26 - Giggling death

  The bear surged upright in a single rolling motion. The seams that had hung loose twisted and tightened. The creature’s outline shifted. One foreleg was splitting into two. Another was growing from its side, half-knitted yet, dragging threads behind it. The body no longer held a clean shape. It looked repacked and reknitted in haste.

  “What the hell are you?” Elanil thought aloud, drawing a bow string as she moved. She aimed and released.

  “Again, reconnaissance in force?” she asked herself rhetorically, as if she had not decided yet. She also decided not to waste her energy on muttering—her ragged breathing indicated growing fatigue. So, she forced it into rhythm, in counterpoint with her body movements. She took the next arrow and aimed at the belly where the yarn was still thin from earlier cuts.

  The bear lunged with a short giggle. Its paw shot forward, stretching as it traveled. The limb lengthened across the clearing, the yarn uncoiling to extend its reach. The forest litter exploded where it struck. Elanil had already moved. She pivoted left and ducked under the sweep, loosing off a shot as she turned.

  The arrow struck the extended limb and sank deep, but the mass did not slow down. The paw snapped back, recoiling like a pulled cord. Another limb burst from the bear’s flank and lashed toward her midriff. She slid across trampled stuffing. The paw skimmed over her back close enough that she felt the pull of air. She rolled, came up on one foot, and reached for another arrow. The monster’s periodic childish laughter created a surreal sense of a tag game for dear life.

  Her quiver felt lighter and lighter. Nock. Draw. Hold. The bear’s torso shifted again. Two forelimbs merged and then split, both stretching outward in opposite arcs. One carved a trench where she had stood a heartbeat earlier. The other swept high.

  She ran toward it. The choice cost her breath. Each stride tugged at her lungs. She cut inside the swing and released into the joint where yarn overlapped and bunched. The arrow buried there. The limb faltered and retracted halfway before lashing again. Threads flicked toward her boots. She kicked free and kept moving. Her chest tightened, and she forced the next inhale slow and even—panic would kill her faster than any strike.

  The bear laughed and gathered itself. Three elongated paws rose at once, spreading to cover most of the clearing. They began to descend together, stretching farther as they fell.

  Elanil’s fingers reached back, but no fletching brushed them: the quiver was empty.

  “Shit!” she hissed, scanning the clearing for fallen arrows.

  A stretched paw crashed down where she stood half a second ago. She spun away from the impact and ran toward the center of the clearing where her arrows lay scattered among stuffing and torn yarn. Another limb swept low. She vaulted over it, landed, her hand grabbed a fallen arrow. She rolled aside as a second strike gouged the earth beside her.

  She rose, nocked at once, and drew the bowstring taut.

  [Knockback Arrow]

  The string thrummed. The shot hit the bear’s muzzle. The impact drove through cloth, carrying electric force that rippled across its tweaking body. The main stun locked its body in place. Shock followed and deepened the effect. The extended paws froze mid-reach in painful tremolo.

  Elanil moved without pause. She gathered arrows one by one, her breath measured and eyes fixed on the stunned mass, as she was counting the seconds before it would move again.

  “Not bad,” she thought. “Time to move on to the real fight.”

  The stun faded and the bear’s limbs started moving.

  Elanil had already set another arrow.

  [Explosive Arrow]

  An arrow crackling like a falling meteorite hit the torn belly seam. The impact triggered at once. Fire burst through the yarn and stuffing, spreading across the damaged torso. Burning took hold along the split spine and chest. The bear dropped and rolled across the clearing, grinding its body against earth in an effort to smother the flames. At the same time, it laughed so contagiously, as if it were not engulfed in flames but tickled by its rolling on the ground.

  Elanil advanced at a controlled pace. She released the rain of quick shots into exposed joints and open seams while the creature rolled, then bent to reclaim more arrows from the ground. By the time the fire lessened, her quiver was full as though the battle only started.

  The bear’s next move was unexpected—the knitted bastard sprang into the trees, giggling. The branches shook as its weight shifted from one to another. The damaged body compressed and extended with each leap, its yarn tightening and releasing to carry it across the canopy, yet it playfully demonstrated the wonders of agility.

