Threadbare waddled off into the woods once more.
With his compatriot, the inestimable Missus Fluffbear missing, the next logical step was to get help. Although chances were slim, his little girl’s friends had told her to rendezvous at Oblivion Point when she’d saved her Caradon. Well, her Daddy was dead and a lot of time had passed, but maybe they were still up there? The place had fish to eat, and everything. It was... possible...
Not really likely, but possible.
Threadbare retraced the path he’d taken five years ago, finding it overgrown, barely what Mordecai, his old scout master would call a deer trail. But he was small, and his hide was now thick enough that the underbrush didn’t bother him much. He was getting a little muddy, but he knew a trick for that too. Tailors had a skill that let them instantly clean things like wayward teddy bears, and since he was a wayward teddy bear he was happy to have access to it.
Threadbare meandered over the hills, actually scrambling in a few places. Before, Celia had been carrying him. Now he had to manage on his own. But he was much stronger and more competent now, and he managed. The exertion cost him a couple of stamina, and gained him two levels of the climb skill, along with three agility boosts. And along the way he cast his spell and used his buffs whenever his stamina, moxie, and sanity got back to full. The skills slowly rose, as did his intelligence by a point, after one successful casting of animus.
Finally, he stopped to pause at the jutting boulder high up on the second cliffside, which overlooked the route he’d taken. He didn’t need to rest, not really, but Celia and Mordecai and he had rested here the first time, and he liked the view.
It was night now, but the moon was out, and he could see relatively fine. He debated using his glow gleam spell, but... well, common sense said that was a bad thing. He was a tough bear, but he was a small bear, and the light would be seen a long way away. Better to run dark for now.
As he settled on the rock, his nose twitched. Scents and Sensibility fired up, and he smelled a strong scent. Some animal had marked this spot. Something big. Something familiar, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on how he knew it.
Your Scents and Sensibility skill is now level 12!
It wasn’t too old, which made up his mind. He’d been planning to shelter here for the night, but if a large creature had marked this territory, that was a bad idea. Threadbare glanced up at the full moon, and the cold stars above. So long as he stayed to the ridges, he thought, he should be able to see fine.
He’d be better off sticking to the ridges anyway. The big tree was next, and that should be easy enough to spot from high up, and then there was the little hollow where the raccants had lived. If they were still there, he wanted to stay out of that hollow anyway. At least until he’d gotten help.
It took longer to navigate through the darkness. He flexed, self-esteemed, and animated his way across the high hills, taking well into the morning to do it. Little legs didn’t go as fast as he had with Celia, but he didn’t stop to rest or even feel a lot of fatigue thanks to his golem/bear fueled endurance.
Not long into his walk, he cast animus, and did the invite again, and got the following messages;
Your Animus skill is maxed! Level up your animator job to increase this skill.
Your Creator’s Guardians skill is maxed! Level up your animator job to increase this skill.
He checked his status. Those skills were only at level five. Curious, he stopped for his regular dose of flexing and self-esteem.
Your Flex skill is now level 6!
Your Self-esteem skill is now level 6!
Those weren’t maxed. Why was that?
No, wait, his model job was higher level than animator. That was it. The higher your job level, the higher your skills could go.
Well, that was fine. If he did more animator stuff, maybe actually used the spells when they mattered, then he’d raise his animator level. From what he could recall of his relatively short life, (the conscious parts of it anyway,) he usually got levels after he survived really lethal situations, or killed enemy monsters. Maybe that was what he needed to do?
He waited hopefully, but neither his intelligence nor his wisdom leveled up. The little bear sighed. It was so hard having high stats in that area, finally. He couldn’t just use them as a guide to figure out what to do. But then, he’d gotten a whole lot more reflective ever since his early days, so maybe high wisdom was a blessing there, at least.
Clearly, to be the most efficient at surviving the stuff coming his way, he’d want to have his skills leveled up before he hit trouble. So when he was moving around and not in clear and present danger, he should be practicing something he could gain skills at for every pool that had it.
“Status,” he whispered into the night, and took another look to find something else that used sanity.
Well, being a bear (of sorts) had worked out great for him so far, hadn’t it? He didn’t think he would have survived if he didn’t have the bear job. So he decided to fire up Scents and Sensibility, and see how that went.
“Scents and Sensibility,” he whispered. And again the world of advanced odors opened up to him. But he didn’t level the skill.
Threadbare walked, peering into the night, freezing every time he heard noise that seemed like it was approaching, keeping an eye out. He needn’t have worried. Though he didn’t know it, the area he was in was prime hunting grounds for Screaming Eagles, which had gotten more numerous since their main predator moved out of the region. Since Screaming Eagles were daytime hunters, the night actually saved him a ton of trouble. (As did the fact he actually had an average luck score, rather than the sucking mess of horrible karma that had been following him around for his early days.)
He did level stealth up twice, and once he came upon something that fled from him, that he never got a good look at. When he went to investigate where it had been, he smelled deer.
Your Scents and Sensibility skill is now level 13!
