Kai dove to the ground as the spray of fast-moving rock whipped by over his head, half flying toward those around the bear and the other half toward the range fighters up above. Kai could feel the power controlling those fragments of rock, and he thanked his ancestors that he’d managed to dodge.

A bass bellow of rage ripped through the air as the dust from the explosion settled, revealing a second elemental bear. Unlike the cub, this one stood easily ten to eleven feet tall and at least fifteen feet long. It all but filled what was left of the mouth of the cave with its bulk.

Kai risked a glance behind him and saw that the cub was trying to flee, but the spear-wielders had it surrounded, and it was being brought down. They just needed time.

The ground shook as the second bear came storming out of the cave, its head swinging down toward Kai as its huge jaws opened to bite him in half.

Hot, fetid breath washed over Kai as he slipped by the bear’s jaws, bringing his spear up and striking at the bear’s neck as he moved away. Rocky armour covered the majority of its neck, causing the tip of Kai’s spear to skitter off, leaving behind a faint mark where he had struck.

The bear started to follow him, but a cry of pain from its cub drew it back to the other fight, and it started down toward the others. Cries of alarm from the guards and barked orders from Silver let Kai know they were preparing to meet the creature. If they were facing just the one adult bear, it wouldn’t be a problem, but splitting their focus between two was a bad idea, not to mention that injuring the cub further would drive the mother into a rage.

Gripping his spear tight, Kai poured Essence into it, not the gentle trickle that he had done during their tests, but as much as he could give it. Now was not the time for reserves.

Flames erupted from the head of his spear almost immediately. Tongues of dancing yellow licked over the metal before becoming deeper and darker, shrinking in on the spearhead as it began to glow with the heat. The dull red colour slowly strengthened as Kai flanked the bear, coming at it from behind.

Taking his spear in both hands, Kai burst into a sprint and kicked off, putting everything he had into a single thrust of his spear, right at its armoured legs. The tip of the spear was now glowing brightly, and the heat emanating from it enveloped Kai, pushing at the resistance his Essence gave him.

This was the first time he’d used the enchantment Verdan had given him, and it didn’t fail to impress. The blazing spearhead hit the rocky armour of the elemental bear and pierced straight through, leaving behind flickers of flame and heating the surrounding rock and flesh as it went deep into the lower leg of the bear.

The creature instinctively bucked to one side, throwing Kai into the wall of the cave and winding him as the air was expelled from his chest. His spear was still in hand, but Kai was momentarily stunned by the impact, giving the enraged bear enough time to close with the guards.

Three guards were valiantly standing in its way, buying their comrades the time they needed to finish the other creature, which was even now falling beneath the attacks from above and the enchanted weapons the guardsmen were using.

The mother bear bore down on the three guards with the brutal power of an avalanche, and though Kai had gotten up and was moving again, there was no way he could get there in time.

The bear was barely ten feet from the lowered spears of the guards and was showing no sign of stopping when Tom sprinted through their line and planted himself in its way.

As Tom hunkered behind his shield, Kai saw smooth grey stone form around both shield and man, connecting him to the ground below and protecting him. The stone grew rapidly but was nowhere near thick enough to stop the massive impetus of the bear as it slammed into him.

Cracking stone, cries of pain and a roar of surprised pain blurred together as the bear ploughed into Tom, ripping him from the ground and flinging him through the air to crash into a nearby tree with a bone-jarring thud.

At the same time, the bear’s charge was arrested just enough to knock it off balance and fling its upper body to one side, changing the charge into a half-roll that crushed two of the guardsmen. All three enchanted spears sank into the bear as it hit the guardsmen, the Aether within them combined with the force of impact forcing them through its armour and drawing blood as they plunged into it.

Tom had fallen to a heap at the base of the tree, leaving Kai to jump onto the bear before it could stand. He had spotted an area on its side where the flesh was freshly healed, and its armour was weak. Angling for that spot, Kai thrust his spear down as hard as he could, spraying blood out onto him as he pulled his spear out and ripped the wound open.

The bear shook and threw itself back, sending Kai tumbling to the ground as it barrelled into the group around its cub, sending several guards flying as it cleared the area.

The smaller bear began to rise slowly to its feet, blood covering a good portion of its body from where the enchanted blades had struck it. Taking stock, Kai winced as he saw that the two guards hit by the rolling bear were lying unmoving on the ground, and so was Tom. Some of the others were favouring legs or had obvious injuries, but they still had the numbers to do this.

The tense moment was broken by an arrow flashing in from the high ground where the ranged fighters were set up. The bigger bear moved to intercept the shot a fraction of a moment too late, and it pierced the younger one’s throat through a section where the armour had been cut away.

The bear gurgled as it tried and failed to breathe, sending its mother beyond the rage it had already been in. One paw went down and pushed into the ground, scooping up rock and earth that it hurled at the archer who had killed its child. The main ball of earth and stone was joined by dozens of smaller ones as the bear channelled a terrifying amount of power into the attack.

Kai had a brief glimpse of Clara standing at the edge of the bluff the archers were on, a triumphant expression on her face before the barrage struck. Rock cracked and broke under the sheer force of the impact, causing the entire bluff to collapse and come tumbling down onto their position.

