There was no time to think, as the bear took a swipe at him with a paw that would have crushed his skull even without the razor sharp claws that were attached to it. Jumping backwards into the room in the hope that he could draw the Bearcast into the room and away from the exit, Harry was surprised when the girl stepped between them, her uninjured arm in the air in a placating manner.

"Mother, please calm down, he wasn't the one that..." Harry didn't know what it was that twigged him to move once more before the girl had finished speaking, but he reached out and grabbed the girl just as the bear roared and lashed out once more. The girls shocked gasp turned into a shriek as the bear's claw raked the area just in front of her where she had been stood moments before.

"I don't think she is in the right mind to listen to you girl, now when I tell you, make a run for the door understand?" Drawing the battle wand from the pocket he had put it in before as the bear reared up once more, he wasn't able to look at the girl to see if she nodded or not, not that it really mattered of course because the chances of them getting out of the room were quite small. The girl's voice spoke once more as Harry raised the wand and cast observe, the ability very quickly showing him that he had been right to aim for the face and the eyes in general, as they were the bears weakest point.

"She won't recognise me, we can't change to our human forms in our land and I cannot change back like this. Please don't hurt her if you can..." With a sinking feeling in his stomach as the idea of blinding this girl's mother was something he knew he couldn't do even as she was trying to kill him, Harry instead aimed at the bears back left leg, which had a large injury on it already and had been identified as another weak point.

Karmic Conundrum Complete- +5 Karma!

Moving to the side and ignoring the pop up for the moment as he started firing his battle wand at the Bearcast, who quickly fell back to its four legged gait in order to protect its back legs, Harry was pleased to see that the girl had moved the other way around the room, that was one less thing for him to worry about as the bear started lumbering after him. The Bearcast was obviously greatly slowed by its existing injuries which was why Harry was able to stay ahead of it for the moment as the thing continued to swipe or attempt to bite him. However, the numbers that were showing up when his wand charges actually hit the bear were not so heartening, each reading a solitary 1 or in more than a few cases a 0.

The bear had moved far enough away from the door to allow the girl to escape, but instead of simply running out of the door to safety, the girl turned at the door and grabbed it with her good hand, moving her head to indicate that she was waiting for him to make an escape as well. As if on cue, a screen popped up in front of him once more and the world froze, allowing him to relax for a moment even as the now familiar rolling text appeared:

Bosses, Enemies and Escaping-

Throughout the game you will find various Bosses related to sub-quests, quests and secrets, and whilst some of these bosses will be scalable to the character's current level and skills (primarily those related to the Main storyline), others have a set level. This of course means there will be certain enemies in sections of the game that the character will find nigh on impossible to beat given their skills, so therefore the only way to survive is to escape from the area and lose the enemies who are after your heads. This will usually involve making the enemy lose sight of the character and then maintaining that loss of sight over a period of time until the enemy is distracted by something or someone else.

New Quest-

Escape the Angry Bearcast

Bonus Objectives:

-Lose the Bearcast in less than a minute

-?

A timer with 60 appeared about 3 m in front of him as he clicked the okay button, the number slowly ticking down as Harry dodged another flurry of swipes from the bear, the last one catching him with a glancing swipe that nevertheless sent him flying over the desk in the room and landing roughly on the floor. The bear rumbled forward as Harry righted himself, shifting round the desk to get at him with a ambling gait that made Harry very happy this bear was injured and not trying to kill him at full strength.

-27 hp

Seeing an opportunity to get out from the bottleneck he had stupidly placed himself in, Harry lunged under the desk as the bear finished making its way round it, glad that whilst he seemed to be a little taller and bulkier than he had been when he had been this age he managed to fit through the gap in the desk that had been left for the occupants legs. A frantic wiggle later and he was out the other side as the Bearcast roared with anger once more, Harry not caring in the slightest as he made a beeline for the door and the chance of escape beyond it.

The Werekin girl was trying to pull the door closed as he approached, no doubt in an attempt to trap her mother inside rather than allow her to pursue them through the halls, either that or trying to trap him in there with her. He doubted the second one given she could have just run rather than wait, so as he reached the door he grabbed the heavy oak frame with both hands and pulled, jarring it into movement even as he heard the Bearcast start thundering towards them once more. The door closed and he let out a sigh of relief as it shook with heavy cracking sound before the Bearcast's pained breathing could be heard through the door along with the raking of claws upon wood.

"That should keep mother busy for a while, though I hope the human's that come later will not hurt her..." The Werekin girl didn't seem overly upset at the fact that her mother had just tried to kill her, but given what Harry had read in the description about Bearcast this kind of thing sounded like it might happen more often than he would expect. A screen appeared in front of him again but he ignored it for the moment as he pointed down the corridor towards where he had left Hermione.

"I left my friend hiding down there when I heard you crying and came to investigate, so if you are okay we can go find her and then get your arm in a sling or something." His more mundane first aid skills were not exactly top dollar but he knew that leaving the arm as it was would probably be worse for it then trying to give it some support. The Werekin looked at him a little confused before slowly nodding her head.