  Elanil stepped back into a narrow gap between two trunks and raised her bow but had to jump aside before she could shoot—the first projectile dropped from above. It looked like her own arrow, stitched from gray and green thread. It fell point-first. She twisted aside and felt it pass close to her shoulder before burying itself deep in the soil. The shaft quivered like wood. Another followed, then two more.

  A knitted axe spun down from the branches. Immediately, a dagger followed and struck the trunk beside her head.

  “Remarkable!” Elanil thought. “They’re knitted but cut bark and earth like real steel!”

  Elanil drew an arrow while moving and tracking a brief opening between leaves. She loosed a shot at the bear’s torso as it launched to another branch. The arrow clipped a trailing limb and tore away some yarn, but the creature kept moving.

  A rain of stitched weapons followed, accompanied by the bear’s laughing. She ducked behind a trunk and shifted around it as a dagger punched through the bark. She broke into a short sprint toward thicker cover, her lungs tightening from the pace. Breath in. Breath out. Keep it steady.

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  Another leap overhead. Branches cracked. A cluster of knitted arrows streaked down in a spread meant to hem her in. She slid across the forest floor and rolled behind an exposed root. Two arrows struck the ground inches from her boots. One grazed her sleeve and sliced cloth.

  She rose on one knee and fired again at the mass shifting above her. The shot drove into a hanging limb and forced it to recoil. The bear adjusted at once, launching to a new perch. Elanil scanned for the next landing point, forcing herself to think ahead while the canopy shook with each bounding impact.

  The bear shifted higher through the canopy and paused for a fraction of a second. One of its elongated paws drew back. The yarn gathered at the tip, twisting into the shape of an arrowhead and shaft. The cords of red thread trailed behind it like a bolide’s tail. The stitched projectile shot, crackling on the flight.

  “Son of a—” she barely thought in indignation while jumping aside.

  The arrow struck the ground where she had stood and detonated, fire spreading through leaves and roots. Heat brushed her cheek. She stared up through the smoke.

  “It replicated my [Explosive arrow]!” she finished her thought. “So, it can copy every weapon that hit it.” If it learned from pain, then she would have to think twice before every shot.

  The next moment a hail of knitted arrows, daggers and axes fell upon her. She dodged, but one of the daggers managed to cut her leg. Gritting her teeth, she sought refuge behind the nearest rock to catch her breath for a moment and reorient herself before her next steps. The bleeding was light, yet annoying since she could not afford even a minor injury distracting her now.

  Glancing up, Elanil immediately spotted the danger—a knitted arrow with scraps of purple thread around it.

  “Oh boy!” the thought flashed through her head as she leaped as far away as possible from the rock she was hiding behind. The arrow whistled through the air and a rumbling thunder followed. Electric discharges ran in circles from the point of impact. A terribly annoying childish giggle followed from above.

  “It’s good, at least, that Nura and Gaspard didn’t use their abilities.” She chuckled at the thought. “I would’ve had no chance against all of them aimed at me at once.”

  The bear swooped down from the tree, aiming to crush her with its weight. She rolled to the other end of the clearing. From the creature’s landing, a dull thud exploded, and pieces of earth flew in all directions. The knitted beast soared back up to the upper tier of the branches.

  “Think, Elanil! You can’t defeat it with force. Blows are no damage to it, but a way of learning. It will copy every hit you land and return with interest. You have to outsmart it. Think. Think!”

  So far, the greatest trouble to the creature was the fire from her Explosive arrows. Sure, it quickly extinguished the flames, then copied and returned the blow. But apparently, the fire really did pose a threat to the creature. Elanil just needed to make it so the beast couldn’t copy it.

  At that very moment, her gaze fell on a spreading bush nearby, its black branches intertwined in a lush, low crown. The texture engineer's memories came to her aid at the perfect time. It was black hazel—one of her first bush models for this game world’s botanical diversity. How many hours she spent rendering it! But the most important thing was that, unlike other models and textures, which she duplicated and adapted to create other tree and shrub models, the black hazel remained a unique creation, not modified into any other taxon. What if…?

