The night was full on and the moon pale but bright enough to cast shadows over the lands. Predators were out hunting now, some of them sentient. Every once in a while the big grey bear needed to just run, take to the wilds and run and hunt until the morning sun bathed the land and woke him up from a deep slumber.

Before he would sleep, however, he needed to fill his belly. To that he needed to hunt, or, more precisely, needed to stalk. The big bear wasn't slow, but deer were faster still, however, wolves were good at running down deer. So the bear found a pack of wolves that was hunting and trailed them as they trailed a herd of deer. He watched from the shadows, using vastly more intelligence than a normal bear would, as the wolves brought down a deer.

At that point before they could devour it the bear carefully set down something he was carrying in his mouth and charged forward. He gave a warning roar which took the small pack of wolves off guard as they turned to face the threat, but the bear kept coming despite the return barks. Three of the five wolves charged the bear who simply bowled over them and stopped at the deer taking a swipe at one of the wolves that was close to it. The canine dodged it and back away as the pack gathered itself again and circled the intruder.

The bear snorted and roared again waiting to see if the wolves would challenge him. A wolf behind him decided to be brave and pounced but the bear turned and and caught the wolf with one large paw. But the bear held back, not wanting to do any last damage to the wolf, so the wolf hit the ground with a thud, sore but otherwise unharmed since the bear held back its strength.

The wolves prowled for a bit longer before giving up and leaving the bear to its meal. With the wolves gone the bear started to eat his fill. Once he was finished, blood covering his muzzle he made his way back to where he had dropped his item. With a grunt the bear sat down on his backside and picked up what he had dropped; a huge hive that he cracked in half to expose the golden honey inside. Happily the bear started to lick and munch on his dessert, ignoring the angry bees that had been following him for a while now and trying to sting him through his heavy grey fur.

This was a guilty pleasure of the bear's, and in the years he had been doing this he had made sure to never get caught.

There were not forests like this one in Parvpora. Sure there were stands of trees, and the mountains had plenty of trees growing on them and Koschei swamp was thick and dark, but none of them were as dense, deep or so deeply steeped in ancient magics as Virens was. Glaciem was approaching its end, and he could feel the life of Terra returning to the earth, the potent magic of life seeping back into even this ancient place. He could feel the power returning to his body as Parvpora began to return to light the sky with her sister Canelux that shown full and bright. The bear inside was awake, and it was growing stronger. Hibernation was effectively over. 

He inhaled deeply of the earthy tones of the forest before he let the bear come out. The shift felt good, it was nice to stretch out. Twenty or so years after being bitten, it had become second nature. The massive black bear looked rather thin, and there was a touch of hunger after a long sleep. He could smell that somewhere something had been hunting. He could smell the blood. He could smell the pack of wolves, hear their anger and frustration. He had a suspicion that something had cheated them out of their kill. He chuckled, or growled as a bear might and lumbered off towards the smell of water. Fish sounded tasty. The water would have plenty to sustain him for the time being. 

Sure enough, the waters were full of fish and he caught and ate his fill. As he ate, he became distinctly aware of the scent of another. Ursa, like him, but not wild. As a matter of fact, the smell was lycan. His curiosity was peaked. He finished the fish and got up, and followed the scent deeper into the wood. 

The grey bear had finished half of his sticky dessert, honey running down his chin and covered his paws and muzzle, he had really found a great hive this time! He ate some of the bees as well, since they were in the honey comb anyway, but their stingers did little to even the inside of his mouth as he ate, so he paid them no mind again.

He thought back a few days before, when he had ran into the knights in the tavern with that red headed elf woman. That kind prompted a sour mood in him, not to mention that night's drinking, and had made him decide to come out on this night to relax a little, allow himself to indulge in his guilty pleasure.

So it was with this tasty distraction and the honey covering his nose, therefore making it so that it was almost all that he could smell, the big grey bear didn't smell the other bruin approaching. It wasn't until a quarter of the way through the second half of the hive that the grey bear started to sense he was being watched. Slowly he stopped eating and looked around, not bothering to stand though, until he spotted the huge black bear watching him.

The grey huffed. ”Shoo, get, go away, this is my honey.” He growled. ”Silly wild bears thinking they can take my honey sometimes.” He grumbled the last to himself and kept an eye on the “wild” bear until it either decided to bugger off or to challenge him to what was left of the honey. Either way he wasn't giving up what he had found, not to mention with a full belly he was starting to get sleepy and wasn't actually up for much of a fight.

