A Bear with three spears pointing behind it.

The mighty bear. Those who symbolize themselves with the bear tend to be powerful, brave, and/or understanding. They are also associated with peace, aggression, authority, solitude, and majesty.

On the banner, a massive brown bear stands upright in a threatening pose, its claws extended and mouth open in a snarl. Behind the bear, three spears radiate from its back, their steel tips gleaming as they stab into the creature’s back. The bear's fur is depicted in rich detail, with darker shading around its shoulders and lighter tones on its chest. The image captures both the raw power of the bear and the martial strength represented by the weapons, serving as a fitting symbol for your unified kingdom.

You tear the banner off its stand, wrap yourself in it and crouch low by the fire, holding your hands out to warm yourself up. As the heat washes over you, you feel memories coming to you. Memories about who you were and who you are.

Your name is Vidar Asgeir. You are famed for slaying Calgor the spear-backed, a monstrous bear that had threatened your home on the Astineki Coast. When you had slain this beast, the druids of your clan performed a ritual that allowed you to absorb the beast's power and grant you the ability to take on its form at will for a short period of time. With this new power and using the beast as the symbol for your new kingdom, you brought together the disparate nomadic clans of the Astineki Coast and created a unified country with you as its king. Your rule had lessened the persistent infighting between the clans, creating a better **** to fight against the orc raiders that plague your land and ultimately integrating the few willing orcs into your growing empire. Much of your elite troops and royal guard are composed of orc warriors and former raiders.

Recently, one of your vassal tribes had started raids on old elf temples from a long collapsed empire further inland. At first, they merely gave you some of the treasures they raided as tribute, but steadily, they began reporting greater resistance to their raids. Other tribes followed suit with reports that they had been attacked unprovoked by elves. Eventually, this conflagrated into total war.

“War,” you whisper to yourself, and a log in the fireplace cracks a loud pop. “I am at war with the elves.” the fire pops again. “They are in the castle.” the crackling becomes louder, and the world around you blurs as the fire grows to surround you. “Their figurehead is here. She has come to kill me. She claimed to be the chosen one to bring back that dead empire of theirs, and my **** is the first step toward that goal.” You feel the weight of your armor and bear cloak manifest on your shoulders as your ears begin to ring, or maybe they have been ringing for a while.

“Die, human scum!” you hear a feminine voice shout from behind you through the ringing in your ears.

You instinctively tighten the grip on your sword and twist your body around to block the oncoming blow. The sound of metal clashing against metal is barely heard over the roar of the fire surrounding you, and you lock eyes with your assailant.

Her emerald green eyes blaze with fury, and her blonde hair is tied back in a tight ponytail befitting a warrior. Her clothes, however, show that her people are not true warriors. She wears a white short-sleeved cloak and short dress with gold trim, her midriff exposed, and heels on her white leather boots. At least she has the intelligence to have a leather armor pauldron on one shoulder.

You shove her back, and she slides on her feet with needless flair and a dramatic pose. You sigh as you humor her with a flourish of your blade. She lunges forward, trying to stab you through with her rapier. You twist your claymore to point down as you block the oncoming attack, spin the locked blades so that your sword comes to lock hers to the ground, and you take a step toward her and land a jab to her face. She stumbles back, sword still in hand, and spits a wad of blood.

“You’ll pay for that, filthy human.” she said.

You raise your hands a little bit. “I’m waiting.” you taunt.

She sneers and lunges again. Not a great diversity of tactics in this woman’s head, is there?

Your blades lock once more, and you come close enough to butt heads with the other. As she glares daggers at you, you take a moment to look down at her breasts. This feature of her body has been fairly distracting since she barged into your throne room to kill you not a minute ago, accentuated by the window that was a part of her outfit that is slowly fraying at the edges as the fight drags on. If the fight went on long enough, you suspect she’d be fighting naked. However, your castle would burn down before then, so you aim to end this quickly.

Your gaze doesn’t go unnoticed as a blush rises on her face, and she pushes off of you, sending her back a few feet. “Stop staring at my boobs!” she shouts as she puts her free arm over her boob window.

“Don’t make the boob window of your dress so big and I just might.”

“Insufferable, dirty-minded, filthy human.”

“That’s a lot more creative name-calling that I’ve heard from you this entire fight. Got any more?”

She growls and lunges for you again. You move to repeat the last motion you did, but she catches you off guard with a leg sweep, knocking you prone, and shrugs your sword out of your grip. Clever girl.

She points the tip of her blade at your throat. “Any last words?”

You smirk. “Yeah, I’ll teach you the meaning of ‘Don’t poke the bear.’”

