Curved claws almost a foot long each tore at the shield above El, sparks flying with every small motion. Despite appearing scrawny, the bear’s strength felt like a mountain pressing down on her shoulders. And none of that was even counting the second bear just seconds away from crashing into her side.

  Her brain screamed to flare her wings in a powerful enough burst to jet her out of the way. Except the man lying behind her would get caught in the blast. No way he would survive that. No, she’d just have to hope her armor was up to the task of absorbing a full-speed charge from several tons of angry bear.

  Not looking good.

  Her eyes stayed locked on the bear to her right while she continued to funnel flames into the shield above her, repairing it just as quickly as it was damaged. Charging like it was, she could see powerful, corded muscles moving beneath the heavy scales, while its maw spread to reveal those familiar, terrible teeth. Stone tore and split with each stride, the claws digging it up to propel the bear forward unreasonably fast for how big it was. No, no way her armor would be able to brush that off. She’d be lucky to…

  Bang, the snappy crack of a Pilish weapon echoed between the rocks somewhere off to El’s side, and the bear’s head jerked hard as its eye exploded in a gush of blood and bits. Stumbling at the sudden and surprising pain, the bear lurched into one stone spike and then another. Smash, smash, smash, the rock crumbled as the beast pinballed between, but each impact stole some of its speed until it crashed to the ground just ten feet from El.

  Blood leaked down the side of its face, but it definitely wasn’t dead. It gathered its front legs beneath it to push itself up, and its good eye turned in El’s direction. A deep rumbling growl reverberated up from its chest, the vibrations alone triggering El’s frost armor. If a bear could look angry, this one was furious. At her.

  “I didn’t do that!” she said, as if it would even matter. Whatever. She needed to get away before…

  The weight on her shield vanished so quickly, she almost overbalanced forward, and El snapped her head to look. Back on its hind legs with its front paws high above its head, the bear was lining up another earth-shattering smash.

  “We got you, El,” Nidina’s voice came through El’s armor a second before Nidina and Dayne slammed shields-first into the upright bear’s side.

  Off-balance from preparing to smite El into oblivion, the two Firestorm hit it like a pair of meteors. A shockwave of flame and force erupted out at the same time El spun on her knees and flared her wings. Gone was the shield that’d saved her life, and her hands grabbed the prone man as she flashed over him and ahead of the shockwave.

  Almost as soon as she began her flare, she ended it and ignited her wings. While her armor could take being bounced through a few of the stone spikes, the man in her hands probably couldn’t say the same. One quick turn, then a second to avoid a pair of stones, El was fifty feet from where she’d started, and a new sound reached her ears.

  A really close sound. Oh, the man in her hands was screaming.

  “First flight, huh?” she asked the panicked man. If he could understand her through the shock—or the volume of his own shrieking—he didn’t show any sign of it. Well, she didn’t have time to coddle him, so she plopped him down on the ground, then burst back the way she’d come.

  “Status?” she asked into her communication magic.

  “These things are tough,” Nidina said. “We’ve injured a few, but that’s it.”

  “The people?” El asked as a few of those people sped between the stones in front of her. Another rampaging bear followed a few seconds later, and El flared her wings to give chase.

  “Looks like they’re all heading towards a rope bridge across some kind of chasm. It’s only about fifty—maybe sixty—feet across, but it’s deep and wide. No other way across I can see,” Laze said. “The bridge definitely isn’t strong enough to support the weight of one of those bears, but it’s narrow. People have to go single file, and the bridge doesn’t look new. It’s holding for now, but I see missing slats, and the people are only going on a few at a time. There’s a line forming.”

  “Suggestions?” El asked at the same time she formed a warhammer of blue flames in her hands. Neither her sword nor arrows had any luck punching through the thick scales, but she cocked her arms back as she caught up to the dashing bear. The people in front of it would be within reach in a few seconds, so now wasn’t the time for finesse.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Instead, skimming low along the ground, El poured on the speed until she was flush with the bear, then turned in the air and swung with all her strength at the bear’s back knee. Her body twisted in the air like a horizontal pinwheel during the swing, and she even flared her wings to completely arrest her own forward momentum. The whole maneuver torqued her body and pulled on her muscles even with the frost armor protecting her. And that was before the hammer’s head crunched into the bear’s leg.

  The impact sent a jarring reverberation up El’s arms in a painful wave that completely shattered the weapon in a wash of blue flames.

  It also took the bear’s leg out from under it, stopping it cold to crash to the ground while El bounced and rolled along the ground in the opposite direction.

  “Ow,” she muttered, pushing herself to her feet and willing the world to stop spinning.

  “Okay, I… might have an idea… but I could be wrong…” Laze said.

  “Let’s hear it,” El said, snapping her hands down, blue blades of flame following the motion to extend into swords.

