Meek

The bloated bear's claws found purchase between the ripples in the melted stone. It hefted itself upward. Standing at its full height, it wasn't that far from reaching the roof even without climbing.

Eli pushed himself to his feet then limped closer, his right leg dragging behind him. He could've stayed back and watched with the sparks, yet Lara was perched directly above the bear, aiming her bow downward. He wasn't going to leave her there alone.

The bear wasn't moving fast, but was making steady progress. One of lumps shifted from its belly, moved with a ripple beneath rotting pelt, then bulged on its back. Another distended its forehead. Its curved claws dug into the stone where the ripples offered toeholds.

Eli's sparks slapped its paws. He felt them hit, but it was like trying to move a helmet with a feather.

Lara's first arrow glanced off the bear's skull and her second disappeared into the thick, encrusted fur of its belly.

"Aim for its paws." Eli tentatively put weight on his right leg and felt its weakness. "To break its hold on--"

"I am aiming for its blighted paws," she snapped.

He grunted and pulled his sword. "How many arrows left?"

"Five," she said.

"Get an angle from the corner. Give me room. Wait til it's closer."

To his surprise, she obeyed without comment. As she moved into position, he watched the bear's steady, slow, relentless ascent. It moved wrong. Not just the lumps and decay; something else was even more unnatural. Like it wasn't held together by sinew and bone. Like all that rotting fur and putrefied muscle and fat was simply a vessel inside of which the tainted blood slowed.

"It's hollow," Lara said.

"Not hollow," he said. "Just ... unnatural."

"What?"

"The blood-bear."

"Not that, this." She stomped one foot. "The roof, the mound we're standing on. It used to be a building before it melted, right? So there's rooms inside. If we can trap the--"

The bear gave a sudden lunge. One paw appeared over the edge of the roof, a slab of meat with three curved dagger claws that gleamed a horrible bone white.

Eli hacked at the paw. His blade sheared away chunks of rotten and fur but the bear just hefted its other paw onto the edge--and roared, blasting his face with cold, graveyard breath.

He put too much weight on his right leg and screamed in answer. Then he forced himself forward through the pain and thrust the sword into top of the beast's chest as it hefted onto the roof.

Trying to disembowel it again. He saw in his mind how it would work. He'd slice it open from throat to groin, he'd make it eviscerate itself on his blade.

It worked exactly as well as his first attempt. The sword carved a gash two feet long before snagging on something that tore the hilt from Eli's grip. So worse than his first attempt. Much worse.

"Vale," he swore, dragging his right leg backward. "Throw me your dagger and run."

Lara put an arrow in the bear instead, then yelled. "Over here!"

"Run!" he repeated.

"Here," she yelled. "This way!"

"What the halo--" he started, before he realized that she wasn't screaming to attract the bear's attention.

She was screaming to attract the attention of the two riders galloping through the town of stone mounds. His sparks hadn't spotted them at first, because they were clustering too low around the blood-bear. But now that he'd raised one higher he saw the riders. Moving fast, wearing Hyssop colors. He didn't recognize the insignia but they weren't bandits. His first impression of them was: elite mounts, expensive gear, and perfect horsemanship.

And at Lara's shouts they veered toward the rectangular building.

Eli might've felt a glimmer of hope ... except the blood-bear was standing on the roof in front of him. Also, how in the halo were two people going help him fight this monstrosity?

Still, his sparks struck the bear again and again as he tried to drive it backward, over the side, but it didn't even seem to notice.

Lara sunk another arrow in its shoulder.

It snarled at her--then swiped at Eli.

The only thing he could do was drop below the attack, leaving himself completely vulnerable on the rooftop. So that's what he did. Lying on his back in front of the creature like a godsdamned buffet.

The bear's horrible jaws spread wide and snapped at him. Its bone-white. too-long teeth ripped skin from his chest but didn't carve through his rib cage because the sparks had guided his hands to grab either side of that broken, impaling spear in its neck.

He pushed upward, keep the bear's teeth away.

His arms throbbed, his chest burned.

The bear bore down harder.

The teeth scraped him again.

He heard himself scream with the effort of keeping the bear from biting him in half.

Lara's final arrows struck the bear's side.

Eli's arms started shaking as he poured every ounce of his trollblooded strength into the effort--then Lara threw herself at the bear with a shriek.

Well, a war cry.

Definitely a war cry and not a shriek.

She plunged her dagger into the bear's muzzle and it slammed its head sideways, battering her away.

And somehow more of her arrows pierced the beast.

Two, three, four of them landed in the space of a heartbeat. Faster and deeper than earlier. And the arrows looked different, too. Not just the shafts and fletching; his spark caught a glimpse of a broadhead like he'd never seen and--

And they weren't Lara's arrows, of course.

One of the riders was shooting a strange curved bow. Closer to the building other rider's galloped hard. And he--the closer one--was climbing onto his saddle like a trick rider. Except he was built like a bloody blacksmith and wearing what looked like thick, delk-hide armor.

He was ten yards from the rectangular mound when he leaped upward for the rooftop.

He didn't get enough height.

Not even close.

He was going to slam into the wall and splatter. So much for helping Eli fight the bear.

At least the bear felt these arrows, though. It lifted its head from Eli to eye the new threat, then sniffed and growled in fury.

And the man landed on a shimmering patch of air instead of hitting the wall.

A shimmering, diagonal shield.

He was a mage.

He raced up his mage-shield like a ramp, a crescent-bladed axe in one meaty hand, then leaped onto the rooftop at a sprint.

"In the name of the Hyssop throne," he boomed, swinging his axe at the bear's neck. "I vanquish thee!"

The blade sliced into the bear's gore-stiffened pelt ... then was blocked by the thick lump beneath.

The bear rose--with Eli still dangling on the impaling spear--and clawed the man, slashing his delk armor and sending him tumbling backward toward where Lara lay sprawled.

"By the choir," the man said, in a resonant voice. "This one's going to take some vanquishing. You hurt bad, lass?"

"Kill it," Lara gasped.

He chuckled. "That's the spirit."

Two more arrows found the bear as the archer raced closer in the street below. Then a third shot an inch past Eli's ear and caught the thing in the center of its white left eye. Except that didn't stop it. It didn't even seem to lose vision--it was dead, its eyes were dead, it was nothing but blood and magic and death.

The man rolled his shoulders and stalked toward the bear. "It's rude to leave the dance while the music's playing," he told Eli. "But you might want to step away."