Chapter Fifty-Three

Bare-Arsed Bear Battle

Tooth had had enough. It wasn’t that he was overmatched so much as out-leveled. In spite of all his raw power, he was still a first-level Greater Werebear. His fighting levels had peaked at level two in several categories, including hand to hand which he was employing now, but it simply could not compare to the ogre’s skills. It had been fighting since it had grown up, and Tooth had had a physical body for about a week. Stat versus stat it did not look good for the core companion. He could, in his current state, drag the fight out for several hours but eventually, he would lose the war of attrition. That was a given.

Tooth had no illusions otherwise. He also realized that even if he wanted to play the ogre out until it was so tired that the guards, constables, and soon-to-be arriving dungeon defenders could take it down easily they would still have to deal with the incoming raiders. Thankfully, he wasn’t just a lycanthrope. He was a Greater lycan, and that came with an entirely different subset of tools for him to work with; tools that wouldn’t just level the playing field, but would give him an upper hand. It was time to open that toolbox.

The problem was the benefits came with some drawbacks, and that was why he hadn’t just triggered the transformation when the toddler of terror first appeared. Yes, he was a core companion, but that didn’t mean he could pick and choose his physical design, separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. He’d had no option but to pick an existing template to work with and accept its benefits as well as its flaws.

The biggest problem that he had was that if he went into his next transformation he would become more bestial. If he’d had a solid connection to Dev then the two of them might have been able to retain more of his intelligence and his personality. Dev, however, was currently occupied with other issues and could not devote resources to aid with his friend’s mental stability. Tooth was on his own here, and he knew that meant that he was not only going to poke the bear, he was going to farging set it on fire and hope that when the ogre was dead that he would calm down enough to not be a danger to the town residents, and would be able to differentiate between them and the raiders.

Tooth resigned himself to the fact that he had to go to the next level, but before he did so he had one other card to play. As his levels grew he would gain other abilities, but for now all he had was the one ace up his sleeve, and it was a good one. Goulcrest was surrounded by a deep and dense forest. There were rolling hills, valleys, and caves; and in a lot of those caves were goblins. Some of those caves, though, held bears and there were uncounted caves.

He could feel them out there; hungry, angry, irritated, and even some with rumbly tummies. They would come for him. All of them, young, old, rabid, and even starving would come at his call. They would come running; their stamina replenished by his mana. The ones nearby would arrive first, naturally, and would attack whatever he was fighting. The late arrivals would go after whatever was nearby if his mind wasn’t clear enough to guide them, and that was Tooth’s fear. If he wasn’t in control then his ursine assistants could deal damage to the people he was trying to protect.

None of that mattered; he sent the call and he could feel them respond. They chuffed and growled their rejoinders and then they ran. Bears were not renowned for their speed, but the woodland warriors were now empowered by Tooth’s magic, and so they came at twice their normal pace thirsty for blood and starving for flesh. Their mouths foamed as their frenzy grew and their eyes bore a hellfire light that burned deep within their souls. Tooth’s army came and he smiled inwardly. Backup was on the way. Tooth let out a long breath that he hadn’t realized that he’d been holding.

The bristled and bloodied black bear looked his opponent over. The ogre was still recovering from the companion’s last blow, and Tooth’s decisions, as well as the call, had taken scant moments for him to conceive and then implement. Several of his ursine cousins were nearby, but Tooth had no idea how long it would be before they arrived. For the nonce, he was on his own. It was time for his second step. He had to assume his greater form, and do so while the ogre was still off-balance.

The first shift was easy, or so he’d understood that to be the case. In spite of its relative ease, it had still hurt like the living hells and was not something he ever saw himself becoming accustomed to doing. Transforming an already transformed body would play havoc on his nervous system. Every nerve would light up as if it were on fire, and all of his bones would shatter, not just break, but explode into splinters to be rebuilt and realigned to their new configuration. Mass would be added from his mana stores to his already sizable body, but it would be like stuffing ten pounds of flesh into a five-pound bag. It was for this reason that he would barely be cognizant, as the pain would not go away. Tooth knew all of this and still triggered his transformation. It was time to be what he was, it was time to grin and bear it.

