-Callia-

  After letting Callen know my status, I snuck back down to the glider and popped off the surviving turbine and made my way back into the tree. You never know if you need an engine for something, and it wasn’t like I had a lot to work with out here. My emergency kit included my personal knives, one for fighting and the other for carving, the invisibility/stealth cloak, and a set of my brother’s wands, including a flare, fire starter, mana shell, water generator, and cleaner. Then I had my quiver of normal arrows. I brought it out of habit, and the experimental/useful quiver was left in the workshop so my brother could add new ideas whenever he had them.

  My bow was in hand, but it lacked the draw weight to hurt anything other than sensitive parts. Maybe I should pester Callen for a magic gun bow or something once we get back. I remember him trying to make a gun before, but he dropped the idea. I refocus back on the task at hand. Brother was right in that my first goal is shelter. Somewhere I won't be exposed to dangerous creatures. For now, higher seemed safer. I grabbed onto the trunk of my tree and ascended to the upper branches, but low enough that I could travel from one tree to the next with the branches.

  Then I tapped my hilt against the trunk, listening for the signs of worms in the wood. It was all clear. I then spent the next several hours stripping off several large sheets of bark. And using the thin branches from nearby trees as twine to form a hiding box against the trunk. Right as I finish, I feel the mana in my cloak exhaust, leaving me with a mundane cloak that was the last color it had taken. No more ground camo, only tree trunk pattern.

  By now it’s getting late and the sun is setting. The darkness crept in, and I really started to miss the light. Still, lighting the tree on fire wouldn’t help right now, and it would ruin what vision I did have as my eyes adjusted to the dark. The stillness around me felt suffocating; no chirps of harmless birds or buzzing of small insects, only the tense silence of a forest on edge where even the smallest tell meant life or death.

  However, it didn’t last long, and I immediately regretted my impatient dismissal of the silence. The rustling of heavy footsteps ambling into the crash site below. It was hard to make out the lumbering form, but the dots connected quickly enough. It was a huge Black Bear, two stories tall, kind of huge. It nuzzled the wreckage with curiosity and caught the scent of something.

  Damn, I used the cleaning wand after I grabbed the engine which meant my scent from before might still be lingering! I almost yelped in surprise when my tree violently shook, and I scrambled to cling onto the tree next to me. I bounce against the walls of my bark box, precariously pressing my weight against its fragile structure. The bindings loosen dangerously, but I cling onto the branch below before it breaks free.

  I peek down below and witness the bear backing off. Just when I think it’s leaving, my instincts flare with danger. The bear charges my tree at high speed, slamming into it, and I’m violently thrown against the wall again. However, this time the outer bindings break free. I fly from my branch but reflexively grab onto the bark wall that's dangling from its last binding. I pull myself up urgently, grabbing onto the branch as the bark falls down below, bouncing all the way.

  Instinctively I look down to see where it lands and can only gulp in shock as it hits the bear in the face. It roars in anger, looking up to see where the debris came from, and it goes quiet when it spots me. There is malicious delight in its eyes, and with unbearlike agility it jumps up onto the tree and begins climbing like it just spotted a honeycomb. With no chance of it passing now, it’s time for my alternate escape route. I begin running along the branches over to the neighboring tree.

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  The bear below drops to the ground and violently rams its shoulder into the tree. Again it shakes violently, but I just barely jump to the next tree. I don’t pause my running trying to move over to the next tree after this, but the bear rams into the new tree I just occupied. It shakes violently, and I’m thrown from the tree, but this time I’m ready with plan C.

  As I fall, the bear leaps upward, intent on catching me in his jaws, but I point at the turbine and dump nearly all my mana into its enchantment. It slows my fall dramatically, and for a moment I’m hovering above the jaws of the bear. The bear falls first, shutting its jaw and looking upward to figure out what happened to its prey. My turbine isn’t enough to push me back up, only slowing my fall at a critical moment. I resumed my fall shortly after the bear and crashed right onto his nose.

  I flipped, snapped up my bow with practiced skill and ease, and knocked two arrows. Sending both into the wide eyes of the bear that was disoriented from my impact. Both hit, and the bear rears up onto two legs, shaking its head in pain and shock. It does so with such strength that I’m launched from the bear and onto the dirt behind it.

  I hit the ground in a roll, minimizing the impact, but I can tell falling onto the bear earlier was a bit too hard, and my shins might be fractured. I push through, and my body breaks into overdrive as I whip out my cleaning wand and erase all traces of my impact. I then force myself forward, lunging into a space of exposed roots under my original tree. I force myself into a hole with nothing but my cloak between me and the outside. I blast another cleaning with the wand, but I also feel myself bottoming out on mana.

  The only thing keeping me going is the burst of energy from my boosting skills, but I reach out to my brother, passing on a jumbled mess of a memory. If the bear somehow misses me, I hope he can find me next. The boost fades, and with it, my consciousness.

  Yeomarr

  Yeomarr, Worril, and Yixin all gathered, examining the strange bird Yixin had shot. It was wooden and metal and stiff, unlike a bird. Yeomarr’s grandmother had told her about these things. The stout folk made them in the old days before the tribes. She vaguely wondered what it would’ve been like to have grown up in that age, but thinking about it never accomplished anything.

  The soft rustling of a nervous breath pricked softly against her senses, and Yeomarr turned to the trees. Scanning carefully until she found it. A round lump of wood unlike the rest of the tree, and when focusing her senses, she could hear the nervous thumping of fear.

  “It was the humans! They come to challenge our lands again! I say we go south to the closest habitat and slaughter them. Show that our territory will not be violated!”

  Yeomarr turned back towards Yixin, who seemed to be getting himself worked up again. Every time something happened, he always droned on about it being humans and that we should slaughter them. We all knew what he really wanted was more power. He was in a close contest with Yaxon on who should be the chief's heir, but it wasn’t like it mattered. The chief still had many years until he would set off on the final journey.

  “Yixin, how about we report it to the chief? He would like to hear about this thing, and he may know better who we should butcher.”

  Worril was just making excuses to not be drawn into Yixin’s rampage, but with Yeomarr in agreement, it was enough to curb him for now. The two talked briefly, but Yeomarr’s thoughts drifted to a human habitat she had witnessed before. Large walls built to protect the weakest of their people. She thought about the tribe and the dozens of children who perished before proving themselves.

  Her hand clenched slightly as she thought of her daughter. However, the others were done talking, and it was time to leave. Giving one last glance back towards the hidden human but letting it be. The size indicated it was a young human, and killing young was the one rule the tribes never crossed.