Frostbitten Wayfarer

“So what are you hunting, anyway?” Zoe asked as Klia led her into the forest.

“A bear.” Klia answered. “I’ve been hunting this bear for the past few weeks, but it keeps eluding me.”

“Really? A bear?” Zoe asked.

“You ever seen one?” Klia asked.

Zoe shook her head. She had seen many black bears back on Earth, but none since she’d come to Abyllan. Boars, deer, rabbits, rats and other rodents. Lots of birds, but no bears. She hadn’t even seen a wolf, despite them being near Flester if the tracks she saw were anything to go by.

“They’re not like deer or rabbits, you know? Bears are big, and smart. And the one I’m hunting has been around for a while. I saw it once, a month ago. Level one fifty seven.” Klia shook her head. “Incredible beast, but it’s been disturbing some of the farmers so it needs to be dealt with.”

“One fifty seven? They can get that high?” Zoe asked. The highest level animal she’d seen was in the mid thirties, a particularly angry boar she once hunted outside Flester. One fifty seven was unheard of for wild animals, as far as Zoe was aware. Even the highest levels Emma had seen were barely reaching fifty.

Klia nodded. “Sometimes. Not near the big cities or popular roads. They’re either hunted before they get very high or they leave once they outgrow their home. Out here they can get pretty high level though, we don’t hunt them for sport or anything. Just to get what we need to eat, so there’s nothing controlling the population.”

“Right. So if the bears are on top, they’ll just keep getting more and more levels. Must be an old bear, then?" Zoe asked.

Klia nodded. “This one looks maybe late thirties, early forties? Not sure where he came from but he showed up about a month ago. Maybe a bit earlier.”

“Right, okay. So what if we don’t find him?" Zoe asked.

Klia laughed. “We probably won’t. I haven’t yet and I’ve been looking for a while. We’ll just pick up any old bear and maybe a deer to keep people going for the next day or two.”

“Alright, sounds like fun then.” Zoe said, and continued following Klia into the forest. They wandered in silence for a while, stopping to inspect some missing bark on trees or signs left on the ground.

Zoe wasn’t quite sure what her purpose was — finding the signs and identifying them seemed much easier for Zoe than it was for Klia, but Zoe hesitated to show off too much. If she really wanted to, finding the bear likely wouldn’t take more than an hour or two. But was that the right thing for somebody to do when they showed up to a town?

On one hand, the bear was disrupting some of the villager’s lives and Zoe handling it might be a boon for them. But on the other, finding it seemed to be a bit of a passion for Klia and taking away that accomplishment from her felt rather mean.

She settled on pointing out signs Klia missed, and decided to just try and nudge Klia in the right direction as best she could, without being too obvious. Stripping the accomplishment from Klia felt wrong, but leaving the bear to harass the farmers just for one person’s pride didn’t feel right to Zoe either.

“So what are you gonna do with the bear when you find it?” Zoe asked.

“Well, I’ll have to kill it, won’t I? Can’t have it messing up the farmers here and no other way to get rid of it than to kill it.” Klia answered.

“You don’t want to, though?" Zoe asked.

“Of course not. He’s beautiful. Far too old and grizzled to be tasty too, so the meat might not even get used which is a shame. But what can you do, you know? Incredible or not, he’s overstayed his welcome.” Klia shook her head.

“I could move it, if we find it. Take it somewhere and drop it in a forest far away.” Zoe suggested.

“You? Going to just pick up this massive bear and carry it far enough away that it can’t just get back?" Klia chuckled. ”I don’t think you understand how big it is. If I stood on your shoulders, I might be eye level with it.“

Zoe whistled. “That is quite a bit bigger than I thought. I might still be able to though, maybe. I could try and move it, if you’d rather.”

Klia shook her head and waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “As much as I love the beast, I can’t risk it getting away if we do end up finding it. If you can capture it quick, then go ahead. But I have to take the chance if it presents itself. If it keeps growing, I might not be enough to handle it anymore.”

Zoe nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll try and be quick then.”

Klia chuckled. “Not that we’re even going to find it anyway, you know? The damn thing’s evaded me for weeks. It’s not going to just show up today cause you’re around.”

