Standing atop one of the local mountains, I had a realisation. While I wasn’t entirely certain where we were, thanks to the effects of the change partially randomising geography on an unknown scale, I was somewhat confident that we had passed what used to be the US-Canadian border a few weeks back. Not that there was much of a border there, in the area we were in it used to be a fence with a clear-cut strip of forest, neither of which would have survived the change so unless we just happened to stumble across one of the border-markers, it was unlikely that we’d have noticed it at all. Well, we didn’t notice anything and, unless things were as wonky here as they had been in the Charland, we had gone across it. A few weeks ago, even before our meeting with Sasha and the Sasquatch, who, in hindsight, may have been Albertan Sasquatch, as opposed to Saskatchewan Sasquatch.
Regardless of the cultural heritage of the Sasquatch we had observed, the interesting part now was that we were easily a few hundred kilometres north of the old border and thus past the inhabited parts of Canada. If I recalled the distribution of people in the frozen north correctly, around ninety per cent of their people had been living south of our current position, making me wonder just what was waiting for us further north.
I was somewhat confident in the thought that it wouldn’t be people. Not with the change leaving a vast majority of people either Shattered or outright dead, and the Shattered wreaking havoc on the survivors right after. The combination had been fatal for many communities, but here, in the north, a certain amount of food shortage would only make matters worse. Or maybe not, I had no idea just how hardy and accustomed to surviving the people of the Canadian north were, maybe they had simply carried on with business as usual, hunting and gathering what they needed to survive. Back home, few people had the experience or, at least initially, the mindset for that, but here in the north? Who knew, I certainly did not.
That thought brought with it another, somewhat amusing, question. Namely, how well did the people who were already used to somewhat rustic living make out? I couldn’t imagine that in the remotest parts of the world, somewhere in the Australian bush or in northern Canada, the usual utilities had been perfectly reliable, simply due to general wear and tear. So, would those people have some sort of general emergency plans ready to go, somewhat similar to the Swiss and their countless bunkers in case of war? And, if so, how well would such plans, likely made to guard against delayed or outright missed deliveries, hold up against the mess that was the change? Maybe we would meet a few people and could ask them, though, if we did, it would already be a fairly strong indication that their plans had worked.
Other than the lack of people, our travels were going fairly well. There were animals, quite a lot of them, and their levels were generally fairly high, a few even breaking the one-hundred mark, though there hadn’t been any serious trouble. The worst enemy we had to face up here had been an oversized grizzly bear, easily some two-and-a-half metres at the shoulder and stupidly heavy. Additionally, it also had an affinity for some simple Earth magic, likely using it to make its bulk lighter as the thing was a lot faster than roughly three tons of ursine muscle had any right to be, to say nothing of its durability.
None of us were willing to get close to the thing, not after it broke a boulder while charging us, shattering the rock with an almost negligent swipe of its paw. At that point, any plans to have Silva or Sasha engage the beast had gone out the window, fast, leaving us with a small problem. Namely, how to keep the beast from turning us into paste, or maybe a snack for the night. Mobility was the obvious answer, but that’s where the beast’s Earth Magic came into play, allowing it to turn part of the ground muddy in an effort to slow us down while the beast itself was somewhat unaffected, its weight possibly enough to compress the mud back into packed earth.
While we scattered, I used my Ice Magic and turned the ground into a slick and smooth surface, only to realise my folly when the bear broke the ice without even noticing. Again, its massive mass came into play, forcing me to abandon the attempt. Luckily, Lia had better luck with her attempt at delaying the beast because Luna’s, just like mine, had been broken with ease. Her vines might have caused the bear to stumble for a moment, but just like the Ice I had conjured, they were broken with almost laughable ease.
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Lia’s trick, however, worked like a charm, maybe due to its simplicity. Likely aware that trying to go for the body was a fool’s errand, she targeted the bear’s mind by way of its senses, using her Darkness Magic to conjure a cloud of darkness around its head, blindfolding the bear in the process. Granted, it only slowed the bear down because the beast could use its ears and nose to track us down, but it gave me some precious time to react, while also showing me the right way to do so.
Namely, target the beast where it’s weak, not where it’s strong. In this case, that meant targeting its mind, as I had no idea just how strong its soul might be. Just a bit of Mind Magic to disrupt the beast’s balance, a bit of Wind to swirl around the air and scatter our scents and, last but certainly not least, another shield around its ears, deafening it. At that point, the bear was quite limited when it came to finding us, giving us all the time in the world to plan our next attack while the bear was angrily pawing the air around it, growling like crazy and even rising on its hind-legs, standing tall enough to look into a second-story window, while breaking trees and rocks. When it came back down on its front paws, it used Earth Magic once more, this time sending out a shockwave to disrupt our balance, but by that point, the magic to interrupt its senses was anchored too strongly to dissipate that easily.
Putting the beast down, however, was an entirely different problem. While I could disrupt its mind, I was hesitant to try knocking the beast out as it would require a tremendous amount of power, simply because the bear was that strong, and if it failed, I would be vulnerable. Letting anyone get close remained out of the question, taking away Lia’s favourite tactic of sneaking up on an enemy, or shadow stepping behind them, to stab their backs, as well as keeping Silva from doing anything but keeping Sasha out of trouble.
At the end of the day, Luna had the right idea. If the beast’s fur and hide were too tough to break, and its eyes were hidden by Lia’s magical blindfold, taking away that target, too. However, when the bear roared angrily once more, Luna managed to carefully lob a few small seeds into the beast’s mouth, causing it to briefly chuff in an attempt to rid itself of them. What the beast didn’t know, nor I for that matter, was that these seeds had been infused with an absurd amount of power for their size, enough power to sprout into a full-grown plant in a minute.
And sprouting they did, it was some sort of ivy-like vine, rapidly growing from the small pods Luna had thrown into the bear’s gullet, where they had been dragged into its lungs after the roar ended and the bear had to breathe back in.
Watching a bear the size of a small house suffocate on dry land, while frantically trying to rid itself of the obstruction, was not a pleasant sight. It raged around like crazy, even worse than its previous attempts to find us, breaking anything and everything close to it. All five of us readily decided that discretion was the better part of valour in this case and took more than a few steps back, watching the beast fight against an enemy it couldn’t reach, its rudimentary magic unsuited to save its life or even allow it to flee until it finally sank to the ground, still gasping for air but its strength was spent.
It was almost painful to watch, and I briefly considered ways to ease the beast’s suffering, but its vitality remained too strong to casually kill it, and none of us were willing to risk the beast finding a last spark of strength if we tried to get close and end it. So, we watched and waited until it finally stopped moving and we received the notification that we gained EXP. At that point, the beast was dead and gone and yet, despite that knowledge, we waited another minute, just in case.
And then we got to work, using some fairly heavy-duty pulleys, alongside a lot of magic and effort to process the beast’s carcass, especially the heavy fur. It would likely make an excellent rug at some point.
But that particular bear was only one of the many obstacles we had to face on our way north. Some of them were bestial, like said bear, others, well, they were something entirely different.
