. Most of his body had returned to that hideous fur. What scales remained had flattened and shrunk. He looked so paltry that for a moment the youngest warriors doubted it was their legendary champion.
Without scales, where it had been struck, the body showed horrible scars.
But all of this was not even the worst sight. Because the kobels had arrived too late. Wéréns had found him first. Three of them were tending to the kobel's wound. When they saw the warriors they gestured for them to hurry.
For that blasphemy, the kobels killed every last one of them.
They would later tell everyone that those wéréns had tried to assassinate their champion in his moment of weakness. And that made sense. To everyone it made every bit of sense. Just as it made sense for them to hide his state from the other tribes.
Weakness only invited betrayal.
So this time they took care to hide him and carry him under the mantle of the night, all the way back to the tower where none were allowed but the most faithful kobels. And to choose those they turned to Etelet.
"Why me?" He asked. "Elua knows better."
The warriors, in that short hallway, looked at him for a moment, then remembered.
"Ah yes! Elua!" Said one who turned to another: "Let's tell her to come back!"
"What?"
He found her outside, crying. She had indeed been thrown out of the tower to make way for the wounded. They would not let her look at him.
Female kobels rushed in and out with water and wool, with jars and pots, with treasures to put at the champion's side. When they walked past, they glared at that impotent fool that cried. Had the shaman apprentice not been there, they would have kept kicking her.
It was the tribe's day of triumph.