Tooth eyed his opponent. The ogre looked wary, but that could be a ploy, and he knew better than to trust what he saw. He decided to try to throw off his foe with a little wordplay just before he changed even further.

“You know something about bears?” Tooth asked slowly and clearly, leaving no hint of where he was going with the question.

“Wha?” Bannedgeik said with a quizzical look on his face.

“Bears kill millions of salmon every year,” Tooth said smoothly, “Do you know how many salmon kill bears in return?”

The confused ogre shook his head in the negative.

“None, because like you’re about to experience after I’m done with you all you’re going to be able to do is lay on the ground, flop around, and gasp for air before you die.”

“Don’t be so certain, Toot,” Bannedgeik countered, “I can see the fear in your eyes, I can smell it emanating from your body like smoke from a wet fire, and I know the little strength tat you had is fleeing your muscles like peasants trying to escape.”

With those words, Tooth felt his might drain from his body like water housed in a barrel with a hole in it. Simultaneously, his confidence flagged and a creeping horror replaced it. It happened so fast that he found himself trembling to a near uncontrollable point. The ogre no longer appeared as a freakish, and somewhat humorous giant baby; now it was imposing and radiated malevolence. The werebear could see lines of power flowing through its veins and saw the dark evil that coalesced around its heart.

How had he not seen this before? He was so outmatched, and he could see that it was hopeless to even consider that he had a chance of standing up to him. The ogre wasn’t just death, it was the devourer of souls, the ender of worlds; he was unstoppable and irresistible.

“You see it now, don’t you, Toot?” Bannedgeik gave a grim smile as he saw the effect his words were having on Tooth. “You see now my inevitability. I am unstoppable, a force of nature.”

And Tooth could see that. He could see that trying to defeat the ogre would be like trying to hold water in the grip of your fist. There was nothing he could do. Everyone in Goulcrest was doomed, and Dev would be trapped below for eternity. He was nothing when compared to the beast that stood before him. Tooth couldn’t help it. He was overwhelmed with terror and despair. He considered everything, and in spite of his wishes, he could feel his body preparing to flee. It shamed him, running away like a coward, but there was nothing he could do about it. He wouldn’t have thought himself that kind of man who would abandon the people he cared about. Dev, Nix, Q’uillen; they meant more to him than his own life, or so he’d thought. The big bad bear was about to run for his life and leave everything he cared about behind.

Then there was a crashing sound, the tinkling of broken glass, and a muffled cry of pain and the two foes turned in the direction the noise had come from. Tooth spied the face of Mayor Keong protruding from the shattered remains of his office window. His face was scarred with numerous cuts and slashes. The one thing that stood out to the werebear was the mayor’s eyes. They were wide with terror but also filled with a defiance that he didn’t know the man possessed.

Keong was in complete fear for his life, and yet he still had the courage to cast a defiant eye towards what looked to be his soon-to-be killer. It filled Tooth with shame, but the shock of the mayor’s appearance also managed to clear his head. Tooth could feel the unnatural fear covering his body. He didn’t know how the ogre had been able to make him so afraid, magic, mana manipulation, and emotional overcharging were not in such a creature’s wheelhouse. An Ogre Magi might be able to do things such as casting a fear spell, but not the one before him. This specimen was an ordinary garden variety ogre, albeit one that was unusually smart for his species.

How then had he managed to do what he’d done? Tooth was certain that what he was feeling was natural fear. If that was all it was then he’d fight through it and continue the battle, but this had been thrust upon him from out of nowhere. Tooth doubted that the ogre had even realized what he’d done.

The man-bear reconstructed every moment that had led up to his sudden emotional trip, and as soon as his eidetic memory recalled the ogre’s words Tooth’s heart skipped a beat. The ogre had used his true name. His name of power, the one thing that could make even a god obey the lowliest peasant. A true name, when coupled with a command, could not be resisted.

