How to train your hoglin

Battle

Philza could barely walk. He couldn't fly, and his left shoulder couldn't support his sword for longer than a minute.
Their chances were looking slim. Techno growled at the wither knight, lifting his head to point his tusks directly at the armored skeleton.

"You think this mutant hoglin can protect you? The moment you are weakened, it will attack. And even if it doesn't, it will leave you. Why should it die for a simple human?"
"I am not a simple human, wither knight." Philza responded. His voice didn't tremble. "You know enough of me to call me Death's Angel, so you should know I am no ordinary being. I have lived for centuries. I have fought wars on the side doomed to fail and brought them to victory. I have fought your kind before and I have not been killed. What makes you think you can kill me now?"
"Now you are alone. The great Technoblade is no where to be found. He has abandoned you. And although you are both immortals, he has always taken the hits designed to kill you. Without him as a human shield, what are you? Nothing."
No. Techno wouldn't have left. Philza looked into the flaming blue eyes of the wither knight and shook his head.
"Techno would never leave me. What have you done to him?"
The wither knight laughed, an echoey, vibrating sound. "What have I done to him? Nothing. He went to loot a bastion and never came out. Perhaps the piglins are more worthy of your anger."
A bastion? Techno shouldn't have had any trouble looting a bastion. Was his friend okay? No. Piglins couldn't have killed Techno. Right?
"What... no begging?" The wither knight laughed. "You will die, now."
Philza drew his sword, the hilt rough in his hands. Onyx snarled and lowered his head.
Skeletons rained from the walls, and the air was full of arrows.

The arrows were nothing. And Phil, who'd found some armor in the fortress, didn't have much trouble with them either.
Techno leaped, reared, and kicked, crushing skeletons, both withered and not.
Phil's sword swung, an arc of death, but the skeletons kept coming. With a raspy roar, the first of the wither knights leapt down from the wall. Techno twisted, his tusks tearing a either skeleton in two, to face the new threat.
The skeletons backed up, forming a ring around Techno and his friend, and a pathway for the knight.
It snarled and leapt forward. Techno dodged to the side and smashed his powerful snout into it. One of his tusks punctured its ribcage, and he threw it into another knight, one up in the wall. They both plummeted.
"Good job, Onyx." Phil whispered.
Techno. My name is Techno.
Techno grunted. More knights were coming. He had to get Phil out of here.
He looked towards the gate. If he charged it, he might be able to get through, but he'd get hurt. Bad. Phil would likely be fine though. And that's what mattered.
Techno turned towards the gate and started galloping. Phil grabbed onto his fur. "Onyx no!"
The skeletons became dust under his hooves as he ran. He passed a wither knight, which plunged its sword into his side. But he kept running.
As he sprinted forwards, the wither knight perched on top of the arch screeched.
"Don't let it through. Stop it!"
Techno smashed through another group of skeletons, and he was through the arch. A spear sank into his shoulder, sending pain stabbing through his body, but he shrugged it off.
An axe slashed across his face, scarring it in the same place his scar was when he was human. How ironic.
Blood flowed into his eye, turning his vision red and blurry.
Techno smashed into the side of the arch, sending blocks of stone flying.
He stumbled as he ran.
A spear sank into his leg, and he nearly collapsed, but he kept running.
He was fast. Fast enough, barely. None of the wither knights had their horses with them, so the distance between them and Techno grew.
Behind him, he could hear the leader screaming.

Onyx was hurt, bad. Blood dripped down its face, and spears stuck out of its shoulder and hind leg. A large slash had opened its side, and arrows filled it to the point where it looked like a pincushion.
But still the hoglin ran. It kept going, entering a tunnel and coming out in a warped forest, where it slowed.
Onyx limped forward, entering a cave, where he went up. Was the air getting cooler?
Finally, they entered a small cave, full of a warped forest. But that wasn't the unusual part. There was a giant spire of ice in the ceiling, and water dripped down it, pooling below in about.
"What is this?" Phil asked. "Water? In the nether? I thought that was impossible."
Onyx groaned and staggered to the edge of the water, where it collapsed.
"Onyx?"
Phil slid off the hoglin's back, wincing ad he put weight on his injured leg.
"You're hurt."
Blood matted the soft pink-brown fur, pooling around the boar's hooves. The hoglin licked weakly at the water.
Phil examined its wounds.
How was it still alive? Those wounds would kill almost anything. The spears stuck out. The one in Onyx's shoulder was just embedded. The other had broken off, dragging through its flesh. It had probably hit bone, anchoring itself in muscle.
Red poured down the hoglin's face, and the sword wound coated the blue ground in blood.
Phil had never healed wounds this severe. The hoglin should be dead... it was only a matter of time.
Philza didn't know if he could fix this.