Pepper sighed. She promised Arn she would put him back together if necessary, and the big bastard didn’t even wait ten minutes to put her to work. Now she was supposed to somehow put a broken, vomit-soaked, near-corpse sufficiently back together for his regeneration to do the rest. Yay me.

After muttering some nonsense to Keana, Arn had faded into unconsciousness, but she could see breathing. Arn’s right arm was clearly terribly broken, with a 4 inch splinter of bone sticking through the blood-splattered sleeve of his bizarre bear-coat. She had put down horses for less, but if he could really regrow an entire damn arm, she reckoned the break was something she could deal with. His left “arm” however, was a horror the likes of which she had rarely seen traveling with the Sisters, and only on the dead, or soon to be dead. The flipping ridiculous coat’s sleeve hadn’t completely severed – maybe it had helped to a degree – but she could still see the disgusting mess that had once been a shoulder easily enough. The arm was ripped from the socket, “connected” to Arn by a thin core of non-severed tendons. She could see the tendons slowly writhing. Don’t need to be a prissy dancer to find that all kinds of wrong. Lower down, the coat’s sleeve was intact enough to be a major hindrance, but she could see snatches of exposed bone on both the upper and lower arm through gashes in the sleeve, and worried that the arm would literally fall apart if she tried to put Arn’s shoulder back together.

Sighing, Pepper knelt down by Arn’s left and tried to gently and slowly manipulate what was left of his arm back to the shoulder socket. The intact sleeve of his coat was a help; she grabbed the sleeve at the upper and lower arm, and, ignoring Arn’s high-pitched piercing scream, carefully lifted and moved them towards the shoulder, hoping that its structure would prevent his likely crushed bones from completely shattering.

That done, Pepper turned to Keana and calmly demanded one her knives, since her own daggers were ordinary steel. Keana held out a knife in Pepper’s general direction, not looking at Arn. Unbelievable. How in the Hells did she kill anything to level?

Figuring that Arn’s right arm probably wouldn’t kill him, Pepper grabbed at the knife, and started carefully cutting Arn’s left sleeve. The sleeve offered heavy resistance, forcing her to use her full strength as carefully as she could. One slip and I might be the one to pull his damn arm off. Once she cut open the sleeve, the result was a slaughterhouse horror show. Flaps of skin, torn muscles and tendons, and multiple full breaks in the arm. Like one of those puzzles pa bought me when things were good, only I don’t know I have all the pieces. As she worked, Arn began to scream himself raw. Pepper tried her best to ignore the screaming and the horror, and her mind began to wander as her fingers worked. I wonder if I can unlock beast-healing working on a man-bear? Did the titanic bear mistake Arn for a lover or a rival, or is Arn really just that flipping annoying to everything under the sun?

A gore-soaked Pepper unconsciously began to hum a little tune her father taught her to calm injured horses, only increasing Val and Sar’s shock and horror at the insanity of the scene. Suddenly Arn’s screaming stopped, he gasped and his eye’s focused on Pepper. In a raw grating voice Arn said “help me up. Freaky bastard can’t have gotten far.” Despite herself, Pepper smiled.

“Lay your ass down there until I say so or I’ll have Princess sit on ya. Sorry to yell ya, not sure youre left arm is ever gonna heal right, regeneration or not, and I ain’t even touched your right arm – you’ve still got a big ole shard of bone still sticking right out of it. Let me work, let your regeneration do its thing, and Gods willing, you’ll still be the same two-armed idiot we know and kinda tolerate.” As Pepper grabbed Arn’s coat near the wound and prepared to cut, what she saw froze her mid-motion. “Got news for ya Arn; that crazy-ass coat of yours drinks blood. Fur near your wounds is all shiny and longer. Thing might look like a rug, but that’s some crazy shit all right.” As Pepper refocused on cutting, she couldn’t avoid jostling the bone shard, which just flaked off. Stunned, Pepper checked the hole in the sleeve, and found a small, visibly shrinking wound. “Huh, that’s some real deal regeneration Arn. Well, here, keep this for a souvenir. Better yet, nothing says love like carving your girl a flute out your own bone.”

Pepper made Arn lay still for another five minutes ignoring his ranting about chasing down the bear, but eventually he started waiving the formerly-mangled arm about, and she backed off and stood. “If you can get your giant ass upright on your own, I guess your good to go. Be careful though, bear literally ground your bones into splinters. Nothing I could have fixed with spells for certain.”

Ten minutes later, the hive fragments were gathered in Arn’s sack, and he was still arguing his case. “Listen, that was an 18 silver firestone canister loaded with nails. Thing was stronger than Hell, but nothing protecting it on the inside, right? It has to be bleeding to death somewhere, might just need a little push. That thing was from deep jungle, it’s sure to have a gem heart. Claws, teeth and the hide, all going to be worth a ton. Might be two or three gold dying around the corner. We can’t just give that up when we did the hard part!”

