The pair worked in companionable silence for several minutes before Zelda picked up her stick once more.

“Thank you for taking care of me all these years,” The bear had obviously been thinking about the message for a while as she misspelled fewer words.

“What do mean?” He wondered.

Zelda dragged a paw along one of the many seams he had sewn together over the years. The color of the threads, not quite matching the rest. Pieces of grime and dried blood flaked off and fell with the movement.

Zack frowned and knelt before her. “You remember all of that? How?”

Zelda began to nod and then stopped. The stick in her hand tapping thoughtfully against the ground. “Pieces, here and there, not everything. Connection to her grew… dim, strained, almost gone at times, but I held on, I refused to let her go-“ The writing grew increasingly messy, and hard to read.

He pushed the stick from her paws and pulled her close, looking into her marble eyes. “So, you know everything that would happen to her even after she left the portals? All the experiments they did to her, how we had to live after we were rescued?” It was hard to keep the bitterness from his voice.

She nodded, with a slight tilt of her head, unsure of where he was going with the direction of his thoughts. He engulfed her in a hug, holding his breath so he wouldn’t accidentally breathe in her smell.

Zack stood and ineffectually tried to brush the grass and other debris from the knees of his pants. Pants that, if he was being honest with himself, were officially on their last leg. They were old, worn, and patched before this little trip. Now they were being held together more by the dried pieces of various beasts that had gathered on the material than any remaining cloth.

He ignored the stiff crack and crackle and picked up a tendon and a smaller scale. Behind him, Zelda stamped her foot as he ignored her. Tying the tendon to the claw of a dead lizard, he used the scale to scrape the excess material from it. Honestly, he had no idea how the bears had managed to get the tendons out as quickly as they had. Normally, they were a rather time-intensive endeavor to retrieve, not that he was going to complain.

The tendons, or sinew as it was actually called now that it was outside of a living body, were incredibly strong once they were dried. It was the perfect material for constructing some quick but relatively durable weapons or armor. Exactly what the three bears needed at the moment.

He would try to think of a more permanent solution later.

Zack would clean, and Zelda would use the claws to slowly worry holes into the many scales. It was a long and boring process. One that grew faster when they were joined by a newly animated George a while later.

He and Zelda did indeed seem to be able to converse as they worked together in an increasingly efficient manner. It was something that he had been somewhat expecting and made sense if George also could talk to his sister.

“Zack!” Zara screamed when she finished animating Aisha. The large new bear had doubled over and was ripping a hole open in its throat.

“What’s going on?” He asked, running over to her.

Zara was sweating from her constant efforts in animating the bears and was standing on one knee. “I’m not sure! She just keeps saying that it hurts.”

“What hurts?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Can you help her?”

“How am I supposed to help her when you don’t even know what’s wrong with her?” Zack protested, stepping closer to the bear regardless. He slapped her large paws away and reached for the hole she had started to tear in her throat. “I have no idea if this will hurt, but sorry.” He gripped the edges and pulled, ripping it open. Thrusting his hand into the opening, he began to root around in her fluffing, to her obvious discomfort.

It only took a few seconds for that to be too much, and Aisha retreated from him. She shoved her own paw into the now larger hole. Then, carefully pushing it against the inside of her chest, she pulled out a small object and handed it to Zack.

“Does she know what it is?” He asked with a sinking feeling. There were no markings on what he now saw was a rather intricate device with a tiny mana crystal the size of a grain of sand powering it.

Zara shook her head. “She wasn’t awake yet when they put it in. What do you think it is?” She proceeded to fix the hole in Aisha’s throat while they talked.

He plucked the tiny mana crystal from the device and stored it in an empty water bottle. “I can’t say for sure, but considering who she came from, and what we thought she might have before. I would say it’s likely that it’s a listening device of some kind.”

Zara bit the corner of her lip. “So, they know we are in here, then?”

He nodded. “Probably. I would expect to see Anna and Second waiting for us when we leave as well.” His hand tightened around the listening device, crushing it.

Her brows drew close together in thought. “What does that mean for any mana crystals we bring back tonight, then? Will they try to confiscate them?”

Zack shoved the remains into his pocket and thought over her question. “I’m not sure. On one hand, they are used by corporations for everything, but on the other, they are also readily available to the public. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense for them to confiscate them, but it is certainly a possibility.”

“We should hide some of them just in case, then.” Zara decided, finishing her work on Aisha.

“We only have so many water bottles,” Zack said, mentioning the obvious location, before glancing at the next obvious one.

Aisha covered her throat and hid behind the much smaller Zelda.

Zara shook her head emphatically. “No! That would hurt them!”

“Fi-“ He stopped and looked from her to George. “How’s George doing then?” They had put a secret pouch in the bear years before. Now that he was animated, Zack was wondering if the addition was hurting or bothering him.

Zara looked startled, apparently having forgotten about the spot where she hid all their extra money. “George, are you doing alright?”

The bear nodded and reached behind to touch the spot where the zipper was hidden. He was aware it was there, but didn’t seem to be bothered by it for some reason.

They stood around thinking for a minute longer before Zack ushered them towards the materials.

“Come on, we can decide when we actually have the crystals to worry about. There is no point in thinking about it too much before then.”

“Where are we heading towards?” Zara asked him, as the bears tied pieces of other beasts to themselves as armor and weapons.

Zack pointed out three separate directions to her. “There are three locations that I was able to somewhat identify as being likely locations when I was inside earlier. The first is closer to the mountains, a typical location for a mine. The second is in the middle of the forest. Maybe in an open mine of sorts, or with stronger monsters, both common options. The third is the river, with loose crystals just gathering along the bottom in certain areas.”

Zara rolled her eyes. “Those are kind of obvious.”

He shrugged. “What can I say? There was no one inside, and there hadn’t been anyone for a few hours. You know how fast portals tend to fix the damage humans do to them, especially when they are empty.”

“The mountains are too far,” She said, moving on with the conversation. “The depths of the forest are probably too dangerous for us. There are too many places where we could be surrounded and cut off from the bears. You could easily handle a few monsters, but in the forest, it would be too easy for there to be a near-endless wave of them.”

“The river it is then.”

On the far side of the clearing behind the portal was an area a lot of travelers ignored, simply because they never thought to look. It was more of the green clearing and forest, but there was also a river that came down from the mountains that were part of the hollow. There was something about coming out of the portal, looking in a certain direction that kept most travelers from ever thinking to look the other way.

They waited for the bears to finish arming themselves and then walked around the portal.

The river was only a few hundred feet into the depths of the forest. They were able to hear rushing water as soon as they reached the edge of the trees. Along with that came the sound of beasts and other kinds of monsters occupying the forest.

Zara swallowed. “I didn’t realize the river was so far inside the forest. It almost makes no difference what choice I made, does it?”

Zack snorted. “The trees will be much thinner as we get closer to the river, so it’ll be a lot easier. Trust me, the trees will be dense for maybe fifty feet or so and then they should begin to thin. This is still the better route.”