Okay, that made sense. Just casting it wasn’t enough to level it, you had to smell stuff with it to increase the skill.
He found the big tree, peering at through the moonlight, remembering the branches. Remembering the honey he’d dug out of the hive there, and been unable to eat.
The little bear considered. He had a mouth now... and he also had dietary restrictions, and no idea if honey was unhealthy or not. If it was, it’d blow his dietary restriction skill away.
Man, being a model was tough.
He got his bearings, checked his course, climbed a tree for good measure so he could sight the course he wanted to follow...
AGL +1
Your Climb skill is now level 9!
...and found the peak he needed. Not far from what looked like a mass of campfires.
Threadbare would have blinked if he could have. There were people out here?
He got closer, keeping his Scents and Sensibility up, keeping to the thicker parts of cover. It took an hour, but his stealth crawled up two more points as groups of chattering things crashed through the underbrush ignoring him, and his Scents and Sensibility picked up a familiar smell.
These had to be raccants.
Your Scents and Sensibility skill is now level 14!
He didn’t know why they had campfires now. But it looked like there were a lot more of them than the last time he’d been here.
Threadbare got just close enough to see the sharp fence of pointy sticks they’d made around the area in front of the old mine entrance, and the collection of patchwork tents around several fires, then he slunk back into the shadows, heading for high ground once more. There were at least a dozen raccants out, masked in wood and carrying clubs. Nothing he wanted to face right now.
He took it slow, gained another stealth level when a patrol nearly caught him, and managed to get out of their patrol radius without being detected.
You are now a level 4 Scout!
+3 AGL
+3 PER
+3 WIS
Finally, he came to the mountain cliff that led up to Oblivion Point. No Celia to help him this time, and it was pretty steep... “Status,” he declared. Maybe there was something to help with this.
No, not really. Nothing that buffed climb or agility. But flexing would help endurance, which would keep him from getting tired. He flexed, and for the first time in a while, he didn’t level it. It stayed at nine.
He decided that he had enough stamina to experiment, flexed again, and there it went.
Your Flex skill is now level 10!
Maybe the higher up you got in a skill, the more usages it took to level it?
INT +1
Yeah, that was it! It made sense, he supposed. Otherwise it’d be trivial to hole up somewhere and exercise your skills repeatedly until they maxed out. That sounded thoroughly boring, and he had stuff to do anyway, so it was kind of a relief to know he didn’t have to do that. And you couldn’t, anyway, not for all of them because things like Scents and Sensibility and Speak with Dead required stuff around to practice with.
Threadbare thought he might be getting the hang of how things worked. All it had taken was the loss of everyone and everything he ever held dear, forcing him into isolation in the wilderness, surrounded by hostile and uncaring monsters, and—
—the little toy sat down with a bump, as events caught up to him. The flex buff faded and expired, as he put his head in his paws and just sat there for a time. The stuffing behind his eyes hurt, and he knew that if he could have, he would have been crying. But he couldn’t. Button eyes didn’t cry. Instead he opened his mouth and sobbed, little rasping gasps.
He really, really missed Celia.
He wanted to go home.
But he had neither Celia nor home anymore, and after a while after the pressure left he stopped sobbing and stood back up. He flexed again, restored his self-esteem, which made him feel a bit better, and started climbing up the cliff.
AGL +1
Your Climb skill is now level 10!
Your Climb skill is now level 11!
Your Climb skill is now level 12!
Occasionally he’d slide down, or lose his grip and tumble downslope a bit, but he was very strong now compared to his size, so stopping his fall wasn’t a big deal. He just caught ahold of the ground and pushed, until he slowed, and then it was back to climbing.
But during the climb, Threabare completely forgot about his buffs. Which was a pity, because otherwise his nose would have told him that he was going straight into the lair of the region’s biggest predator.
The sky brightened as he reached the top, moon sunk below the mountains. Dawn soon, he knew. The bear hauled himself up over the cliff, got to the little plateau, and there was the curtain of blackness, dividing the mountain peak in half. There was the little pond... no so little now, swelled with the first of the season’s snowmelt, and roiling with silvery fish. And there was the stand of pine trees, where Celia had sheltered and they’d built a small fire.
But no sign of either of the half-orc brothers. If they’d ever made it here, they were long gone.
Threadbare’s heart sank, and the terrible despair that had struck him down at the bottom of the cliff came rushing back. He staggered to the trees, calling out as he went, “Jarrik? Garon? Bak’shaz?”
But his little voice fell into silence. The snow crunched underfoot, warm and... yellow?
Yes, there was a patch of yellow snow. Someone had peed here!
“Scents and Sensibility!”
Predator stink filled his nose, the same predator that had marked the rock. Big and deadly, and familiar, and...
Oh. Oh!
For the first time since he’d arrived, hope, that fragile thing with wings soared in his chest. He looked at the sky.
It had been so long. Would he remember Threadbare?
The little bear got to work, brushing snow away until he found the old firepit. Damp wood, pine wood went into a pile, and the little bear pointed at it.
“Firestarter.”
