When the bear removed its paw from my chest, I waited breathlessly for my healing to kick in, as I couldn't even inflate my lungs due to the extent of the damage. I don’t have much oxygen if I can’t breathe, I reminded myself, I need to keep still and wait for my lungs to heal. It took another few seconds for me to realize that I couldn’t hear my heart beating either, which confused me. How am I even conscious? I wondered, the last time something like this happened was with Yaavtey, and… Horrible crunching noises from my chest brought me back to attention, and suddenly I noticed that the bear wasn’t anywhere in my visual field.

“Step back! Attack it from the side!” someone was yelling, and I spent some of my valuable energy turning my head to the left. Around ten meters away, the guards had formed a circle around the animal and were poking at it, drawing its attention in circles while they tried to score a fatal or crippling blow. Koyl was with them, but his lack of reach with his sword meant that he could only safely strike at the bear when it was facing away from him. There was another crunch from my chest, and I heard my heart restart. My field of vision widened, and I realized I had hardly been able to see anything.

The bear roared again, forcing the humans back, and took a swipe at the nearest guard. Metal sheared apart as its claws raked effortlessly through his armor, spattering blood and chunks of bone across the ground. Not to be deterred, the remaining guards dove back in and doubled their stabbing efforts, but the bear was either too stupid or too durable to have much of a reaction. A series of pops sounded from my throat, and I coughed out bright red blood, then began to breathe again. Feeling returned to my limbs, and I began shakily getting up from the ground. A lot of bones are still broken, I noted, but I should be fine to move as they heal.

While the guards kept the bear busy, I scrambled to fetch my sword and get back into the fight. Thankfully the bear hadn’t stepped on it, so barring a few new scratches from the rough ground it was fine. What good is a sword going to be though? I asked myself as I stared down the scene playing out before me. Koyl was moving around the outside, looking for somewhere to jump in, and I realized I would be stuck in the same position. Throwing weapons worked that one time, but they would probably just anger it further. The guard who took a swipe to the chest got back to his feet, breathing heavily, and picked up his spear to rejoin the fight. Actually, I have a plan, I grunted to myself, I know a way I can get close enough for long enough, and it just might work.

Waiting for the bear to be facing away from me, I sheathed my sword and instead prepared to do a running leap. When one of the female guards, on the opposite side of the bear as me, thrust her spear and hit a sensitive spot, I broke into a run. Pushing force magic into my legs I sped up rapidly, then with one focused shove, I used my right leg to propel myself high into the air. I gained just enough height to land on the bear’s back, and quickly gripped its oily fur to avoid slipping off.

The bear was not pleased with my plan, and tried to shake me off just as I had suspected. Now oblivious to everything but the fact that I was on its back, it began shaking back and forth, roaring repeatedly. Unfortunately for the bear, the combination of my own grip strength and a bit of force magic kept me secured, and I started to slowly climb my way across its body to its face. When I reached the small of its back, the bear reached up with its paw and slashed at my right arm, flaying the skin and muscle as if they were no more solid than water. At least a few of my tendons were severed, and my hand started to lose grip.

“Keep it distracted!” Koyl yelled, somewhere to my left.

“What’s he doing?” one of the guards yelled back.

“Just keep it off him!” Koyl screamed. I couldn’t look away from the bear, but suddenly it began to turn around, so I figured someone had done something to get its attention. With a bit of magic to move the disabled parts of my hand, I moved forward another meter, then slapped my left hand down on the bear’s forehead. Now, we see if your brain is as tough as the rest of you, I grinned, I'm betting it's no more durable than a human one, just bigger. The bear tried to shake me off again by whipping its head around wildly, but it was too late.

Power flowed out of me, through my palm, and into the volume underneath it. Another roar, higher pitched than the ones that came before it, left the bear’s mouth. The animal physically jumped into the air, then began rolling over on the ground to crush me when the jump failed to knock me off. I felt more of my bones break, but wrapped my right arm around the bear’s neck and held tight. Now on its back and on top of me, the bear flailed all four limbs into the air, and I could hear the sounds of the humans stabbing at it. I took a short breath, barely able to move because of the weight on top of me, and gritted my teeth. I don’t think I have much left, I thought, and for the first time in many days I checked my heads-up display bars. The top bar was empty, and the three below all hovered near the halfway point.

Damn it, I thought, I need to convert it faster somehow. As if responding to my demand, the top bar jumped up by around five percent, then dropped back down to nothing. My whole body stung as if it had been shocked with electricity, then I felt a pop and a rush of heat under my hand. Abruptly, the bear went limp, covering most of me like a suffocating blanket.

“What happened?” one of the guards asked. I could hear footsteps as the others gathered nearby.

“Help me get it off him,” Koyl said, and I heard footsteps coming around to my right. “You still breathing there?” he asked. I pulled myself along the ground, peeking my head out and seeing Koyl looking at me.

“Barely,” I grunted, trying to dislodge myself from the bear’s carcass. Superheated blood dropped from its eye sockets onto my face and upper body, and I failed to budge my legs. Two sets of hands gripped my shoulders, and with the aid of Koyl and a guard I slid myself out from under the bear. The corpse was absolutely covered in stab wounds, all frozen in various states of repair, and still had two spears sticking out of its belly.

“What did you do?” the guard who helped me asked. I noticed that she was the same one who had spotted the bear earlier.

“Killed it,” I replied, not wanting to let on too much.

“But-” she started to sputter.

“Oh gods!” Zoyvrao’er cried, drawing all other heads in the vicinity in his direction. “Is it dead?” He was poking his head out from inside the rear of the covered wagon.