"I don't know what this, sling thing is, but I will trust your judgement Taoiseach. Though I would wish to know the name of the clan I am to pledge my service to in repayment for saving my life." The reverence in the girl's tone made Harry feel a little self-conscious as another tab appeared on top of the first one he had ignored, drawing his eyes to it.

Accept Follower: Aife of the Werekin

Follower type- Clan Magic Bond

Yes No

Followers will usually provide the player with unique bonuses related to their own skills, so for example a great swordsman would provide the player with a bonus to melee weapons or a scholar providing bonuses to knowledge based skill, as long as they are part of the player's faction. Of course other followers have more physical value to the player, either as frontline fighters or better balanced individuals that can go on separate missions for the player or act in their interests elsewhere, so the followers have an impact upon the player other than just improving their stats.

Accepting followers into your faction has an impact on how others view the player and their faction, a murderous arch-demon with a history of slaughtering entire towns for fun might provide your faction with a powerful asset but will cause massive negative connotations with society as a whole. So the player must consider their actions carefully before accepting followers whenever they can, lest they end up making their overall mission that much harder to complete.

Finally, the methods of Follower acquisition have different effects that will be listed as part of the follower acceptance screen, ranging from a basic verbal agreement to an unbreakable vow and soul bond. The more serious the bond the less likely the follower is to be subverted against your cause without obvious signs and their views will become more aligned with the players, but the actions of your soul sworn elemental will have greater impact on peoples view of the player than the mercenary that you worked with once.

For this tutorial, Aife is offering a magical clan bond, which is an ancient bond used between high chiefs and their bannermen as well as most intelligent magical creatures that hunt in packs. It is a fairly weak and generic bond that usually is then reinforced with further pacts and vows, but it means that she will be marked by magic as part of the Potter Clan and will follow your orders as long as they cannot be construed as betraying her, disagreeing heavily with her own morals or ethics or sending her to her death.

The bond will take a portion of the players magic to imprint her own as well as being used to heal some of her injuries, which was woven into the bond back in ancient times when it was used to solidify the loyalty of defeated enemies in leadership contests and heal them of wounds they would have sustained in the contest.

As a Werekin youngling, Aife will provide a +1 bonus to the Tracking skill and Knowledge (Pocket Creatures) as well as being able to serve as a spy/scout/messenger with her animal forms. As long as she is not revealed as a Werekin then she will have no impact upon other faction's perceptions of the player.

That... was a lot of information and still didn't really make things clear to Harry in regards to what would happen in regards to follower limitations and how he was meant to control them, but he assumed (and hoped) that they would be explained as he went. Seeing no disadvantage of saying yes at this point Harry tapped the button and the screen disappeared in a flash of pixels and there was a sudden light pressure on his mind, words that he didn't know before spurting out before he could stop them.

"I am Harry Potter, Jarl apparent of the Potter Clan and claimant of my forefathers' heritage, you wish to pledge yourself as my housecarl and defend my clan's interests and honour even in my absence?" The pressure was gone as he finished speaking but Harry made sure to remember the words, determined to look up what a Jarl was though it sounded similar to a family head like Mr Weasley had been in the world of Grey. The girl looked a little shocked at his words but nodded her head and knelt before him, head down as she spoke her affirmation.

"I Aife of the Ratatosk Clan, pledge myself in the service of Jarl Potter until he dismisses me or proves himself unworthy of my allegiance. With his magic I mark my loyalty and with my magic I swear to uphold this oath to the best of my ability..." She grabbed his hand with her own good hand and placed it to her head, a heavy pull of magic occurring a moment later.

-40 magic points

Warning, the player's magic is less than half of its maximum, if the character exhausts his magic points then he will be unable to cast further spells until he has rested or his magic has recovered at its baseline of 10 magic points per hour (which can be improved with level as well as certain abilities and titles that the character can gain during the game.)

Looking around Harry couldn't see any sign of what his current magic points were, or even what his health was at which might be even more important. Before he could take a look at his game manual to see if that would help at all there was a flash of light which bathed Aife in its rays before vanishing a moment later along with the Werekin girl. Blinking his eyes to clear the spots that had filled his vision, Harry couldn't help but gasp as he fixed his gaze on the result of the bond.

"Hedwig?"

A/N: Another moment of what I hope was unexpected surprise at the end of the chapter there, but I don't doubt I will get loads of reviews telling me how obvious it will have been what I was planned from the start etc...

This stories history is going to be pretty wide ranging, so I apologise if people are wondering why I have both Norse and Celtic influences on Harry and Aife's interaction, but to be honest Britain's early history is such a mismatch of different settlers/invaders that I want the influence they had on our 'muggle' culture to be as great on the magical side of things, something that rarely seems to happen in fanfictions or stories in general.

And to be honest, if it was a worldwide spell that locked away the most magical of Earth's magical creatures then there will be a lot of international appearances of different monsters/magical races. So if anyone has any suggestions of races that might be good to include in this fic, please drop it in a review and we can go from there.

Hope you all enjoyed it,

Defias out!