Chương 613: Day Six Hundred And Eleven

Dear Diary, One good thing about fighting these fuckin' Dire Bears, I don't feel guilty fighting monsters. I mean, even normal bears or wolves I'd feel a little bad about at this point. I'm pretty sure that if I manage to get all my stolen defensive Skills up and running, not to mention maybe Thick Skin, a bog standard wolf could gnaw on my hand all day and I'd maybe get a nice massage out of it. The same goes for a bear, or even a serious big boi like a moose, an elephant, or an orca.

Anything without some kind of major Mana boosting its ability to throw hurt isn't gonna overcome my ability to no sell it. Then again, maybe some normal natural animals use Mana, and can boost themselves the same way I do with Strong Arm and Swift Foot. I mean, yeah, Siobhan talked way back when about how Mana flows from the Soul, but anybody who's spent any amount of time around a dog knows that they've got Souls. Frequently dumb as a post, but Carruthers has a Soul too, so Soul doesn't mean smart.

Or maybe that's one of the things that makes Monsters monstrous, that they've got Mana and something about it calls out to them, tells them that the works of Civilization are a threat to be attacked no matter what. But Dire Bears, big fuckin' piles of muscle and bone that see anything approaching humanity and react with unthinking, unbridled aggression until they're put down, hard, those I can feel good about applying all my best shitkickery.

No 'but what if I'd warned them more stridently', or 'did I give them enough chances to back down', or any of that other bullshit. Just a bona fide reason to cut loose and do my worst to whatever the fuck is tryna mess with me and mine. Even if my definition of 'mine' seems to be expanding by leaps and bounds.

Really got to make sure that Her Dark Fatassness hasn't started tryna plant tentacles in Grandmother's Village, unless Grandmother and Rabbit and Lily are all looking for some tentacle shaped shadows to hang out in. I'm good with her spreading where she's invited, but not where she's not wanted, or even where she's not welcomed. Speaking of Dire Bears, as I wrapped up at Loki's place at dusk, Marie whispered, Bearsign. into my brain. On my way. Blend.

I pulled Dad in for a hug, got one and a whispered, "be careful, young lady," from Mom, and then leaned on my Blend and stepped next to my favorite tiger lady. I touched her shoulder with my fingertips as I scanned the lake. The view, while incredible, had no obvious ursine invaders. Just an endless sheet of rough, ugly ice. Eventually I gave up and asked, what signs? Listen. She hadn't moved since I arrived, just crouching with Vulcan held loosely in her hands.

Despite her casual grip, his string had all the tension in the world, and a single glowing bolt rested ready to fire. I shut my mouth, stilled my thoughts to maybe stop my heart from pounding so loud, and listened. The only sounds came from water. The ice on the lake creaking, cracking. The sound of water moving beneath the ice, slowly scouring it away as spring approached. A constant low drip of melting snow. Other than all that water, nothing. I don't hear anything. Exactly. It took me a minute. Then I realized.

That water, oncoming spring, there should be some kind of other sounds. Something, anything. Maybe not something I'd notice if I were walking around being a big obvious apex predator, but I was blended, and Marie was absolutely at her fuckin' sneaky stealthiest. I only knew where she was because I was literally in her head and touching her shoulder. I'm pretty sure Murder Mittens be sneaky enough she could get two knuckles deep and have me coming before I noticed her in the room.

Which meant if shit wasn't quiet because me, and shit wasn't quiet because her, and animals generally aren't impressed by inanimate objects, no matter how smug, that meant some other apex predator had scared them all stiff. That's when I realized the crackling of ice from the lake had gotten louder. More focused. Right as I realized that, the ice all along the shore, from one edge of sight to the other, lifted up off the water beneath it. Not by a lot. Maybe six inches, maybe a foot.

I leapt into the sky, still Blended, still not breathing. At altitude, looking directly down through the cloudy ice, I saw it. Face mooshed against the ice from beneath like a toddler in a sandwich bag, tongue the size of a parking lot squooshing out toward the shore, nose scrunched, its body extending so far back I could barely make out its shoulders. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I slipped to M-Space, caught my fall, and stepped back to Marie's side as the fuckin' Mega Bear lunged upward, lifting the surface of the lake again. You've been scouting here for days? Yes. Any other people? Or near people? Anybody other than trees and local wildlife as collateral? No. Give me Vulcan and his case and get back to the Homestead. Oh, and your dress. She shot me a look, but a moment later Vulcan's case slipped over my shoulders. His stock slid into my hand, and then tigress tongue filled my mouth.