“Right, yeah. Well hopefully we can get enough food for the people at least then. What’s it like living here, anyway? I’ve never lived somewhere like this. Seems interesting.” Zoe asked.

“Interesting is right.” Klia scoffed. “It used to be better, before the fall of Flester. We’d get merchants in, travellers. Lots of people to talk to, stories to listen to. Cool wares to browse through and if you’re lucky, maybe even buy.”

“But not anymore?" Zoe asked and looked off in the distance through the trees, summoning her Cosmic Familiar out of sight from Klia. She pushed through an image of a massive bear, telling her familiar to search for it and stay away from her and Klia. The strange purple shapes fell into the ground, and Zoe felt them moving further away.

Klia shook her head. “No, not anymore. Last person that showed up was Anna, but she stops by all the time. Last new person would have been, hmm. A year ago, maybe?”

“Anna?” Zoe asked, remembering the little goblin named Klihur who kept asking if she was Anna. “Does she spend much time at the Springs of Gir?"

“Yeah, why?" Klia asked.

“Oh one of the goblins there kept asking if I was Anna, I have no idea why. Do I look like her?” Zoe asked.

Klia laughed. “No, but she never looks quite the same every time we see her. Always changing her hair style, playing with new fashions. I guess the goblins aren’t quite so good at recognizing people, maybe."

“Maybe. They were cute though.” Zoe said.

“That’s what I’ve heard, yeah. Never been myself, though.” Klia said.

“You should go sometime. It’s not that far away, I don’t think.” Zoe said.

“You don’t think? How’d you get here?” Klia asked.

“Flying?” Zoe grinned. “Yeah, flying.”

“You can fly?" Klia looked at her in surprise.

Zoe wrapped herself in a suit of Earth and lifted off the ground. “A little, yeah.”

“Seems convenient. That how you plan to move the bear?” Klia asked.

“More or less, yeah. I can carry a lot of weight with me.” Zoe said.

“Hmm. It might just work, then. But like I said, I can’t risk losing it again.” Klia said.

Zoe shook her head, and they continued through the forest in silence for a while longer. Klia found some deer tracks to follow along and they soon found the owner of the tracks, storing its corpse away in Klia’s ring. Zoe noticed many of the other animal tracks along the way — plenty of different rodents, deer. Bears, of course as well as a few very old wolf tracks that Klia either didn’t notice or didn’t care about.

“So why’d you come here, anyway? What’s your story?" Klia asked as she bent down to inspect some rustled leaves and split branches on the ground.

“I was just travelling around and saw the village in the distance. Got nothing better to do really so figured I’d come meet some new people.” Zoe answered.

Klia looked confused for a moment before she responded. “Ah, right. Flying. I was wondering how you saw our village through the trees. Flying sounds so nice.”

Zoe smiled. “It is pretty nice, I enjoy it a lot. I haven’t done it as much as I think I should have though, which is part of why I’m enjoying just getting out and exploring some.”

“I can’t imagine that. If I could fly, I don’t think I’d ever do anything else.” Klia said.

Zoe laughed. “Well I’m not really flying. I just push myself around with a suit of dirt. It’s a lot more effort than it looks, but you could learn it too you know?”

“Really?" Klia perked up. ”I could learn to fly?“

“Yeah, I mean I think in theory anybody can, really. All you need is a skill that lets you manipulate some kind of solid material and enough mana to move both it and yourself.” Zoe said.

“Okay, but how do you get one of those skills, and how much mana is ‘enough’,” Klia made air quotes with her fingers.

“Kill an elemental?” Zoe laughed. “Or lots of practice. Get an enchanting class or a good mage class, or probably a bunch of others I guess, for Mana Sight and Mana Manipulation then get to work. And I dunno, a decent bit of mana. Few hundred per second, maybe a thousand for sustained flights? Probably depends on the skill you’re using and all your class bonuses and feats too, I guess.” Zoe shrugged.

“See, that all sounds completely out of reach for me.” Klia said. “I’ve got hunting classes, I can’t see mana at all.”

