Sun Mote Copse down, among a million same

Firebirds!

The mountain had not been kind to him. It was the season that made things difficult, and his own bravado which got in the way of his progress, leading to failure. Tulimaq had thought himself to be more than capable of taming the mountainside. He was Tartok! He was a mighty beast of the ice according to some elders, those that spoke of a grandmother who hailed from these Wilds—but he had failed. Failed the wolves of the wasteland, failed his own bloodline. He came down from the mountain with a hitch to his step and a half-healed crescent scar crossing his lower abdomen. A reminder from the resident boars that it was their mountain. He would be back. One day Tulimaq would climb those paths again and those lowly beasts would rue the day they let him live.

He was alive, though. The puncture hadn't been a deep one, and the curving tusk that had penetrated his soft tissue had not eviscerated him as expected. Fate, maybe. Luck, more like it. The boar was long dead now and frozen among the red-cast trees. Still, Tulimaq wasn't in a good head-space. He marched down from that mountain without looking back, and as he came through the glimmering copse he finally had to stop and take a moment to catch his breath, something he'd never been forced to do before. Oh, how he loathed those swine of the black hills — he breathed deeply, unfurling a draconic cloud as he fumed and exhaled, realizing only a moment later that he wasn't alone in the woods.