“Prove it. Tell him to go find prey.” Arden said with a grin.

Willow knelt next to Arlo and spoke with him through their bond. Arlo turned and ran ahead of them a ways before starting to sniff around. After a few moments, he hit on a scent and took off. The party quickly hurried after him. After about ten minutes of running Arlo stopped and waited for them to catch up and then looked at Willow who spoke up, “Arlo says there are prey close by but that we need to be quiet or we’ll scare them off.”

The party all nodded and moved through the forest as carefully as they could and soon spotted a small group of deer, a buck and three doe. They all looked to one another and realized they should probably have planned this out better.

Hazel motioned to the group that she had an idea and Nolan motioned for her to go ahead. She spoke a word quietly while making a hand gesture toward the deer and suddenly they all staggered and then laid down. Everyone looked back at Hazel in surprise.

“I put them to sleep,” Hazel said in response to their looks. “If you attack them, it’ll wake them up. So kill them in one hit.”

Nolan pulled a knife from his hip, “I got this.” He quietly moved closer and slit the throat on each animal. In each case the cut woke the deer but it bled out before it could go more than a couple steps.

The party then spent the next couple hours being taught by Nolan how to field dress a deer. Oddly enough, Ewan wasn’t bothered by the process and was asking a lot of questions about it all. Once that was done Willow asked, “So who’s carrying these back?”

Arden spoke up, “Our packs are dimensional storages. We found out yesterday that they would hold a body. Should hold a deer as well.”

“What if they bleed all over my stuff?” Hazel asked.

“That shouldn’t happen,” said Nolan, “but we can test that and see. For now we’ll just use Arden’s pack. He said he wanted to raise his stats, let's let him lug all this around.”

After packing each deer into Arden’s pack they discovered that the weight only changed by a few pounds and it appeared that pack still wasn’t full.

Arlo was sent back out and the group started to follow. As they walked they started discussing different options for killing things. They decided they wanted to stay away from fire so as not to burn the meat, which saddened Hazel as that was the spell she most wanted to use. But Hazel’s [Sleep] spell seemed the best path forward. Willow had an [Ice knife] spell that was a ranged attack and an [Entangle] spell that would restrain the target, both of which seemed promising. Arden and Nolan both each had a single ranged spell, Radiant Bolt.

They soon learned that Arlo was quite good at finding prey and by late morning they had already killed five deer, three rabbits, and several squirrels. They were all about ready to call it a day when they learned one more thing about Arlo. That his definition of prey was pretty much anything living. Including a massive bear.

They were trying to keep up with Arlo as he sped through the forest but were getting strung out as Arden and Ewan weren’t able to keep up. Nolan was only thirty feet from Arlo when the wolf stopped running and started barking at something. The party all stopped where they where when they saw a shape rise up, easily topping nine feet tall.

“Shit!” yelled Nolan as he started backing up. “Willow, get Arlo out of there! That’s a grizzly!”

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As Willow started to call after Arlo, Hazel took a few steps toward it so she’d be in range and cast sleep on the bear. This caused the bear to drop to all fours and shake it’s head a few times. Then it charged toward Hazel.

Arden quickly ran forward with his kite shield raised. Man and beast collided… and man lost. Arden was thrown back nearly ten feet. Before he even hit the ground, Nolan was already between him and the bear stabbing it in the side before dancing away from the bear’s attempt to bite him.

Willow started to throw multiple [Ice Knife] spells at the bear as Hazel was throwing [Fire Bolt] spells. Arden stood back up and ran back at the bear, this time with a mace in hand.

Fully enraged by this point, the bear rose up on it’s hind legs and let out a roar that temporarily deafened the entire party. This caused Arden to stop his charge as he dropped his mace and shield, grabbing his ears in pain. Seeing this, the bear walked forward, paw raised high preparing to swat the cleric. But Arlo was already in a full run and, using Arden as a ramp, jumped at the bear and put all four paws square in its chest before kicking off, knocking the bear onto it’s back. Before the bear could recover, Arlo had already ran back into the forest, hidden amongst the trees.

Golden light surrounded Arden as he healed himself only to hear Nolan and Hazel both cussing the bear quite loudly and Ewan behind them, crying. Willow on the other hand was focused on a spell she was casting. Vines and roots soon sprang up from the forest floor and started to wrap themselves around the bear as it tried to right itself.

Arden proceeded to cast healing on his party, starting with his daughters. When Arden went to heal Nolan, he was waved off.

“Already took care of it,” Nolan said. “I have healing magic too, remember.”

“Forgot. Now, how do we kill a grizzly?”

“Not just any grizzly, one that out levels us,” Nolan pointed out. “And very carefully. If it had gotten that swing off, I’m not sure you could have survived.”

“Shit. I didn’t even think about checking its level.” Arden said as he used [Identify] on the animal.

Grizzly Bear - Level 7

“Well, at least we should get a lot of experience from this one,” Arden continued, clearly trying to be positive while considering how close to death he had just come.

“Maybe talk about it after he’s dead. My vines aren’t going to hold him for much longer,” Willow hollered clearly straining to keep the spell going.

“Yes ma’am,” Nolan replied with a grin. “Girls, aim for his hind legs if you can. That should slow him down. Arden, try and keep his attention as best as you can. Everyone, if you have any abilities or spells you’ve been saving, now’s the time.” As he gave orders Nolan cast his own [Radiant Aura] spell which should damage the bear whenever it was within range. And with that, Nolan ran back toward the bear, knife in hand.

“How am I suppose to keep his attention when I’m doing the least amount of damage,” Arden complained as he ran after Nolan.

Willow stopped feeding mana into the vines and then started chanting something new. Hazel grabbed her son and stepped over behind a large oak tree. From cover she started tossing spells. She was twisting her fire bolts so that they would continue to burn whatever they hit, making them harder to put out. Willow yelled something about her spell not working and started throwing ice knives at the bear again.

The bear was not resting while they spoke. He had managed to fight his way free of about half of the vines. Nolan jumped onto its back and ran up to the bear’s head and sank his knife into it’s eye. Ice attacks started to land on it just about that time. All of this obviously pissed the bear off and it was able to break free of the last vines and rise up onto all fours. Arden, being quite a bit slower than Nolan, was just reaching the bear as it stood, facing away from him. And the view presented a great opportunity for gaining the bear’s attention as he saw a pair of testicles hanging before him at chest height. Sliding his shield up his arm so that he could grip his mace in both hands Arden took a hopping step and swung for the fences. The sound the bear made could only have been a cry. It immediately hit the ground and curled up. But then it started to shimmer.

“What’s it doing?” Arden yelled.

“Looks like some sort of magic. Kinda like he’s turning red.” Hazel called back.

“Please don’t tell me it has a rage ability.” Nolan said as he stabbed the bear in the side trying to reach it’s heart.