Chương 618: Day Six Hundred And Sixteen

Dear Diary, Y'know, for all that I keep getting the shit kicked out of me whenever fights get serious, I can't help but thinking that somehow this is what I was meant to do. Yeah, I love lazy days playing around with the kids, or reading in bed, or just fuckin' around with my ladies, but none of that is really what you'd call a vocation. I mean, for Marie, yeah, she's all about that wife life.

But while I've taken to following her around now and then, lending her a hand and learning a bit about the shit she loves to do, it's really not my jam. I dunno. Maybe after three thousand years of throwing down whenever needed, I'll decide that I want to focus on my pastry making skills too. Or maybe I'll actually sit down and write. Fuck it, maybe I'll go full on art major and learn to draw or something.

Not like I'll ever be half as good as Raven, but I used to be able to draw some pretty funny stick figures back in the day. Then again, three thousand years. I'm not sure, but I think Marie has picked up all her wifing skills over the past three to four hundred. If I spend that long practicing my scribbles, maybe I'll be able to 'capture people's inner essence' or whatever it was that Saffron said Raven does. Anything's possible, I guess. But here and now, it's time to do what I know I do best.

Protect people from monsters by kicking some monster ass. Okay, Kitten, where's the perimeter? Meet me on the roof of East House. I stepped from Norfolk to the roof, landing right next to where Saffron stood staring at a map set into the roof itself. Not a super high def thing, mind you. More like the one on the ground floor of Lancaster House. Even with my dumbass brain doing the thinking, I caught on to the implications pretty fuckin' quick.

"When did you put this in?" She smiled up at me.

"It's been a while since you were up here. I've been working on it since we moved in." I took a few moments while she Shaped a Scrying Spell to get a solid look at what she'd included. The Homestead, obviously, although the West Tower looked kinda oversized. But then, that's the first thing people saw, and I'm pretty sure none of them really noticed the understated elegance of the exterior of our Houses after that.

Between the Homestead and the rock of the mountainside behind us was a farm with strong Pennsylvania Dutch vibes, at least it looked that way to me, and a little fortress around a mine. Way to our left, like almost on the edge of the roof, we had an image of Lancaster House. Almost directly in front of us, maybe halfway to the front of the house, I saw the little hillock houses of Grandmother's Village.

A sparkling blue line ran just this side of that, all the way around to wrap south of the picture of Lancaster House; on the other side it ran back to nearly connect with the mine. Beyond that river my Kitten had placed a few dozen little figurines that reminded me of the ones we'd used down in Calverton. Except these, especially a few that reminded me a lot of my Senior Cadet Recon squad, plus a trio that were clearly Lachlan, Larry, and Carruthers, were very clearly modeled after specific people.

"Wish we could get those for the bears." Saffron just looked at me, her jaw dropping a little. Then she laughed.

"I suppose it would be useful. Sadly, while I've managed to get the links to Grandmother's Village working, I still can't scry on Erie." She nodded, and I saw the lake picked out in the same sapphire blue as the river.

"Isn't this gonna get weathered?" She shrugged.

"Our son gave me the material covering it. I suppose we'll need to clean it more often, and we might want to put something up here for when the weather is bad, but," she sighed.

"I didn't think of this until we'd already laid down all the floors, and that left the roof or the Courtyard."

"Why not the Courtyard then?"

"Do you want the girls having access to this?"

"Point taken. So... we've got a solid line of Heroes and Senior Cadets along... the Susquehanna?" She nodded.

"I think we're faster on the water than the bears. It also gives us a terrain feature to hold."

"Are our guys on the far side then?" She shook her head.

"Grandmother's Village is on the far side, though." She nodded.

"It is."

"Who's guarding it then?" She looked at me and smirked.

"Okay, okay. I get it. I'll have to stretch a little, but sure. You'll have Vulcan here in case of problems, right?"

"And the defenses I've built into the Homestead as well. Now. Go, my Attack Dog. Kill me some bears." I swept her up into my arms and kissed her. As I dropped her to her feet, right before I stepped away to the orchard north of Grandmother's Village, I barked out, "woof! Woof! Bark!" The moment I arrived, I Co-Located one of me to the Village and another to M-Space. At the village, I knocked on Grandmother's door, then stepped in.

"Sorry to intrude. Just wanted to let you know that there's a bunch of angry Dire Bears, normal sized ones, headed this way from Erie. You might want to have your folks get inside. I'm tryna stop them up by that orchard to the north, but if any get past me, sing out and I'll end them." When she nodded, grimly giving orders to her daughters and granddaughters, I stepped back out of the house and hopped to the top of the hill to the north, then to the top of the nearest tree.

Of course, most of what I saw from there was the remains of the Dire Bear before Mega-Bear, but I still had a decent view of most of the northern approaches to the village. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Meanwhile, in M-Space, I rose into the sky until individual trees started to fade into a misty forest, then dropped down maybe a hundred feet before blinking over to the Mortal Realm and back.

From that height I couldn't really spot anything small, but then, even a normal bear wasn't what you'd call 'small'. If somehow some of the rampaging horde of Dire Bears wound up being, I dunno, koala sized or some shit, I'd count myself lucky and punt the fucker all the way back to Erie. In the Orchard, I found the highest ground I could, then settled in to wait. On my arrival, I heard the normal kinds of noises I'd heard in the forest before. The rustle of animals running away.

Birds, or what I thought were birds, making those angry chirpy noises that translated roughly to 'fuck off, this spot is mine', because birds as a rule haven't realized they're no longer dinosaurs. I mean, emus and cassowaries maybe have a point there, but I'll move aside for a chicken if and only if it's headed toward Murder Mittens' kitchen for processing. I waited, just kind of stretching. Not sure how long I waited, but not long before I got impatient, everything got really quiet.

