Langblade swings as the bear retreats.
Seeing Cath and the others stay behind she grips her sword tightly and adopts a solid stance.
Langblades sword comes away with more of the mothers blood as the beast chases after the big cat. While her first shot flies wild, Sparks second arrow sails true and strikes the mother bear deep in the back of the neck! The big bear heaves and shuffles forward it's ragged breaths come more and more slowly until it collapses forward in a heap of blood soaked fur.
The young bear growls and makes a lunge for the big cat but it's claws pass straight through the apparition! Blinking back confusino it turns just in time to see the slash and arrow that ended it's mothers life. Roaring in rage and fear it looks as if it prepares to charge!
"Tuwe na amani," Sparks says softly as the mother dies.
Then, as quickly as before, she notches another arrow snuggly on the string of her' bow. She lets this one fly as the bear lunges at the Tainesh's illusion...
...but the bear's unexpected movement throws off her shot. Sparks blinks her eyes shut and shakes away her fatigue as her shooting hand once again performs its smooth motions.
Quiver. Feathers. Shaft. Hand. Bow. Arrow Rest. String. Pull.
The arrow is in place and ready to fly by the time Sparks reopens her eyes. Her well practiced movements even very nearly set the correct aim. All she has to do is make slight adjustments and release. An instant later her forth arrow in as many moments zips towards the enraged bear cub.
Cath stows his bow and picks his sword back up, bracing himself for another charge.
The gnome cringes when the mama bear falls dead, and draws a heavy sigh when the cub looks like he might charge. Aware of the small weight in his throwing hand, he considers his options. Umros doubted that the explosion would kill the poor cub, but there was a narrow chance the blast might jar him from rage and frighten him away.
Arching a bit further back for the extra distance, Umros lobs the flask between the heads of Langblade and Cath, and it soars over the clearing. When it lands, a small explosion of liquid fire bursts from the broken container.
The figment had been good while it lasted, but now it was cluttering her headspace for no benefit. Tainesh banishes the panther into nonexistence and takes stock of the situation.
'Mama bear, dead. Cub, enraged and closing fast. Sparks is shooting and that looked like a solid hit. Umros is getting ready to set it on fire, maybe make it angrier. Langblade is living up to her surname, possibly pseudonym, and Cath is... what?'
The Half-Elf had just dropped a perfectly serviceable shortbow to draw a sword. All of the best fighting manuals Tainesh could find had emphasized Psellus' Proverb: If your enemy is close enough to hit you, you are close enough to hit your enemy. Only now it was reversed. If the fighters were close enough to hack away at the bear, the bear was close enough to disembowel one of them.
They needed range, and damn if her crossbow wasn't in three pieces in her pack. That just left one spell, one which didn't have as much reach as she'd like. Tainesh intended to take it apart and research a spell with much further range, but didn't quite have the understanding to make it work. Not yet.
Decision made, heartbeat still pounding in her ears, she steps shoulder to shoulder with Cath and begins activating one of her two remaining spells.
Taking a cue from the fighter to her left, Langblade readies her own sword against the impending charge.
The Elves arrow and Gnomes alchemical flask fly simultaneously. Though while Sparks shot finds its mark, Umros arm just isn't as strong as it used to be and his fire falls short. The unknown pain of the arrow and the bright threatening flames spurn the roaring mammal into action, with a leap and growl it throws itself towards the nearest thing, Langblade with sword drawn!
But before it can, the bear is hit by arcane magic and strength of sword! Though Taineshs spell does little more than singe it's fur, the distraction allows Cath to bring his sword down in a vicious slash, cutting deep into it's side!
Even though they are a good distance away, the two sudden blasts of fire cause Sparks to recoil, sending her next shot high off into the distances of the forest. She moves to ready her bow once more but her previously smooth motion, perfected through decades of practice, is instead shaky and disjointed. It takes her two tries to notch the arrow but once it is in place she does not even bother to draw it back...
