Somewhere in there, deep, deep down, there is a spark of the old Heather. The beloved bear has moments of lucidity as she runs down her terrified prey. In those brief moments, she thinks: Good. I’ve always hated all you assholes, anyway.
Unlike most boss battles, it didn’t appear that I was locked into the area. But I couldn’t run, could I? I looked wildly about. Behind me was a large intersection. A two-story building sat at each corner. It was already too dark for me to see inside.
Carclass="underline" Mordecai. Boss battle. Level 19 black bear with worms for claws and roller skates for feet. Tips?
Mordecai: Roller skates? Like those little shoes with wheels on them? Are you serious?
Carclass="underline" Yes, I’m fucking serious!
Mordecai: Male or female?
Carclass="underline" Female.
Mordecai: Shit. Okay. What about your Protective Shell? Has that reset yet?
Carclass="underline" Yes. It did about 15 minutes ago.
Mordecai: Black bears are the smallest of the bears, but they are faster and stronger than they look. Female bears are much smarter than the male ones. I don’t know what the worm claws mean. Don’t let her hug you. Use your shell.
Heather roared and stood to her full height, balancing on her two legs as she spread her two upper arms out.
“Fuck me,” I said, scrambling back. I’d seen plenty of black bears in my life, and they usually weren’t that big, most no larger than big dogs. Heather was an exception. She was huge. On her roller skates, she stood about eight feet tall. The pink clown hat sat cockeyed on her skull head. I could see where the cone of the hat was fused directly to the bone, like she was some sort of fucked-up bearicorn.
The worm claws came to life, dozens of little appendages wriggling and undulating.
…And growing longer and longer. The bone-white worms appeared to glow in the fading light as they spread to the ground, like pasta being made directly from the bear’s hands. As the swirling worms fell, I caught glints of actual bear claws at the ends of the paws.
Holy shit, I thought. That’s really fucking gross.
Where the hell was Signet? I looked about for the elite. My eyes caught movement, and I spied her through a hole in a building across the intersection. She was on the second floor, and her arms were raised like they’d been yesterday. Her strange tattoos twirled about her body the same as before.
I sensed the movement before I saw it. I’d only looked over my shoulder for a second, but the bear had halved the distance between us. She sailed across the wooden slats on her roller skates, gliding at me. The well-oiled skates made a whisk, whisk, whisk noise across the ground. She whipped her arm back as I twisted, pulling a pair of smoke bombs from my inventory and tossing them at my feet. I pulled two more as I started to run. I’d learned my lesson the other day not to use just one of these things.
Too slow. Heather swiped from fifteen feet away. The worms swept at me like a whip before I’d even realized what the hell was happening. Dozens of worms rushed at me, slapping into me, and wrapping around me three quick times like a damn tetherball. The wet, cold ends of the worms hit the exposed skin of my upper legs, and I felt them start to burrow into my body. I need pants. I really fucking need pants. It felt like knives going into my skin.
Yes, yes, this is new flesh. Primal flesh. Delicious flesh.
Strong he is. Do we taste this? He will feed our clowns well.
The clowns hunger, Primal. They are ravenous. And now they know of your flavor.
I smashed down on Protective Shell as the smoke started to billow from the smoke bombs. The worms severed off the bear, cutting them in half and killing them. The ends half-burrowed into my skin dropped away. The bear, which had been almost on top of me, rocketed back, hitting the ground and rolling away. I’d blown it a good fifty feet back.
What the hell was that?
The worm things had entered my skin and immediately started talking in my mind. The words had come all at once, piling on top of one another. I couldn’t tell if it was one voice or a thousand voices. Male or female. It’d felt as if someone had taken their dirty fingers, sunk them directly into the meat of my brain, and dragged.
Fuck no. Fuck that. I would die before I let that happen again. I jumped into action.
I rushed at the fallen bear, leaving the protection of the shield behind. I pulled nuts and bolts and barbells from my inventory as I ran, scattering them on the ground.
I was too close for a boom jar or a stick of dynamite. Instead, I pulled a regular jug of moonshine and tossed it at the bear as hard as I could. The jug shattered against the bear’s head. I’d thrown it significantly harder than I’d expected or anticipated. Wow. Even with my enhanced strength, I hadn’t been expecting the sheer violence of the toss. I skidded to a stop.
A health bar finally appeared as Heather screamed in rage. Moonshine splashed over the bear, who remained on her back, struggling. The pungent stench filled the intersection. The puddle highlighted itself in my vision, and the word Flammable Liquid appeared floating over it. That’s new, I thought as I pulled a torch, lit it, and tossed it at the bear.
I didn’t wait to see what happened next. I turned and ran toward the still-billowing smoke plume. Like last time, it was an irritatingly-narrow cone of smoke despite the multiple bombs. It’d caught in the wind, swelling away from the bear. But the smoke cone was just wide enough to hide within.
Whoosh.
I felt the heat of the moonshine igniting. I ran into the smoke and turned in time to see the bear pulling herself to her feet, her entire body aflame. The red and blue flames rose into the night air. The billowing fire partially obscured Heather’s health bar. It moved down, but at a crawl. It wasn’t even in the red yet.
The on-fire bear shrieked and started roller skating at me. Whisk, whisk, whisk.
Now, if you’ve never had a flaming, skull-faced bear on roller skates barreling at you full speed, you don’t know what you’re missing.
She stumbled and fell, tripping over a dumbbell. When she rose again, half of her skin and fur remained on the ground, revealing an exposed ribcage, filled completely with worms, like a knot of ramen noodles. The worms burst forth from the flames, reaching every which way.
For fuck’s sake.
I’d been saving it for a dire situation, and I pulled it out now. The scratcher lottery ticket I’d received from that Lucky Bastard box. Fireball or Custard. I had a fifty/fifty chance. It would either fire a level-15 fireball, which would probably kill it immediately. Or it would splatter the thing with strawberry custard, which would heal it.
I awkwardly held the paper ticket in my left hand as I scratched off one of the five spots, revealing a little spinning circle. The tiny icon flashed back and forth from a red fireball to a pink glob. The skating boss was nothing but a skeleton now. Only the hat and the roller skates remained on fire. Even the round, bulbous eyes were gone. A mass of worms covered the skeleton, as if it was wrapped in yarn.