  She raised her bow, drew the string, aimed just above the bush, and fired.

  [Explosive arrow]

  The explosion scorched the hazel’s upper branches, and the flames immediately began to spread throughout the entire bush.

  The next moment Elanil looked up and took aim. As the giggling monster jumped from branch to branch, she fired, anticipating the direction of the arrow so as to catch it exactly in flight.

  [Knockback arrow]

  The arrow struck the beast under the armpit, and the electric shock ran through it. Its vast body contorted and twisted. The bear instantly fell like a stone in the middle of the clearing.

  In no time, Elanil cast [Protective shield] on herself and rushed to the burning bush, tongues of flames licking all its branches. On her move she picked the knitted ax laying nearby and cut the bush slightly above the ground. Unlike a real weapon, the toy-axe inflamed in her hand.

  Praying that her protective shield wouldn’t wear out prematurely, she thrust her hand into the flames and grabbed a burning bush. In two leaps, she was at the monster, which was slowly recovering from her [Knockback arrow] shock. Mustering her strength, she pushed the hazel deep into the still-open wound on the belly suture, trying to get the bush firmly entangled in the beast’s threads and yarn.

  The bear jumped on its rear legs and frantically slapped its paws against its belly, trying to extinguish the fire. But the flames seemed to be spreading inside. Meanwhile, the monster laughed heartily, as if being tickled to death. The clearing was filled with a sharp smell of burnt wool and lichen. At one point, the bear struck a piercingly high note and froze for a second.

  The next moment, it sank to the ground. Not as a huge and heavy carcass, but as a shapeless heap of yarn and fluff. As if its skeleton had been removed and now nothing could hold it from within. Now it looked more like a giant knitted slug with a bear’s head.

  Elanil exhaled. She was right: the creature couldn’t copy the hazel texture. She was unsure if this was the end, afraid to even voice the possibility in her thoughts, lest she jinx it. She knew, if this battle was to continue, her chances of surviving it were slim. She shuddered—something inside the pile of yarn sparkled with green light. Then again, in a different place, as if a firefly had gotten lost inside. Then one of the beast’s eyes flashed green, then the other.

  Elanil’s heart sank. Not again!

  Then something even more incredible happened. A glowing figure, glowing with blue and emerald, emerged from the bushes. The figure soared into the air and hovered above the clearing, surveying the surroundings.

  “Dryad!” Elanil realized.

  “What a mess you caused here!” the dryad said menacingly. Their voice sounded both childishly clear and wise from millennia of experience, at once earthly and otherworldly.

  “I’m—” Elanil tried to explain, but the dryad interrupted her.

  “Not you, I mean you.” With these words, the glowing creature descended toward the knitted body, reached inside with a translucent hand, and pulled out a second glowing creature. It seemed to Elanil that the larger dryad was holding the smaller dryad by the ear, if they even had ears.

  The strange truth of the whole reason behind their crazy quest dawned on her. The little knitted teddy bear must have been possessed by a little forest dryad, who was simply bored and had nearly killed their entire team in a playful fit of frolicking.

  Two knitted cocoons fell on either side of Elanil with a dull thump. Their seams came apart, and Gaspard and Nura emerged, barely able to stand on all fours. Gaspard convulsed and threw up yarn like a ball of cat fur.

  “Yuck!” Elanil grimaced at the sight.

  “Apologies for that little brat,” the dryad said to Elanil. “I just turned away for an instant and look what happened! I hope it didn’t cause you too much trouble.”

  Elanil scratched the back of her head; it did cause. Her numerous bruises and burns suddenly began to ache, and the wound on her leg reminded of its existence.

  “I have a small compensation for all these pranks,” the dryad continued. “This mischievous magpie, for some reason, collected all sorts of trinkets in their cache. They are of no use to us, but might be very useful to you. Now it’s all yours. Come, I’ll show you.”

  Elanil glanced at her friends, who were still recovering and were unlikely to join her now. The dryads disappeared into the thicket, and Elanil followed them alone.