Instead, Sparks' attention is drawn to the smoldering grass left in the wake of Umros' and Tainesh's attacks then back to the second bear as it draws too close for comfort to the others. She grimaces at the deep wounds it receives as the two armored fighters strike out at it with their swords.
Cath's blade is already low from the previous swing and bringing the sword up for another downward slash would take too much time, opening his midsection to attack. Instead the fighter cuts upward, putting his full strength behind the blade.
Seeing the twice-burned bear suffer wounds from the bloody blades of Cath and Langblade, the old gnome takes on a grim look. He reaches forward and mutters a prayer when he touches the half-elf’s knee. Sweet Desna, let us finish this quickly…
That was it for offensive spells, and the Daze cantrip she'd prepared that morning only worked on humanoid creatures. The minds of animals were either too simple or too alien for the magic to take hold. That just leaves the damage she could do with her own hands and mundane instruments.
It's the sort of decision that only makes sense when adrenaline is coursing through your veins.
Tainesh dashes through the tall meadow grass and swings her quarterstaff at the bear's less toothy end, landing a blow in the right flank.
It's... not very effective.
The wizard swings her staff with all her might, but the heavy wooden stick does little more than cause the bear to turn and growl in anger. The growl fades to a whimper though, as the chemical burns take their gruesome toll.
The creature of the woods finally succumbs to it's wounds and falls to the ground, dead. The clearing is once again silent as the sounds of frantic battle die away, eventually the song of birds once again fills the air and the pleasant weather reminds those still drawing breath that the world is bright and full of hope for those who are willing to search for it.
"That was impressive... and honestly, a little frightening," Sparks says as she rejoins the others."I apologize that I was not more helpful. In more than forty years of hunting I have only ever needed to fire near a member of my party once... I will do better." she says by explanation.
After that, the elf stoops down to inspect the smaller of the bears. She cringes and shakes her head as she runs her hand over its now rough, unappealingly charred fur before moving on. Sparks slowly follows the path of burnt grass in the direction of the bear's mother, collecting her undamaged arrows along the way. Like before, she checks the bear's fur, but this time finds it soft and thick with only the sword gashes marring it.
'It will need more work than normal, but it should fetch a decent price...' she thinks to herself.
Then, without asking the others, Sparks turns the animal over on its back, pulls out her knife, and expertly begins the lengthy process of cutting the bear's coat free of its body.
Breathing a sigh of relief, the gnome suddenly realizes that parts of the chemically-burned bear could be useful in his alchemy. He racks his memory to recall any specific recipes that might feature ursine ingredients.
If there are no applications that to come to mind, it means they’ve yet to be discovered…
Umros Whipporwill draws his dagger as he moves around the tall folk. Resting a gentle hand on the departed bear cub, the body still warm, he whispers reverently in his native tongue. “Mae'n ddrwg gennyf digwyddodd hyn. Gorffwys hawdd yn baradwys arth.”
Stooping down to the bear’s paws, he works the edge of blade against the thick hide to remove the claws. Next, he turns to the jaw, seeking to remove the teeth, starting with the longest and sharpest.
“I am sorry this happened. Rest easy in bear-paradise.”
Cath steps back as the two forest-folk dive into the corpses. Well, that was fast! He takes a moment to survey the scene for anything that might lead to a missing child.
"Wow," Tainesh gasps. "That was..."
Intense? Terrifying? Invigorating? Any other of a dozen words coming to mind? After all the shouts and the enraged snarls from the bears, the quieter sounds of the forest are almost deafening. The birds had gone silent, of course, but the wind through the trees and the slow creaking of tree trunks is louder than her steady heartbeat. A nearby squirrel is just now coming out of hiding, chittering angrily at the intruders to the clearing.
Tainesh had heard of the rush people felt after near-death experiences, but this hadn't been one of those. The bears had scarcely even touched the party. Sure, it had been frightening for the first few seconds, but thereafter she'd been too busy casting spells and... running out in front of the defensive lines to smack a furious bear with a big stick.
Incredibly stupid. But it had been an action committed in the absence of any sensation of fear. Ergo, fearless.