Zoe shrugged. “Like I said, a lot more effort than it looks. But if you really wanna do it, you could.”

“Maybe. You think you could teach me?" Klia asked.

Zoe nodded, and then felt a tug on the link to her Cosmic Familiar moments before the connection was destroyed. Something killed her familiar, the bear Zoe hoped. “Yeah. I could take you up flying too if you want to try it?"

“Really?” Excitement wafted off Klia as she looked at Zoe.

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” Zoe laughed.

Klia nodded her head like a child begging for candy from their parent, and Zoe wrapped earth around the both of them then lifted them up above the tree canopy. Klia screamed as she rose off the ground, and Zoe felt her trying to flail around in the earthen suit.

“Oh my god oh my god! Aaaah! This is so much scarier than I thought it would be. You’re sure your mana can handle all this extra weight?" Klia looked at Zoe with a mixture of fear and excitement.

Zoe nodded. “This is nothing. Where do you wanna go?"

Klia looked around then pointed in the same direction Zoe felt her Cosmic Familiar fade away moments earlier. Zoe drifted through the sky, pulling Klia beside her as she stared down at the forest.

“This is so cool,” Klia said. “I can see so much of the forest from up here. And you just get around like this all the time?"

Zoe laughed. “Something like this at least, yeah.”

“That’s crazy. I’d be doing so much more if I could fly. You say you can help me with learning this?” Klia asked.

Zoe nodded. “Yeah, sure. Sounds like fun, really. A lot of work though, and I don’t know how long I’ll be around.”

“Oo!” Klia pointed at a spot in the forest. “Put me down there, I think I see something.”

Zoe obliged, and pulled both of them down to the forest floor where Klia indicated. The trees and ground were abound with massive signs of a bear where they set down. Enormous gashes in the trees where the bear was scratching, far above Zoe’s eye level. Footprints in the dirt reminiscent of exaggerated dinosaur tracks from movies and bear droppings larger than Zoe ever wanted to see.

“This is it.” Klia whispered. “We found it. I can’t believe we found it.”

Zoe looked around, following the tracks which were surprisingly difficult to see, she found. Where they landed, the bear signs were large and obvious — perhaps a moment the bear let its guard down? But all around them the forest seemed almost clean, and beyond a few feet out there was nothing. Not a print or scratch in the trees to be noticed, even to Zoe’s improved senses. At least not at a glance.

“I’m impressed,” Zoe whispered. “Other than this mess here, I can’t see where it went very well at all.” She bent down to inspect some of the tracks and the area around where the bear might have travelled through, but even with a closer look the bear left nothing to say where it went.

Klia nodded. “This is the problem. I find these remnants of moments where it lets down its guard, but then it may as well just disappear.”

“Is it teleporting around, maybe?” Zoe asked.

“No, definitely not.” Klia smelled some of the cracked leaves. “I saw it once. It just runs through the forest but doesn’t leave any tracks.”

“So how do we find it?" Zoe asked and summoned her Cosmic Familiar again off in the distance, giving it the same instruction as before.

“That’s the question, isn’t it? So far I just pick a direction and hope it’s the right one. But if you think you might be able to see the tracks, you can give it a go if you want.” Klia suggested.

Zoe shook her head. “No I can’t see anything, may as well get moving before it gets too far away. These look pretty fresh, at least.”

Klia nodded and started walking through the forest, each step placed with careful precision to not crack a branch or crumple a leaf. Zoe followed along after her, matching her steps. The two walked in silence for a few minutes, before Zoe once again felt her connection to her Cosmic Familiar tear apart a short distance to their right and the two heard a sharp crack as a branch snapped off a tree in the same direction.

Zoe watched as Klia took off towards the crack, leaping from tree to tree with only the slightest noise even to Zoe’s enhanced ears. Not feeling confident in her ability to replicate such precision, Zoe summoned a suit of earth and drifted through the air after Klia.

They arrived in another clearing full of damaged trees and torn off branches, with the dirt thrown about by the bear’s powerful, massive paws a few long seconds later. But the bear was nowhere to be seen.

“Dammit,” Klia cursed under her breath. “We’re so close I can almost smell it.”