Bound To; The Wish of the Witch

XI

The breeze hushed as Tori went in for the kill. His axeblade coming down, aimed at the other ranger's throat. The enemy spoke calmly with a smirk.

"Fine, I yield." Tori stopped the blade just before it met Locke's throat. Tori stayed still for a moment before sheathing his axes, removing his foot and knee from his wrists, and holding a hand out. Locke swung his arm up to grip Tori's wrist. Tori took his in return and pulled him to his feet.

"What exactly is going on here?" Scinthia asked, her hand still on the hilt of her sword.

"That was something we call a ranger's greeting." Tori said.

Scinthia gave him a look, still seeming confused.

"Ordinarily, when one ranger happens upon another, they attempt to ambush the other one to test their awareness, reaction time, and combat skill." He explained.

"So you two weren't trying to kill each other?" She asked.

"Not exactly, most ranger's greetings end with the death of one of them, however my friend and I have a mutual agreement to offer each other a chance to yield." He said.

"So every time you rangers come across one another, you kill each other?"

"There's a reason there's not a lot of us." Tori chuckled. "The idea is to test each other. If you're fool enough to be seen, you must fight, and if you can't fight properly, you die."

"That's a bit extreme don't you think?" Scinthia asked.

Tori sort of agreed with her. He really didn't like having to kill his comrades, however he understood the reasoning behind it.

"Perhaps, but it'd be better to die at the hands of a comrade then get killed or captured on an assignment." He said.

She remained silent for a moment.

"Now that that's over with." Locke said, stepping forward and introducing himself.

As him and Scinthia exchanged names, Tori thought about why Locke was here. He wondered if the corps had sent him after him or if it was just a sickening coincidence. Tori felt a knot bundling up in his gut. He couldn't believe how vulnerable he had left himself by traveling the way they had been. Tori wondered how he should play the situation and ultimately decided that being friendly like he used to be would probably be best before returning to the conversation as Locke turned to him.

"Now what gave me away this time?" He asked.

"I heard your bowstring release." He lied through a confident smirk.

"There you go again with that. When are you actually going to tell me how you do it?" Locke asked.

"I'll tell you how after you kill me. How does that sound?" He said, his smirk holding.

"This was Deine's greatest lesson to us, but you were too busy trying to compete with me to use your head and figure it out." Tori thought to himself.

"Yeah, all right." He chuckled and turned toward Scinthia. "Your boyfriend here has dodged every arrow I've shot at him since we were fresh-faced recruits in the Ranger Corps and even now, as a full status ranger, I still can't hit him." He said.

"Oh, we're not together like that." Scinthia said sounding slightly flustered.

Caught off guard, Tori added to Scinthia's comment.

"We're just traveling together for now." His words came out sounding more rushed then he had planned and struggled to think of what to say next.

"Yes, there isn't anything like that between us." She continued.