And then the sound of Sparks's and Umros's knives grinding against the bear's bones sets her teeth on edge.
"Should we check the bears' stomachs? I fear we just learned what happened to James," she says as she drops her pack and retrieves pieces of a crossbow.
Umros pauses in his work, and nods. “I think, wherever James went, this Shining Lady went with him...” he squints at the bear’s underbelly, thinking aloud, “but diligence is a virtue...” Stepping over to the ursine underside, he holds his dagger against the hide, and suddenly appears to fight an impish grin. “Brace yourselves, ladies. This could be grizzly.”
Without further ado, his dagger tears open the bear.
Sparks snickers, despite being some distance away. Turning back to Umros for a moment she calls out with:
"Mwyseiriau ddrwg bob amser yn anodd i arth."
Joke made, Sparks continues her slow work, sure that it will take her at least another thirty minutes to do the proper, quality job she intends to.
White, wiry eyebrows precede beaming eyes that peek over the mound of bear to meet Sparks' for just a moment before popping back down again. A short, tittering laughter escapes his moustache as Umros' tiny bloody hands push aside fleshy thinga-majiggs to inspect gods-know-what.
The hunter and wandering cleric make quick work of the bears corpses. Sparks easily trims the skin from flesh and dresses down the heavy fur coat, cleaning it before stowing with her things. Umros has significant difficulty, no doubt due to his smaller stature, with removing the claws and teeth. But with perseverance he is able to make off with teeth and claws.
At the wizards suggestion Umros digs into the bears torsos, one after the other. It rapidly becomes apparent that the little wanderer has no idea what he's doing, as it doesn't take more than a minute before he makes an absolute mess of the creatures insides. The others bear witness to the, admittedly unsettling, sight of a tiny gnome, elbow deep in bloody entrails. He titters, wild-eyed at words spoken in his native tongue and dives back in.
Through trial and error Umros finally locates the stomachs and opens the first to reveal, berries, leaves, small stones, and some unidentifiable partially digested meat. The second stomach however, has something far more interesting. What appears, at first examination, to be a human hand...
Langblade turns away and swallows heavily at the sight of Umros covered in gore. The smell permeates the air and she steps away for a moment. Downwind of the carnal site.
After she finishes with the mother bear, Sparks takes a slow walk around the clearing looking for anything amiss.
With that done, she calmly observes Umros' very nearly botched dissections of the bears and leans forward with interest when the hand is found.
The gnome pauses when he produces the hand, turning it over to inspect. He looks up at the others and jiggles it. “You can tell a lot about a person by their handshake,” Umros mutters as he lets it fall to the grass. Looking down at his bloodied hands and sleeves, he sighs disappointedly. The alchemist eyes the organs already removed from the bear, and tries to recall his understanding of anatomy to sort out which of these would be the liver. I’m sure I have an empty flask somewhere I could squeeze the liver oil into…
Once finished, the finely-hatted gnome steps away, grimacing at the gore on his hands, sleeves, and front of his clothes. With a quick gesture, and a “Minor dolum,” the blood on Umros’ hands erase, and every surface the palms of his tiny hands scrub are similarly cleansed. In moments, his patchwork cloak is as good as ...well not new, but definitely clean.
Sparks' eyes light up as she watches the effect of Umros' magic. Though she kept herself far and away cleaner than the Gnome while skinning her bear, she still gives a glance to her unavoidably blood stained hands and asks, "Would that trick of yours happen to work on others as well?"
Tainesh draws three pieces of a repeating crossbow from her pack and begins assembling them. A steel bow bolts onto the stock, and a wooden magazine is mounted over the receiver on a lever that the manual had called a 'forward assist'. The crossbow has the grubby look that could only have come from being rubbed down with a handful of dirt for five minutes. The abortive attempt to make the weapon look like the worn and well-used tool of a seasoned adventurer does nothing to hide the fact that it had been made two weeks ago by a skeptical bowsmith following a rather old set of blueprints.