She reels her arm back to go for a thrust, giving you ample time to start getting up and begin your transformation.

Starting with your arm, your muscles grow to three times their size, covering with a dark brown fur, as your fingers recede into paws with long black claws. You deflect the blade with your added mass and shove your paw into her chest, clenching your claws to tear at her shirt, exposing her collarbones, her skin unblemished.

Losing her grip on her sword, she tries to use her other hand to pull the severed pieces of clothing back together, willing them to return to their previous state. “Perver-!” she began but stopped as you transformed into your monstrous bear form, the pelt seeming to melt into and grow over you like vines on a wall.

You roar, shaking the castle grounds, causing the inferno around you to flicker and the elf to fall onto her ass.

“Shalia!” you hear another woman shout as another elf with short black hair and gold eyes enters the room, wielding a bow and carrying a spare on her back.

“Sorisana?!” the blonde elf yells. “What are you doing here? I told you I’d take care of him myself.”

Sorisana tosses her spare bow to Shalia and hands her a second quiver. “We’re best friends and I was sworn to protect you. I would never let you fight this monster alone.”

Shalia smiles, and the two elves notch arrows and aim at you. “Then let’s do this together.”

You narrow your bear eyes at them, snarling. You let out another roar and charged at them head-on.

They loose their arrows, and you’re too big to dodge them entirely, but you have taken the form of Calgor, a monster bear famous for shrugging off an entire volley of arrows. Your hide is thick enough to survive these arrows.

None of the elves’ arrows managed to pierce your hide, and only when it was too late did the two elves run away, but not before slamming a massive paw down on Sorisana, pinning her to the ground, possibly breaking a rib or two.

“Sori!” Shalia said as she turned around to face her endangered friend.

Keeping the black-haired elf pinned to the ground, you shift back to your human form, pull out a dagger hidden in your boot, and point it to the back of her neck. “Tell the rest of your people to surrender now, or she gets it.” you threaten.

“Don’t do it, Shalia!” she says. You grab her hair to pull her head up and press the knife to the side of her neck.

Shalia hesitates, but not for long as she closes her eyes and nods to you. “Alright.” she says, “I’ll tell them to surrender. Let me cast a spell that will communicate that to them.”

You tilt your head. You don’t know elf magic very well. “How do I know that you are doing exactly as you say?”

She doesn’t respond as she tosses aside her bow and arrows, begins waving her hands to cast magic, and sends a ball of white light straight up. After a moment, the din of battle that you forgot was there dies down, leaving only the sound of the burning castle around you. Shouts could be heard from humans organizing firefighting efforts.

“It is done,” she says. “Let her go.”

That was too fast for her to make that decision. You don’t like how quickly she made that decision. You suspect there might be something else. You pull your prisoner up to her feet with you, continuing to hold the knife to her throat. “How do I know this isn’t a trick? Plus, you’ve caused me a lot of damage. I might just take my frustrations of you out on her just because.”

“NO!” Shalia interjected. “Please don’t hurt her. I’ll do anything you want. Just don’t hurt her.”

“Anything?” you say.

She blushes and weaves her hands again to cast another spell. You twitch and press the knife into Sorisana’s neck again, almost drawing blood, as you begin to demand Shalia stop casting again. Still, she was too quick and finished casting, a golden light dissipating from her and flowing over you harmlessly.

“What was that?”

“A contract spell,” Shalia said. “as long as Sorisana remains unharmed, I will do whatever you say and am unable to harm you.”

“Kneel.” you say tentatively.

She kneels before you as if someone else physically **** her to do it.

You quirk an eyebrow, run your tongue across your teeth, then smirk. “Show me your breasts.” you command.

“You vile-!” Sorisana began before you reapplied the knife against her throat, and she shut up.

Shalia shuddered, and she was visibly fighting her own arms from moving up to her dress. They slowly inched toward the top of her dress before grabbing the edge and pulling it down to reveal her perky pearly white breasts with bright pink nipples. “You satisfied, monster?” she growled.

You nod and say nothing as you take in the sexy sight.

After a while, you tell her she can cover herself back up just as a group of guards and firefighters arrive in the room. The guards take both elves off your hands, holding their hands behind their backs.

“The elves outside surrendered.” One of your captains informs you, a human flanked by two orcs. “They are currently being detained in the castle yards, and we are awaiting your orders on what to do with them.” he looks to the blonde and raven-haired elves. “I take it one of these two is the leader.”

“Figurehead more like.” You explain. Shalia glares at you.

The captain nods and asks you a question.