Matthew Nesheim
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Chapter 38: Lefty - Night Watch
🕑 Added 2023-10-20 05:08:05 +0000 UTCLefty awoke to the duck pecking his face. He scrambled against his bedroll as he tried to brush Feathers off him, but before he could cry out a webbed foot covered his mouth. Then he heard it. Something was moving outside. Lefty froze as Feathers gave him a stern look, hopped off his chest, and waddled over to the front of the tent. As the duck leaned his head out, Lefty heard how large the intruder was. It sounded massive. He could hear the heavy breathing and the scrape of paws like cinder blocks working the dirt. Claws like daggers as they dragged themselves against the bark of a tree. Whatever it was, it was monstrously large.
With great care to stay silent, Lefty pulled off his blanket and shifted around so he could look out the front of the tent with Feathers. At first, all he saw was darkness, trees, and stars. Then a shadow, huge and brown, crossed between him and the sky. It was a monster covered in dark brown fur with spines that stuck out from under its bulk, with jaws that could snap a limb like a twig or paws that could smash a man’s skull. Lefty had survived enough wilderness adventures to know in one glance what it was: a dire bear.
Nine hells, you’re not supposed to fight those things until you’re at least level four or five. As he watched the bear tear through the contents of their cooking pot, Lefty suddenly realized he needed to urinate. Badly. This is going to be a very uncomfortable situation. He then watched as the bear tossed the pot aside and began to sniff around the next tent. That’s Kevin’s tent. Where is Kevin? He’s supposed to be on watch. Why isn’t he waking the others up? Looking this way and that, Lefty spotted the slumped form of Kevin against a tree. At first, he was afraid Kevin was dead, but then he saw the game master’s chest move up and down. Kevin had fallen asleep.
I warned them about this guy. Now we’re all sitting here with a dire bear in the middle of our camp because that idiot fell asleep on guard duty. Then he felt a nudge on his elbow. It was Feathers. The duck was pointing toward the tent on his left. That’s where Calista is sleeping.Without another quack or warble, Feathers waddled off.
Great. I suppose he thinks I need to somehow wake the dwarf. Looking back at the bear, Lefty could see its head was now all the way inside Kevin’s unoccupied tent. For a moment, he wondered how much his odds of survival would improve if he simply fled, but then he remembered he’d be alone at night in the woods as a level one wizard and thought better of it. So after taking a moment to calm his nerves, he began to crawl toward Grumner’s tent.
He still really needed to pee and low crawling through the grass wasn’t helping. If the gods in this gods’ forsaken game are really real, they better watch over me or I’m gonna haunt the shit out of them when I die.
Reaching the front of Grumner’s tent, Lefty placed his hand over the dwarf’s mouth before he shook his shoulder. As Grumner opened his eyes, Lefty held a finger over his lips, silently mouthed the words “Dire bear,” and then pointed outside. Grumner looked out just as the bear grunted and ripped through the top of Kevin’s tent. The dwarf then squeezed Lefty’s shoulder and nodded.
They then crawled out of the tent together and circled around the edge of the firelight where they stopped and looked for the other members of their party. Hiding behind a thick, hollow oak, Grumner pointed to the other side of the fire where they spotted Calista’s shadow as she crawled out of her tent with Feathers by her side. That only left Kevin, who was still leaned back against a tree, snoring away only a few feet from where the dire bear was rummaging through his tent.
The situation was tricky. None of them wanted to fight the dire bear, but they also couldn’t leave Kevin who, so far, was their best chance of finding out more about the company running this world. So as Lefty leaned out from behind the tree, he wracked his brain on just how he might try to extricate them from this situation. Opening his H.U.D, he checked his spell list.
Spells:
Cantrips (may cast any 4/day) – Detect Magic, Ghost Sound, Dancing Lights, Light
1st Level (may cast any 4/day) – Magic Missile, Feather Fall, Burning Hands, Sleep
While he was pretty sure a dire bear would shrug off any of his spells, he was also pretty sure it was much lower risk for him to take a shot at landing a non-combat spell than it would be to actually fight the damn thing. So after a moment of considering which spell he’d try first, he picked a spell and whispered the incantation.
“Sonus extrandicatus.”
In response, the sounds of boot steps and branches breaking echoed in the dark. The bear turned its head, listened, and promptly decided to ignore it. While suspicious, the sound had been too small. The bear was, after all, a bear and as a bear had little concern about anything smaller than it was.
“Okay, let’s try the other one,” he whispered as he furrowed his brow and took aim directly at the bear. “Solamnun solanus.”
Hoping against hope his sleep spell would land, Lefty held his breath. This time, the bear paused, sniffed the air, and wobbled for a moment. However, the bear shook the moment of drowsiness off with a squint and a shrug and then sauntered over to Calista’s tent, tore the top off, and began investigating the contents of her pack. As Lefty watched the bear start in on Calista’s rations, he turned to Grumner and shook his head.
“That’s the best I got,” he whispered. “What do you want to do now?”
The dwarf’s gaze turned to Kevin who was still snoring against the tree. “We either fight the bear and die or we wake up the moron and try to make a run for it.”
Just then, the bear growled loudly, tossed Calista’s pack aside, and moved on to the next tent.
Lefty nodded, “Right, so how do we get at Kevin?”
Pushing Calista’s pack with his nose, the dire bear was now only a few feet away from Kevin’s unconscious form. Grumner lowered his axe and tilted his head as he watched the bear tear at Calista’s rations. “Right, I say that we wait for the bear to move a little farther …”
Just then, Kevin awoke with a snort. The game master’s eyes then went wide as saucers as he took in the sight of the dire bear only an arm’s length away. The brown robed man blinked and shook his head in disbelief as his situation slowly began to register. Then, after a deep breath, he did the exact thing everyone was fearing he would do. He screamed at the top of his lungs.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
It happened in a split second. One moment, the bear’s nose was down in Calista’s rations. The next, it was up and looking at Kevin as he screamed. Then a mighty paw rose and was brought around in a wide arc where it caught Kevin on the side of his head and snapped the game master’s neck. In an instant, Kevin’s voice died.
Lefty whispered, “Maybe he’s still …”
He was interrupted by a sickening crunch as the dire bear bit into Kevin’s skull. This was followed by a tearing of flesh and more bones being crunched, cracked, and broken as the dire bear decided he had found his next meal.
None of them had had any time to react, and so they all stood in shocked silence for a moment as they watched the bear tear into the dead corpse of the ex-game master.
“Yeah, it’s his camp now,” Grumner whispered.
Without another word, the dwarf signaled to Calista and Feathers they were leaving the camp and then the four of them disappeared into the dark.