Five bolts, bound together with a metal clip, slide into the magazine and Tainesh is prepared to face the day without offensive spells.
"It would," Tainesh answers Sparks absentmindedly as she peers at Umros's work.
“That,” says Cath matter-of-factly as he watches over the post-battle carnage, “is disgusting.” While the others finish with their business, the fighter contemplates the odd presence of the bears, “What are a couple of bears doing in a clearing so close to town? Especially one that's obviously used frequently by children?” he asks to no one in particular.
When Umros produces the hand, Cath draws a deep breath, but is caught short by the gnome's 'handshake' comment and can't help but give a slight chuckle. “Oh, that is so wrong. Wonder who it belonged to, or if it's even important for us.”
At first, Sparks pays Tainesh's assembly efforts no attention, thinking that her walking companion was just rummaging through her pack, perhaps seeking some potion or other. It is only when the elf turns to nod her thanks that she notices the human woman's newly produced weapon.
"That's... rather unwieldily... isn't it?" Sparks asks as she takes in the sight of Tainesh's oddly complicated and very heavy looking crossbow.
"Where? I do not see it," Nme'an responds... only to blink once then automatically raise his shield in an instinctive, defensive posture.
In that blink everything around him changed!
Gone is the thick jungle and his companions. In their place is a bright, green, idealistic meadow. One that is marred by the ...desecrated... remains of two brown bears. Around the far more disemboweled bear stands a small collection of people which Nme'an, falling back on his training and experience, quickly identifies.
There is a pair of heavily armored warriors. Not Thaleniel knights... but more likely mercenaries of some sort. A Brother and sister perhaps? A step behind them stands a tall, dark skinned woman who is holding a dangerous looking repeating crossbow. 'A magic user?' Nme'an guesses due to her frail appearance and lack of any sort of armor. Then, down front next to the slain bear, Nme'an can just make out the short figure of a gnome wearing a very fine purple hat.
"I don't wish to alarm," Nme'an says clearly to the strangers after a short moment, "but I seem to be in the wrong... place..."
Umros’ ears pique at the new voice and looks up from what he is doing. “Perhaps not, this could be the right place,” he answers reassuringly to the knightly figure. He does a poor job at keeping a smile off his face as he stands. “We’re all here because we are not all there...”
"Where is here?" Nme'an replies, letting his guard down slightly.
“What the!?,” Cath exclaims at the unfamiliar voice. “Who the hell are you? And what did you do to our elf lady?” he asks, looking the newcomer over with a careful eye… and a hand on his hilt.
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"Actually, it's quite ergo..." Tainesh trails off as Sparks disappears in a flash of non-light, to be replaced by a strapping Half-Elf in shining armor. Her cry of surprise -and the pending search for signs of a transmutation spell of some sort- is averted when he speaks. Clearly, the warrior has no idea where he is and how he got here.
With a murmur, Tainesh activates her magical sight and is astounded at what she sees.
The Half-Elf... well, someone has plans for him. Sarenrae, probably, judging from the holy symbol. Positive energy radiates from his body, and his eyes and mouth are like white-hot furnaces. A high priest of the Dawnflower, or perhaps some sort of paladin.
The thing behind him nicely explains the odd encounter. It... defied description. It was not something that mundane eyes encountered often enough to craft words for, but it was an enlarged hypersphere of insubstantially fractal... lacey-spacey... stuff. It was an un-singularity where planes had collided at just the right angle (acute, really) to cause a pileup of branes, continuums and multiverses. It was a tunnel, a kaleidoscope into a trillion trillion possibilities, some near, some far. She saw a brother and sister -No, closer than that- asking a man to flip a coin. She saw a team of knights in green armor protecting a strange crystal as purple ships like spun glass hovered ominously overhead. She saw a party of outcasts huddling in a red city, casting wary glances over at a haberdashery. And there, orbiting a point five feet to the left of the future, she sees Sparks in a jungle, flanked by a tiger and a warrior kobold.
