Alex watched Kieran and Laina fly off the trail and winced at the crunching impact as Laina hit a tree. He looked back at the bear, one foot standing on Marcus' shield. Marcus held the top with one hand, desperately trying to push it away from his neck and failing.

  With a loud snort the enormous bear brought both feet down and bounced up and down on the shield. Marcus screamed. One of his arms was trapped under there somewhere. The bear roared down into Marcus face as it bounced, but he didn’t react. Alex hoped he had just passed out.

  Shit. He didn’t know what he could possibly do, but he couldn’t watch his friend become armour jelly under this monster's weight. And monster it was.

  There was no time to organize people. No time to come up with a plan. No time to think. He needed to do something to at least distract the bear before it was too late. Now. He was still holding the pole with the challenge flag on it and threw it to the side of the path in order to free up his hands. Then, taking two steps forward, he let loose with everything he had.

  Looking the bear in the eye to confirm his target, he raised his staff in one hand and launched a volley of magic missiles. With the other hand he let out a blast of his phosphorous dragon’s breath, aiming across the top of the animal's face to try and keep the sparks away from Marcus as much as possible.

  The magic missile pod launched and split into three individual missiles, slamming into the bear's face as the Dragon's Breath covered its head and back in a blanket of white-gold heat and sparks.

  The bear made a new sound, surprised and hurt. It moved back several paces and looked like it tripped over a rear paw. It sat down heavily on its back haunches and raised its giant paws to cover its face in what looked like the scariest game of peek-a-boo ever.

  The bear roared again, but it sounded higher pitched this time, more pain than anger with a little pleading as the sound trailed off. Leaning forward it drove its face down into the ground, alternating between rubbing its forehead in the dirt of the path and shaking its head violently from one side to the other.

  Before he could react further, Alex stopped in surprise as the mana he had still been trying to draw, snapped towards him in a violent rush. He had been trying to pull it in during the fight but hadn’t been able to hold onto it. Now he could feel the pressure quickly building.

  Partially in panic at the sudden pressure inside him, he reacted and threw the energy back out, similar to what he had done to Connor, but without the punch. The mana left as fast as it had come. It still felt slippery but he forced his hold over it and pushed towards the bear.

  There were no flashy lights or sparks like the attacks produced by their HEX supplied tech, but the animals head snapped back all the same and it leaned into its seated position even more, listing to one side like a drunk circus bear.

  Jay roared, looking more like the barbarian he had been hired to play than at any point in the past couple of weeks so far, and ran towards the distracted animal, swinging his axe around in an enormous curve as he moved. Hiro was right on his heels, following just behind the arc of the axe.

  With a battle cry that Alex couldn’t quite make out, Jay brought his axe around towards the bear. At the last moment the blade blurred, a little extra energy shifting into the head of the weapon thanks to a HEX upgrade, and bit deeply into the bear's front shoulder.

  Jay had been excited about that axe all week, wanting to get out in the field to test it out for real. A thousand kilo bear probably wasn’t what he had imagined, but Alex knew that he probably had the best weapon for this fight.

  Hex had built the axe with an Inertial Momentum Package, or so Jay kept bragging. However it worked, it increased the mass of the axe head and fired micro thrusters to increase its speed.

  The result was a massively powerful blow that tore through the bear’s thick coat and bit deep into the animal's front shoulder before exiting again, leaving a foot long, gaping wound and spraying blood across the trail. The momentum of the blow was apparently stronger than Jay was expecting and he hopped past the bear, spinning in a semi circle as he tried to get control of his weapon and not trip.

  Alex thought the bear was loud before. Now it recoiled from the blow and rolled over onto its opposite side, roaring at the forest. Hiro was there as the bear went down. Alex watched in amazement as a deep purple glow surrounded Hiro’s hand. He could see the mana pulse from Hiro’s core and flood down his arm.

  The monk brought his fist down, hammering the side of the bear’s jaw. His other hand came around in a much weaker blow and then the purple fist struck again. The bear snapped out at Hiro with a snarl but the nimble monk just spun away, retreating back up the path. The purple was gone and he was massaging his hand.

  The bear rolled back onto its feet again, stumbling slightly as it put weight on its wounded shoulder. It was clearly hurt, but looked angry too. Slobber dripped and sprayed from the animal's mouth as it roared at them.

