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"Have I ever told you how much your opinion matters to me?" Mal swung again, got a glancing hit, and swore as a piece of his coat was shredded. Another piece of his coat.

"Because, really, Asher, your good opinion lights up my life. It is the star that I guide by."

Mal's HP: 25 - 5 = 20
Swarm HP: 12 - 3 = 9

"Actually, I can give you as much attitude as I want--" He interrupted himself with a swing that hit the slow spiraling bird. It looked like it had been nearly done by accident, but it'd leave the metal bird twitching in a pile of feathers, dung, and blood.

He leaned back from it and flicked the sword to get some blood off of it. "--whenever I want. I tend to think of it as a perk of our relationship, Asher, that I can speak my mind without worrying about what's coming out of my mouth."

Mal nodded at the corpses of the birds. "Loot the body?" Mal may or may not (he'd never confirm) have played DnD as a student. Looting the body came with the territory, and thankfully neither of them was the paladin that had to be sent around the hill while the work was done.

Mal's HP: 20 - 5 = 15
Swarm HP: 1 - 6 = ded

Of course, by the time Mal got to the corpses, everything worth taking was gone. Blood (ichor?) had been fouled by the snow and any feathers had been too fouled to pick out. Mal searched diligently and then gave up after not that long, using clean snow to wash his hands and the blade of his sword. "Thank you."

And then Mal grinned at him, because it was Mal and he was terribly irreverent. "For doing most of the work. Let's go get something to eat and warm up." He got the door inside for Asher, holding it open with a flirt of a kind of bow. It was tease and it was sort of a message. Mal knew he hadn't done so well, but they had still won. That was what mattered-- the winning, not who had done most of the work to get there.