The kaleidoscope grinds to a halt as the universe realizes it made an error and reverses direction, looking for the step where it forgot to carry the two. Inevitables step out of the folds of space and, with Auditors and Guardians at their side, begin the metaphorical and metaphysical task of pushing the universe's seat into the upright position.
"Sir knight," the wizard says, stepping as close as she dares to the disturbance. "You may want to take three steps back and, oh, about half a step to the right. In that order."
"I am Nme'an, of the Order of the Dawnflower, Knight Apprentice of the good kingdom of Vyren. I swear to you I did not do anything of harm to any 'elf lady,'" Nme'an replies, answering the armored mercenary.
He is about to ask another question when he notices the female mage staring at him strangely. "Excuse me? I may want t–" he begins to ask when, without moving or actually being moved, he feels a powerful force drag him back and then sharply to the right.
"–kupata moja ya maeneo haya ni salama?" Sparks finishes asking, once again standing in the meadow.
A moment later she drops to one knee and winces in pain. She blocks out the sun with her hand gripped across her face and forehead until the intense headache that suddenly flared vanishes just as quickly.
"What...? Did any of you...?" She asks, not even sure how to properly form her question. The others, it seems, noticed something and Sparks looks to them for some sort of answer.
Tainesh Ludor clicks her tongue disapprovingly as the paladin stares at her in bewilderment. Confusion in the wake of a dimensional disjunction was understandable, but one would think that most people would have the common sense to follow the orders of the mage who knew what was going on. Alas, the Half-Elf doesn't, and tendrils of improbability are already curling around him. Someone is going home without their luggage.
A golden rope snakes out of the disjunction and coils around his chest. It was obligation made manifest... maybe not obligation, but destiny. It was a god's will that this Nme'an character go on to do great things, and that god wasn't about to let little things like fractures in the foundation of the universe get in the way. The paladin is yanked back to his home dimension in the span of a micro-instant, leaving only afterimages that skip across dimensions like a rock across a river.
The disjunction is collapsing, which is really the wrong word for it. It's like two interleaved books being pulled apart and sorted out, an analogy that utterly fails to scale up to eleven spatial dimensions and countless realities. Analogies tend to do that.
Still, Tainesh had a few seconds to enjoy the view into eternity. To see a city frozen in time by the emperor at its center, with only the genius loci of a nearby castle aware of the passage of non-time. To see swarms of five-legged Mindspiders pursue an aethership shaped like a small restaurant, of all things. To see a young woman dressed in the rags of a spider-silk costume, almost completely obscured to the wizard's vision by clouds of insects and innumerate layers of hexagonal portals.
An Inevitable arrives and the rift slams shut before the insect-woman can see the party, and Tainesh feels a wave of relief that she can't quite suss out. All that's left is a jagged scar the width of a thread, glowing faintly with magical potential. A voice comes from the other side of the scar. The sound is muted by the infinite distance between each end of the rift, but the speaker is a living extension of the universe, and their words are clear as a church bell. And in what she guesses to be Celestial.
Tainesh doesn't understand the languages of the Outer Planes, but she somehow gets the impression of a gold-and-silver construct of law and order asking someone to pass him the welding torch. Whatever that is. In any event, a white light erases the scar from top to bottom.
And there's Sparks, standing where she'd been before the disturbance. Looking none the worse for the wear. Mentally, however...
"Short answer is that you were pulled into a hole in the universe and traded places with a paladin from another reality for half a minute," Tainesh says. "The long answer involves a month of instruction on planar mechanics."
Her eyes flick up and down Spark's armor, and she is relieved to see that the ranger hadn't lost any of her gear in the transition. That was worth giving thanks to Sarenrae at the next opportunity.
"So, what did you see on the other side?"
When she stoops to examine the find, the Elf is able to immediately tell that this limb, though Human indeed, is from an adult. No child would have so large or hairy a hand. Her sharp Elven eyes notice that the hand is heavily calloused, suggesting a lifetime of hard labor. But most prominently she spots what looks to be a tattoo on the top of the wrist. A five-pointed star, irritatingly asymmetrical in design, with a small series of lines inside. What looks like, what? Maybe a flame? In the center of the shape.