Your Firestarter skill is now level 2!
A tiny spark leaped out, and the wood smoldered, but nothing happened.
No! He would NOT be denied!
“Firestarter! Firestarter! Firestarter!”
That did it. Around skill level four, the wood caught. Threadbare kept a few pointy pieces of wood aside. Then he glanced over at the pond, shucked off his apron, and stomped toward it with bearly determination. “Forage,” he said, leveling the skill up, and wading into the school of newly-born salmon.
Twenty minutes and one dexterity boost later, the sky was light, so light, and he knew the sun was just behind the eastern mountains. He eyed his eight fish, and decided they’d have to do. He tossed them over by the fire, and stuck them on the skewers, then put them over the flames. It took some fiddling, but soon he had them cooking.
You have unlocked the cook job!
Would you like to be a cook at this time? y/n?
No, that was pretty silly, he decided. The words went away, and he breathed a sigh of relief. What use was cooking to something that didn’t eat?
Besides, he wasn’t trying to cook them. He was just trying to get the smell into the air.
“Clean and Press,” he decided, tapping his noggin. And instantly the fish blood and guts and grime and mud and dirt from traveling whisked away from him. He put on his apron again, buckled it, turned around—
—and there it was, looming over him in the predawn light. Twice as tall as he was, black as pitch, with suspicious yellow eyes fixated on Threadbare. A pair of high, pointed ears poked out from its skull.
Though Threadbare had no word for it, humans would call this beast a bobcat.
And while every instinct shouted at the bobcat to chase the little creature away from its good-smelling dinner, to assert dominance and steal its food, the big feline hesitated.
Because something about this little thing seemed familiar.
It leaned in, animalistic instincts activating its own Scents and Sensibility, and it sniffed the teddy bear. It sniffed him carefully...
...until it came to the apron pocket that Threadbare had tucked soap powder into.
And its eyes opened wide, as a rumbling purr burst from its chest!
He had not ALWAYS been a bobcat, after all, and he too had lost his home, his home that smelled of soap powder and hoomins and polished wood and comfortable napping spots in the sun and warm places in winter and that little toy bear—
It WAS the little toy bear!
“Pulsivar,” said Threadbare, hugging the big cat, and then Pulsivar was purring and licking the little bear over and over again, and rolling around on the ground and purring and getting up and running in circles in pure joy.
CHA +1
LUCK +1
Well, Pulsivar celebrated for a little while, anyway. As much time as he could give the matter. Those fish smelled delicious and you had to have priorities, after all.
Threadbare watched happily as Pulsivar gobbled up the catch, even helping remove them from the skewers so the black bobcat could properly enjoy breakfast. Afterwards it simply flopped down next to the fire, half-on top of Threadbare, grooming him for all he was worth.
By befriending a wild beast you have unlocked the Tamer job!
You cannot become a Tamer at this time. Seek out your guild to change jobs.
The words faded as Threadbare laughed for the first time, tiny little giggles completely lost against the massive feline’s purr. It didn’t matter. Not one bit, because though everything wasn’t right with the world, this, right now, made everything a bit better.
And though there was a lot to do, though so much bad had happened and he still needed to go and save everyone else he could, Threadbare sighed and relaxed against the warm, purring lump of fur and muscle that was his first foe,
and first ally, and just enjoyed being cuddled again.
For now, this was enough.
And it was enough for Pulsivar, too.
Threadbare wanted to stay that way forever, but as the hours rolled by, his mind turned toward the next person he had to find.
A certain small bear...
*****
Raccants had a number of advantages over their base species. Raccoons were mostly nocturnal, and avoided doing anything in the day if they could help it. But raccants were a bit more flexible, and had more energy on the whole, thanks to a good endurance bump from their upgraded job. They could operate in the day or night or both, so long as they got some sleep at SOME point.
Which was a good thing, since the creature they knew as the Black Death mostly came out at night. Mostly. Over the last year, as it had started preying upon them, the fuzzy ring-tailed garbage hoarders had been forced to make a somewhat-fortified camp outside of their lair. To any passing human it would have looked like a teeny, half-hearted, randomly-built fence around a few kids tents. To the raccants it was their castle, their bastion to defend to the last, a masterpiece and triumph of engineering that would make any humans who saw it fall in love with it and adopt them all out of respect for their ingenuity!
Not that there were many humans around anymore. At all. Which sucked, and made for some hard winters. And a lot less interesting trash. They’d been forced to forage further and further afield because of that, with mixed results.
But the simple truth of the matter was that between the fortifications, the fires, and the noisy patrols they sent out at night to walk around the perimeter, the Black Death had only picked off a few of them over the winter. So it was working, and they were proud of it.
Which was why it was a bit of a shock when a small brown teddy bear fell from an overhanging tree branch, straight into the middle of camp, into the smoldering coals of the campfire. Hurriedly he got up and patted the embers away from him.
It was a good thing he had an apron. The sturdy little garment kept coals from his soft belly, otherwise he might have caught on fire right then and there.
Threadbare Volume 2 Page 2
