Bedivere’s arm, wrapped around my body and carrying me like a princess, was tense as all hell. Ignoring my embarrassing situation, I instead tried to focus all my energy on helping Queen. What a pickle. Things had already been bad enough when we came upon Vlugh’s little hidey hole, surrounded by a trio of the massive electric crystals, and had to wait. It was one of the greatest gatherings of our forces with Bedivere, the two other Valkybees, Beryl and a host of warriors, not to mention Beatrice. But when we arrived, Elofan met us and implored Beelzebub to join her in confronting Vlugh alone. Grehn would go too. And for my part, I barely cared. Beelzebub would do what needed to be done if I said so. But if they really wanted to give Vlugh a chance, I’d humor Beelzebub’s wishes. I could feel that she truly, deep within herself, trusted Vlugh in some manner, even as she scoffed and had the first instinct to attack him when they came face-to-face.


    They were talking now. The whole hive was listening in to their conversation, and Vlugh probably knew it, because he was still being cagey. Not that he was particularly talkative, even for his once-companions. As it were, this was proving to be a waste of time, but there was no choice. Something would have to be done. We had been operating under the assumption, until now, that the Link was infallible when it came to weaker Minds. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that Linking someone like Greyan would be a cakewalk - maybe it would work - but assuming that the Link was all-powerful was a terrible idea to have. It was a recipe for disaster.


    But Vlugh broke all my preconceptions. His Mind was not only much weaker than mine, but even on the trip here he was still weakened. A chunk of his brain had been freaking blown out, for Bee’s sake. He was, of course, missing his eye still. And yet. And yet, there he sat, deceiving the Link in its entirety. It wasn’t even that the Link didn’t work; it was that he had essentially fooled the Link. The ramifications were already creeping up my spine. I was on the brink of having Bella out in Yiwi interrogate every human Linked in the city, especially ones like Bobby. In his case, I was also on the verge of forcefully prying open his Mind vault regardless of the consequences he implied would come about. Maybe he was just desperate, trying to keep relaying information at all costs. If he died from the process, it was no chitin off my back.


    “Enno?”


    Damn. Queen heard that, of course. Or wait. She was talking about the random bear attack.


    “Of course I’m talking about the bear attack. Belial and Belphegora are down!”


    Chill. They’re not down. They’re just struggling to breathe.


    “Exactly!”


    “We are fine, Mother, simply startled,” Belial interrupted.


    They would be perfectly alive and well, obviously. I mean, it probably wasn’t pleasant, but the Valkybees weren’t weak enough to be taken out by the simple fact of being unable to breathe. To be honest, though, it was lucky that those two were the ones to fall victim to this bear’s weird Ability. If you had attacked, Queen, I think you would’ve at least passed out by now.


    “Precisely,” Belphegora said, puffing her mental chest out. “Though this is still extremely unpleasant. And we can’t last forever, sadly.”


    It took Queen a moment more to calm down. It made sense. The last time she had been in control of herself in the midst of a conflict, it was during the Burning. I would never panic when conflict arises. I was calm as an ocean, of course-


    “Can you shut up and help me?!”


    Right. Sorry. So the bear-


    “Mother!”


    Ben zipped up to me, eyes wild and frenzied. His squadron was close behind, as usual. He looked at me, then at Bedivere carrying me, then at the three electric crystals, then back to me again. I held my head high, pretending I was in complete control.


    “Yes, Ben?”


    “What’s going on? Isn’t that where Vlugh is? Beelzebub is talking to him right now about some crazy stuff!”


    Beatrice came forward. “Ben, we decided not to inform you of this. Mother made the decision under my advisement. I simply believe that risking your life was not an acceptable move to make under the circumstances.”


    “Huh? What circumstances? My wing? I’m fine, the electricity doesn’t scare me at all. I’m going in.”


    “Stop,” I said, causing him to freeze in place. “I thought it was the right decision. Vlugh is a liability. And the circumstance is that you think of Vlugh as a comrade now. Am I wrong?”


    “I mean, we fought together. He’s not evil or something. And Beelzebub thinks he’s alright too!”


