I have made an incredible discovery. I have solve police brutality. I also got slapped when I told Titus of my accomplishment. Who would have thought a retired police chief could be touchy about those things.

  Really it was my fault, I failed to explain that I had started recording the effects certain sigils had. About ten days ago we killed this twenty point rack werewolf. That hunter got a sigil called ‘pack guardian’. It granted twenty-five percent increase to strength and two-hundred fifty percent when protecting other people. The good law enforcement gets a buff while the corrupt ones are weakened. I believe that it would be prudent to start collecting these to maintain order and stop any portals within community limits.

  Day 14, Owen Landers

  Was Silas crazy? Maybe. Did he probably need to see a therapist? Most Likely. Was he frustrated enough not to care about any of it? Definitely.

  He dropped the baby cockroach, which happily skittered through the portal in Silas’s place. His entire contribution to the human race would be a baby cockroach if he didn’t survive and get home. It was a ridiculous thought to have at a time like this, but that was just how Silas’s stressed mind functioned.

  The bear had heard Silas’s scream and turned toward him. The torso and legs of the unfortunate man were hanging from its jaws. Now that Silas was closer he could see that bear was not the most accurate description. The snout was much wider, almost shark like in shape with jagged triangular teeth, the eyes were pure black orbs, and a mottled pattern of black and brown fur would camouflage it well in the darkness. A single broad horn poked up from its snout, though the base of the horn flared out and ran in a bony ridge up its forehead.

  While the bear was large, it was less terrifying than most of the other things Silas had stumbled across. It was big and loud, but also very mundane in its capabilities. No fire breath, no ravenous tentacles, and no mind altering chirps, it was just big and angry. The bear roared and Silas rethought his earlier doubts. Big and angry might be a bit much.

  Thrashing its head to the side, the horned bear threw the lower half of Connor into a rock formation. The beast slammed down onto all fours hard enough to shake the ground and cause Arabella to fall over. Then it lowered its horn and charged straight at Silas. Arabella screamed again, but the bear paid her no mind. It had eyes only for Silas.

  “Oh, shut up,” Silas grumbled at the bear’s roaring.

  His body groaned in protest as forced it to move. Adrenaline coursed through his body, sharpening his mind, but doing little else. Flesh Lord kept his body at its peak capability, and hysterical strength was that peak. Still, the world seemed to slow down as he stepped to the side and let the bear's bulk flash past.

  Silas chopped at it with his sword, cutting a long gash along the bear’s flank. It cut deep, he felt the tip stutter as it bounced several ribs. Spinning to view his handiwork, Silas was shocked to see the bear sink its claws into the ground, spin, and charge right back in a split second. Move! Silas screamed at himself.

  He barely evaded the horn. Trying for a second slash with his sword, Silas felt like a matador. At least he did right up to the time the bear reached out with a massive arm and dragged its claws across Silas’s chest. His eyes widened as four points dug into his skin.

  Then the claws made for tearing caught on his bone armor and dragged Silas along. Using its claws as leverage, the horned bear threw Silas across the ravine like a human shaped frisbee. He hit the ground and rolled for a few before coming to a stop against a boulder.

  Frantically, Silas tried to push himself upright. It was slow, his body resisted his attempts at rushing it. At least he kept ahold of his sword, somehow.

  He was rising from a crouch when something large clamped onto his shoulder. Silas’s head swiveled to see a set of massive jaws sinking into his pauldron. The bone plate was not made to handle the pressure. Like a hydraulic press was crushing it, the plate shattered.

  The teeth sank into Silas’s shoulder, only to be stopped by his cuirass and upper arm protection. It only bought Silas a second, but that was all he needed. Reversing his grip on the mantis blade, Silas rammed it back into the bear’s torso.

  Just like before, the blade functioned as intended, sinking up to the grip into the bear. The bear didn’t like that. It whipped its head to the side, flinging Silas across the ravine for the second time, this time without a weapon.

  The bear roared, but it was difficult to hear over the ringing. His helmet saved his head from being split open, but it did not stop what he assumed to be a light concussion. Unsteadily, he rose again, glaring at the bear.

  Two huddling figures caught his eye. What were they still doing here? He wanted to yell at them to run, but where? In the brief time since he had arrived, the portal was closing. Why didn’t they go back through? What was so horrible that a man eating bear was the preferable alternative?

  Felt at his chest, the claws had done some damage, it hurt to move his right arm. Pain was something that he could deal with. A few rotations of his dominant arm proved that the limb still functioned. With that sorted out, he turned his glare back to the bear.