Umros is able to easily identify that the Human hand is from that of an adult, likely a male since the grown women he's seen have had far less hair. There are callouses on the fingers, which might suggest a stringed-instrument musician. Or perhaps the more boring explanation of a lifetime of labor. By far the most interesting thing he takes note of is a tattoo, on the upper side of the wrist, its shape like that of a star with five tips. Though it is far from symmetrical, the certain level of inherent chaos in it's design speaks to the Gnomes own sense of aesthetic. In the center of the shape are a series of small lines, not any sort of script or writing the Cleric was familiar with. At least one of the shapes kinda looks like fire. But it's hard to tell.
His body-type probably tended towards the heavier, if not perhaps given to fat. Bone thickness and density would suggest perhaps around twenty-stone, though without a larger sample-set Ludor hesitates to make any more specific an assumption. Interestingly he also seemed to have a tattoo on the top of his lower-forearm. A pentagram with annoyingly non-euclidean perimeter. A short series of small squiggles are in the center of the shape. Though the learned Wizard cannot begin to speculate as to their meaning. The design matches no arcane sigils or shapes in Tainesh's wealth of knowledge.
At a glance the Fighter can tell that, yup, that's a hand all right!
The breeze picks up slightly, bringing scents of loam and wildflowers with it. With the warmth of the sun through the canopy the light wind is welcome and pleasant.
"A dense jungle... and... there was something about a tiger but I am unable to remember any more than that," Sparks answers Tainesh before stooping down to inspect the hand. "Do any of you recognize this symbol?" she asks, showing no qualms about reaching out and rotating the detached limb for a better look. "If not, we may need to carry it back to town and see if someone there can lend..." Sparks giggles, then finishes with, "...if they can help us."
Stuffing the corked vial into a pocket, the wandering storyteller notices that the bookish girl is entranced by something, just behind the shifting figure, who is thankfully returned to the elven archer Sparks. He knows that she used magic to alter her senses, though she did not do so by the blessing of powerful source like a god or mother nature herself. At Tainesh’s educated response, Umros raises an eyebrow, his suspicions inching toward confirmation. A wizard? Witch? I remember the last wizard I met, the great Davian Mambrino... But the musing does not last long for the growing smile in finding a fellow knower of the extraplanar. I wonder where she’s been! What she’s seen!
Remembering how jarring such travel can be, he is mildly surprised that Sparks does not lose her lunch. By her brief description, he supposes that she visited the First World. But why would a paladin be there? When she nearly cracks a pun, he snickers, seeming that she is alright, inside and out. He straightens one end of his white moustache, answering, “Nice, isn’t it? This is a man’s hand, probably a lute or fiddle player by the callous on the fingers. I don’t know the tattoo, if it means anything.” He squints at the rotten hand uneasily. “I would prefer to find James before going back to town. But the stink of rotten meat doesn’t easily wash out, if we are taking that with us.”
Pausing for anyone else to weigh in, the old gnome adds, “Should we just bury it for now?”
“I think that might be best,” Cath says, daring to take his eyes off of Sparks again in case she disappears in another moment of distraction. “Tainesh, maybe you can sketch out that tattoo in case we need to reference it later?”
“Anyway, I bet that the bears came from the north east. Not sure if that's helpful or not.”
Tainesh is mildly disappointed that Sparks can't remember much of what she'd seen on the other side and none of the journey there and back. Then again, subjective time while drifting across the space between dimensions (Which had its own flavor of time) would have been as near to zero as makes no difference. All she could do was make note of the knight's name and see about contacting him later.
"I'm afraid I haven't seen anything like it," she says as she finishes the memorandum and draws a quick sketch of the tattoo. After she's done, she flips the paper back over to the memorandum and writes another, reminding herself to buy a journal.