How had an ogre learned his true name? It made no sense. There was simply no way that the ogre could have learned Tooth’s name. Of that he was certain. So, how then? Then he realized it didn’t matter how the ogre had learned his name; what mattered was keeping him from using it. He couldn’t let the ogre speak anymore. All he would have to do was to tell Tooth to die, and the core companion would do just that. You could not resist the power of true names. That was an immutable law of this universe.

“Come, Toot, come to me and let us finish this.” The ogre had lost all interest in the mayor’s bloody face and had turned his attention back to Tooth. Already afraid, the words did not make him more scared, but he felt a compulsion to go to the ogre that he could not resist. If he didn’t do something soon it was going to be all over. He found his feet moving of their own accord, taking him right to the ogre.

Tooth tried to stop his forward motion, and all he managed to do was to slow himself a minute amount while looking like he had just been hit in his twin panda bears down below. Try as he might he could not resist the ogre’s command. The fear overpowering his cognitive abilities and the order from the use of his true name combined to make him as helpless as a baby deer born in the center of a pack of wolves.

He took a step and began to think. His head wasn’t clear, but he was still the Tutor of the Overseers. The greatest sage on this world could not compare to him for his intellect or wisdom. His knowledge was practically omniscient and actually was until he took physical form. After that, the Overseers stopped feeding him information, but what he didn’t know in comparison to what he did was utterly insignificant. Fuzzy head or not there wasn’t another living mortal creature that knew more than he did, not even gods were in his league.

And yet, here he was marching to his death.

Tooth scrambled to see what he could do to alleviate the situation, and all he could think of was Dev and Nix. His heart ached to be leaving them, and even though he knew it was his end he still cherished the way that they had made him feel. He’d not experienced emotion as the Tutor. He’d never experienced anything. Any personal progression he might have made was wiped out every time they’d reset him. Dev had granted him an opportunity to experience life n all its facets, and Nix was one of the best facets of life he’d found. The emotions they’d shared were…were…emotions.

For being so smart Tooth, an emotional cultivator had forgotten one of his greatest abilities because he’d shut it down. He’d begun as an agronomist of fear but had quickly grown into working with all manners of feelings and passions. He’d shut all that down before the beginning of his fight so that he didn’t toxify himself with the rampant emotions that were overwhelming him at the time.

His mind, now moving at a speed beyond mere thought analyzed all the data. Up until this moment, he’d acted like a mortal being, which he was, but he was also so much more than that. It was high time he kept that in mind. He’d done something wrong when he was aligning his emotional channels with his chakra points before connecting to his internal organs to filter and then purify them back into his channels.

Tooth’s inner eye ran through each channel individually. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he was certain he would know it when he saw it. Intuition told him that the issues were in his channels and not anywhere else, and he listened to his gut. He was a bear after all, and if there was one thing bears knew was their stomachs.

And there it was. He’d found what he’d done wrong. He’d connected his own emotional state to those he was gathering. His own emotions were not supposed to be involved in the process, the intermingling would have caused him to suffer mood swings, mania, depression, red-raged anger, and absolute bliss the longer he’s let his personal feelings mingle with those he’s collected.

For all of his knowledge, he hadn’t considered that comingling might not be the best course of action. His Wisdom might have been high, but if he didn’t do a wisdom check it wouldn’t do him any good. Tooth made a mental note to make sure that he did so from that point forward. His mind, moving beyond thought, made the adjustments and repaired his bad wiring. His system now restored to working order and activated, went to work energizing him. Using the courage of others, he was able to override his own fear. Fear dispelled did not have the power to return, and just like that he’d freed his mind of half his problems.

Now all he had to do was figure out how to circumvent the ogre’s second command, and with his clear head, he knew what to do. He’d been trying to stop himself from going to the monster. Why? Because he wasn’t able to think clearly and was overwhelmed with emotion. Not even the great tutor was immune to the effects of fear, at least not since he’d taken on physical form.

What he wanted to do was to rush the ogre. A full-on bloody charge, transforming as he went. It wouldn’t be easy, but then, what was? Easy was tutoring every dungeon that came along for eternity. He’d willingly signed up for life, and life was hard. He knew that going in, and it was time for him to step up. The way that Tooth saw it, this was the easy stuff. Fighting an ogre and defending against a raid? How could that ever compare to what lay ahead for him and Dev? If they expected to take on the Overseers, or at the very least keep out of their notice, then something as simple as preserving themselves, Goulcrest, and its people should be a cakewalk.

