Centoriel

[Graybeard]

The bear ambled past the prostrate woman, heading for the blackberry patch on the other side of the road. Cave bears are mainly vegetarians. They have also learned from generations of experience that humans don't taste good.

Its hazy ursine brain registered something approximating puzzlement, though -- puzzlement tinged with suspicion. The relation between cave bears and humans (not to mention cave bears and trolls) is more one of competition than predator-prey. The species compete for habitat, food, water. Of course, each will, on occasion, stoop to eating the other, although neither is one of the other's preferred menu items. This bear hadn't reached its 14-foot height and ton-and-a-half weight by being either malnourished or a fool. The woman on the ground was behaving almost as if she wanted him to eat her. Food wasn't usually so compliant. And what was that racket coming from the east? Bears are notoriously nearsighted, and all it could see was a blur of motion and dust. Furthermore, the rainstorm's west wind was making its excellent sense of smell useless. What was going on here?

The bear reared to its full height and squinted toward the approaching wagon.

----------

"What in Luminosita's Name is it doing?" Rose asked as the wagon drew nearer. The horses were getting unmanageable; they could smell the bear, even if the bear couldn't smell them. And everything likes horse meat, even cave bears, and the horses know it.

"I don't know, but now it looks more interested in us than in her," Miguel said as he searched his mind for offensive spells that he could use. He knew Force Bolt, but it was a pretty wimpy version that probably wouldn't do much more than make this huge beast mad. What else?

"I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not," Rose replied, "but we'd better decide fast..."

[Sareth]

As the cave bear ambled past her and on to the bush, she was relieved. The bear didn't seem inclined to talk with her, but at least he'd decided he wasn't angry with her. Given the disparity in size, that was a relief. The bear could have torn her apart in seconds if he'd been angry. She debated if she should push him, beg... Cave bears weren't the smartest animals, so there were likely limits to what he could tell her, but at least he was friendly. The spirits of the air and earth here, on the other hand, seemed very unhappy.

The bear hunched back, lifting to his mass into the air on his back legs. High in the sky, his nostrils flared as he sniffed the air loudly, then made a grumbling noise. Something had gotten his attention.

She turned. A wagon was approaching, a floating pike of stone next to it. On it were several people. Some were dressed in casual travel clothes, but some were wearing...

"Oh no." She shot to her feet, dropping the pendant from her hand to dangle over her bodice. Quickly she stomped out the incense and grabbed her pack. "Go!" she shouted to the bear, as she began backing away.

[Drannin]

Something was off here. The bear was not menacing the woman. In fact, it looked like she was being protective of it. Protective! Of something that would just as soon chomp off her head! Well... he had heard rumors of certain individuals with a magical ability to manipulate animals, but up until now it had never seemed a useful ability. A mistaken assumption, that.

Argus was about to suggest a halt to figure out what was going on here, when to horses finally lost it. Rearing and screaming, they caused the wagon to rock and slide wildly. Harker went flying of the side. Argus just barely kept his footing, but his stone pike jittered in midair. It took all of his will to keep it from falling on the ground and shattering.

And then, to top things off, the cave bear apparently decided that it had had enough... and charged them on all fours. Cave bears were not a good breed of creatures to annoy. Between the sheer size, the fangs and claws... Argus swore creatively. "Try and get the horses under control! I need to aim this thing!"

"Wow... sight like that's a good cure for constipation..." Harker said hazily from somewhere on the ground. Given the circumstances, Argus was inclined to ignore him.

[Graybeard]

"Shield?"

"SHIELD!"

Brother Miguel and Sister Rose pumped their combined energies into the spell, just as the bear reached the wagon. It wasn't much, but it was enough to give the bear a jolt of energy as it started to swipe at a horse. Startled, the animal recoiled and rose up again on its hind legs to survey the situation before another attack.

Which was just what Miguel was hoping for. He dropped his part of the Shield spell and channeled his energies into a Force Bolt -- not enough there to do any real harm, but force applied above the center of mass of something standing 14 feet tall, and balancing unsteadily on two legs, can easily be enough to knock that very tall thing over. The bear fell backward in a heap...

... And decided that it had had enough. It tore off into the berry patch, growling and licking its wounds, which were trivial in all regards except the blow to its pride.

Rose dropped the remnants of the Shield spell as Miguel panted, trying to regain his magical and physical strength. As she wrestled with the still-panicky horses, she called out to the mysterious woman, "Now would someone please explain just what is going on here?"