  “It’s nothing fancy…”

  “Laze. Plan,” El barked. Then she burst to the side to intercept another bear that’d spotted the fleeing people El had just saved. The worst injury she’d seen one take so far was to the eye, so she focused her attacks on the monster’s head. Every blow felt like she was hitting one of the new generation of the Guldish golems, the scales frustratingly resilient, and the damn bear kept moving its head as it ran. It wasn’t actively trying to protect its face, but it had ridges above its eyes that naturally protected them.

  “Most of the people are already at the bridge,” Laze said. “I see maybe a dozen of them still heading that way. El, the largest group is just in front of you. They’ll reach a break in the stone forest in fifty feet, then there’s another narrow passage. This one is big enough for the bears to get through one at a time, but if we can hold that pass…”

  “We can buy time until everybody gets across,” El finished her friend’s sentence. “That’s what we’re doing. Laze, sounds like you’ve got a good view of things. Tell us where you want us.”

  “But you’re the…”

  “Laze! Where?” El snapped, changing from swords to short hammers to batter at the bear’s head. If she couldn’t cut through the scales, maybe she could at least rattle its brain around in its skull.

  Laze took a deep breath over the communication magic, then spoke. “Dayne, keep on that bear you’re fighting now. Hold it for ten seconds more. Nidina, cut forty degrees to your right. You’ll intercept a bear… yeah, that one. Keep it busy for a few seconds while the people ahead get through the pass. El, that one you’re fighting is the closest. You need to slow it down.

  “Stop giving it love taps and use its own momentum against it like you did the others,” Laze ordered.

  El opened her mouth to respond to the love tap comment—she was burning hitting the burning thing as hard as she burning could!—but instead considered the rest of Laze’s comment. Momentum, huh? I should’ve thought of that.

  Giving the bear one more love tap, El spun and shot ahead with a flare of blue flame to the monster’s face. Twenty feet in a second, she cut off her flare, spun, then flared a second time to stop and face the rushing bear. In her hands, the two smaller hammers merged to form a flaming maul, and she lifted it high above her head as she hovered motionless in the air.

  “Come on!” she told the bear as it barreled straight for her. From the look in its eyes, it planned to barrel straight through her, but she wasn’t going to have any of that. With it less than five feet from her—and with its front paws in the air from its loping run—El swung her hammer at the same time she flared her wings and weapon.

  The maul exploded in size and power—just for a brief second—as it slammed down on the top of the bear’s scale-covered head. The whole area echoed like a gong while the bear’s face got driven down to the ground, its legs extended ahead of it.

  El’s flare carried her up and over the scaled body practically sparking across the stone ground, and she ignited her wings before her feet even touched down.

  “Consider it slowed down,” El said into the magic of her armor.

  “Great, fall back to the position directly below me to hold the line,” Laze responded. “Nidina, you’re done there, but you need to pick up two runners on your way here. Drop them on this side of the bridge; we need you to help El. Dayne, keep that one busy a few seconds longer.”

  El twisted in the air until she spotted Laze above the battlefield, then without a second look at the bear on the ground, darted between the stone spikes in her friend’s direction. Eyes peeled, she didn’t spot any bears or runners until she found the cleft in the rock Laze had described. Sheer cliffs easily eighty feet tall stood on each side, and the bears would need some serious skills to be able to climb them. Between them, the opening was barely—bearly…?—big enough for a single monster to fit through.

  Tucking her wings at her side, El zipped between the stone walls without slowing, then spun in the air and flared her wings to completely negate her inertia. The sudden stop held her motionless in the air for a split second, dozens of eyes looking up at her, before gravity took over and pulled her back towards the ground.

  El let herself drop the twenty feet, her frost armor releasing a pulse of cold as it absorbed the landing. All around her, the crowd full of wide eyes backed away one step, then two. Men, women, even children, though nobody older than maybe their thirties, looked tired and ragged. Torn clothes, dirty skin, bruises, cuts, and dark bags under their eyes. Tired was an understatement. These people are exhausted, but not just because of the bears. What are they running from?

  She was just about to open her mouth to speak when several men and women in a kind of leather armor pushed their way through the crowd. They each had a wide hat on their heads, and those strange metal weapons in their hands. Some held a smaller version in each hand, while others carried a larger, two-handed version.

  And, of course, all of them were pointed right at El.

  Patreon, where you'll find up to 40 advanced chapters.

  Rune Seeker: A Progression Fantasy litRPG ( Book 6 Running now on RR) | Royal Road , or, if you'd prefer to check it out on Amazon (sorry, this will be the .com link) here's where you can find

  Time For Chaos: A Progression Fantasy | Royal Road

  book 1 (Worthless)

  Patreon , there are three other books on there you won't find anywhere else.