Then the woods echoed with the same kind of grunting roar that I'd heard from every Dire Bear that got a chance to express itself. I dropped out of M-Space, glanced in the direction of the sound, and saw the trees shuddering in a path that wasn't quite headed for my position in the orchard. So I Shaped a public address Message and extruded a Mana Blade in the shape of a giant middle finger.

"YO! SMOKEY! OVER HERE, ASSHOLE!" In the light of my own Mana Blade I realized that it was well after Midnight, and I'd just spotlighted myself at the top of a hill. Another drop out of M-Space showed me a lot more of those shaking trees denoting the passage of Dire Bears. All of them now headed right for my position.

"Time to go to work." Company's here, Kitten. Call me if you need me elsewhere. The Maenads have taken the area to the east of you. Just in case you hear things from that direction. Thanks for the heads up. Right then the first Dire Bear broke through the edge of the Orchard. It stood head and shoulders over the trees, but most of these were fruit trees. Ten, maybe fifteen feet at most. So, big for a fuckin' bear, but smaller than that Dragon from my first day here and now.

I pumped Mana into my limbs, into my skin, into a long, skinny Mana Lance. At maybe a dozen paces I charged and leapt at the thing, half expecting the Mana Lance to stop dead if I missed the thing's eyes, or maybe deflect off of it. I was not prepared for it to skewer right through the thing's forehead, brilliant light backlighting the Dire Bear as brain piercing or no, it took a mighty swipe at me, then shouldered me aside. Well, okay, I'm pretty sure that's what it meant to do.

Something about me extending spikes every which way from the Mana Lance shish kebab through its body left it a little less coordinated, and when its shoulder hit me it wound up less car accident and more bumper cars. Stolen Dragon Scales and Hole Spawn Shells for the win! Of course, before it finished slumping to the ground, the next one arrived. Then the next one. And the next one.

Over and over and over, some of them surviving the initial clash only to have two or three of me swarm them and make with the stabbing, slashing, and beheading. Through the night the tigress roars of Maenads fighting against the guttural grunts of Dire Bears echoed from my east. Once I heard the sound I'd dreaded, a feline yowl of pain. Kitten! Marie is on it. If nothing else, Sparagmos will recover them, love.

I might have gotten a little savage after that, triple and quad teaming smaller bears to rip them limb from limb. At one point a bear maybe twice the average size came at me, and when it stood to tower over me I pinned its feet to the ground with the femurs of two of its dead siblings, then brought a tentacle with a Mana Blade as long as it was tall around to lop its fuckin' head off. Blood everywhere. Blood everywhere, soaking all of me, and I Reveled in that shit.

I Gloried in it, killing bear after bear after bear. Right around dawn the first one to leak past the orchard arrived at the village. It got past where I watched on the hill, but it roared as it charged the village. I realized why I'd missed it when I stepped in front of it. The thing couldn't be much bigger than a really big dog or small horse.

Adrenaline and Mana pumping through me like the combat drugs they absolutely were, I met the thing's charge, my fist hammering its skull in, then lifting it up over me and slamming it to the ground, its bone plates and spikes shattering as it hit the ground. By midday my uniforms were ragged, every bit of cloth on me soaked in the blood of dozens upon dozens of bears. How many of these fuckers are there? They seem to have been drawn to your position, love.

My Divinations show at least half of them have come straight for you, even if they had to bypass other defenders to do so. Really? Why the fuck am I so popular? I know not the reason, but it may be the only reason none of our defenders have died yet. Casualties? Roughly ten percent. Some enough to put them out of the fight. One Maenad requested Sparagmos from her sisters. Two others have requested it to restore lost limbs when the fight is done. Any extra bears in the spots we lost somebody? No, love.

They seem to have shifted southwards, so I've shifted our defenders to match them. My shit-wrecking senses tingled. I ended another three bears as they arrived, then in the brief respite that provided, the me in M-Space rose. Rose and flew northeast. Every half dozen miles I blinked into the Mortal Realm to hear the sounds of battle. Well, bear fighting anyway. Eventually, where the Susquehanna curved back toward the east, I stopped hearing fighting, and rose into the sky in M-Space.

Rose until the river was a twinkling blue pencil line. Something... rippled. Like something in the Mortal Realm disturbed M-Space with its passing. I stepped to the Mortal realm, Shaping an Air Shield Box as I did, bracing myself and staring where I'd seen that ripple. To the northwest of where I'd seen it, the trees rocked the way they did when something big had just passed by. I scanned the forest southwest of there, and my eye caught some kind of ripple in the air. The light was terrible.

Almost twilight, the perfectly awful lighting big ambush predators loved. I blinked, shook my head, and leapt upward. Something rippled. I leapt upward and southwest. In the light from the setting sun, I caught a glimpse of it. Something huge, winged, and flickering in and out of sight like a heat haze. Headed right for the Homestead. Atop the Village Hill, in the middle of the Orchard, I screamed out, Karen! Tallulah! Marie! On me, now! BLADES OUT! My Ladies, blessed be, didn't ask or hesitate.

All three of them arrived at the orchard to meet the next wave of Dire Bears, and a Marie showed up next to me on the hill before the Village. Saffron! Get everyone at the Homestead inside, under cover, bunkered down, and if you've got defenses, GET THEM UP! I landed atop the West Tower, my feet slipping as some kind of Shape kept me from touching down. I grabbed the railing and, backlit by the setting sun, finally saw the thing clearly. A Dragon.

A Dragon bigger than the one from the Battle of the Bay, one that had to be the size of the Black Dragon. A Dragon that reared up, wings outstretched, and screamed in a voice like a tsunami, "NOW IT ENDS, INSIGNIFICANT APES!"