Healing Incorporated

Frozen in place from the sheer terror of the approaching bear, all Eli could do was ready a heal as he shoved Amy out of the way.

Those terrible claws dug into his arm and then the weight of the bear was upon him. Eli slammed into hard ground with blood oozing out of his arm, searing pain making his eyes tear up. A heal helped his injury, but did little to improve his position.

The bear's shaggy fur, dotted with blood, got into his face, and no matter how much he pushed, the weight was just too much.

"Eli!" Amy shouted somewhere off to his right, but he was in no condition to answer.

If only he'd had some sort of blade to shove into the bear's neck. No such luck, but the huge beast let out a whine and stepped back enough for Eli to see Charlotte standing there, her eyes dazed, like she wasn't quite awake. The blade she'd sliced into the bear's back with clattered to the ground. Its health bar was still well over two-thirds full.

"We can't kill it!" Eli shouted, starting to get his feet under him. "Amy, we have to tame it. Dana, you're a bard. Don't you have any skills to calm it down or something?"

"I didn't pick that one!" Dana screamed. "You think I can play an instrument in this situation?"

Her arrows were pitiful. Sure, she kept firing them into the bear, but they did almost no damage and most of them didn't even penetrate its skin even at this close proximity.

"Well, what do you have?" Eli shouted back.

"Fear! I have a fear song!"

"Use that, dammit!" Eli shouted.

Charlotte cried out as the bear's giant paw struck her in the chest, sending her crashing to the floor and hitting her head again. Eli winced and healed her. Even with his now much larger mana pool, it was running low. He couldn't sustain this for much longer.

An instrument popped into Dana's hands, a lute. Her trembling fingers began to play an unsteady tone. Eerie notes rose to the ceiling, amplified by the bare rock all around them.

The bear was unaffected and turned from Charlotte, lying prone and unmoving on the floor. It didn’t care about Dana’s song enough to attack her. Instead, it turned on the most defenseless member of their party, Amy. She was on her hands and feet, her eyes wide with fear, darting back and forth.

The situation, as hard as it was for him, must have been ten times as bad for Amy, who couldn't see a thing. That was it. Eli glanced up into the ceiling at his orb of light from the Light in the Dark skill. As the bear approached Amy, he willed the orb of light down from the ceiling. Time to test its new effect.

"Amy, you have to tame it!" Eli shouted at her.

"It says it's impossible! I keep failing! I'm trying!" Amy yelled.

"Damn it!" he grumbled, willing the orb to fly faster.

The bear put a foot on Amy's leg, sniffing her curiously. The weight must have been crushing, as Amy cried out with a horrible wail.

Finally, Eli the orb returned, and he launched it with as much force as he could muster, right into the bear's face.

"Keep playing, Dana!" Eli barked. "Zack, do you have anything to debuff it?"

"I don’t!" Zack shouted. He was holding an explosion potion in each hand, unable to use them for fear of harming Amy.

The orb of light slammed into the bear's face. The bear shook its head from side to side, dazed.

"I mean you no harm!" Amy shouted through her tears, directing her words to the bear. "I want to be your friend!"

Eli smashed the orb into the bear again. The bear whined and shook its head.

A debuff appeared under the bear's health bar.

Blindness.

"It worked!"

Amy whispered to the bear, "I want to be your friend."

She reached out toward the bear's fur against, all better judgment, stroking it right by its face, ignoring the massive mouth full of wicked teeth. "Why don't you come with us? Come join us."

The music was taking hold. Another icon popped into existence by the bear's health bar.

Fear.

The bear trembled and looked back over its shoulder, then back at Amy and her soothing words."

Eli sent a message through the party chat.

Eli: Do not disturb Amy. We can’t attack it now. It’s up to her.

Amy kept speaking, stroking the bear's muzzle with one hand. "I’ll take care of you. You won’t have to be afraid anymore or alone."

Eli saw the Blind status start to blink. The bear was getting its sight back. Just as the icon disappeared, a green light shimmered across the shaggy fur, and it jerked back, starting to change.

"I did it," Amy panted, groaning as she gently brushed her fingers over her crushed leg.

Eli healed it and saw the flattened part reform itself in a heartbeat. Amy winced, but didn’t cry out again.

The bear, now about the size of an adolescent grizzly, stopped shrinking.

Eli inspected it as it sat down with a thud right next to Amy.

Bear. Animal. Level 12.

"It leveled down," Amy said.

"Good," Dana said, equipping her bow and knocking an arrow. "Makes it easier to kill."

Eli slapped it out of her hands. "What are you doing?"

"What we couldn't before," she growled, pulling out a long rusted knife, holding it to Eli's chest. "That thing killed so many people."

"Part of our party now!" Amy shouted. "It even lets me pick a name for it!"

Charlotte had woken up again and was sitting on the floor, her hand on the pommel of her sword. Zack regarded them with troubled eyes, and Amy's face took on a pleading expression.

"Dana," Amy whispered, "we need all the strength we can get, and to waste this."

"This wasn't the deal," Dana interrupted.

"This is the deal," Eli said. "Put that knife away."

He wondered breathlessly if it was possible for her to attack him, but if the game would even let her wasn't a given.

Dana let out a cry of anguish mixed with grief, and the knife popped back into her inventory. Tears ran down her face as Eli moved closer to wrap his arms around her.

"Don't touch me!" she hissed, pushing him away and getting to her feet. She wiped at her eyes. "Let’s find the rest of the bodies."

Eli nodded, glancing up at the outcropping where the bear had been enjoying its feast. He turned to Amy. "Good job, Amy. That thing was far too strong for us to kill."