Val was getting angry. “Arn! Use your damn head for once. Like you said, that thing was deep jungle; it’s just beyond us. Shrugged off Pepper’s fire arrow like it was nothing. Sure, it ran, might be hurt for real, but you corner it, it will finish tearing you to shreds. The firestone is gone, and even you aren’t fool enough to repeat that move. What the heck are we going to do, tickle it to death? Besides, you and Pepper are going to attract a LOT of attention covered in blood and vomit and we haven’t passed a stream. You got your fungus, lets call it a win, go back to town and get cleaned up.”

Arn thought. “Ok, you’re not full wrong, it would be foolish to rush in blind, maybe somehow, someway it’s out there climbing trees, humping dead giants and just waiting for us. So we don’t go blind. Princess has keen senses. She can eye the thing from a safe distance, and is fast enough to run if she doesn’t get too close right?”

Pepper considered. “Maybe. Don’t like the idea much. Let me try and see if she thinks she can do it. If I can make her understand.” After what felt like an eternity of Pepper and Princess staring at each other, Princess trotted off in the direction the Dire Bear took.

“Ok, we’re good. Sneaking and scouting comes natural, she should be ok. Plus, she was very damn clear she doesn’t want to fight that thing. Real smart that way.” Val asked skeptically, “I’m not sure what this is going to tell us. We already know it isn’t dead and was well enough to run off.”

Arn figured that the group was going to have to pick a leader eventually; Val seemed to have a damn opinion on everything. For now, Arn decided to just deal with it. “Wait and see Val, wait and see. Thing is lying down, doesn’t react to Princess at all, the wound Pepper gave it is still there, that tells us a lot right?”

Maybe twenty minutes later, Princess appeared and darted up to Pepper for head scratches. “Good girl! I knew you could do it!” Pepper’s eyes got distant for a minute and she continued, “looks like Arn pretty much nailed it. Princess knows what dying smells like; thinks the bear even shit itself."

The group followed Princess cautiously, Arn in the lead. After a time, Princess crouched down and began inching forward. Arn signaled the group to wait and slowly walked forward as quietly as he could. After a time, he saw it, perhaps sixty feet away, lying down, facing the other direction and unmoving. He returned back to the group, confident he had been right.

Arn pointed and spoke quietly. “That way, maybe 100 feet. Lying down, facing away from us. Not moving. Still alive or we would have gotten a notification I think. I say I take point, get say 40-50 feet away, and Pepper goes for a headshot from say 20 behind me without another explosive arrow. I think that will kill it. If I’m wrong and it charges me, I’ll just climb a tree again. No way it can climb with its insides melted. Hmm, just to be safe, give me the web canister Val, ought to at least make it fall; I’ll be fine.”

Val shook his head, but handed over the canister. “Just to be safe he says. Ha. Arn, you can’t make up for lost time all at once. It’s your life, I won’t try and stop you, but you need to rethink things is all I’m saying.” Val paused, stuck out his hand awkwardly and said, “good luck!” Arn decided to play along, shook hands and said, “soon we’ll all have vampiric were-bear armor, just watch!” Pepper snorted and drew an explosive arrow. “Lets do it.”

Arn and Pepper slowly edged to where they could see the massive bear, which was still unmoving. Pepper signaled that she wanted them to circle so she could get an angle on the head, fell back 10 paces and started circling to the left. Arn took her cue, circled until he had the head in view and waited. An arrow whizzed past his left, striking the dire bear more in the neck then the head. After the fireball blossomed, the dire bear made a sickly sounding roar and tried to struggle to its feet before giving it up as a bad job and plopping back down.

Arn yelled, “it’s helpless! Finish it!” and ran forward. Ignoring Pepper’s shout to wait, Arn angled for the monster’s mid-section, dropped his shield and leapt onto its back. Awkwardly adjusting himself with one hand, Arn got situated, and stabbed his short sword into the dire bear with both hands. It only penetrated about eight inches, but the dire bear didn’t react other than with a strained grunt. Arn scooted forward using his leg muscles and put all his strength into stabbing the dire bear in the neck. Stab, withdraw, stab, withdraw, stab. “Come on, everyone on the bear! We can do this!” Arn shouted. Stab, withdraw, stab, withdraw, stab.

The group came to a halt 15 feet from the dire bear watching the bizarre proceedings. Sar spoke first asking, “is he beating a dead bear?” Keana laughed, answering “we’ll have to get this scene commissioned for a painting. I can see it now, ‘Legendary Titan Single-Handedly Slays Dead Bear.’”

Arn’s energy was starting to fade, but he kept stabbing. “Come on! Don’t just stand there!” Stab, withdraw, stab, withdraw, stab…

Congratulations! Dire Bear slain. For defeating an enemy more than ten levels above your level, you are awarded double experience!

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 7! +4 Constitution and +4 Attribute Points (4). Resurrection Timer reset. Would you like to go to the Attribute distribution screen?