Book 2 Chapter 19: The Bearman

Isolde

April 3, 1787, Realm Time, south of Sankt Petersburg

The most annoying part about Koshchei was that he wasn't in a hurry at all. The hut had moved a couple of miles on the first day, but only to find a place where a hill and a thicker wood provided better protection from the cold. The giant chicken legs were moving adroitly, and Koshchei was adamant that those were the best means of locomotion during the Russian mud season.

Then they spent two and a half days training. Isolde started by grooming the hut, sweeping the floorboards, cleaning the pantry of human remains, burying them, and nailing a few shingles back in place. The rest of the lessons were split between two topics: learning how to heal—a derivative of the Flesh Savant perk—and how to use her wings and talons.

For the first, Koshchei took over Isolde's body while leaving her conscious, and healed the Warg, who had decided to tag along. The male wolf had a sprained foot, and taking care of it was the matter of two hours. Koshchei insisted that slow healing allowed for better results.

The flying session started with Isolde slowly unfolding her Griffin wings, then pulling them back a hundred times. The sensation was not organic, as she had imagined; it was similar to opening a folding knife. There was a moment of inertia, of resistance, then the wings started to deploy and clicked into place. They had a metallic shine, and the tips were razor sharp. The talons as well. Long and curved, they resembled Wolverine's claws from the comics.

Then, Koshchei taught her how to search for specific attuned Mana. A Griffin should not have been able to fly; it had nothing aerodynamic about it. However, flight became possible once one could feel the Air-attuned Mana, a flowing energy embracing every wind, every breeze.

Isolde was far from a natural, but her long experience learning to ride and training for competition gave her a strong mindset. On the morning of the third day, she launched into the air, decided to try more than just hovering ten feet above the ground, and flew for real.

The morning was sunny, and she took advantage of the rising currents to rise above the pines' canopy. After a minute of mental preparation, Isolde began to glide in circles, stopping every few minutes to go back up. Her eyes registered the landscape, but her mind was so focused on flying that she understood what she was seeing only when she settled to drift with the wind.

Sankt Petersburg was burning. Not a huge fire engulfing everything, but dozens of individual plumes of smoke. There were two fleets in front of the island at the mouth of the river; one was floating; the other had sunk, showing only the tips of their masts here and there. Big rowing boats were ferrying groups of soldiers to the island. The ships and boats flew Sweden's flags, which were almost identical to Earth's modern ones. Columns of people were escaping the city to the East, some on horses, some with carts, many on foot, all running for their lives as the fleet was firing its cannons.

"That mother fucking Gustav invaded!" Isolde sighed.

I know, I'm seeing through your eyes. We have to move; an army is approaching. Look west.

The Old Magic user was right: countless birds were taking flight in a wide pattern, about two miles away. Crows and other non-migratory birds. The tone of emergency in Koshchei's voice made Isolde fold her wings, fall like a stone, and open them again like a parachute a hundred feet above the ground.

It's too late to run. Come inside and don't make any noise. Hurry!

The door slammed behind her a second after she ran into the log cabin, and the curtains closed by themselves. First came a choir of dissonant, shrieking sounds and the sound of flapping wings.

Harpies. I didn't know Elena made so many of them.

Peeking through the small slit, Isolde saw only a display of shadows running over the snow. They were big. Then came a herd of countless bison, spreading wide as far as she could see between the trees. On each one was a rider, with green skin and tusks emerging from the lower jaw, armed with javelins or greatswords. Orcs.

The parade continued with boars; their riders were goblins. Finally, after everybody else had left, a mixed group entered the clearing. Nine of them were children of various ages, varying from maybe ten to fourteen, with iron shackles on their hands and feet. They were herded by a dozen goblins on foot. Half of the goblins were armed with crude spears; the rest held long sticks with nooses at the end.

And last but not least, there was a giant-sized monster. Ten feet tall, walking upright, a combination of a man and a bear, albeit the only human part was the right hand, holding a staff. The bear's left paw was pulling a sleigh with a giant sack.

"See, maser, see?" a goblin chirped, bobbing his head. "The hut is where I told you."

The bear let go of the sleigh and produced a gold coin, flipping it toward the monster, who took it, bit it to check the metal, then hid it in his tattered leather vest.

"Elena, where are you?" the bear bellowed.

"Who's that?" Isolde whispered.

I remember him. One of Elena's strongest Chimeras, The Warlord. One of her revolutionary comrades who volunteered to be experimented on. A Third Order she combined with a Dire Bear, giving him strength and toughness.

"What's he doing here?"

I don't know. Maybe he followed our scent, or maybe we accidentally moved to a place where she was supposed to be.

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"Elena! Are you sleeping, you lazy bitch? Get out, I can smell you!" the bear yelled.

This is very bad. He's strong enough to tear through the door. If he figures out you're not Elena, he'll kill you to take your place.

"Why?"

To build armies of monsters, of course.

"Shit..."

It all made sense. Endless thrall armies were a revolutionary's best dreams.

Take that hooded cloak from the hanger, pretend you're Elena, and slit his throat with your claws as soon as you are in range. Once their master is slain, the goblins will run.

"I don't think so," Isolde said in a low voice. "I'm five on Constitution, remember?"

Isolde's gun, a revolver, was stored in a drawer, and she retrieved it before donning the cloak, the hood pulled as far over her face as possible.

That won't—

"I'm here," Isolde said, faking her voice to match what she remembered from Elena's, and opening the door.

"I brought you a few gifts," the bear gestured toward the children before opening the sack and revealing a few dead animals. Many stag antlers, a few frogs, a badger, and a lizard, all of the latter as big as a small dog. "Use them as you see fit.