    The look in Ben’s eyes was something I’d seen in him before. For various reasons. But it was never something I saw that came from my own actions. But I had to harden my heart.


    “Ben. Would you kill Vlugh if I asked you to?”


    By this time, all the bees present who were fully connected to the Link had turned to look at him. Beatrice, Beryl, Bend, Behemoth, Bedivere. Even his squadron, Bennet and Benita. Ben had a quick mouth, so almost instantly, his words ‘ of course’, echoed in everyone’s Minds. I don’t know if they noticed, then, something I did. A tiny spark of something that I had only really identified before in Queen.


    A lie.


    “Enno!”


    “Damn. Ben, please just wait. Let Beelzebub handle it. We need to approach this carefully. It’s a complete unknown and you’re too valuable to lose. I need to focus right now, so please just bear with me. Literally, there’s a bear attacking us.”


    The tone shifted immediately. Bedivere’s tense arms shivered in anticipation - he wanted nothing more than to fly to Queen’s position right this moment. Already we were commanding more warriors to fly to that edge of the forest, but I knew it was pointless. It was going to be up to me and the individuals already there to resolve this. As for what it was, well, that was the question, wasn’t it? Obviously an Ability was in play, but there were some strange, strange details involved. The area they were in, the one making the surroundings brownish, was probably the limit of the Ability’s range, but leaving it would probably be easier said than done. The teddy bear was also a weird detail. Unless the Bear god was a hilarious individual, it was strange to think of a bear even knowing about something like that.


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    On that note, where the hell did a bear even come from? They did once live in the forest before the Burning, according the humans’ memories, but they were rare. And none of them were grizzly bears, like the one counting on its claws. At this point, it had finished counting with one of its paws and had moved on to the second. Which, a bear using its claws to count was also a weird detail.


    Queen. I’m going to kill you.


    “What? Now is not the time to be joking around, you dolt. The bear-“


    It took a tremendous concentration, but Queen was weak on her feet anyways. With a quick swipe of Mind, her legs flew out from under her and she landed face down in the dirt with a yelp. Follo and Enfla jumped in surprise, and even the bear paused in its counting for a split second before continuing. The teddy bear didn’t move.


    Queen, tell the fernen to lie down. We should also get the warriors to curl up and act dead on the ground.


    She hesitated for a moment, but eventually she nodded, and with an undeniable hint of annoyance at having been flipped onto the floor, gave the word to the others. Once everyone was on the ground, and even the Valkybees made an incredible effort to remain still despite their fading consciousness, the bear finally stopped counting its claws. There were still two left, which meant that we might be on the right track.


    Quick as a blur, it attacked.


    “Correct!”


    The teddy bear shouted with a wave as the monstrous bear roared, moving to slam its claws into the nearby Belphegora. Queen’s heart quickened uncontrollably, and she tried to reach out and grab Belphegora and move her away. I felt a tug on our Mind, but she couldn’t draw it out. I acted as her arm. She didn’t even try to move her body, instinctively moving her Mind instead, and I helped to have it comply. A tiny push moved Belphegora from the bear’s attack, and it seemed to blink before roaring again. The teddy bear danced as the bear attacked, and although I didn’t control our entire Mind, it didn’t take a nuclear bomb to beat the bear’s clumsy and telegraphed attacks. Eventually, though, the bear smartened up. It sniffed the air, locked its eyes on Queen, and sprinted towards her on all fours.


    Oh crap.


    At this point, Queen definitely wanted to move. But the teddy bear’s dance was slowing down. We were still on the right track. When the bear reached Queen, she still hadn’t moved, purely because every part of my thoughts was telling her not to. If I were there, my thoughts probably wouldn’t be so clear, because, well, there would be a grizzly bear running straight at me. But I was somewhat separate, so I could stay calm. Calm enough to put up one of my Mind barriers between Queen’s ‘dead’ body and the bear’s claws.


