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14. Beef with the Wrong Bear
🕑 Added 2024-12-09 20:00:08 +0000 UTCI hate heat.
That was my first realization after a few days in the windy, hot, and dry environment of the Stonetalon Mountains. It was an admittedly evident point, given several of my characteristics: a body unfit for thermal dispersion, layered with thick fat and muscle covered in a dense coat of insulating fur. It didn't need to be an impossibly hot desert to leave me panting like a dog halfway to the afterlife.
Bears on Earth–besides, I think one or two species–weren't known to appreciate high temperatures, and it didn't differ here. Furbolgs were no exception, more so since we could comfortably live in climates not unfit for polar bears, whom we were roughly the same weight and size. Regardless, we were a mix of Kodiak and polar bears—hardly the type you would find in hot deserts.
We weren't built for anything at least a minimum above tempered, whether hot, arid, or tropical. These mountainous ranges weren't fully desertic; there was plenty of vegetation and several large permanent bodies of water, but it was still sweltering.
At certain times, even Ashenvale was uncomfortably hot for us! Well, until we molt, but it still sucked.
It was why none of us were permanently settled here and lower down South Kalimdor. Why would furbolgs try to live in tropical forests, suffocating swamps, and different flavors of dry and hot areas composed of deserts, savannas, and mountainous regions? And Mulgore wasn't much better, cooler as it may be. It was a land of green prairies, offering nothing of immediate worth to our species beyond the curiosity of it being the tauren's sacred land.
It was why I hated the heat so damn much.
I was never a fan of it when I was a human being. My dislike was even stronger now, and I never thought the ability to sweat was something I would ever miss.
However, there were two saving grace. Depending on the time and place, like night and high altitude, it could get quite cold, so comfortable for me, and my bloodwing bat form supported this place's climate better.
A use for shapeshifting and control of one's body I never seriously considered until then, and another reason why I must strive to continue to understand and master them.
This point aside, it was why I was walking in the middle of the night. The air was dry and windy, but at least it didn't feel like my organs were simultaneously boiling and shriveling. Not that it would kill me at that level; any damage would be nullified easily at the cost of a bit of mana, but despite many of my tendencies hinting to the contrary, I didn't love to suffer.
More so when it was a headache from heat stroke and unwellness in general, like extreme thirst, my magic stopped most of its debilitating effects on my health as long as I didn't push it beyond reason–I was still a living breathing being, cheating by magic or not–but that doesn't mean the sensation and mental aspect of thirst and the like disappeared.
Elixirs could help, too, but I preferred to use them purposefully.
"Hm?" I hummed, crouching down near patches of struggling bushes, my target growing from their bases in a mix of orchids, Indian pipes, and rafflesias, strictly appearance-wise. It didn't smell like corpses. Their tactic was essentially the same as the latter: parasitism, and I wanted them.
I unslung the backpack of living woods from my shoulder and took my old elven-made leather padded notebook from within, roots parting away at my command. I fiddled with the yellowish page by delicate claw flick until I stopped at a sketch of the plant I was seeing with scribbling below.
I was lucky I was marginally better at drawing than writing. Otherwise, I would be here for longer, transcribing my dirty writing of random shortcuts, arrows, highlights, underlines, abbreviations, and glued papers or thin pieces of barks for added space in an oddly orderly symmetry, not even I got the secret.
Sometimes, things didn't change, and the lack of modern appliances didn't help. Feather pens were a bitch and a half. My words were barely readable to me. But it had advantages.
I wrote in Ursine, Darnasian, and my slowly rusting French and English grammatically and speaking-wise. Even if my notes were somehow translated, they wouldn't be understood easily, more so since I wrote like that all at the same time, depending on what was shorter.
There were several important pieces of information, from what I recall of the lore to theories, plans, and research—the curse of not having eidetic memories.
But most of the first three were absolute nonsense. I wrote everything I recalled of the pile of bullshit reckons and contractions that was Warcraft lore. I did that multiple times, each iteration differing by little or a lot.
"Scarlet trumpets, ah, finally found them," I smiled. My left paw glowed green with flickers of red as I stimulated both plants while my right, with precision betraying its bulk, played the pollinator.
A few minutes later, I was packing everything up, new scratches from corrected data in my notes to two small labeled crystal flasks filled with seeds and the other spores from the two specimens of this one-sided case of symbiosis in the comfort of a leather pouch.
Collecting was one of the reasons I was here, even if it wasn't a focus. Mapping where and how they grow and getting samples of organisms, rare or absent from Ashenvale, was necessary. They were sometimes used as reagents and tools, even ornamental in bonus.
It might seem miscellaneous, and in a way, it was. Not everything I plucked had a clear purpose or potential, which didn't justify ignoring them. And it was relaxing and satisfying, like completing the Pokedex thing, and you never know, you might hit gold.
