//------------------------------// // XVII - Bear With Me // Story: A Beginner's Guide to Heroism // by LoyalLiar //------------------------------// XVII Bear With Me I hate snow. It’s wet, it’s cold, and it gets everywhere. I won’t make you suffer through a tortuous narration of the week we spent preparing for our expedition, nor the two-and-a half weeks we traveled through the endless tundra, fighting off giant feral diamond dogs (the locals call them “wargs”) and enduring the constant numbness of our hooves.  Angel rambled on and on about nothing.  Gale and I danced around stories of our pasts as we had for the preceding weeks.  Graargh occasionally butted in, but I could tell he was worried; the little colt who would be a bear just carried himself that way. Only a day’s travel from the site of whatever was left of White Gate—a forgotten unicorn city, and a truly ironic name, in retrospect—I asked Graargh a question which is worth recording. “Graargh, tell me something.  Whinny back in Neighvgorod said his roar meant something.  Does your roar mean something too?  Maybe something I can pronounce more easily?” “Nothing.” “It’s just a roar?” I pressed. Graargh fiercely shook his head.  “No.  Nothing.” “Wait, which is it?  No, it isn’t just a roar? Or yes, it doesn’t mean anything?” Gale groaned aloud.  “You know, Morty, for some genius wizard, sometimes you’re a fucking idiot.  He’s saying it means ‘nothing’—not ‘it doesn’t mean anything’.”  The quotes in the preceding sentence correspond to directly to sarcastic hoof-gestures that Gale provided me.  “And on that topic, Graargh, that’s a crappy name.” “I don’t know,” I told her.  “They say out in the desert south of Equestria, there was an earth pony named Nothing who was some sort of legend at bucking shoes.” Gale rolled her eyes.  “You and your stupid stories, Morty.  Was he good or bad?” “All I know is he was ugly.  Squinted constantly, wore a really wide-brimmed hat, like a pointy wizard cap but without the point on top.” “You’re making this shit up, aren’t you?” “I’m serious.” “Not matter!” Graargh shouted, rather abruptly.  Gale and I stopped our bickering almost on instinct; Graargh had been so quiet for days that the outburst left us both worried..  “Graargh better name.  Not care about story.” “Hey, easy kiddo.”  Gale raised a hoof.  “You like ‘Graargh’, that’s gonna be fine by us.  You’re not the only pony—” “Bear!” Gale sighed.  “You’re not the only one in our dumb group with a fucking stupid name.” “Gale, language?  You’re not impressing any of us.” “You’ve got a problem with how I fucking talk?”  She took a swing at me, though it came too slow to avoid a elegant, if simple, burst of telekinesis.  Three hooves aren’t very effective at maintaining balance in chest-high snowdrifts.  However, as Gale quickly discovered, in the absence of a fourth leg, a face can very easily grant a pony stability. “While I’ve got you off-balance, Gale, I’ve got a proposal for you.  Graargh and I have nicknames; clearly, we should come up with one for you.” Gale withdrew her face from the snow and bashed off a full beard and sideburns of snow.  “Gale’s my middle name.” “Oh?”  I nudged Graargh in the ribs with the knee of my foreleg.  “The plot thickens.” Angel made a coughing noise.  “That is a rather lewd comment, Master Coil.  And I’m certain she can hear you.” Gale laughed unreasonably hard at that, though I confess also I chuckled just a bit.  “Well played, Angel.  But in all seriousness, Gale, what’s your real name?” All humor died when she glared. “No.”  Then, with a huff and a twist, she stormed off into the perpetual snow of River Rock. “As I warned you, Master Coil, your comment clearly offended her.” Not three hours after that curious conversation, just as I was beginning to develop the rather painful icicles on my eyelashes that so perfectly complimented my eyes, I caught my first sight of bear society.  In turn, bear society caught me completely off-guard. Recoiling from the sudden lurch of the polar bear holding me down by my throat—a figure who simultaneously appeared beyond my expectations, and who most likely rendered the preceding sentence more literal than you initially assumed—I stared up into a rather even face defined by focused black eyes and the grim line of black lips against a white coat that faded against the similarly white sky.  Near as I could tell, it erupted from a snowdrift beside me, though I’d lost most of my sense of direction in the process of being tackled. I’ll give you three guesses what happened next. When the roaring stopped echoing in my ears, I smiled.  “A pleasure to meet you too.  Coil the Immortal, Court Mage-in-Exile of—” The second roar was slightly more surprising, but no less deafening. “Graargh, you can speak up any time now.” A third roar followed in the proud precedent of its forebears.  The fourth, issuing from Graargh, was at least farther away from my face. The bear leaning on me looked up, growled (more quietly, thank Celestia), and released me. Sitting up painted me a rather frightening story.  Gale was holding Procellarum aloft in her magic; Angel hovered beside her.  Graargh, though, was the greatest threat.  