It wasn't just the scent he had decided to follow. As he had followed the scent through the dense underbrush, there was a strange magical influx, which seemed to coincide with the location of the scent he followed. He slowed his pace as they grey bear came into view munching rather happily on a honey comb. He paused and watched for a moment, since he couldn't figure out why such an influx of magic was permeating the area. 

He hadn't really expected the other bear to command him to "shoo". It was most comical and it rather struck his funny bone. The black bear began to laugh heartily. 
"Brother, the only one who ever tells me to shoo is my wife, and even then it doesn't work most the time," he chuckled. "Don't worry, I don't have much of a taste for honey," he said as he lumbered closer and came to sit within a safe distance of his lycan kin. 

"This is the first time I've come across kin anywhere but in Koschei or on the ocean. Do you have a name brother? Or a clan?"

When the black bear began to laugh Lokir cocked his head to one side in question, that was a strange reaction from a wild bear. But when the bear spoke Lokir snorted in surprise and nearly choked on his honey as he watched the black bear lumber closer while listening to what he was saying. Wife? That wasn't a wild bear term, not that wild bears would ever reply in such a manner. Kin? Brother? Clan? Lokir was confused and it showed on his face.

He set the honey down for now and turned to face the other bear directly, while licking his nose clean of it so he could get his full sense of smell back. Once he did his jaw dropped open as he finally found the ability to speak again. ”Yo, you're a werebear?!” He exclaimed taking one step closer, but suddenly he felt like bouncing around like a cub! ”No, no I have no clan, I am on my own and my name is Lokir.” He started but didn't stop now that he was started, Lokir was excited now! ”I've never met another werebear, in the three years I have been one, I knew our kind was rather rare but to actually meet another, a kin, I hadn't thought this day would come for much longer, if ever!”

”As I said I wasn't born this way, I was human before and I took this blood on as a gift from my Lord from when I was a knight in his service. He gifted it to me for saving his daughter despite the way it had to be done breaking my vows.” He finally paused to take a breath only to continue. ”But, who are you? Where did you come from? Were you born this way?” He asked in rapid succession, but then finally stopped. Lokir was normally a calm being but this was a totally unexpected meeting and he wasn't to contain his excitement. Truth be told Lokir didn't know a lot about werebears beyond what he could figure out from being one, but that was it. He also had no idea how is old Lord had come to posses the blood of one strong enough to turn him in the first place.

This bear had no idea what Drae was talking about. It was almost as though he couldn't tell what Drae was supposed to be. Something he had said clearly confused him enough to put down his sweet treat and clean the honey from his maw. It took only a moment of cleaning and sniffing with a clean snout for him to realize what Drae was to him and Drae chuckled at his sudden cub-like excitement as he came closer and began bombarding him with questions. Drae at least was given a name and it gave him a place to start. Drae lifted a huge paw as Lokir bounded closer to him, a welcome to come closer. 

"No, no, Lokir," Drae chuckled. "I was turned, like you. About twenty years ago," Drae explained. "But it wasn't nearly as glamorous as yours. I didn't have the pleasure of being sired by one who could teach me like you did. I was in Koschei and was attacked by a crazed individual while trying to help a young girl out of his path," he explained. "My name is Adraejen Porthyrius. You might actually know me as The Keeper of the Keys and Secrets of Knowledge and the Arcane," he chuckled. 

Turned twenty years ago, so he was more like Lokir than Lokir had thought. But when the name came up, along with the title, Lokir tilted his head in question for a moment again before a clicked what all that meant. ”You're a God?!” What a hell of a night this was! Lokir had never met a God before, not that he didn't believe in them that evidence was all over the place and was rather hard to deny. He just hadn't been a close follower of any of them.

As befitting a knight, even in this form, Lokir dropped back to some formality and managed an akward looking bow of his front end towards Drae. ”It is an honour to meet you.” Lokir intoned, his excitement still evident despite the added formality. ”I'm sorry for the way that that change was forced upon you, but you seem to be handling it rather well from what I can tell?” He spoke up. ”Ah, no, the one who gave me this gift did not explain anything beyond what it do to me and the added strength I would gain. He himself was human, he had the blood preserved somehow and in fact I do not know the source of the blood either.” Lokir had no idea who his “sire” might be, if such a term was used among their kind he didn't know that either. ”Truly, I know nothing of what we are truly capable of beyond what I have managed to figure out in the last three years.” He confessed with a sigh, until now, aside from his mother and sister, he had felt rather lonely as a werebear not knowing any others like him. ”I will admit, the one advantage of our kin being so rare is the looks on an enemies face when I decide to shift in the middle of a fight and have my armour shift to match this body.” He gave a huffed chuckle.