Saturday Morning September 14th, 546 ALW. Fennur's Maw, North-Eastern Glacial Regions. ….
Konan didn't let his fear fester any longer and was on the move.
He charged the three bears. The mother-bear returned the charge taking six steps before rising up on her hind legs to slam him with her front paws.
Konan picked up his speed and dropped to the ground to slide across the frozen stone.
In a blur, he slid between the bears legs. As he moved, he got back to his feet and drop kicked the left bear climbing over the ledge.
The bear slipped off the rock and slid down the cliff face, tearing up the stone with its thick claws.
The bear on the right side swiped at Konan. Konan flipped over the claw-swipe and let himself fall off the cliff.
As he fell, he landed on the bear he previously attacked and stomped both feet into its face, knocking it down a few more feet.
Reflexively, he gripped the stones to stop his own fall. Taking the previous bears place.
It's brother didn't appreciate that and snapped and swung at him from the right with horrifying power.
Konan dodged and rolled, breaking his nails as he slipped his hold on the icy stone cliff-face.
Beneath him, the other bear ascended with a bloody black nose and watery blood-shot eyes.
It jumped with its jaws open and eyes wild, aiming to bite off his foot he assumed.
Naturally, Konan pulled himself higher up the wall to evade.
The moment he did, a flash of fangs from above came crashing down.
Konan roared as the mother bear-mutate leaned down the cliff-face and bit down on his arm with a hideous crunch.
The endless rows of sharp teeth shredded his arm beneath the shoulder as she growled and shook.
Her children were closing in, looking to remove his flailing legs.
Quickly, frantically, Konan swung his other arm at the bears face from above.
Blood splattered from the impact of sharp stone against her long snout.
Another stone in his hand. One he didn't remember grabbing. Only this one was less circular and more dagger-like.
He used it the same way he used the last stone and swung again at the bear, this time smashing the sharp stone into her last remaining eye.
The bear was unbothered and continued gnawing on his arm.
In a panic, Konan swung again— harder, slamming the sharp stone into her now empty eye socket. He left it there and swung again, hammer fisting the rock further into her skull.
A fizzle and sputtering sound emanated from the wound. Konan couldn't think much on it as he was thrown up over the bears shoulders.
He soared before landing back on the plataue. Back where he started. Only all his healed over or less painful injuries were quickly reawakened— worsened.
Weakly, Konan stood up on the stone grounds— now covered in a two inch thick glaze of ice.
Blood dripped from his upper right arm in streams of bright red that fell on the ice grounds and sizzled.
He tried to brace himself as the bears recovered and lined up three strong.
The leading mother was now fully blind and couldn't seem to care any less as she scented in his direction.
Konan balled up his fists and braced himself. Trying to ignore the noodling of his legs and tearing up of his eyes. The burn of the moon was a benefit he didn't know he needed.
The mother let off a stunning roar.
Konan stumbled backward with blurred vision and a twisting stomach.
The bears charged. Barely bothered by the slip of the ice. Not that Konan could capitalize on it anyway.
He brought his hands up and snarled.
The mother bear sprinted ahead on longer legs.
She rose up to smash him where he stood.
Konan's ears twitched in the scarce moments in response to the scrape of rocks and blur of movement overhead.
It was dark. Not flecked with black like the bears but purely dark furred. Konan mistook it for a rock before he heard the vicious snarl as the beast collided with the bear on its hind legs.
The two went down and in the stillness Konan could make out the creature. It was large. Rippling fibers of muscle caused its silky black and brown fur to shuffle and shift as it wrestled the bear with massive paws. The battle was quick, coming to a sudden and unexpected end as the dark furred attacker lunged for the bears exposed throat and bit into it.
The struggle was short and the bear met a twitching death as the creature above ripped out its throat with ribbons of flesh stuck to its sabered fangs.
The creature stamped its paws on the dead bears chest and roared at the remaining two.
It was deafening— empowering. The roar shook the earth and caused stone, dust and snow to fall from the mountain around them. The result was a tumbling aura of shattered earth left to cloak the beast.
The bears took a step backward.
It was all Konan needed to see.
He was on the move, jumping over the creature to smash his fist into the face of the left most bear.
The bear yelped from the impact and spit out a tooth.
The other bear roared and tried to charge him from behind only to be tackled by the dark furred animal with sabered fangs.
Konan and the bear battled.
He was at a disadvantage. The bear was easily around five hundred pounds, and unlike his mother, all senses were in tact.
The same couldn't be said for Konan in his triple weakened state.
Even so, he was desperate. He was making use of his enviroment as he shoved and punched in tandem with the bears swipes, causing it to slide across the icy stone grounds until he had its back to the edge.
Defensively, the bear stood up on its hind legs and roared.
At the same time, Konan charged, pushing past the brain-scrambling effect of its vocal chords to shoulder charge the beast over the edge.
The bears roars echoed as it fell off the cliff.
At the same time, Konan fell, sliding just to the edge in a cruel mix of exhaustion and physical pain.
There was silence for once. All he heard were his own breaths, the distant howling winds, and the fading echoes of the bears roars.
His skull throbbed.
Everything throbbed and swelled and bled and ached.
But it was over.
Something snorted.
Then he remembered.
The saber-toothed creature that killed the mother bear.
And the other bear.
Konan suddenly wondered if he was next.
He tried to get up but all he could manage was sitting up on one elbow. His hair flowed in the wind off the cliffs edge.
The beast padded towards him slowly, licking the blood off its maw with a tongue topped by spikes.
Konan raised his arm defensively, holding a hand out to stop the creature.
The animal continued advancing. Close enough for Konan to see every minute detail and smell it's acrid animal musk.
Konan braced himself.
Lush fur pressed against his outstretched hand.
The animal vibrated as it let off familiar purring sounds.
In fact, all of it was familiar.
The vision came. He expected it that time.
Suddenly he was in a cave. Morning sunlight spilled in through the expansive opening, giving way to a world of snowcrusted grass valleys and icy mountain regions beyond.
He was among Lycans in human form. Golden eyed and tan skinned.
A little girl wrestled with a young animal resembling the sabertoothed feline while an older man sharing her same white hair sat on a throne-stone beside a great brown furred feline.
Konan could hear bits of their words and languages in ever shifting tones and dialects. Even so, the word came all the same.
Sabertoothed cat. Homotherium-Prime. Wolf-lion. Cave-watcher.
And then another word came to Konan as he was sent back to the present where he still sat with his hand against the cats dense skull.
"…..Friend."