I could see the fur on the back of his neck rising up, spiked almost unnaturally.  His eyes were glowing green, not metaphorically.  Tension built in his shoulders. Graargh growled.  The polar bear roared.  Graargh roared back.  This riveting discourse continued for some time, redefining the definition of poetry and wielding brilliant metaphor in a new depth of discussion on the equine condition. In all seriousness, I tuned it out after the third growl.  My focus was on what appeared to be the threat of impending battle—and, perhaps more importantly, my own philosophical question. Would I be right to kill the bear? Understand, whether you’re a unicorn mage, a pegasus wielding a sharpened blade, or even an earth pony carrying the strength to break bones and skulls with ease, someday every would-be hero holds in their hooves a frightening power: control over some other creature’s life.  Wintershimmer offered it to me when I wasn’t ready, and I had the pride to think I deserved that power.  But this bear… I didn’t want to hurt him, of course.  I wasn’t bloodthirsty; I didn’t assume he was out to get me from some savage desire or impulse.  My concern came from a more basic fear: I was still well within the reach of his claws, and I knew that if he swung for me, I wouldn’t be able to finish a spell before his paws met my throat, or my skull, or most painfully, my horn. Courage isn’t the absence of fear; that’s a form of clinical insanity.  Courage is not letting that fear control you. It takes a lot of courage to be a hero. Now that I’ve satisfied a moment’s quota of ‘heroic advice’, let’s get back to the part you most likely care about: my friends and I in what could loosely be called a debate (the same way I could loosely be called an assassin for killing Wintershimmer—and apparently, judging by my past hanging, that was close enough for government work). The polar bear standing beside me growled at Graargh, only to stop when the little colt roared and stomped his right forehoof.  Sighing with enough shoulder motion that I briefly suspected the bear was performing a spontaneous pushup, he turned his back to us. “Follow,” Graargh told us. I was content to follow his instructions; to no great surprise of my own, however, Gale proved less trusting.  “Uh… okay, where are we going?” “Bears,” Graargh replied. “That is not the answer to every damn question in the Equiish language!” “Just all the ones you ask him,” I told her, trudging through the snow and trying to ignore the chill in my hooves.  “Put up with it for now.” “Yeah?  And what if they try to kill us?  That bear jumped you, and you didn’t see shit!” I rolled my eyes.  “Gale, stop.” “Why?” She protested, jabbing a hoof into my chest.  “You’re the one saying we should get surrounded by a ton of bears—” “Because I don’t want to kill them,” I told her, maybe too bluntly.  She stared at me, almost disbelieving.  “I would like us to be friends with the bears.  That means if one of them speaks Equiish, I’m hoping they don’t think you’re being incredibly rude.” Gale clearly wasn’t happy, but she nodded in acquiescence nevertheless.  To my mild relief, none of them responded to my obvious heavy-hoofed prompt. The walk to the bear village took no more than half an hour.  It sat nestled in a river valley—exactly what we’d been looking for anyway—where tall valley walls supplemented by stacked ice shielded it from the worst of the wind and the snow.  The bears lived in a strange mish-mash of homes, running the gamut from caves in cliff walls all the way to carefully assembled oversized pony-style cottages on the banks of the river.  A massive lodge of wooden logs dominated the otherwise relatively small shelters and houses, its painted spruce walls and steep roof demanding all attention in the area. “I must say, after all this cold, this does look rather cozy.  Don’t you agree, Master Coil?” “You can’t feel cold, Angel.  Do you even know what ‘cozy’ means?” My golem spun in place.  “I… was endeavoring to raise spirits.” I spared a long curious glance in Angel’s direction.  “You’ve been unusually empathetic recently, Angel.” “Is that a problem, Master Coil?” “No, I just… I didn’t think you had it in you.”  Though I neglected to mention it aloud, I mentally added literally.  Something was changing in Angel during our travels.  He had clearly gotten smarter since leaving the Union. I had half a mind to interrogate the golem on that uncharacteristically observant...  observation, but my mind was more focused on the city’s denizens: dozens upon dozens of bears, both brown and white, pulling fish out of the river with their claws or working on the streets.  Several cubs came up to us, gawking at the ‘misshapen visitors’ (or so I inferred, when one of the cubs attempted to emulate my gait, mocking my proportionally longer legs by standing on the tips of his claws).  They only backed away when our guide roared at them. We were finally deposited beside a wide iron ‘pan’ filled with dead coals and charcoal, resting in front of the face of the lodge I mentioned earlier.  We were only there for thirty seconds at most before the lodge’s doors opened, but a wait can seem far longer in the moment. The bear that emerged was a sort of rusty gray color, clearly old from occupation stress instead of age, if the sheer physicality of her body was anything to judge by.  