She pulled away as her dress cleared her shoulders. Kill. Dead as fuck. Thanks, Mittens. Get clear. She went. One of me stepped to M-Space, and even there hovered a solid half mile in the air, just to be sure. Another started leaping up, up, up, until gravity fell away and ice picks tickled my ears.

The me with Marie's dress leapt right to where I'd seen the fucker's nose, pirouetting to spin the skirts out to a near circle before collapsing on myself as Mega Bear slammed into the ice, a single long crack running from the shore out to the horizon. I cranked Vulcan's string until he sang his tension through his stock. Trusting the sound to carry through the cheek pressed against his stock where I aimed, I said, "okay, son. You see Marie's dress?" He just smugged at me.

"I know you've been aching to plant a money shot in that dress the whole time you've been in the woods with her, haven't you?" Look, you gotta know your audience, and Vulcan was every horny thirteen year old with a cock, real or imagined, since the dawn of time, all rolled into one. He fuckin' quivered with anticipation when I said that. I couldn't really say that I saw the dress, even with all my Deific Woo, but this is what my boy was.

Also, while I couldn't see the dress, I could see the fuckin' silhouette of fuckin' Mega Bear. It was significantly larger than the Dragon Lich at the Battle of the Bay.

"Okay, son. Time to make the bear swallow." I stroked the trigger, and Vulcan pushed my shoulder backward as a line of blue light connected us to the edge of Erie. In M-Space I backpedaled as fast as only somebody with Translocation could do; whatever Vulcan had done fucked up M-Space just as badly as the Mortal Realm. From a dozen miles away and several dozen miles up, I watched a brilliant blue globe centered on where I'd last seen the bear's head spread out to cover about half of the bear.

My hands worked as that blue globe's growth slowed, reversed, and then shrank in a reverse of its growth, growing brighter the smaller it got. When only an eye searing mote remained, it exploded, an instantaneous flash that left both of me staring at a reverse wireframe world for a moment. The me in M-Space flickered back to the Mortal Realm just long enough to evaluate the situation. The first thing I noticed was the glitter of snow.

It looked like the world's biggest stripper had gone overboard, because the air over all of Erie glittered. A glance downward showed that Vulcan had blown the ice off a whole assed semicircular section of Erie. Like maybe twenty percent of the lake's surface now stood clear of ice. Of course, right at the epicenter of the introduction of Mega Bear to Weapon of Mass Destruction? Said Mega Bear shoved itself upward out of the water.

There's this old anime I saw once where at the end the bad guy summons up some kind of demon to kill the good guy's giant everything eating cockroaches. Look, anime, okay, stick with me here.

The fire demon, which I think was some kind of allegory for nuclear weapons, starts blasting the fuck out of everything, but the bad guy fucked up the summoning, so the whole time it's doing it the demon's just melting, falling apart like a decorative candle that was never meant to be lit, but got thrown in the fireplace by an ADHD kid who wanted the fuckin' Christmas fire lit. I was a little bit of a pyro sometimes too, yeah, but like I said, focus. Mega Bear reminded me of nothing so much as that fuckin' demon.

Its fur burning, huge hunks of its face, its shoulders, even its back sloughing off like rendered fat off a roast, but it still shoved itself upright, unleashing a bellowing scream that hurt my ears even when I ducked back to M-Space. So I shot it again. And again. And again. And again for good measure.

Honestly, I think the third time was the charm, because while Mega-Bear struggled to lift its head after the second impact, after the third direct high power Vulcan hit to the dome, it just lay there, still, silent, and smoking gently. Which is why I shot it a fourth time. After the fifth shot, nothing remained of its skull but a crater and a jawbone with most of the meat burned clean off. Its shoulders and back still burned fiercely; I don't know if I'd lit its fur, its fat, or both had lit on fire.

Didn't much care, either, because nothing living burned and didn't move to put itself out. I felt Vulcan wanting to shoot it again. Just one more time. Of course, he and I both knew that if I did, he'd want just one more, then another, then another, and I wasn't sure how well we'd done in the past regarding bolt recovery, or if Saffron had new ones made, or he fuckin' grew new ones in his case or some shit. No clue.

But my ears hurt and Mega Bear was dead and I figured I should let Grandmother's Village know about the small forest fires burning in a rough circle around the south shore of Erie. Didn't think they'd care as much about the ones on the north shore.