She nodded and smiled weakly, glancing up at the still huge creature beside her. She petted its fur. "She’ll make a great companion."

"It’s a lady bear?" Zack asked, looking up.

"She is," Amy said. "She’s got her own status screen and everything, with skills and talents. Even an inventory."

"Why don’t read up on the bear's skill?" Eli suggested. "We’ll go see if we can’t find her friends."

"Sure," Amy said. "I’ll let Rufus get acquainted."

Eli looked around, his eyes wide. "Where is Rufus? I didn’t even notice him being gone."

"I put him into what this place calls my stable when we went through the narrow passage," Amy explained. "I didn’t want him to be hurt in case we found the bear. Turns out it was a good precaution."

"So it’s like the second inventory?" Zack asked.

"Something like that," Amy said, patting her head. "He’s safe and happy in here."

Taming the bear had meant none of them received any experience for it, but it didn’t matter. If Amy hadn’t tamed it, they'd be dead. Actually, Amy had gained quite a bit. Eli realized, inspecting her before they turned to leave. She was level 8 now.

Charlotte was still sitting, her eyes dazed.

Eli got down on one knee in front of her. "Are you hurting anywhere?"

Charlotte shook her head, not looking at him. "I’m not in pain," she said, her voice small and distant.

"Why don’t you rest here too?" Eli said gently. She didn’t reply.

Eli made the orb hover above them. "You coming, Zack?"

"Yeah, sure," Zack said. "Not exactly looking forward to the prospect of hauling bodies out of here."

"I can see that," Eli said, exhaustion eating away at him from within now that the rush of battle was draining out of him.

Dana was already making her way up to where the bear had been sitting before. They crested the rock outcropping and found not a massacre of blood and guts, but a simple, flat wooden board sticking out of the ground. On it, a name was painted in red lettering: Harry Sigurdson.

Dana brushed the top of the stake with her fingers. "Harry."

"Who put that there?" Zack asked.

Eli left the three of them in darkness for a brief moment as he willed the orb to move back to the entrance, where he saw similar planks in the distance. "They’re markers," he whispered. "Once we removed the threat of the bear, the corpses must have turned into these to show where people died. The corpses are gone."

Dana’s voice was barely audible. "I didn’t want them to rest in here, in the darkness."

She stood, grabbed the wooden plank, and pulled with all her might. It didn’t budge.

"That thing isn’t going anywhere," Eli said.

Dana let go, panting. "Dammit!"

"Do you want to check down the other paths back the way we came?" Zack asked, scanning the huge, empty chamber.

Eli looked around, not seeing anything of interest and no path out other than the one they'd gone through. "Not really. If it's all the same to the rest of you guys, I'd rather head back and rest a little, then see if we can't do a better job at the graveyard now that we have the bear."

The bear was too large to fit through the narrow passage, and Eli was too spent to question how it had gotten there in the first place. Amy happily stabled the bear and brought out Rufus again. Together, they left the cave. Dana grumbled all the way to the surface and stomped off into the woods without a word the moment they entered the forest.

"She did not look happy," Eli said.

Zack squinted into the distance. “No, she did not.”

“How are you doing, Charlotte?” Eli asked, turning to her.

“Fine,” Charlotte said, flinching at him when he mentioned her name.

Amy sent Eli a private message.

Amy: I'll talk to her later.

“Mission accomplished," Eli said, changing the subject. "You have a pet stronger than any one of us now, Amy.”

"Feeling stronger already!" Amy said, holding up two fingers in a victory sign.

It didn’t take them long to leave the forest and enter the grass field. The Infinite Innovation Solutions building loomed in the distance.

“You mind if we stop a bit?” Amy asked. “I’d like to let Rufus meet Princess.”

“Named the beast already?” Zack asked.

“Of course,” Amy replied. “If it’s going to be a friend, we can’t just keep calling her the bear, right?”

"Princess?" Eli asked, seating himself on the grass to grab another meal. A doner kebab formed in his hands, and he set to eating with great abandon. Zack and Charlotte joined in with their own meals.

"A pretty name for a pretty animal," Amy laughed, withdrawing the bear from her invisible stables.

Seeing such a huge animal pop into existence from out of nowhere would take some getting used to, but Rufus mostly just looked curious, walking around Princess and sniffing her still blood-matted fur. Princess sat down with a huff and a snort, which seemed to convey she was above the dog’s attention.

“That’s not nice,” Amy told the bear.

“You understood that?” Eli asked.

Amy blushed, nodding.

“What did it say?”

“She called Rufus an annoying pup.”

“Will she let you ride her?” Zack asked.

“Ride her?” Amy asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I mean, she’s big and strong.”

Princess let out a guttural groan and tossed her head.

Amy chuckled.

“What did she say?” Zack asked.

“Nothing.”

“Maybe Princess should be kept inside the stables when we’re with the others?” Eli asked. “She might scare people."

“Didn’t think of that,” Amy said. “Yeah, you’re right. Fine,” she grumbled. “Say goodbye, Princess.”

Princess roared and popped out of existence mid-sound.. Rufus barked once, then trotted up to Amy’s side, taking his place as her guardian.

“What’s going on over there?” Zack asked, pointing to the base of the building in the front. “Are those walls?”

“What’s happening?” Amy asked.

“There are a bunch of people outside, and I think someone built a small cabin, maybe part of a wall,” Eli said, squinting. “I’m not sure.”

Amy allowed Rufus to pull her along, but she was obviously hesitant. "I don't like this."

By the sound of shouts drifting across the field of grass, people were arguing.

“We better hurry back,” Eli sighed, thinking he might know what was going on.