From the doors of the lodge, she took a single leap to land at the far side of the fire pan.  Her claw lashed out in a motion I could barely follow; the sparks she left behind gave us precious heat, but they also cast her in a terrifying light. “Why you have come here?” She asked in surprisingly comprehensible Equiish. Graargh stood up.  “Is home,” he said.  “I—” and then he roared out ‘Graargh’, just as he always did.  “Cub of,” and then two more roars. The she-bear staring at us turned to the gathering crowd surrounding us for just a moment, and then turned back toward Graargh.  “You are not bear.” “Am bear!”  Graargh shouted.  “Am!” “Stupid pony…” grumbled the adult bear.  She turned to me.  “Who he?  Why he say that he is bear?” I opened my mouth to speak, but Gale beat me to the punch.  “He is a bear!  Graargh, show them!” “Gale, wait—!” My words were too slow.  Green flames consumed Graargh. The bears screamed.  Several of the cubs who had followed us scattered backward. In a moment, Graargh was a cub.  At first, he wore a smile.  That faded quickly, however, with the realization of how the other bears were looking at him. Horror.  Hatred.  Confusion.  The she-bear strode toward us.  “He is skinwalker!” “What?”  Gale shouted.  “Look, he’s a bear now!  Morty, what’s a skinwalker?” “Beats me…  Some kind of lycanthropy?”  I racked my brain for a moment, but none of Wintershimmer’s lessons came to mind.  Shapeshifting of Graargh’s magnitude was a nearly impossible magical feat for even an archmage; Star Swirl the Bearded’s Omniomorphism was the only magic I could think of that would equal such power, and there was no way a colt could do that… My thoughts left such questions when I saw the she-bear approaching.  Without really thinking, I cast up a dome-shaped shield.  My icy blue magic warded the three of us from the bears. “You protect him?” the she-bear shouted.  “You skinwalkers too?” “Master Coil, perhaps now is the time to teleport away?  Abandon this course?” Angel proposed. I nodded.  “That seems like the best move to make sure nopony gets killed here—” “No!” Gale shouted.  “You’ve got to be kidding me, Morty.  This is where Graargh wants to be!” A bear outside the circle clawed at my shield; I felt my horn spark painfully as my limited mana dwindled away to deflect the force of the blow.  “Well, that’s all well and good, but I’d say it’s pretty obvious that here doesn’t exactly like our little friend back.  I tried to warn you not to have him transform in front of them.” “Well, maybe next time, give me five fucking seconds of warning or something, instead of keeping all your plans to yourself so you can feel ‘cool’!” “I don’t—” Graargh roared.  “Both stop!  Not fight!”  I turned toward the little cub to find him fighting back tears.  “Bears not want me.  Morty right.  We leave.” Another strike from a bear, another painful draw of my magic.  I took a deep breath.  “This is going to be a little disorienting…” “Hell no!” Gale shouted, stomping her hoof.  “Graargh, we’re not giving up on your family just because these bears are making a stupid assumption. Morty, let me out of the stupid bubble.  I’m going to fix this.” I shook my head.  “Gale, I’m not letting you go out there—” Procellarum thrust into my shield; the sheer agony behind the power of the magic sword was more than enough to crack my defense.  I felt it in my mind like a branding iron, and my vision flashed white in the pain.  Gale slipped out somehow through the narrow crack; I couldn’t see it with the brilliant white dominating my eyesight. “Gale!” Graargh shouted, rushing over to the side of the bubble, where my magic quickly repaired the hole.  When my vision returned in earnest, I saw him pawing at the icy blue wall.  On the opposite side stood Gale, thoroughly surrounded by bears easily three times her size. “You think you fight us, she-pony?” the leader of the bears asked her. Gale shook her head, and then sheathed Procellarum.  “What are you doing?” I shouted at her.  “Gale, you’re going to get killed!” She ignored me, letting her attention sweep across the bears.  “I want to talk.  Nopony— er, no one has to get hurt today.” “You bring monster!” the she-bear growled back.  “It hurt us!” Gale straightened her posture in a way I’d never seen before; she brought her hooves together, aligned her shoulders, and stood stall, upright and formal.  When she spoke, it was with a different accent than her usual rough language.  Each syllable passed her tongue sharp and refined.  “I admit that my friend isn’t a bear, just as he isn’t a pony.  But does his race make him a monster?” The bear seemed to freeze, visibly confused.  She even rotated her head, like a puppy mystified with the principle of transparency after having run face-first into a freshly cleaned window.  “What you mean?” “I mean that even if Graargh is a ‘skinwalker’, that doesn’t make him evil.  I’ve traveled with that child, whatever his shape, for nearly two moons now.  And in that time, he has been nothing but well behaved and helpful; even caring, when the situation called for it.”  