  Alex lifted his hand and launched another round of magic missiles, the small drone seemed to pop out of the handle of his staff in slow motion. Alex watched it rise above his head and split into 3 with a burst of white light. The 3 micro-missiles screamed towards the bear leaving behind lines of blue tracers. They hammered into the bear’s chest and shoulder, one exploding close to the bleeding wound.

  Before his missile’s explosions even finished, more colours of light burst into life and tore through the air towards the bear: Brandon and Ethan throwing into the fight again.

  Each impact should’ve felt like getting hit by a… well, by a bear really. But the beast in front of them just shook it off, looking more annoyed with every hit. And more angry.

  Alex threw out an illusion. He was running out of ideas and weapons and what he had didn’t seem to be making enough of a difference so far. At best he was slowing the bear down. At worst? He was pissing it off.

  He hadn’t updated the illusion image since their fight in the clearing, and didn’t have time now, even if he could manage it on his glitchy HUD.

  He called the illusion into life directly on the bear's face and the nanodrones spewed out of his staff like a dark fog. Within seconds a 6 foot boar started to take form around the bear's head. It was a solid illusion, but moved around any physical contact. As a result the image kept blurring slightly around the bear as it moved, but would instantly solidify again.

  The bear couldn’t see through it though and tried to swipe with its paws one at a time. It roared again, whether in pain as it put its weight on its wounded shoulder or frustration because it couldn’t see, Alex had no idea.

  Jay stepped back in with an overhead swing of his axe that looked deadly, but had a hard time finding purchase on the animal's thick, dense coat. Alex hoped that the impact still hurt.

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  Then the bear’s aura pulsed.

  It was strong enough that Alex could see it even though he wasn’t looking at the mana field. His HUD spasmed into life in his view and he had to force it shut again. His illusion lost cohesion as the pulse knocked some of the microdrones out of the air, flying apart in dark, misty wisps. It started to come back together again, but slowly.

  “Alex!” Hiro’s voice cut through the noise. “Your—”

  “Later!” Alex yelled back. He didn’t know what Hiro had seen, but Alex could feel it: something about the bear was interfering with mana itself. Not just his control. The environment. Not only that, it was somehow messing with their HUDs as well.

  That was when the trail behind them exploded with movement.

  One of the Dungeon Inc. ops teams arrived, pouring around the trainees further up the path.

  Four men came into view, half cloaked in that same shifting fabric the rogues used to go invisible. Their outlines shimmered and then resolved as they moved fast enough that the cloaking couldn’t keep up. Assault rifles came up in practiced arcs.

  “MOVE!” one of them shouted, voice flat with command. “RUN TO BASE! GO!” He didn’t look back at the trainees, he simply expected them to follow his order.

  Then they spread out across the path and opened fire.

  The crack of rifle rounds was loud and sharp and felt out of place in the fantasy forest as muzzle flash lit up the underbrush around them. The sounds slapped between trees and echoed back at them.

  The bullets hit the bear. You could see it in the little puffs of fur, the tiny jolts of movement.

  But the bear didn’t go down. Instead, it started backing down the trail, reevaluating this new threat. The ops team followed at a steady walk, swapping magazines with practiced precision. They passed over Marcus and Alex ran in to check on him. Jay was immediately by his side.

  Marcus’ eyes were open, but he was just lying there staring up at the sky, dazed. He tried to hold back a scream when Alex and Jay helped him to his feet. Jay took the shield off his dangling arm and threw it to Brandon.

  Looking over his shoulder as they started to move, Alex took one last look at the retreating bear and the ops team pushing it back—professional, disciplined, doing the job they’d been trained for. The bear looked more ridiculous than scary with an illusion of a boar wrapped around its head, constantly breaking apart and reforming as the bear moved back and bullets tore through it.

  Alex turned and started moving up the path. Off to the side he saw Sarah and Kieran, back on his feet but with long gouges torn into the metal of his breastplate, helping Laina to her feet. She was unconscious and Kieran was trying to take her weight. Hiro ran to help them.

  “You heard them—Move!” Sarah screamed at the trainees as they came back to the path, but everyone else was milling about, most of them still focused on the bear and ops team.

  Behind him, Alex felt it before it happened. The bear started pulling mana. He stopped and looked back to see what was happening. Before when the bear pulsed, disrupting his magic and their electronics, it hadn’t pulled any mana… So what was this?