Kai heard the screams of those caught in the falling earth but could spare no time for them now. He had to finish the bear before it could take them all down. Its armour was sundered in multiple places, and it was bleeding heavily, but somehow it was still on its feet.

Burning more Essence, Kai restored the flame on his spear and pushed strength into his battered body. Silver and his people were harassing the creature up close, just as they’d discussed, but a swipe of the huge creature’s paw crippled one of them, its claws shearing through armour and bone alike as it ripped a leg clean off.

Blane rushed past the dying guard and inside the bear’s reach, out of Kai’s sight. In response to whatever he did, the bear reared back instinctively, but its left leg gave out from where Kai had hurt it earlier.

Darting in, Kai put his weight behind a thrust into its right knee, the flaming blade of his spear penetrating deep into its flesh just above the joint. Kai must have hit something important as that leg immediately gave out, sending the off-balance to the ground face-first.

There was no artistry in what came next, no technique, no skill. Every human left alive around the beast simply swarmed it, going for any soft targets they could. The bear lashed out with tooth and claw, throwing some of them aside and wounding others, but it wasn’t enough.

Silver braved the bear's jaws and was the one to deliver the finishing blow. The Lieutenant waited until it snapped at someone else and then leapt forward, driving his blade into an existing wound on the side of its neck. The arterial spray of blood spelt the end for the heavily wounded bear, and it slumped, its strength finally fading.

There was a moment of stillness as they watched the creature die, the sound of the survivor’s heavy breathing echoing loudly around them.

“Clara?” Callum’s voice reached them from where the hunter stood at the shattered remnants of the bluff they’d sheltered behind. The man was staring down at the rubble that had been piled on the valley floor with a distraught expression.

“Jenkins, check the wounded, see who can be saved, you two, with me,” Silver barked, limping toward the rubble with a determined set to his shoulders. The two guards that Silver had pointed to hurried after him, along with Blane.

Jenkins and the other guard still standing were moving among the fallen, checking who could be saved and who was already gone, but Kai had his eyes on one in particular.

The bear had thrown Tom into a tree with enough force to dent the trunk where the sorcerer had impacted it, but his stone armour had been in place. That was all that had saved Tom's life.

With years of practice, Kai checked Tom over for injuries, noting the huge swelling down his side with professional eyes. His new friend would live, but he’d feel like he hadn’t for a while. Kai estimated that Tom had broken an arm and cracked or outright broken quite a few ribs, but just how many, he wasn’t sure.

Kai was reluctant to move Tom too much in case of a concussion or head injury, but he was satisfied that there were no life-threatening injuries that he could deal with at the moment.

Kai headed over to where Silver and the others were digging through the rubble. Driving his spear butt-first into the ground, Kai moved in to help. His Essence was still burning, so Kai was able to shift some of the larger rocks, exposing the broken bodies trapped within.

Callum fell to his knees as Kai revealed Clara’s body, the old hunter crying silently as he stared down at his daughter.

“I’m sorry,” Kai whispered, squeezing the other man’s shoulder as long-buried emotions stirred within his chest. Min had been about Clara’s age when Kai lost her.

“It killed her mother when it attacked the village, and now it’s taken her too. I told her not to take that last shot, to wait until they were both fighting again, but she didn’t listen,” Callum’s voice was barely more than a whisper as he reached out with one trembling hand to touch his daughter’s face.

“Let’s get her out of there,” Kai said, the weight of the dead settling onto his shoulders with a familiar pain. Maybe this wouldn't have happened if he’d noticed the signs and understood what they meant. If he'd been the support that they needed.

Working together, they unearthed the three bodies within the rubble, Clara and two of the crossbow-wielding guards. Kai remembered their names from the day before, Laar and Baras.

Two of the spear-wielding guards had been crushed under the bear's bulk, and one of the swordsmen had bled to death after his leg was ripped off. That meant that six of them had died taking down both bears. A third of everyone who had come here.

The survivors were bloodied and battered, and Kai knew that he was no exception; it would all hit him as soon as he stopped burning Essence. But first, he wanted to take a closer look at the wound on the younger bear.

The creature was covered in wounds from the fight, but the festering injury on its shoulder was something else entirely. Now that he was closer, Kai could see that the problem came from a puncture wound in the centre. Taking his belt knife, Kai dug into the wound and pulled free a corroded and almost destroyed arrowhead. An oily and unpleasant Essence had been in the arrowhead, though it was all but expended now. He doubted this was from where it was shot at the village; they had no one that could use Essence in this way.

Remembering the wound on the mother, Kai’s frown deepened, reflecting the unease in his mind. Elemental bears were known for tracking down those that hurt their cubs and forcefully claiming their territory as their own. The mother had used two large bursts of power, but there had been little altering of the landscape or regrowing her armour.

If she’d also been shot by an arrow like this, she would have been able to shrug it off faster than the cub, but at a cost to her Essence stores.

It was all guesswork, really, but Kai was starting to build an image in his mind of how this might have happened, and he didn’t like it one bit.

Cleaning his knife and retrieving his spear, Kai started towards the caves, to see what territory the bear had claimed for itself.