[Sareth]

As the bear charged, the woman swung the pack over her shoulder, then slipped her arms through the straps. She felt a bit bad about the bear, but it would provide a good chance to escape. She started to turn, hoping to get gone. Unfortunately, before the turn was completed, a flash of light got her to whip back around in time to see the after effects of a blast of magic dwindling as the bear took to his heels.

Crap. The situation, it seemed, had just gotten worse. Not only had there been Veracian clergy on that wagon, there were Veracian Combat Clergy on that wagon. Of all the things to run across she had to run into commandos. Don't run. Only guilty people run. If you don't run, then they won't suspect you of doing anything. Which, of course, you haven't. Right? Quietly, she turned to begin walking down the road like nothing had happened.

"Now would someone please explain just what is going on here?"

She froze, then slowly turned. "It was a random bear attack?"

[Viking-Sensei]

Sasha quickly flipped through one of her travel manuals. "It says here random encounters are common... chance of running into a bear is about 1 in 200 for every 100 steps taken through the woods..." She looked up, seeing that everyone was staring at her. "No, really, that's what it says."

[Drannin]

Argus glanced over at his now-useless pike of stone. Well... it was the thought that counted. Absently, he lobbed the thing at a nearby tree, impaling a twisted and warped old oak straight through the middle. As soon as the spike rammed through the mutant excuse for a tree, a low, inhuman moan echoed around them. For a brief moment, Argus wondered with horror if someone had been standing on the other side of the tree for some obscure reason. Hopping down to the ground and investigating, however, revealed... nothing. Just the wind?

Walking back to the others, Argus noted that they seemed as startled as he. Except for their new acquaintance, she who spoke to bears. That individual was trying to look as friendly as possible. Well, whatever. Just another traveler, right? He reached down to pick up a rather dazed Harker. "Would someone kindly explain to me just what's going on?" He paused. "Or are eerie moans another form of 'random encounter' around here?"

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose's eyes narrowed. It was true enough that cave-bear encounters weren't unusual out here; they'd had one on the way to the other small town (Zantel, was it?) yesterday, after all. But something didn't feel quite right here, and it seemed to be centered on this odd young woman. She didn't seem violent, to be sure, but still... Time to do some fact finding here.

"I'd better get these horses calmed down," she said, and started speaking to them in quiet, soothing tones -- which gave her cover to work in the incantation necessary to cast a surreptitious Empathy spell. Of course, it was instantly flooded with pure, animal fear from the horses despite her calming, but she slowly turned away from them past Brother Miguel (no real need for the spell, she could read his emotions like a book anyway and was fully aware of his agitation), Argus (complex emotional state mixing suspicion of the girl, miffed ego at having his stone pike -- that was a creative use of resources at hand, Rose reflected -- go unused, and puzzlement and concern at what the countryside was doing), and Harker (typical familiar mental pandemonium) to the girl ...

Ah.

"Don't worry, we won't eat you," she said to the woman in much the same tone of voice that she'd used with the horses. "Nor will we burn you at the stake, or turn you in to the elves, and at least for now, we won't even try to convert you, if you extend us the same courtesy. But we really would like to understand what's happening here. Please explain."

[Sareth]

The woman's jaw dropped like a trap door and she made inarticulate sounds for a moment as she simply stared at Sister Rose. After just long enough for the shock to begin to slide from "comical" to "getting old" she clomped it shut audibly, and her face went from right to a dangerous shade of red.

How... How could she... How does she know all of that? She'd been so careful to wear her long, dark hair in a way that hid the ears, and she'd tried to erase the evidence of her ritual when the wagon had first begun to trundle up. How could...

Belatedly she realized the goddess pendant around her neck was outside her bodice rather than couched between her breasts. She hastily stuffed it into the bodice, her face threatening to go from red to purple.

How... Infuriating!

Rather than lash out at the nun, or cleric, or priestess, or whatever these goddessless called her, she spun about towards Argus. She stomped past him to rest a hand on the tree he'd speared. "The spirits seem very stirred up and angry here. I don't think they liked this much." She leaned her head against the tree. "There there... I know it hurts..."

[Drannin]

Argus stared at the woman. Looked to Harker, and the others, in bafflement. Stared at the tree. The woman again. The tree again. Walked up to the tree. Observed it carefully. Confirmed his suspicions.

"Miss? It's just a damn tree."

Damn Hippies...