Big, the monster was. But not quite as big as the undead behemoths. Funny how fighting those had made everything else seem…lesser. Not to say that a bear the size of a carriage is anything but huge regardless of one’s perspective, or that I handled myself well as I saw this one lunging towards me.

  Bears. Of course it was a bear. They were local to Anglyn just about anywhere in Anglyn you went, and a perpetual menace when the season was wrong. The season was evidently very wrong here, because this one looked lean and snarled with hunger as it came at us.

  The Grynkori, despite his tiny legs, was faster in responding than me, and I barely saw his hammer as it moved up through the air in a tall arc to end right on the bear’s shoulder. A man might’ve had half his torso broken up by such a heavy impact, but this thing weighed more than the Grynkori would have if he were carrying me and another of himself on each shoulder. The bear snarled, stumbled, halted, but I didn’t see anything break. Then it was rearing up again.

  I don’t know what possessed me to lunge for the fucking thing, panic maybe. My sword thrust out and dug its tip inches-deep into the bear’s belly while it was still making a show on its hind legs, and the effect was instantaneous. A growl escaped it, then its forelimbs came crushing down for me.

  They missed, but not because of any deft dodge on my own part. The Grynkori grabbed me by the shirt and dragged me back from the path of its paws, letting them slam down in the ground right where I’d been standing as the hammer came around to smack off the bear’s snout. The creature stumbled, snarled, and the Grynkori fell in swinging again. The bear backed up, actually faster than the oreling in sheer movement speed and easily growing the distance between them. I expected it to run, but it didn’t. Just started circling, staring our way with beady black eyes and breathing hard.

  Apparently, bears usually run when you fight back. This one must have been hungry, territorial or something else. It came on again, closing the distance faster than I’d have ever thought possible. The Grynkori’s hammer came down right on the bear’s head and barely seemed to faze it as the creature bowled him over and had him pinned beneath it in an instant, I watched as its jaw widened and closed tight about one head-wide shoulder. The oreling grunted, like he was being punched rather than mauled.

  My sword moved on its own, lopping off the bear’s ear more by happy accident than deliberate aim. Not so happy, because the animal turned its focus on me a second later and started forwards all over. I panic-swung and got lucky, dragging the tip of my blade along its nose, watching as the bear suddenly backed off snarling and spitting, shaking its head and letting long threads of blood flick off from the wound. Not a deep one at all, but it looked painful as fuck.

  Not, apparently, painful enough to buy me more than a few seconds. I panicked for the second time in as many seconds and turned on my heel, sprinting away as the bear shot after me. I had no chance. Big as it was, short as those legs were, the thing gained another yard on me every second. It was on me moments later, smashing me off my feet and hard into the ground. There really is no way to describe the feeling of that collision, unless you can vividly recall wrestling with adults as a child. That disparity in mass, a simple bodily difference that spoke for itself more than I ever could, struck me dumb as I hit the dirt.

  I rolled over just in time to stare up at the bear’s teeth as they came for me, raising my legs on sheer reflex and bringing both feet to plant themselves up against the animal’s shoulder and neck. I heaved, screaming as every muscle in both my lower body and core strained against the thing’s weight and strength. I had the advantage in leverage, in how much of my strength I could put into this contest. The bear, however, had the advantage of being a fucking bear, and every moment brought its snapping jaws closer to clamping down on my head. This was it, I was—

  —the hammer smashed down so hard into the back of its skull that I thought the impact might drive teeth right into me. It didn’t though, just made the bear snarl and snap as it hauled its own weight off me—making me realise only then how difficult breathing had been with such a mass atop my chest—as it turned to its new assailant.

  Well, not new. The first assailant really, just recovered from his brief mauling. He was stumbling more than dodging as the bear turned on him, swinging again and missing but sending the animal another step back. It seemed more cautious of the hard steel than it had been, though I hardly noticed in my haste to roll back up to my feet and run away. Something stopped me, a voice at the back of my head.

  If I ran again, the bear would give chase. It would see a weaker one among its two enemies and focus on killing that, find its meat easily then flee before the Grynkori could further drag out their fight. I had to be strong, because anything less would see me killed.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  The bear had probably been expecting weakness, because it turned around to bring its maw back towards me. I saw it all happening slowly, as if the air around us were suddenly dragging water, and moved right when the animal did to bring my sword down hard on its face. This one was a deep wound. Deep enough that the bear seemed to ignore everything in favour of screaming, reared back, roared, thrashed and sent bloody drool spraying as it shook its head and stumbled away.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the Grynkori approaching again and raising his hammer…Then pause. He lowered the weapon a moment later, though kept it ready, and watched. I realised why shortly after as the bear turned and ran off into the woods, still trailing blood. The two of us stood there panting and wheezing. My wounds were by far the less severe, having not actually gotten any worse in the bear’s assault. A few of my previous scrapes and cuts had opened up, stitches tearing and blood lazily weeping out to wet my skin as the hot pain spread, but there was no sudden stab of a truly grievous wound.