Should be being the key thought. Somehow, Tooth knew the two weren’t comparable, and to think otherwise was just foolish. Besides, he was in the heat of battle and shouldn’t be thinking at all so he just let go, allowed the change to happen, and ran pell-mell at the ogre.

The shift was faster than he’d expected, but the intensity of the change was far worse as well. His bones didn’t break; they overheated and melted one piece at a time. His flesh didn’t tear; it exploded and then imploded before fusing back into a solid mass. Tooth’s internal organs shriveled until they looked like dried tomatoes, and then flooded with fluid until they were like over-filled water balloons. His body struggled to keep up with their growth. His fur became shorter and took on a hardness of a brush filled with razor wire instead of bristling hairs. His barbed nails grew longer by six inches and every quarter of an inch sported an extra barb. Tooth’s maw grew not a second set of teeth, but three rows of razor-keen fangs that doubled their normal size.

Tooth now saw their world through a thick fog. His thoughts were slowed, but as he had hoped but not been certain of, his hyper-intelligence made him think at the pace of a normal man. It was hard to decipher words, the spoken word was like hearing a foreign language backward, and having to translate it and play it forward in his head before he could comprehend them. Right now, he didn’t care to hear anything the ogre had to say, so that was a problem that was on the bottom of his list that needed attention.

Tooth’s senses were in overdrive. He could smell everything. As overpowering as the ogre’s stench was he could still smell the mayor’s blood, a hint of unnatural death on the air, and the sizzling of Chozen’s still simmering body. He could also scent the approaching raiders, and if he had been able to calculate time properly, he would have realized that they were nearly upon them. His ears verified everything that his nose smelled. A small part of him worried that he couldn’t detect a trace of Q’uillen, Numblee, or Nix. It was as if they’d fallen off the face of the Earth.

The information overload all occurred in the span of seconds that it took for Tooth to reach the shocked-looking ogre. His new talons tore into thick greasy ogre meat like a fork digging into cottage cheese. With a roar that would subdue the sound of thunder a set of teeth that were stronger than steel clamped onto the ogre’s throat.

“Stop, Toot, I beg of you!” Bannedgeik forced the words out of his throat that was almost completely closed. Eyes bulging from the pressure of the bear’s powerful jaws the ogre struggled to breathe in. The words, though, had an effect. Tooth might not have understood them, but they still carried the command of a true name. Unfortunately for the ogre, he had only told Tooth to stop and not to let go.

Tooth froze in place, his right hand lodged in the monster’s ribcage, and his jaws locked around the ogre’s neck. He growled in frustration, not knowing why he couldn’t move. His opponent reached up a beefy mitt and wedged it between Tooth’s teeth and his throat. The ogre slowly forced the lycanthrope’s jaws apart enough for him to slip out of Tooth’s mouth. It then clamped both hands onto the werebear’s arm and held it in place while it wriggled free of his bloody clutch. Bannedgeik bellowed in pain as the maneuver managed to free him of the bear’s clutch, but cost him a lung in the process. The organ was left dangling from Tooth’s claws.

Bannedgeik stumbled back and fell on his arse. He did not notice that all the blood that he had sprayed Tooth with or had dripped on the ground vanished the moment that it landed. He did not notice the twitch of Tooth’s left hand as he struggled for freedom against the invisible chains holding him in place. The ogre saw three more bears coming right at him.

They were big brown bears that probably stood at least seven feet tall on each. They were mundane bears, but that meant nothing to a wounded beast like Bannedgeik. Magical creatures had certain abilities but tooth and claw were still the bread and butter of their battle tactics. On an average day the strongest grizzly in the world posed no threat to a creature such as an adult ogre, but having just received the worst wounds of his life Bannedgeik would barely be able to hold them off if they struck in unison. The bears seemed to sense this and began to encircle the brutish baby-shaped horror.

The command telling the werebear to stop had not been given a time limit and so after a solid sixty seconds Tooth found himself able to move. He shook his hide and flexed his fingers in anticipation; this caused the ogre lung in his hand to drop with a wet splat before vanishing. The greater lycan could taste blood in the air, and it made his enormous heart race. With blood pumping through his vessels the ursine humanoid was reinvigorated and roared so hard that the spittle flying from his mouth covered a ten-foot distance in spite of wind resistance.

Bannedgeik began to heal, albeit slowly. Tooth, not being fully aware of his surroundings did not notice the ogre’s skin stitching itself together. He took one menacing step towards the monster, his lycan instincts telling him to make the prey afraid of him before finishing it off. The ogre raised a hand as the werebear moved closer and seemed to be on the verge of speaking again. When pain erupted in Tooth’s backside.

Tooth whirled around to see what had struck him and saw a flaming arrow lying on the ground. Though he could not consciously realize that the arrow could not pierce his flesh because it was not magical or made of silver, he recognized the age-old adage of, “Fire bad!” Fire burned weres just as it did most everything else, and that thought did click, the pain he experienced was a horrible heat. It didn’t take much more pain before Tooth realized that his arse was on fire.

He could smell acrid black smoke rising from his posterior and before he knew what he was doing he’d dropped to the ground and began dragging his bum in a circle. The road helped to smother the flames, but when he stood Tooth could see every follicle of hair on his backside had been burned away. Tooth was too angry to be embarrassed and looked for his butt-burning assailant.

His cheeks were still smoldering when he spied an archer that was not from the town. It took him a moment but he realized that the man nocking a second flaming arrow was a raider. Unable to help himself during his revelation, Tooth dropped onto his bottom once more and began dragging his rear end around in a circle. It seemed there were still hairs there that were smoldering and he was determined not to let them reignite.

Tooth decided to focus on his real enemy and mentally charged the nearby bears with guarding his rear. Literally. He didn’t want another flaming arrow to cook him any further, and he did not relish the thought of roast nuts. They would better serve him by attacking the raiders while he finished the ogre. In spite of his charred rear end, he was feeling better than he had since the fight had started; even his mental faculties were growing sharper.

The ogre had managed to get to its feet and was looking much better than Tooth had expected. In fact, he was looking downright chipper. Tooth could see that his chest was no longer a gaping wound but had closed and the scabs were turning into scars. Deep inside the werebear’s mind Tooth recognized that this was not possible. Ogres didn’t have healing factors or regenerate wounds on their own. This told the man-bear that magic was involved, and since the thing facing him wasn’t some sort of ogre-magi or mage, that there was an item involved.

Tooth’s hyper-observant eyes scanned his foe; seeking any item that might heal the ogre. There was no necklace, earring, nose ring, or finger rings on the beast, but the monster did have a belly button ring punched through its grotesquely protruding outie. It wasn’t big, just a small brass hoop that a man might wear on his finger if he were so inclined. The design was two snakes intertwined and eating one another’s tail. Their tiny eyes looked like chips of rubies that glowed with an inner light.

The ogre noted his gaze and smiled. “Yes, I heal given enough time,” Bannedgeik said with a chuckle. “You seem to change more tan te seasons, my friend.”

Tooth scooted closer, his upper paws pulling him forward as his hind legs stuck up in the air. It was hard to look menacing, but he managed to pull off imposing. He winced as one of his tender berries was dragged over a rough stone he hadn’t seen, and he immediately lost his imposing status as his eyes crossed. Having enough of his burning arse Tooth stood and towered over the ogre. There was no question who the dominant predator was between them any longer.

“I don’t know what is going on wit you Toot,” drool oozed from his lower lip, “But I appreciate your willingness to give me time to recover.” Bannedgeik chuckled as he noted Tooth’s bare backside. “Looks as if we are about to have a bare-arsed bear battle, are you sure you are up to it? Burning biscuits don’t belong in a fight.”

“You…are…going…to…choke…on…my…biscuits…before…the…day…is…over,” Tooth managed to spit out. Words were hard to form coherently but the bear made his point.