  What he saw was the bear continuing to retreat, backing into the forest. The four ops members had stopped at the edge of the path, obviously just trying to drive off the bear at this point. There was almost 30 metres between them now as the bear kept backing up steadily.

  Alex could feel the mana pull though. The bear was building up for something. A charge maybe? He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself enough to see what was going on in the mana field.

  He was getting tired and it came into view slowly, but once it did he could clearly see the bear drawing mana into itself as it backed up. The mana circulated through its system and infused all of its muscles. Beyond that Alex couldn’t tell what it was doing, or what it was about to do. He wanted to yell out and warn the ops team, but he didn’t know what to tell them. Or whether they would even believe him.

  Then the bear charged. One of the team members took a calm step back as he changed magazines, but the other three continued to fire in short bursts.

  And then the bear was gone. Alex and Jay both yelled. They tried to warn the men. One of the men on their team looked towards them, but made a gesture like he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Alex dropped his staff and waved a hand, trying to tell them to run.

  Then the bear was on top of them. Too late.

  It swiped with its massive clawed paw, knocking two of the men through the air and into the underbrush. Alex couldn’t see where they landed. One of the remaining men reacted quickly and opened fire from a point blank range. The Bear roared and fell on the man, its massive jaws clamping down on his shoulder. It lifted him off the ground and shook him like a dog with a toy. There was a shriek and then the man's body flew through the air and off the other side of the path.

  The last man tried to back up and started firing again. One of the bullets hit the bear on or near its shoulder wound causing it to rear up with a roar. The man continued to shoot the bear in its chest with little visible effect. Then the bear jumped on the man, crushing him underfoot like it had with Marcus.

  The bear’s front paws came down in a straight smash. Not a swipe—an execution. The man went down hard, body folding wrong, rifle spinning away.

  All four men were down in seconds. Unconscious or worse. Alex couldn’t tell, he couldn’t even see most of them. The bear didn’t linger to finish them off though, they were simply obstacles to get through.

  Alex turned to Jay and they just looked at each other, wide eyed. Alex tried to push down the panic he felt rising and turned back to the group.

  “Everybody—weapons out. It’s our turn. Mel, start playing. See if you can do the same thing you managed with the boars. Maddie, Victor, Kieran—get the wounded back up the path. Everyone else… spread out and hit it with everything you have.” Alex turned back to the bear, who was ambling up the path slowly, remnants of his illusion still clinging to its head, but mostly gone now.

  The animal was limping slightly, clearly hurt, but too stubborn or angry to give up his game.

  Alex reached over and picked up his staff where he had dropped it. He wasn’t religious, but thought that now might just be a good time to try out a prayer.

  ***

  SHIELD – OPERATIONS TEAM COMMAND

  INTERNAL MEMORANDUM

  FROM: Lt. Kazemi

  TO: ██████████████████

  SUBJECT: Preliminary Explanation – Delta Perimeter Team (Alvarez)

  Sir,

  This memo is intended to summarize our best current understanding of the loss of contact with Sgt. Alvarez’s perimeter team during last night’s sweep of █████████, pending formal after-action review.

  At approximately █████ local, Alvarez’s team encountered █████ ████████ █████ ███████ █████, consistent with the anomalous interference signatures observed during the earlier perimeter distortion event. Initial ANIP telemetry suggests █████████ █████████ ██████ █████████.

  All team transponders ceased reporting within 90 seconds. Microdrone feeds ██████ █████████ █████ ████ ██████. Body-mounted cameras remained functional long enough to confirm ██████ █████████ ██████ ██ ██████ ██████ and ███████ ██████ ██████ ██ ██████ ███, after which all feeds terminated.

  While the working designation remains ██████ ███ ███ ███ for reporting purposes, I want to be clear that this label reflects █████████ ██████ only and should not be interpreted as evidence of ██████ █████-██████ ██████, ██████, or threat response.

  Recovery teams located Alvarez’s team at first light. I will defer specifics to the medical and HEX reports, except to note that ██████ ██████ ███ █████ ██████ █████████ ██ ███████████████, ██████ ████, and the █████ █████████ for reasons we do not currently understand.

  I acknowledge that I previously signed off on Ops’ acceptance of localized interference risk. Based on this incident, I recommend that classification of ██████ and that adjacent grids be upgraded to HOSTILE until further study is completed or ████████████ ██████ is confirmed.

  Respectfully,

  Lt. Kazemi

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