  Its roars had turned red, flecked with blood. Silas had hit a lung. The beast tried to get the sword out, but without a posable thumb, it was struggling. It craned its neck trying to grasp the mantis blade between its teeth.

  When it was unable to reach it that way, it howled its rage to the sky. Then went to all fours and charged Silas. Evidently, it only needed a single lung to end Silas. Cursing, he scrambled out of the way.

  He dodged the swipe the bear made as it rushed past. Silas ran over to his crushed pauldron and scooped it up. The bone was useless for armor now, but he could repurpose it.

  When he was younger he had rolled play dough between his hands to make ‘snakes.’ The important part of that experience was that these ‘snakes’ were pointed at one end. Five seconds later, Silas held a bone awl, and unlike play dough, it wouldn’t collapse.

  Silas would have to play the long game and bleed the bear out. Unfortunately, stamina was one of the things that he was lacking at the moment. One other problem showed itself. The bear was not an unthinking beast.

  This time it did not rush in like an unthinking beast. It stood on its hind legs, striding forward with measured, intentional steps. Silas took a step back, not entirely sure how to handle the more cautious foe before him. The bear’s eyes lit up, it sensed weakness.

  Silas couldn’t say it sensed wrong. He was a hundred-ninety-pound man facing down a half ton creature with caveman weapons. The only advantage he had over a caveman was a single point in vitality, that didn’t sound like nearly enough to handle the bear.

  While the bear strode forward, Silas started circling it. He did not want to attempt a frontal assault, if he could stab it in the jugular from behind he could kill it. The bear knew this as well, changing its approach to intercept Silas.

  “Come on, stupid beast,” Silas grumbled.

  Several minutes later they were still circling each other. Silas was faster than the bear while it stood on its back legs, and more maneuverable than when it was charging. The bear was too big and strong for Silas to realistically harm without his sword. Neither could close the distance in an advantageous way.

  This was actually a preferable situation for Silas. The bear had the worse injuries and this dance was not expending Silas’s stamina at an unsustainable pace. Dropping to all fours again, the bear glared at Silas. Something had to change eventually, and the bear decided to add several variables to the confrontation.

  It turned and ran towards Arabella and her daughter. They had tried to hide themselves behind a rock but had only managed to cut any means of escape. Arabella’s eyes widened as she watched the bear’s horn rush in at her. She screamed and threw her body over her daughter.

  Silas gritted his teeth, knowing that he needed to take the bait. He rushed on an intercept course with the beast. It was faster, but he had less distance to travel. As soon as he reached the creature, he lunged, attempting to jab his makeshift weapon into its neck.

  That was the moment it had been waiting for. It jerked to a stop, like momentum was a mere suggestion, then launched itself to the side. Silas couldn’t evade as the beast’s furry bulk smashed into him. He didn’t stand a chance, getting knocked over like a bowling pin. Thankfully it was furry, so he didn’t break any ribs on impact.

  As soon as he hit the ground, Silas tried to get to his feet only for a massive paw to land on his chest. The perforated cuirass groaned under the pressure. He looked up into a mouth filled with several rows of triangular teeth. The beast roared, spattering Silas with a mixture of Connor’s and its own blood.

  He still had the awl and before the bear could rip his throat out, he thrust it into the bear’s ankle. It ignored the injury, after all, it could remove the splinter after Silas was dead. The maw snapped down with the speed of a striking serpent, clamping shut on Silas’s head.

  Closing his eyes against his impending death, Silas expected to open his eyes before the judgment throne of God. He was wrong, instead, they had a very up close and personal view of the bear’s throat. Metal groaned and pressure mounted. The mantis plate!

  Silas took the handful of seconds he was granted by the metallic exoskeleton and drew his bone shiv. Then he stabbed blindly at where he remembered the beast’s nose was. That was the most sensitive part if he remembered right. Bear fighting 101 included the use of a really big gun, so he wasn’t exactly following survival protocol.

  Teeth punched through metal, sinking a quarter inch into his flesh, when Silas’s shiv sank into something soft. With a very un-bear-like squawk, the beast jerked its head back, pawing at its face. Silas reached out with his unpinned hand and grabbed the hilt of his blade, letting the bear draw it free as it recoiled.