  On the other hand, I saw just such an injury upon the Grynkori. His shoulder actually looked better than I’d have expected, which was to say that it was still in one piece and hadn’t yet been turned into bear shit, but flaps of skin as big as a palm were hanging off it and the blood beneath was foaming right down his arm.

  “Bloody bear,” the Grynkori spat, “stupid fucking thing, better not have rabies.”

  I took a step back from him at that, not liking the idea of this man of all people ending up mad and foaming. He seemed to notice, glaring my way at that.

  “Oh relax, rabies doesn’t affect Grynkori like it does humans. I just don’t want to be sick for a week.” He started walking without another word, planting his hammer over one shoulder and covering the ground in heavy footfalls. I hesitated only a brief instant before following after.

  “So that was it,” I frowned, “just a mad animal? That was the monster?”

  The oreling shrugged, not actually seeming so surprised. “It happens more often than you’d think. People see something at night, they’re panicked and don’t get a quick look, they exaggerate when telling it to others…Among humans of course, yours is a frail race.”

  “Yeah well this human didn’t get his arm bitten off, did he?” I shot back. The Grynkori’s head turned sharply towards me, eyes narrowing at the retort. I forced myself to hold his gaze for all of the long seconds it lasted. Then he started chuckling.

  “Aye, fair enough, you’ve a stronger nerve than I thought you had too.”

  I took that compliment, and decided not to bother illuminating him on exactly what had been going through my head during that little fight. It would only sour his mood, and of course he needed to be in as high spirits as was possible if he was to properly heal that arm. Little shit, remember?

  We made decent time stumbling back to town, and I was more than a little irritated to see the Grynkori having less trouble with his wound than I did with mine. It seemed the stamina and endurance of orelings had not been exaggerated by hearsay, unlike so many other things about them.

  “Are you even going to need a surgeon’s help?” I asked him, when we were still a mile or two from town. He laughed.

  “Probably, stitches will help this close faster. We don’t heal overnight.”

  “Do you heal fast?”

  He eyed me at that. “Why the sudden questions?”

  “You’re the first or—Grynkori I’ve ever met,” I replied honestly, “I don’t know, I’m curious I guess.”

  “We don’t heal faster than your lot, as far as I know,” he replied, almost begrudgingly, “we’re just harder to hurt.”

  I eyed the wound again, taking in the slightly sickening sight of exposed meat moving under frayed skin.

  “I see.”

  He glared at me. “We can go and find that bear again if you’d like to compare—”

  —”No, no, that’s fine.”

  No reward awaited us in town of course, I tried telling a few people what the monster really was but not a one of them believed me. I got more than a few glares in my efforts, too. The Grynkori seemed to find it all terribly amusing, and only spoke on the fact when we were back in the tavern swigging down more thin ale.

  “So this is what you do then,” I grumbled into my drink, “run around, almost die and watch everybody not be grateful.”

  The Grynkori grinned as he took his own swig, practically guzzling his tankard down. The sheer volume of alcohol he seemed able to intake was frankly baffling.

  “More or less. Usually there’s a harder fight though, an actual monster. I was expecting a troll, this time.”

  I frowned at that, thinking back to exactly how well we’d done trying our luck against a half-starved bear.

  “We’d…Have died, against a troll, right?”

  “Probably,” the oreling shrugged. He seemed entirely indifferent to the fact, and not in the way of other drunkards. Barely tipsy, his voice betrayed a perfect clarity of thought. The man just didn’t care about death, or didn’t fear it at the very least. As you can probably guess, that state of mind was quite fucking different to my own.

  “So how long are we staying here?” I asked, itching to move sooner rather than later, “I’m still being…you know.”

  Mentioning that there was a horde of undead after me in public seemed like a great way to get either kicked out of town or, at worst, suspected of necromancy and lynched. The oreling understood my meaning, fortunately.

  “I’m planning on heading out tonight, more chances of getting trouble on the road.”

  Just fucking brilliant. I kept drinking my ale, feeling sorry for myself and basking in abject misery. Even then, I had no idea how bad things could get.

  Explore more of our books — begin your journey here: