Chapter 10: The Big Bad Bear

I don't own anything. Resident Evil belongs to Capcom and Tomb Raider belongs to Core Design, Crystal Dynamics, and I think Square Enix. The only thing I own is the changes made to the stories of the Tomb Raider games/comics and Resident Evil games/comics/CG movies, the Government branch S.P.E.L.L., the person that has taken over Kathrine Warren's life, and Rose Warren. This story also will be bloody, violent, and have cursing. It's rated T for Teen.

Country: Russia, State: Siberia, City: Siberian Wilderness, Place: Near Kitezh, Area: Near Mountain Camp, Month: November, Day: Saturday 25th, Year: 2000, Time: 19:49 KRAT…

Lara and Kat sat on rocky overhang for the small meadow. Kat had her bow nocked and ready and Lara was reading though something she'd found.

For a year I have ridden with an army of Mongols, as envoy from the Order of Trinity. Their Khan is a great warlord, despite his heathen ways. Under my influence, I have helped them topple nations, burn cities and kill Princes, all in search of the Prophet. Our slaughter of the Rus was not in vain, for among the spoils, we at last found the map.

And now, this very morning, after a season in the mountains, we saw buildings rising from a green valley surrounded by ice. We have found Kitezh. I tell the Khan of the riches that will be his, and that alone drives him on. But the real victory will be for God, when we purge the Prophet's lies from the earth. And at last, the Divine Source will be ours.

"Trinity had an envoy to the Mongol horde, and he led them in search of the Lost City..." Lara whispered to Kat, looking up from the leather wrapped parchment.

"I vaguely remember that. I think we'll find more later on." Kat whispered back then drew her arrow back.

She had spotted a deer and followed it with the bow. Then she moved the bow just a bit ahead of where the deer was walking. She loosed the bow string, the arrow sailed through the air and sank into the young buck's neck. She muttered an old Norse curse before nocking another arrow as the deer squealed dancing back and forth, trying to dislodge the arrow and runaway at the same time.

Kat loosed the arrow again and it sank into the deer's head. This ended its cries and downed it. Kat put her bow to her back then she and Lara jumped over to it. Lara keeping any eye out for a threat as Kat got to work with butchering it, getting some meat, the antlers, and the skin.

As Kat did this, she disassociated. She couldn't think about doing what she was doing. It only brought back the memories of her nightmares. The ones of Irons gutting her and stuffing her. He was long since dead. She was the one to kill him. But doing this was making her think of those dreams that kept her awake for years. She let her mind slip away to another land of cold and snow and long meeting halls filled with song and boisterous laughter. She didn't realize that she had started to sing one of the songs that the memories brought back.

Lara spotted a box tucked away by a tree. She walked over to it and opened is as Kat finished her work. She gasped at seeing the old crown inside. "Kat, I found a crown."

Kat snapped out of her state and looked away from the deer carcass. "Really?" She asked with her Norse accent in place.

"Yes. Looks to be from one of the princes of Kiev…" Lara nodded as she lifted the crown and turned it in her hands, the golden eight-pointed crown had small red and blue gems in it and the metal had beautiful decorative inlays. "How did it come to be all the way out here?"

Kat shook her hands at the snow, sending red blood drops around, she needed to get the blood off so she scooped up some snow and rubbed it over her hands, the warmth melting it so she could wash away the blood, or at least most of it. She didn't want to waste drinking water on it. "Maybe the Mongols brought it as a trophy?" She said as she kneeled down next to Lara and pointed to the broken parts to the crown, how it looked indented inward at one point. "The wearer was wearing it when they were killed more than likely. My guess would be an axe."

Lara looked around them and pulled out a glowstick from her pack. She cracked it and shook it. a yellow-orange glow filled the area. "These ruins…" She pointed out to what was around the box and had long since fallen apart. "Mongolian." She chose to say nothing about Kat staying in the Norse accent longer than normal.

Kat picked up the cloth in the box, it was a very large square of woven wool threads. The pattern was beautiful even after all this time. She made a face as she used her axe to rip it in half. She used one half to wrap up some of the deer meat and the other she filled with snow.