  Blood spattered him as the sword shaped cork was withdrawn from the beast’s chest. Without rising, Silas swept his weapon around at the bear’s ankle. He couldn’t let it recover, the spike to the eye was a good distraction, but it was by no means a decisive blow. The mantis blade slammed into the back of the bear’s ankle slicing into the taught Achilles’ tendon.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  ‘Snap’

  The tendon tore as the weight placed upon it exceeded its maximum capacity. Another cry of pain came as the monster’s leg no longer supported it. Silas rose as the bear fell, unsteadily, he took a step towards the bear. His sternum felt like it had fractured, blood ran down his face from where teeth had punctured all the way to the bone, and he was so unreasonably tired.

  A less exhausted person might have realized that running was now a viable option. A three legged bear would struggle to give chase and be easy prey to this worlds denizens. Silas was trained not for violence, but to follow orders, and lacked the requisite experience to face his challenges with a cool head.

  It was with a mind full of anger and frustration that he brought his mantis sword down on the beast over and over again. Long cuts opened up along the bear’s back and flank. It was so big that the lacerations didn’t impede it. The bear finally got its shock under control.

  Silas had a brief warning as the monster’s eye cleared. Then it surged forward, twisting its body in a way not dissimilar to a batter hitting a home run. Silas took all that torque right to his chest. His abused armor finally gave out as did what he could only assume to be a rib, he he hoped it wasn’t his sternum.

  The blow with half a ton of angry bear behind it, tossed Silas across the ravine. He felt like a soccer ball bouncing over hard packed earth on his way to impacting a rock formation. His spine would have likely shattered if his armor hadn’t included a back plate. The impact still removed any protection his upper torso once had.

  With a roar, the bear lumbered after him. It was dramatically slower with only three good legs, but was still coming fast. Silas grimaced, his back was against the wall, literally. He lacked the strength to kill this monster.

  The sharp point of the horn bobbed as the bear limped towards Silas at the speed of the car. He was about to die. The mantis blade sat on the ground beside him, but even if he took it up, he lacked the raw power to truly harm the bear.

  Silas was on his knees unable to muster the energy to fight on. It was oddly freeing, the knowledge that all his worries would be gone. He frowned, did that mean all he had been through over the last five weeks was meaningless? Glancing at Arabella, he realized that it might not be meaningless. The bear simply needed to die with him.

  Reaching out, his trembling hand closed around the pommel of his sword. Digging the tip into the dirt, Silas used the weapon as a cane to push himself upright.

  “Screw this hell, screw this world. If I have ever done anything worthy in my life, make this time count,” It was not a particularly elegant prayer, but then again, he wasn’t in a particularly elegant situation. Silas raised the point. It was longer than the horn, to kill Silas, the bear would have to impale itself.

  The bear’s one good eye was filled with blind rage, it did not see the danger. With the force of an avalanche, the beast rammed the point of the blade. Silas was not able out keep his grip. The skull proved to tough to puncture, instead it shoved the mantis blade through Silas’s fingers.

  He barely felt it as his own weapon cut his fingers. The horn was aimed straight at his chest. At least it was until the sword pommel hit the rock formation between Silas’s arm and ribs. A seventy-foot tall stone formation that was nearly six hundred feet in circumference was more than up to the challenge of holding the blade still.

  The sword pushed the bear’s head off to the side, before crunching into the skull right above the brow. Silas was saved from the horn, it smashed into stone right beside him. That didn’t mean he evaded the bulk of the monster. A half ton of bear smooshed him into the wall.

  Silas was surprised at how little it hurt. It did, but only because it jostled his broken rib. He had expected getting his body slammed into a wall would crush him. However, the monster was quite soft. He wasn’t even knocked to the ground.

  The beast slumped off of him. For a moment, Silas thought that had been enough to kill it. It made a pitiful groan as it tried to get back to its feet. A punctured lung and skull hadn’t put the monster down. The mantis blade hadn’t hit anything vital, it had entered the skull just above the brow and had pushed through between the bone and frontal cortex to exit the far side.

  To be clear, if Silas walked away, the bear would die of its wounds. Then get resurrected ten minutes later. He had to put it down now. Reaching up, his fingers sank into his left arm pauldron. Several seconds later, he held another bone shiv.

  He dropped onto the bear’s back. Using his full body weight he drove the bone into the bear’s brain stem.

  Notice: You have made contact with spirit manifestation, Terra Ursa. Would you like to purify the taint of Fenrir from Terra Ursa?