Content with what I did, I took off, my arms becoming wings connecting to my legs through the membranous skin as my body transformed. Then I swooped back down, grabbing the weirdly shaped leafless branch in my jaws, and flew away.
The idea to make a backpack out of living plants I got from an old book–a few millennia of age–was pure genius, well, for me. The original idea for kaldorei had problems, notably in weight and the requirement of being a druid among less intelligent points; many saw it as a perversion, disrespect, and cruelty toward nature.
But I mean… who cares? As long as you don't force things and avoid creating a subspecies that can propagate and out-compete the flora–easily avoidable by favoring traits against that–then selective breeding for extreme results was fine.
Despite the existence of spirits, sapient flora, and fauna, the bulks of the wild didn't give a flying fuck unless you messed up badly. It was why I supposed Wild Gods were neutral for the most part; the well-being of their territory was their priority. Virtues held little survival value, even for furbolgs, really.
You just have to keep things in the rules and on a controllable scale; one's morals and individual sensibilities play no necessary role. The anthropomorphization of flora and fauna was a bane to eradicate; every being interacted with the world in its unique ways.
And frankly, as long as the ancestral spirits weren't unanimously against my action or unresponsive to discussions, it was dandy.
I understood the night elves' stance on artificial selection, considering what some of their hubris had resulted in–even after the Sundering–but it remained silly and hypocritical.
They used nature and bent it to fit their view, not that it was wrong. Their houses were literally upsized bonsais made specifically for this purpose, but their funny, illogical rules didn't bother me. So... whatever floated their boats.
Tangent aside... my backpack, other than the process of finding the plant and selectively breeding a variety I wanted. Right now, it was a prototype at best, one that could be a makeshift armor if the need arose. Back at the home base, Groot worked on changing that while I was away. Trusty bugger that he was, my little grumpy assistant.
This philosophy of selective breeding was, in essence, similar to my interests in shapeshifting and healing: adaptability and versatility were what I sought. In fact, they were very similar.
They were keys. Arguably the best aspects of Life. It's not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but one most responsive to change, or so said the quote.
I didn't look for destructive power.
My goal since my rebirth never changed. It was to survive, to enjoy this new lease on life. Death was… it was something I didn't want to experience again. Remnants of it still haunt me, no matter how rare they are.
And those were my thoughts as I flew until the sun started rising. I stopped a few times to expand my plant compendium and check on the map where I was. An utter pain in the ass to do, even with a compass equivalent and the help of the local spirits of the wilds. Let's say I often lost my direction.
Eventually, I worked it out, and after a quick hunt on a young thunder lizard, I stopped not too far from my destination, the distinct unknown smell in the wind a clear indicator. But I was sleepy and unfit for what I had in mind.
I didn't decide to go deep into these arid mountains at this time of the year for sightseeing, testing, and botany, even if I did a lot of the three. I had a purpose.
I found a nesting spot in the form of a fir tree big enough to support me.
I attached my backpack near its top mid-flight and landed one of its largest branches, still as a bat. My mana pulsed, and the needles and branches around slowly moved to cover me. It was slower and consumed more mana than in my true form; as such, it was essentially unusable in fights, but it was very convenient to have in cases like now.
Then I let myself fall head down, my toes and legs locking themselves, and the exhaustion caught on immediately, my eyes on the incredibly vast size of Stonetalon Peak above any other mountains far away in the distance as my mind drifted off to sleep.
•••••
The late morning turning to early midday sunlight bathed the expansive range of the Stonetalon Mountains, warding away the last shred of the cold of the night as the predators of the night slipped away from their harsh light.
Today, An'she–the sun–that had yet to reach its apogee promised to be blistering, but a pair of horned, hoofed bipedal creatures, taurens, ignored this unworded warning. The first had short, light brown fur, was taller and far bulkier, and was a male. The second was female by her lithe frame of dark grey fur painted with bright blood-red markings.
Following closely behind them and held by a leash for guidance more than disobedience–it would do little in case of the rampage–was a pale green scaled lizard-like beast of burden: a kodo and a vital aspect of any tauren's life.
In front of them was an immense fir tree, one of the region's largest and most ancient. It stood out beyond its size by its odd crown shape, but the two taurens didn't pay much attention. The winds were strong, and they sculpted the trees here to their ever-changing whims.
"Helka, your aunt is a great shaman, yes? Do you know why the elders suddenly told us to cut the old tree here instead of the one planned? Earth Mother forgives me, but I don't understand why we go for the riskier and harder options and why us two." Orthus, the male and far bulkier of the two tauren, asked with a heavy frown, attaching the leash of the kodo solidly to a rock.
"Hmpf, yes she is, remember that well," Helka uttered curtly and as unhelpfully as physically possible, barely paying attention to him as she went to check around for danger. Her dislike wasn't to him as an individual that she couldn't care less.