Lara nodded to the snow bundle. "To keep the meat cold?"

Kat shook her head. "No, we hang it near the fire and the heat will melt the snow. We can catch it in a cup for drinking water. My bottle is empty. My guess is that yours is as well. We need to keep hydrated."

Country: Russia, State: Siberia, City: Siberian Wilderness, Place: Near Kitezh, Area: Near Mountain Cave, Month: November, Day: Saturday 25th, Year: 2000, Time: 19:54 KRAT…

Leon spotted the flashlight. He looked to Jonah and nodded out the mouth of the cave, that was luckily hidden. Jonah came over and peered out. Seeing more than one flashlight beam Jonah shook his head.

"Maybe they'll pass right by us." Jonah said as Leon slowly shook his head.

"They're coming right this way." Leon looked to Jonah. "I'll lead them away from here. But you've gotta move too."

Jonah shook his head. "Splitting up is a bad idea."

"Don't need to tell me, I know. But it's the only thing we can do." Leon said as he checked over his gear. "Kat said you'd find the people who live here, she said Lara would get there too. So, let's all meet there. Wherever it is."

Jonah shook his head. "If you find the girls before me, help keep 'em safe, yeah?"

Leon nodded. "Not that they need it, but yeah. I'll watch their backs."

With that, Leon slipped out of the cave, crouching to the snowy ground and moving to some cover to the far right of the cave. He peered over the top of the icy frozen rock to look at the soldiers. This wasn't a good vantage point. But it was better than nothing.

He sat back down and closed his eyes, counting to ten to psych himself up. At ten he jumped up and bolted from cover, deliberately making as much noise as he could. Not yelling as that would make it far too obvious that he was playing distraction.

"Over there!" Yelled one of the men from behind him.

"Shoot him! Shoot him!" Yelled another.

'Shit, move to the trees!' Leon thought as he struggled through some deeper snow.

He could hear the shots and the poofs of snow going up around him. With gritted teeth, he tucked and rolled behind the closest tree at the bottom the snowy hill he'd run down. He heard wood splintering and the yelling. He pushed off the tree and took off into the woods, bobbing and weaving through the trees.

'I hope this helped you get away, Jonah.' He thought as he ran, looking for a way to lose his new pursuers.

Country: Russia, State: Siberia, City: Siberian Wilderness, Place: Near Kitezh, Area: Mountain Meadow, Month: November, Day: Saturday 25th, Year: 2000, Time: 20:06 KRAT…

After eating some cooked deer meat and filling their water bottles, the pair of women reentered the meadow. Kat and Lara jolted as a red signal flare flew up, lighting up the air in a pinkish red hue. Both women ducked down into cover and cursed.

"Trinity…" Kat hissed.

"They are here…shit, we're too late." Lara said as the radio buzzed on their belts.

"Command…Do you copy?" Asked a male voice from their belts.

Suddenly the roar of a bear was heard over the radio and in the distance.

"Oh shit!" The man yelled in fright, clearly not prepared for a bear attack.

They cringed at the sounds of the man's terrified then pained screams. The Bear roaring and grunting in disturbed anger. The call was then cut off, not allowing them to know what happened next. But Kat could guess.

"Oh shit…" Lara breathed and looked to Kat. "What the hell was that?"

"A bear. I don't know what kind, but a very big ass bear." Kat voiced. "We need to be very careful."

"What do we do if we run into the bear?" Lara asked as they moved for a tree by the upper hill/overhang. "Supernatural stuff I know what to do, hungry bears, not so much."

"Attack its face, make ourselves seem bigger, play dead, but try and protect our necks." Kat listed as her voice went Norse again. "Whatever we do, we shouldn't run for it. If we're far enough away, maybe we can climb up a sturdy tree, something thick. If we get high enough, a big bear can't climb up it with how big and heavy they are. Problem is, all the trees we've seen have been thin. So that option is a very slim maybe."

Lara nodded. "So…just out of curiosity, is that old knowledge or…"

Kat snorted. "Rose has been watching Animal Planet. She's decided she hate's Sponge Bob and wants to watch Big Cat Diaries and The Most Extreme. A documentary on Bears came up while I was cooking dinner."