  Wasn’t Fenrir a wolf? Why was his name attached to a bear? Maybe bears were a kind of dog. Silas simply lay there on the beast’s back. It was soft and warm, he purified the monster, getting a face full of putrid black smoke, but it didn’t reduce the pleasure of being alive.

  “I bet you’re laughing at me right now,” Silas mumbled. He had expected to die, planned on it even. He had prayed to make his death count and then survived. Now if God was looking down on him, he was definitely laughing at Silas’s childlike declaration.

  Silas would have been more irked at his brief bout of nihilism if the relief of survival hadn’t been so strong. It was a bit euphoric, so he just went with the feeling and started laughing. Another thought crossed his mind. This was a responsibility he could bear. The stupid thought sentence sent him into another fit of laughter.

  At least it did until…

  Notice: You have pushed Flesh Lord to its limits by straining your body. Flesh Lord has advanced to the new baseline you have demonstrated. Your Body has increased to reflect this.

  Silas grinned, if he was reading that correctly pushing himself so hard was worth it. The constant strain he put on his body was now the new baseline. Thankfully he didn’t see any mention of violence being a requirement of growing the sigil. He shuddered at that thought. People would be worse than monsters if they could harvest other humans for power.

  He closed that notification only to be surprised when a second one took its place.

  Notice: You have pushed Bone Crafter to its limits by working despite your extreme fatigue and crafting under pressure. Bone Crafter has advanced to the new baseline you have demonstrated. Your Focus has increased to reflect this.

  Silas blinked. He had been aiming for control, but his focus was more logical. It had been difficult to muster the desire to get to work after his long days of intense physical exercise. It took a month of hard work, but it was something that he could do repeatedly until he could capture a portal by force.

  He wanted to scan his interface, but his current location stopped him. Hell was a bad place to read ones mail after all. A tiny room behind a rock in hell was the correct location, obviously. Silas groaned, not wanting to get up and march the mile and a half back to his camp. The bear was soft, it would be a comfortable place to nap.

  Something poked his shoulder.

  Silas jumped to his feet, ready to run from whatever horror had just tried to eat him. He didn’t have a weapon, so he fumbled for the spike of bone in the bear’s brain stem. Then he laid eyes on the savage creature attempting to consume him.

  Arabella recoiled at his movement, staring at Silas in the same way he was looking at her. It took a few seconds for Silas to settle his racing heart. It was a woman not a monster, no fighting was needed. At least he hoped no fighting was needed.

  “Uh, hi,” Silas started, not entirely sure what to say. He knew she spoke English, so at least that was not a concern.

  She collapsed to her knees and started crying. For a moment, Silas was worried he had done something wrong. Then he remembered what Arabella had just lost. He was not sure what to say to her. Telling her that her husband was in a better place was not the kind of thing that helped while pieces of said man were scattered across the ravine.

  He looked around for the girl. Samantha was still hiding behind a rock with her little hands covering her eyes. She was crying too, but she was doing it quietly, so he let her be. Arabella was the bigger concern as Samantha’s caretaker.

  Kneeling he placed a hand on Arabella’s shoulder. He wasn’t sure if that was the correct gesture, it was something his father had done when he felt distressed. Processing grief was also not something Silas was good at, it was something many people would become well acquainted with in the coming years.

  “I know things are hard right now, but we can’t stay here, it’s not safe,” Silas said, “Monsters like this are fairly common, so we need to move to somewhere safer.”

  Arabella didn’t stop. It didn’t even seem like she had heard him. Silas didn’t know if he was able to pick her up. Probably, but the broken rib and exhaustion would certainly impede his ability to carry her. Should he do something to snap her out of it, his mind seemed to think slapping her was the way to do it.

  “I need to stop getting my advice from movies,” Silas knew there was a better way. He stood and started walking towards Samantha.

  The little girl was nearly a clone of her mother, or at least she would be when she grew up. For now they simply shared the black hair and pale freckled skin. When Silas got close Samantha looked up, her eyes were blue as opposed to her mothers brown. Connor likely had those eyes.

  Samantha blinked up at Silas, “Who, who are you?”

  “I’m Silas, I need you to come with me,” He smiled to look non threatening.

  She stared at his teeth with fascination for so long that Silas felt a bit self-conscious. He ran his tongue along them, only to find that one of his front teeth was missing. When had that happened? Probably one of the times he was punted across the ravine.

  “Mom says I shouldn’t go with strangers,” Samantha said.

  Silas nodded slowly, “that is a good thing to do. Strangers can be dangerous. But what if your mom comes to?”