“Yeah,” Koyl replied.

“How many did we…” Zoyvrao’er began, scanning the exhausted guards. “You’re all still alive?”

Zoyvrao’er made us spend around two hours tying the bear to the top of the covered wagon, insisting that we had to bring it along with us. Several boards had to be used to reinforce the vehicle so it wouldn't be crushed under the weight of the corpse. I also learned that bear meat, while edible, was rumored to cause “weak” humans to experience tremors and something that sounded like neuralgia. Zoyvrao’er also insisted that the bear’s corpse would keep other bears away, since the animals were too stupid to know it was dead and would avoid it due to their territorial nature.

Whether by luck or because he was right, no bears bothered us for the rest of the day. The craggy ground was growing gradually more lush by the time the sun went down, and I saw that we were heading due south. There isn’t a mountain or anything to our right, I thought, I wonder why the path does such a huge loop instead of taking the shortest route. Once darkness had fallen, Zoyvrao’er brought the caravan to a halt and instructed us to start pulling some supplies out of the back of the wagon. Tents, it looks like, I thought, wood for burning, and food.

The tents were a simple triangular design, more for stopping rain from waking the sleeper inside than anything else. There were eight of them, one for each guard, and it appeared that Zoyvrao’er intended to sleep in the wagon. As Koyl, the guards, and I set up our sleeping spots Zoyvrao’er tended to the pack beast, feeding it highly compacted dried grass. They’re remarkably docile animals, I noted, it didn’t even run away when the bear attacked. Then again, it’s bigger than the bear and its skin looks very thick, so maybe it just wasn’t afraid. Or it just can't run at all.

An hour into the night, Zoyvrao’er had gone to bed and the guards were sitting around a campfire, socializing and eating. Koyl and I sat with them, but we mostly kept quiet. Koyl looked tired, while I simply had no reason to socialize and plenty of reasons to avoid it.

“You want some of the bear meat, ihlzheyv?” the female guard who had helped me out from under the bear asked. “That was like something out of a storybook.” She held out a piece of charred flesh on a stick in my direction, grinning. Is this some kind of challenge? I wondered, it's probably not dangerous in the long-term, so it might be worth it to just play along. After all, I don't want to appear suspicious. My stomach rumbled at the thought of eating meat. I didn’t need to check my green bars to know I was still hungry because the rations were too small for me.

“Don’t be a ngoyth Jhaeaal,” the man beside her chided, “he’s not dumb enough to fall for that.” While I hadn’t been paying close attention, I hadn’t seen any of the guards eat bear meat. In fact, the only bear meat they possessed was from the woman in question, Jhaeaal, sneaking over to the wagon with a knife and cutting some from one of the paws. My stomach growled again, and I grimaced.

“Give it here,” I said, gesturing with my hand.

“Yuwniht...” Koyl warned.

“I’ll be fine,” I told him, pulling the meat from the stick with my hand. It was still hot, having been sitting in the fire for around fifteen minutes in order to cook, and had the consistency of tough leather. I took a bite, having to use both my arm and my neck to pull a piece of the meat off, and began to chew. After almost a minute of pulverizing the meat with my teeth, I swallowed it and felt the lump traveling down to my stomach. With bated breath, the rest of the guards watched me.

“So…?” one of them asked. I looked at him, telling him to continue with my expression. “How does it taste?” he asked.

“Like meat,” I shrugged, taking another bite. Despite being tough and overcooked, the meat was still very juicy and delicious underneath the charred exterior. It was also very filling, probably because chewing it barely broke it up enough to deform for digestion. It’s almost like eating meat-flavored wood, I thought, it’s no wonder those animals are so tough with flesh like this. If I found this on Earth, I would have thought it was genetically engineered.

“He kills the thing, and he's even brave enough to eat some of it,” a male guard laughed. “I thought you looked a bit soft for a big guy, but that fight was some of the craziest shit I’ve ever seen. Like something out of a bard’s tale. We're always looking for more people in my outfit, you working for anyone?”

“Freelance,” Koyl replied.

“I asked him,” the male guard countered, gesturing to me with his eyes.

“Freelance,” I echoed. “Heading east, not working for anyone at the moment, not interested either.” A few of the guards huffed, though I wasn’t sure if it was from derision or being impressed.

“How did you kill it?” Jhaeaal asked, repeating her question from earlier in the day. Koyl shot her a look, and she shot him the same look back. “It’s just a question,” she said.

“It’s not any of your business,” Koyl said.

“I think the man can speak for himself,” she countered. The conversation suddenly got very tense, and all eyes were on me. Koyl said one time that he didn’t even know magic could be used the way I used it, after I killed that man in the Hatchet Crew hall, I recalled, it could be identifiable.

“I’d rather keep my method a secret,” I told her.

“But-” Jhaeaal began to plead, the expression on her face saying everything I needed to know about her motives.

“We all have things we can’t talk about, Jhaeaal,” the man beside her said. I noted that he was the one whose breastplate was shredded by the bear's claws. “Leave the man alone. If he doesn’t want to talk about it, he doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m tired anyway,” I said, feigning a yawn, “thank you for the meat.” I stood up to walk to my tent, and heard Koyl standing up to go to his behind me. Inside the tent, I set out my bedroll and laid down, still feeling the lump of bear meat in my chest. I could probably cough it up right now, I thought, but I suppose I'll wait and see. Contrary to the rumor, I felt nothing but fatigue sapping sensation from me, and before I knew it I was asleep.