Heron Lake Plateau and when you wanted someone else, i withdrew

Even with all its ungainly stoutness -- for surely this thing was a creature far inferior to his kind -- Svalinn found that the beaver they had been tasked with subduing was no injured bird or bug. The swimming rodent was far stronger than it looked, and he was about ready to relinquish the task of strong-arming back to Caiaphas (who certainly wouldn't have helped) when he noticed that Elwood and Raleska had joined the endeavor as cheerleader and collaborator, respectively. The ruffian doubled down on his efforts while his sister took a craftier approach -- creeping in like the night.

Though not chosen out of skill or practice, Svalinn had unwittingly given himself a would-be crippling advantage over his opponent. The beaver could not easily bite or scratch him like this; it opted instead to try and escape from the boy unsure of how to apply his strength, and was stopped only by an additional force at its tail keeping it from gaining any momentum. Svalinn, puckering about the beaver's back like a plecostomus, found its neck wound in that moment and dug in with his vexing teeth, sending the beaver into a thrash that outclassed him.

Svalinn's position was broken, but his spirit was not, and now that he had identified the weak point, he recovered only so he could latch onto the beaver's neck again, tasting a fresh wave of blood as he left himself open to a vicious rebuttal from the injured water-rat. It caught him in the shoulder with its digger's foreclaws, and because he had never been struck with such earnest before, Svalinn barked out a yelp and let go of his and Raleska's fearsome dinner.