No, it was deeper; he was an unimpressive member of a band of cowardly weaklings whose only survival methods were hiding, running, and begging. It was a stain on their noble and mighty race's honor. It was maddening and sacrilegious. There were numerous reasons why her tribe was successful, and none of them were represented in that meek and feeble bull.
There were a few seconds of silence, ending with a snort from Orthus.
That had been pointless; it was a moot endeavor he learned on the walk here, but at this point, he understood there was no point in trying anymore. Sighing, he carefully picked the ancient ceremonial axe clasped on the kodo saddle to cut the tree, but as he turned around, his eyes widened.
The crown of the fir unfolded, blooming like a flower, and from it, a massive shadow swooped down just paces away from his fellow tauren.
Broad, tall, and muscular with fur as dark as coal, whose unique pattern was repeatedly broken by a shade of light brown in the chest and head and by bright greenish and reddish white glyphs.
Its paws ended in long, sharp, blade-like claws with a metallic shine, and its golden eyes were sleepy yet distinctly aware and predatory. It could and would inflict harm and revel in it. Yet it wasn't a mindless beast. It, no, he from the smell.
He was intelligent, with a loincloth of skilled craftsmanship, a gilded leather pouch, numerous pieces of jewelry of woods, bones, and feather clothes neatly worn, proving this wasn't a beast to react in an uncivilized manner.
Or that was what Orthus thought as the bear-man yawned, revealing sharp teeth of a sheen not entirely dissimilar to the claws. But Helka, the closest to the strange walking bear, had reached a dramatically opposite conclusion and reacted in a way fitting a threatened or slighted Grimtotem. Violence was her response, causing his eyes to widen in horror.
With a bellowing warcry, she fearlessly charged, her totem mace held high above her shoulder for a mighty ruthless slam upon the defenseless head of the unprepared bear.
"Nooo!" He rushed his mind with the singular goal of stopping the incoming bloodbath. No matter who was the winner, violence was entirely unwarranted and unnecessary in this context.
However, he stopped dead on his track, not of his own volition, as roots busted from the dry soil, forming a dense wall in front of his shell-shocked eyes. But his gaze shifted right back to the fight. If what he was witnessing could even be called that.
The mace that would have fractured the bear creature's skull was held with barely any visible strain into his meaty paw as flickers of verdant green dissipated from the other. It was like a father stopping the hit of his young calf.
Then, in one swift, practiced movement, this very same paw was slammed into the space between the ribcage and belly of Helka, her liver. And that signaled the brutal and anticlimactic end of this battle.
She fell to the ground, all strength leaving her body as she let go of her weapons and curled up. Soon after, her mind went into unconsciousness, her hands over the four gaping puncture wounds of her stomach. The distinct coppery smell of blood began to permeate the air.
The bear-man smirked in satisfaction and spat on his downed adversary as she was unworthy of any consideration. He muttered something short, a mix of grunt and click of tongues that, unknown to Orthus, meant the equivalent of 'worthless suicidal bitch'. What followed deeply confused the already shell-shocked tauren while debating whether to flee or fight.
First, the bear carelessly flicked the blood away from his paw and lifted a finger whose green glow was impossible not to notice. Orthus' heart hammered at the sight, but it was for nothing as the living wall went back into the ground, giving him ways to get closer or walk away, whichever he wanted. Not that roots would have stopped him, but they would have impeded his movement, which could have spelled his doom.
Second, he spoke. This time, Orthus understood despite how guttural, broken, and accented the Taur-ahe was.
"Me peace and talk. Wait." After that, the bear-man closed his eyes for ten seconds, ten very long and tense seconds where the young tauren remained frozen. He knew how to fight, but he wasn't a brave–a warrior–he knew how to hunt and the basics of fighting, but it wasn't his path in life.
Against what appeared to be a strange shaman with the strength seemingly eclipsing nearly all warriors he ever saw from how lazily the hit from one of the most skilled Grimtotem brave–elite warriors trained from calfhood to kill and avoid restraint while doing so–was stopped. Female or not, it should have had an impact, yet it didn't appear so. And that was terrifying.
"Do you understand me?" The bear-man spoke again. This time, his voice was closer to the echoes of multiple others. Orthus blinked and dumbly nodded. The bear smiled and yawned again, amply stretching all the while.
"Good, I'm Ohto, a furbolg, and I have flown from Ashenvale to meet your people," The newly named Ohto said, simply finishing his last stretch with a groan of satisfaction and low mutters about bat sleeping position and spinal cord.
"Oh, and don't worry about… her." He pointed at the unconscious Helka before the male tauren could ask what was going on, "I will heal her in a bit; she won't bleed out. Now, what's your name?"
Comments
Mika Willems
I thought for a sec we were gonna get an TImber! with Ohto waking up to the tree he was sleeping in falling with him still in it.