Gale gestured widely with one nearly stiff foreleg; a graceful motion that managed to direct the eyes of all the bears gathered toward Graargh, desperately clawing at my shield to stand by her side.  “Even now, he’s worried about me; even at risk to himself.” A slight wind blew through Gale’s short-cropped hair, and she settled firm focus on the bear leader once more.  “Is that not proof enough?  And if not, what?  What would it take for you to see past the ‘skin’ of this child; to let him prove that he only wants to be accepted?”  She drew in a slow breath, which I quickly recognized as more important for its pause than her lungs.  “If you can’t see that, you’re letting yourself be deceived by an illusion of skin.  And I can’t allow Graargh to suffer for it.” The bears were stunned silent.  Tartarus, I was stunned silent, albeit for a slightly different reason.  Had you told me there really was some evil ‘skinwalker’ in our midst, in that moment, I would likely have suspected Gale over Graargh.  All semblance of the slouching, slinky, dirty-tongued noble-in-exile I knew had vanished.  In her place was a mare who belonged in a throne room, leading and guiding and offering her kind words to help those around her. Sure, her logic wasn’t perfect, but that wasn’t her weapon.  If it were, she would have listened to me and fled.  Her deadly blade wasn’t the magic sword at her side either; it was unbridled charisma, in a way I could never match.  For all my good looks, compelling demeanor, and undeniable charm, there was some connection she built with the bears present that exceeded any of my magic. I remind you again, friendship is magic.  That it is so much harder to wield than arcana only made her efforts more powerful. The bear leader spoke first, understandably given her position.  “We not hurt.  We listen.  But watch closely.  He not change shape.”  She gestured forebodingly to Graargh.  “Not hide face.” Gale—or the strangely eloquent statesmare she had become—offered a curt nod in reply.  “Morty, let down the shield.” “Are you sure we can trust them—” She turned her neck fully into her right shoulder, glaring back at me.  Though she maintained her delicate pronunciation, it was clear the Gale I knew was back from her word choice.  “Does it look like I need some jackass questioning me right now?” I released the shield. Nothing terrible happened. Gale and I were escorted to a private room in the lodge, dominated by two sizeable hearths and a set of treated furs on the ground to serve as some semblance of a bed; though the idea of some other creature’s skin was more than slightly uncomfortable, Gale insisted I get over myself, and I reluctantly laid down. They were cozy. The she-bear, who I had decided to call Smokey after passing no fewer than four other fireplaces in the mostly wooden lodge, informed us in far fewer words (mostly for want of prepositions) that she needed to speak with Graargh and her elders privately, and that on her honor as a bear, no harm would be done to him so long as he did not break his promise not to shapeshift further.  I was against the idea, but Graargh elected to go, and that was the end of the discussion.  That left Gale, myself, and Angel alone. I waited about one second after the door was closed to address Gale alone. “What in Tartarus was that?  Where’d you learn to talk that way?” Gale rolled her eyes.  “Morty, you’re really fucking stupid sometimes, you know?  I do not want to talk about it.  Can’t we just accept that we got Graargh past his whole trial thing, and focus on the Windigo?” I laid back.  “Alright. That sounds good.  So we head down to River Rock and talk to Cyclone; is he gonna know where to find the Windigo?” “I’m hoping so.”  Gale shrugged.  “But mostly, I’m hoping he’ll join us.” “Hold on.  Cyclone the Traitor?  Or Betrayer, or whatever the title was.  That’s who you want to join us?”  I coughed heavily into my hoof.  “You don’t get an epithet like that for being the kind of pony other ponies want around.” Gale shrugged.  “Maybe not.  But he’s the best fire-using pegasus in the world.  They say he can just stand in the middle of a dragon’s breath and not get burnt.” I chuckled.  “Yeah, that’s made up.” “How would you know?  You hadn’t even heard of Cyclone before we got to Neighvgorod.” “No, but I know how dragons work.  When a dragon breathes fire, it’s not just fire empatha like a pegasus can use.  The empatha is mixed with arcana—our unicorn magic.  That’s why their breath can teleport things.  And it’s also why a pegasus can’t survive it.” “Huh.”  Gale shrugged.  “Okay. Doesn’t really matter, though, does it?  He’s still a great fire empath.  I’ll convince him to join us, we take him and kill the Windigo, and we’re done.” “Oh… about that.  Timing, I mean.”  I breathed in slowly.  “There’s something I need to take care of in River Rock first.  Alone.” Gale shrugged.  “Sure, whatever.  As long as you're in, Morty, I don’t care if I have to wait a little.  Do what you’ve gotta do.” As I laid down to sleep, though, a question sat in my mind like an obese noble in the middle seat of a three-seat wagon: firmly rooted and spilling over into all other concerns. Did I have to?