    Massive paws slammed into the barrier and bounced off, making it yelp in pain, and interestingly, it stopped in its tracks. To my astonishment, instead of continuing its assault, it instead turned and looked at the teddy bear, almost expectantly. But the teddy bear didn’t respond. Instead, it just continued dancing, slowing even further, until it just flopped over in the air like the life had disappeared from its form. Our surroundings shifted, turning into a kaleidoscope of dark colors. The bear snorted, then lumbered back to the place it had been sitting only moments ago, plopping itself back down. Thankfully, Belial and Belphegora finally stopped choking and drank deep gulps of fresh air, and Queen sighed in relief.


    “What in the world just happened? This Ability is absurd.”


    It’s definitely weird, and crazy strong. But strong Abilities do tend to have some sort of downside. Looks like in this case, the bear doesn’t have complete control of what happens, like a game with set rules. I’ve gotta say, our butts got totally saved by the CBU there.


    “Hm. I see. If the CBU could not perfectly retrieve memory, you would not have figured out something so arbitrary. It seems odd that something from your world would have a direct correlation here.”


    If it’s brown, lie down. If it’s black, fight back. And if it’s white, good night. A classic saying, more like pneumonic, to know how to deal with bears. Well, technically, I’d recently learned it was total bullshit and was actually a dangerous mantra to adhere to in all cases of bear encounters, but whatever. It seemed to work in this case. A grizzly bear had popped out of nowhere and pulled us into a weird game, so naturally the Valkybees responded with what they do best: violence. And the result? They got totally hosed. Which, for something like that to happen to the Valkybees of all bees, meant this Ability was incredibly strong and didn’t care about things like the difference in power. The bear didn’t seem all that amazing on its own, after all, if a barrier made from my limited control of Mind could easily stop it. It was the absolute rule of its Ability that was dangerous. And also unfair! The bear could still attack even though we were supposed to play dead. But as long as what we did wasn’t considered an attack by the Ability, it seemed to be fine. If this was how the game would go, then this fight would be a piece of cake!


    Belial really wanted to rain fire on the bear, but I held him back. The bear was calm as can be, which could only mean that the game was still being played, and breaking the rules probably meant more punishment. Thankfully, we were bees. No reason to let the bear play its game for free. We commanded an unLinked warrior to hurtle towards the bear, stinger raised. It was sad, but this was they were born for. Unfortunately, as expected, the teddy bear sprang to life.


    “The next round hasn’t started!”


    The warrior continued flying to the best of its ability, but one could see the sudden loss of air in its lungs. By the time it reached the bear, it was already on the verge of death, and the bear easily swiped it away. It landed on the ground, curled up. No longer was it playing dead.


    “No critter is a quitter!”


    Once again, the teddy bear sang, though the bear looked surprised this time. Unbeknownst to it, we’d also tried sending a warrior out of the area of the Ability, but it proved useless. Hidden behind our swarm, one of the warriors tried pushing against the shifting sky, but its strength left its body and it too fell to the ground, twitching and curling into a ball. Dead. Two warriors dead, and only a bit of information to go off, but at least now we knew the true power of this Ability. And it was, in all honesty, completely unfair.


    Before we had time to come up with a plan, the shifting landscape slowed. Despite myself, I almost wanted to rub my claws in anticipation. It wasn’t an amazing situation, but not hopeless in the slightest. Would it become black for a black bear, and we’d have to fight directly? Or white for a polar bear, and something else would happen?


    The world finally settled into a shade of black, with some level of transparency. I was ready. Except it didn’t end there. Splotches of white appeared in the darkness, and the black color of the surroundings seemed to… elongate? It almost seemed to become fluffy, if that even made sense. I barely noticed the bear itself shift, transforming from a massive brown grizzly into another sort of bear. It shrank substantially and became lean, its fur growing into what could only be called adorably fluffy. Its snout elongated too, turning almost completely white in the process. Most alarming were its claws. Already huge, they elongated into razor sharp points, like a horror character ready to chop us up with its fingers alone.


    “And what sort of bear is this? Which part of the rhyme do we need?”


    Bedivere looked down at me expectantly. Ah. He was watching the whole thing. I hadn’t noticed, but everyone was actually looking at me. Except Ben. He was still peering at the electric crystals.


    Ahem. Right. The bear. Uh. I have no idea.