"Truthfully, I do not have high hopes for finding the boy," Sparks admits to the others with some sadness upon hearing Cath and Umros' suggestions, "but my intension was to remain away from town for a few days no matter if we were to find him. As long as we have a trail to follow we may as well see where it leads."
Sparks retrieves her pack, spends some moments readjusting it so it again rests comfortably on her back, then moves to the northeast edge of the meadow. Leaning down to one knee she uses a hand to search the soil and foliage for telltale clues that she is sure will allow her to trace the bears' path back into the woods.
Umros idly glances above the treeline in the northeasterly direction, checking for the smoke of a forest fire. He quietly sniffs the air, and listens for any animal cries in that direction that might seem out of place.
When the girl is done copying the image, the gnome unlimbers his heavy pack, casually lifting the top flap. He hesitates, frowning, and casts about the recent battleground. Oh, that's right. I lent my shovel to Yorik. Damn...
Surveying the rocks that dot the clearing, he finds a sizable one to turn over. He kicks out some of the exposed dirt, and indicates that Sparks should drop the hand into the divot in the ground. When she does so, he pushes the stone back over it with no small effort.
He listens to the elf and smiles at her admission. "Well, we won't find him with that attitude," he replies good-naturedly, "At the spry age of fifty-one years, I too went missing from my parents. And I was lost a bit longer than a few weeks. Give the boy some credit, we may find him yet, and maybe this 'Shining Lady' said to call him."
When it is clear that the hunter is studying the ground for tracks, the old gnome stops talking so he does not distract her.
"Please do not misunderstand, I very much desire a happy outcome," Sparks responds as she helps Umros bury the severed hand, "...but given the circumstances I feel I must temper my hopes for fear of being utterly crushed when ...if... they are not met."
"But that does not mean I will give up. I will not. Not until it is right to do so," she adds with conviction before making her way to the meadow's edge.
'So that's what a bearskin looks like. I suppose I can see why they're used as rugs. Wonder how warm that would be in the winter? If I haven't worked out a spell to keep the elements at bay, it might be worth looking into.'
"Bears are apex predators, are they not?" Tainesh asks the ranger as they walk toward the treeline. "If they are, don't they defend their territory from other predators? That would mean that if these bears didn't attack James -and I've heard that bears are not as man-hungry as their reputation suggests- then there are not a lot of other feral animals around to do the job."
She looks over her shoulder to the boulder under which Umros buried the dismembered arm. "Er, bears don't usually attack people, correct?"
"If these bears had attacked James when he first went missing two weeks ago then I doubt there would be much evidence of it here and now," Sparks cautions. "But yes, it is unusual for bears to approach and attack in the open, away from their den, as these two did. I suspect we did Sharlestown a service by putting them down."
"This won't get you in trouble with the union, will it?"
With his pack still on the ground, the old gnome digs through it and fishes out a small shortbow and bowstring. Best to get this ready now, in case we run into something worse than bears… In a smooth, practiced motion, he arches the wood around and against his calf and the other shin, stooping to pull the loop around the end of the bow. Holding the grip of the now functional bow recalls memories to the wanderer, and after a few moment’s pause with a faraway look, his right hand brushes his belt where he expected a quiver to hang. Smirking at his own forgetfulness, he digs through his pack once more until he produces a bundle of arrows -the quiver of which is obviously self-made. Clipping it to his belt, Umros’ tiny gnome fingers smooth out the ruffled fletching.
It takes a few minutes of experimentation for the traveling alchemist to sort out how best balance his overbearing pack with the bow in one hand and the arrows swinging from his belt. In the end he decides that keeping the bow in his hand would be simpler and easier than trying to reorganize his entire pack just for the ease of shortbow retrieval. I slow these youngsters down enough as it is. Unpacking and repacking would take at least an hour! Knowing himself, and his tendency for distraction, Umros thrums the bowstring, admitting to himself that the endeavor might even take two hours.
As he waits for the huntress and the trailing wizard or witch? to learn something from the bear tracks, Umros licks his lips and begins to whistle the birdsong of the whippoorwill.