Seth pulled into his driveway and got out of his car, leaning back against the door as he rubbed his face. He pulled out his phone and began typing out a text to Olivia.

A hand slapped his phone out of his hand and it bounced on the cement. Seth looked up to see the leader of the shamans standing there, towering over him. “Consorting with the enemy? Not a good move, Seth.” He turned into a powerful left hook that drove through Seth’s jaw and sprawled him out on the driveway. Seth heard the noises of shifting and as he pulled himself back up, three bears stood before him: the massive grizzly shape of the leader, and two smaller but mean-looking black bears. Seth scrambled to his feet and backed up to his garage. Only now did he notice the lack of lit street lamps despite the time being five in the morning.

The grizzly growled, low and deep. It appears you need to be broken before you serve.

The bears spread out to form a semi-circle around him. Seth reached a hand behind his back and gripped the handle of the cold-iron fighting knife.

Teach the whelp his lesson.

Seth exploded to the right, drawing his blade and slashing hard at the face of the black bear in his path. The bear stumbled backwards, deshifting into human form in less than a full second. The man staggered back, a deep crimson cut across his eye and nose, shrieking in pain.

Rip off his limbs!

Seth could hear the black bear charging from his left. He snatched the deshifted man by the wrist and pivoted, putting him in the way of the charge, and then leapt and rolled away from a swipe by the grizzly. He came up in a low stance, knife held forward between him and any incoming attack. So, the knife worked. “Back the fuck up,” he growled.

“Aaaaaaagh!” A scream came from behind him and someone grabbed him by the roots of the hair, sprinting forward and slamming him face first into the wall of his house, splintering the siding. Seth’s vision went black and through the haze, he felt a powerful blow nail his face and rebound his head off the wall, ripping flesh with it.

How does it feel, impudent whelp?

Seth’s rage bubbled up and he slashed wildly in front of him. His blade sliced something and he heard a shriek of human pain. Seth kept swinging like a wildman as he stood to his feet, his vision clearing partially. Enough blood had dripped into his left eye to make it useless. The man his knife had deshifted lay in Seth’s lawn, holding his lacerated face. In front of him now stood the other black bear, the grizzly, and the massive polar bear he had seen at homecoming. Seth swallowed as they all bared their fangs, but the fear in his mind was rapidly being replaced with the spitting rage of the void.

“It feels good,” he snapped. “How about this? How about you give me back my friend and I don’t turn you into a goddamn rug?”

Deep laughter reverberated in his mind. “Get out of my head!” Seth lunged for the grizzly, aiming a stab right at the bear’s nose.

Seth lost all his air as the polar bear blazed into motion and chomped hard around his midsection. Pain filled every nerve ending in his body and he dropped the knife as the polar bear shook him like a ragdoll and tossed him into the siding again. Seth rebounded and slid to the ground, on the verge of blacking out again. The polar bear stepped between him and the others, black eyes locked on him with a predator’s glare. Blood leaked onto the pavement all around Seth, and he could feel his legs beginning to go numb.

What? No backup witch this time? Shame. The polar bear stalked in closer.

Seth lashed out with his augmented leg, his heel landing square in soft black nose. The bear yelped in pain. Seth was not prepared for how human-like the cry from the vocal cords of the animal sounded. It retreated a step back, but found its footing again, and continued to advance. Seth kicked again and the bear snapped its jaws shut around his augment. The metal was far too strong for it to break, but Seth was trapped.

Ah, came a new voice. So this is how you broke my brother’s leg. No matter.

The polar bear whipped its head and Seth spine cracked. He flew through the air onto the lawn, rolling to a stop near the sidewalk. He definitely couldn’t feel his legs now, aside from the augment. He pushed himself up on his elbows as the polar bear advanced towards him.

You know, said the leader. If he’s this weak, just kill him now. No need to mess with this prophecy business. The polar bear stalked forward.

Seth looked down at this left index finger. Range: sight. Seth lifted his arm and pointed at the polar bear, focusing his intent like the note had said. “Ignis alta.” For a second, that wasp-sting lanced through his skull and he saw a single red dot appear on the skull of the polar bear.

KABOOM!

A fireball erupted in the polar bear’s open maw, filling a ten-foot-wide sphere with flames and shattering every window in the immediate vicinity. Chunks of meat exploded in every direction and the strong scents of sulfur and burning hair clogged the air of the early morning. Seth was lifted from the lawn and thrown into the street, rolling three times before coming to a stop face-down on the curb opposite his house, his face scraped open on the cement. A flaming arm from the deshifted shaman crashed to the cement next to Seth, but made no sound for him, as only an intense and all-consuming ring filled his ears. Right. Concussion radius: fifty feet.

For the second time that night, Seth fell unconscious as his blood trickled into the nearby storm drain.