  Samantha had not considered that. She leaned forward to look around Silas. He glanced back at Arabella as well. When Silas left Arabella, she hadn’t stopped her weeping, but when he moved towards her daughter, she managed to push her emotions down and watch him warily.

  To her Silas was a strange man who had killed a bear. That was it, her only knowledge about him was that he was somewhat proficient at dispensing violence. Now he was crouching before her daughter.

  “How about you ask your mom what she wants to do?” Silas stepped aside to let the child out. She couldn’t be more than ten. It made his mind return to the other names that showed up on his list every so often. Many had similar surnames, did that mean dead families were scattered all over this world? Well, he shouldn’t be shocked by that, Earth was no better.

  He gave the pair some time to talk things over while he went to retrieve the Terra Ursa’s sigil. Earth bear, he wondered if it existed in any of earth’s myths. Looking the beast over, he assumed not, it wasn’t visually distinctive like the beholder or sphinx. Silas could tell it wasn’t a normal bear, but anyone who he described it to would think it was simply a gigantic bear crossed with a unicorn.

  The sigil had some Norse inspiration. A roaring bear occupied the center of the sigil and what appeared to be a braid of purple crystal wrapped around the edges. Silas would be willing to bet that this would give something similar to Matteo’s Pack Guardian.

  Could Arabella get the full effect of the sigil? Mateo had helped with the second werewolf and had been able to reap the full effect. Silas assumed that meant he received either a full powered sigil, or that his greater was the full version while his original ability was weakened. If Arabella had done anything to the beast, there was a chance she could get the full reward.

  Silas glanced up at the pair, who were watching him intently, “Don’t mind me. There is no night here, so I quite literally have all day.”

  He drew his mantis blade and started cutting the bear up. Flesh Lord was powered by his diet and he needed more bone to fix his armor. He would be a fool not to harvest the pile of resources before they started rotting.

  His body went into autopilot as he chopped the bear apart. Could he get a greater variant of Flesh Lord? He didn’t know what that could be, maybe he would be able to subsist exclusively off of meat. Not needing to sleep or drink water would make this hellscape much easier to survive.

  The lake of water was shrinking, though much more slowly than Silas had expected. He had saved a few hundred gallons in bone barrels, but the fact that he hadn’t needed to use them was strange. He couldn’t prove it, but it seemed like the water cycle was different here and he didn’t know how that was possible.

  Jerking back several times, Silas tore a rib free. He couldn’t take everything, but if he made a sled out of bone, he could carry more. It was a time consuming process and took several hours. He was surprised Arabella hadn’t approached him in that time. Still, he had spent a lot of time being alone, it wasn’t that it was comfortable, he had simply adapted to it.

  He was wrapping the largest piece of undamaged fur around the sled when he decided they had waited long enough. It had been a good three to four hours with no initiative shown from his two new companions. Silas knew that any man with a large weapon covered in blood would be scary to an isolated woman, but some questions should have been asked by now.

  Hefting the two sticks at the end of his sled, Silas glanced over at his two further guests, “You coming?”

  “I-we would rather just go home,” Arabella stuttered.

  Silas laughed. It was not a humorous laugh, no it was one of frustration. He had given up his opportunity to go in order to save them. Arabella flinched at the abrupt noise.

  “You don’t get to go home that easily, today was my first chance and that was because this monster was set on making you a snack,”. Silas instantly regretted saying it like that, her husband had died protecting her from that same beast. That did bring up a point that had Silas curious, “Why did you come through the portal to begin with?”

  “It opened in our home, blocking off the stairwell. We slept in the basement, so our only options were to stay with bunch of cubs and the mother bear or go through the portal,” Arabella seemed to be a bit lost as to what she could possibly do.

  That… That was actually quite a sound reason to make a decision. It was always best to pick possible death over certain death in any situation.

  Silas nodded, “Well you can come back with me, we can see about getting you some super powers and you can tell me how things are going on earth.”

  Arabella glanced at the glowing crystal on the sled, “The government says that those are radioactive and that we should hand any of the ones we find to the proper authorities.”

  Silas blinked, he should have expected that, “It’s not dangerous, I have two abilities.”

  He reached up and wadded a part of his curass, then tossed it to Arabella. She tried the same thing, but was unable to so much as dent the clump of bone.

  “See, now are you coming or what?” Silas asked.

  Arabella nodded and grabbed Samantha’s hand, “I don’t think we really have any other choice.”