“I don’t expect forgiveness, but you might want to, wat’s the saying? Burn the oter cheek?” The ogre started to laugh, but his mirth was cut short as Tooth’s claws raked him from his throat to his crotch. The cuts were not deep, but the ogre bled profusely. An arrow afire sailed past Tooth’s head, and he heard a scream that trailed off in a gurgling sound as three bears could be heard crunching bones from behind him. Tooth smiled and held up his claws.

Dangling from his third fingers was a small hoop sculpted into two intertwined snakes eating one another. Tooth plucked the hoop from his finger and inspected it as Bannedgeik looked on in horror. A toothy grin spread over the bear’s jaw and he lifted the ring and slipped it over a lower canine. Tooth waggled a finger at the ogre and pointed to the monster’s superficial cuts, and then he balled his hand into a fist and left a thumb upraised, and nodded at the ogre.

Bannedgeik had no idea of what the thumb gesture meant, but Tooth could see fear growing in his eyes and his stomach quiver with fear. Tooth stepped forward and drove his thumb into the ogre’s right armpit. The talon, lengthy and cruel, dug into the rancid flesh, and when it was withdrawn its hooks drug out a mass of meat and muscle.

The ogre barely had time to gasp as Tooth’s other hand repeated the process, and then both hands splayed open and caught the monster’s head, nails biting deep into his cheeks with a thumb in each nostril. Tooth applied pressure on the ogre’s skull, and while it made his foe’s eyes bulge from their sockets the bone was too thick for even his muscles to crush so he brought his knee up into the ogre’s groin and then pulled back from the monster with all his might.

Tooth found himself holding the ogre’s face, well, most of it anyway. There were still chunks of flesh adhering to the raw muscle and bone that now remained. Tooth casually tossed the remains away and drove his thumb into the ogre’s sternum.

Bannedgeik didn’t make a sound. It was clear that he was in shock, but that didn’t stop him from driving his fist into Tooth’s jaw. The blow staggered the bear and Tooth dropped to a knee. Head ringing Tooth blocked his body by crossing his arms. He heard the bones of his forearms crack when twin fists clubbed them like sledgehammers.

Tooth rose to his feet and kicked out into the ogre’s right shin. His claws dug into thick pulpy flesh but could not connect to bone. The leg was too fat and his kick too weak and off-balance to make it all the way to either the fibula or tibia, but the ogre definitely felt it. The werebear then wrapped his arms around the ogre’s chest and began squeezing. Ligaments popped like firecrackers, muscles tore, and bones cracked under the tremendous pressure that Tooth exerted. Tooth could feel the ogre's internal organs shifting, slipping, and sliding from where they belonged and knew that it wouldn’t be long before he took the ogre out with his deadly embrace. The ogre retaliated with a bone-crunching head butt that caused Tooth to drop the grotesquerie and staggered back.

Bannedgeik retaliated with a kick to Tooth’s left knee, there was an odd popping sound, and the lycan found himself hobbling to stay upright. Acting on adrenaline and instinct Tooth lunged forward and sank his teeth into the ogre’s left shoulder. Tooth’s jaws crunched through the first and second clavicle of the ogre as if they were made of twigs and with a violent wrench the ogre’s arm tore free of its blubbery body.

Tooth could feel his animal comrades rejoin him and ordered them to join in. The ogre was dragged to the ground by the massive bears as Tooth tossed away the foul arm that was still in his mouth. The four of them dug into the ogre and viscera, blood, and bone sprayed through the air. By the time they were done naught was left of the ogre but a steaming pile of offal, and that faded away seconds later leaving no trace that Bannedgeik had ever entered Goulcrest.

The bears growled in disapproval of their vanished meal, but Tooth held no sympathy for their stomachs. There were more than enough raiders out there for them to feast on. They would just have to eat fast because Dev would be gobbling up every corpse he could, but Tooth had no doubt that they would get their fill.