He wants me to make monsters and food out of the children?

The man continued saying something about meeting less resistance than anticipated, but Isolde didn't pay attention. Never had she felt such anger. She pulled the gun out of the cloak and used Fast Shot on the bear from point-blank range, discharging all six bullets in the back of his head.

The monster turned toward her, massaging his nape, while a thin layer of energy colored in rainbow colors, like the light reflecting on engine oil, was running over his fur.

"You're not Elena."

Fuuuck! Isolde's mind screamed in panic.

CLAWS!

She let go of the revolver and took a swipe at the bear, expecting him to swipe at her too, with his left paw. Instead, The Warlord stepped back, aiming his staff at her. Isolde ducked under the incoming fireball at the last moment.

The goblins spread around, the one with nooses trying to catch her hands and neck. She managed to deliver a shallow cut to one's hand, then the small creatures yelped and ran in panic when the Warg jumped in front of Isolde, growling.

A second fireball singed her hair, missing her by an inch, and that was only because Isolde's body had jerked back instinctively, control taken over by Koshchei. The hut flexed its chicken legs, then jumped twenty feet in the air, landing on the bear, pinning the monster under its weight. The staff launched a third fireball, going wildly upward.

Isolde's body moved like an automaton, running on all fours. First, she wrestled the staff from The Warlord's grip, throwing it away, before tearing at the bearman's exposed neck with her Griffin claws, alternating right and left arms. Her awareness was on, and she screamed as the monster's blood sprayed on her face and torso, erupting up like a fountain. The bear's neck was wider than an adult's torso, and it took a dozen or more swipes until the spine was finally severed, and the head rolled to one side, hanging on only by a string of skin.

Next time, listen to the ones who know better, Koshchei said.

You have participated in killing a Direbear. Level up x 1.

Panting, Isolde crawled out of the hut, looking around. Now, the goblins were trying to stop the kids from running, circling around them, and the Warg was helping. The children were screaming and shouting, some trying to grab rocks and sticks to fight back.

The monsters recognize you as the boss now.

"Stop chasing them!" Isolde screamed to the monsters, before turning toward the children and taking a softer voice. "I won't hurt you, I swear. I want to help. I'll escort you back to your homes."

Don't make promises you cannot keep.

"You have to swear to keep what you saw a secret!" Isolde added.

"Are you the Baba Yaga?" a girl asked.

"Yes."

"But... you're pretty..."

"Yeah... long story."

"Our village is gone," a boy, the tallest kid with better clothes, said. "The monsters' army killed everyone but us."

"Monsters' army?"

The army we detected is one made of monsters. I cannot estimate the numbers or the chimeras Elena created during my hibernation. Yet, it was frequent for her to make ten to twenty monsters a week when I was awake.

"A few thousand, at least..." Isolde said under her breath.

A slight movement in her peripheral vision attracted her attention. Something covered in gore was squeezing itself out of the bear's severed neck. A slim man with sickly white skin and only one arm, which he used to crawl, was pulling himself out of the carcass. Their eyes met, and they both gasped.

"The fuck?" Isolde exclaimed, rushing to pick up her gun from the ground.

She aimed and fired, but the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. The man mumbled something, stretching his arm. The fallen staff flew into his hand, then the air around him twisted, and he was gone.

Now I remember! That was Elena's friend. She grafted him inside a direbear.

"We have to go; he'll sound the alarm," Isolde said. "Can you carry the kids?"

"Easily."

"Children, hear me out," she yelled. "I want you to be calm. We have to go, or the bad people will catch us. I want you to enter that hut; it will keep you safe. He... it has a big rocking chair; it will be fun, I promise."

The children rushed to enter the hut, all like one. It was surprising they trusted a stranger so easily, but as the door closed, a whiff of smoke reached her. Isolde understood their real reason: the two fireballs that had missed her had started a forest fire, and it was growing fast. The only good part was that the wind was pushing it in the other direction.

A small hand pulled on her cloak. A goblin, the same one who had shown the hut to the Warlord.

"What do we do?" the green monster asked.

"You talk?"

The monsters nodded in unison.

Stupid me... I heard him talking before.

"You strong. We serve you now," the goblin said.

Shit! They were humans once... Kids too, probably.

"Go on the porch."

Tell them to hang tightly.

"Hang tightly!" Isolde yelled as the band ran toward the porch.

Use the Warg as a mount and follow. I count on you to defend me from any threat that appears. I cannot manage your body while running. Project the image of you riding him in his mind, and he'll understand.

"What do you say?" Isolde asked, trying to focus on the idea of riding the wolf.

She felt nothing special, but the monster came near her, offering his flank, and she grabbed the fur, climbing up. Meanwhile, all the annexes had fused with the main cottage's body, the sleigh with the monster parts sliding into the working shed.

+22 in Humanity for saving 9 human children, 12 chimeras, and adopting the Warg as your pet.

The hut began to move, first slowly, then faster and faster, the chicken legs stretching in an unreal jog that didn't look like running, but so far she could tell, approached thirty miles per hour. When she activated her Warped Road, instead of going faster, they jumped, and it hurt, like she and the wolf had jumped through a pane of glass and gotten cut by the shards.

You have learned Dire Jump, a movement skill. When in danger, this will automatically replace the slower Warped Road. Warning: Due to your chimeric structure, some parts of your body react more slowly than the others. Increase your Endurance to mitigate the effect.

Will five points be enough? Isolde thought, trying the movement again after focusing on raising her stat. It turned out it wasn't. She invested fifteen more until the pain disappeared.