He received a notification, something that he knew about but had not expected to ever happen to him. He saw the heads-up-display form in front of him, HUD for short, and watched as words formed before his eyes. He was an honest adventurer now. He hadn’t earned any experience points before because the people he’d been fighting could not compete against what he really was; it would be like a six-foot-tall three-hundred-pound man earning experience for defeating toddlers. The ogre had been an actual challenge, and he’d grown from the encounter.

The display was red and the letters a deep tenebrous black. Their stygian-hued forms stood out against the sanguine color and were as crisp as the morning air in winter.

Congratulations you have defeated a Level 5 Greater Ogre. When monsters clash there is rarely a winner, but in this case, you survived to fight another day. For tenacity in the face of such adversity, you have earned 10,000 XP. You are now a Level 3 Greater Werebear. You have gained three levels in hand-to-hand combat. You have gained one level of Ursine Control. You have gained one level in shapeshifting, subsequent levels will affect the speed of your transformation, the amount of pain you experience, the amount of mental coherence you maintain when transformed, and will eventually allow you to undertake partial transformations. You have also earned the skills Claws, Raging Bite, and Bear Hug all of which are at Level 0.

Additionally, you have gained six points to be applied to your attributes. You may use these points immediately or retain them for later use.

Tooth waved away the notification and reverted back to his simple were form, and then back to human. He noted that he could not go from his Greater form back to human, but had to transition from each form in the opposite order he’d progressed in. It was hard to think when he was an animal and he did not like the sensation. At least he had the ability to increase his awareness the more powerful he became.

For some reason, Tooth reached to his bum to check himself, not sure if his backside would still be tender, and found that his hands fell on bare cheeks. His pants suffered the same fate as his fur, and he noted that the rest of his clothes were torn and tattered to some degree. They became a part of him when he shifted but were not indestructible while in that altered state. He’d have to remember that. His thoughts circling around the concept of indestructibility reminded him of the ring he’d taken from the ogre.

It was gone now, apparently vanishing into his human form just as his ursine form had absorbed his clothes. It was funny, he mentally noted, he’d torn out of his clothing as he’d changed, but those tears were not present in the clothes he wore now. The tattered remnants only showed signs of the damage he’d taken during the fight. In the future, he’d either have to disrobe before changing or get sturdier clothing. The ring he’d acquired from the ogre was another matter. He planned on giving the ring to Dev but would need to transform to do so. He’d worry about it later. There were raiders in the town, and that meant there were humanoids to kill and people to defend. If he had to do that with his arse hanging in the wind so be it. He hurried off to the main gate in the hopes of finding it being defended but fearing that it was already down.

***

Several blocks away Numblee stepped out of an alley with Quillen in tow. He watched the man he knew as Tooth hustle away to help the town defend itself. He’d known that Tooth had a good heart when they first met, and so hadn’t worried when he’d realized just what the man actually was. Now he was certain that the town needed Tooth more than anything. He knew the man was hiding something, something big, but whatever it was didn’t matter. Numblee was certain that it was no threat to him or anyone else.

The tiny man looked down at Q’uillen. The boy had been healed completely when he’d gone and gotten his weapons. He could hear, but could not speak a language just yet. That would come in time. The generosity of weapons and armor, as well as complete healing for everyone that came to him, proved Tooth’s sincerity. There were many townsfolk who no longer suffered from asthma or arthritis because they had visited Tooth’s store. A few drops of blood for an unknown god and they’d been rebuilt as good as the day they’d been born. A blood god who saw blood as life, and not pain or death. It seemed too good to be true, but everything he’d seen had led the old man to trust Tooth. Right now that brave man was out there fighting for the people of Goulcrest with his derriere flapping in the wind. Could Numblee do any less?

“I think I’ll keep my tush covered, but it's high time I helped as well,” Numblee said. He gave Q’uillen a wink and said, “Let’s get you over to Nix’s place. Once you’re safe I have things to do. Tooth can’t fight this battle all by himself, but,” he added, “I bet he’d give it one hell of a try.”

Q’uillen gave the man a nod and followed after him, a dagger still clutched in his hand. His eyes scanned the area that the ogre had fallen and looked surprised to see the body missing. He looked up at Numblee, and with the barest whisper he said, “Tooth.”