"Oh, so the Valkyrie voice?" Lara asked.

"That was on purpose this time. Little joke." Kat smiled, feeling a bit like when Scarlet Witch switches to her Sokovian accent in the Marvel movies…that aren't out yet. Kat groaned. "I can't make the joke yet…shit…"

"What?" Lara asked as she put her bow to her back.

"There's a long series of movies I remember and like. None of them are out yet. I can't make the joke and have people laugh with me or get it." Kat groaned.

Lara chuckled. "Kat, that really hasn't stopped you before."

"I know, but I treasure when the refences land. I get sad when they don't." She said as Lara climbed up a tree. "So, how's your combat training going? I saw that you're learning Brazilin jujitsu."

Lara jumped from a tree branch to the overhang. "Going well. But from what you saw, I need to get better."

Kat climbed the tree then joined Lara on the higher ground. "We all need to. The bleeding effect of my old life helps me remember, but I still need to put the moves into practice. Glima is something that I'm thinking of focusing on now. I just need someone who knows it to practice with."

"Ah, historical Marshal arts, well in that umbrella anyway. That's the Nordic Folk wrestling, yeah?" Lara asked curiously as they pulled their bows and nocked arrows.

Kat nodded as they lapsed back into silence as they didn't know how close Trinity was. A spotlight tinted red from the signal flares rolled over the ground, making them duck into tree cover.

"Survey team, this is Overwatch." They heard from their radios. "Please respond."

They came out in crouches as they rounded a bend and came to a clearing with a lot of melted ice. There was the red flare on the ground. In the middle was a dead body. They realized that the voice wasn't just from their radios. It was coming from the body.

"Survey team, please respond." The man on the radio called.

By then Kat and Lara had reached the body. Lara began searching him as Kat kept look out.

"We got some…interference on that last transmission." He said as Kat looked for what attacked this guy.

"Shit…Lara, get up slowly…" Kat said as she shifted herself to stand on the balls of her feet, making herself taller and ready to run if they needed to.

Lara looked up from retrieving the man's radio and gasped. Lumbering forward from the cave was the bear that had attacked and killed this man. It let out an angry roar, clearly the radio and their scents had disturbed it's attempt at reentering to its slumber. It then moved faster than Lara and Kat had expected.

It lunged at them and raised a mighty paw with sharp claws and brought it down at an angle, aiming to swipe at them. Kat and Lara dove to either side to avoid the swipe. Lara screamed in pain as its claw managed to nick her arm.

Then both Kat and Lara turned to a path. As much as they wanted to follow the advice of the animal experts, this bear was too pissed off to be intimidated by the "Look-Bigger" trick and neither one wanted to play dead and risk getting batted around. They bolted forward, running up an old wagon from the 1800s and jumped from it like a ramp, avoiding the pissed brown bear. It was a powerful creature and as they kept running over the muddy ground, the bear smashed through the obstacle like stale pretzels.

They ran on an old fallen tree and jumped from it. The bear smashed through that too as they spotted a hole in some very dense brambles, roots, and branches. They ran for it. Lara slid through it and spun to pull Kat in sharply. Now in some form of a nature shield, the bear's swipes and attempts to hit and get at them was slowed.

Kat and Lara pulled their climbing axes and started to swing them at the powerful paws that were bigger than their heads. Blood flew as the great creature pulled it's hurt paws away and growled at them before biting at a root, snapping it in two. Kat slashed her axe upward; the point cutting crossed the bear's nose.

It roared in pain and pulled back before shoving its head forward again. The two slashed their axes at its angry face and dazed it. With that, the pair backed up in a short crab crawl then jumped to their feet in the small clearing. They ran only four feet and stopped abruptly, gasping at the cliff they were now by. They turned back at the loud roar of the bear.

Wood splintered in every direction as the creature broke through the wooden foliage. It swiped at them again. Lara dodged to the left, and Kat to the right. Kat switched her axe for her spear and spun in a forceful way, driving it's point into the bear's neck. At the same time, Lara slammed her axe point into the side of the bear's head.

Blood splashed on them, matting up the bear's fur, and drippling onto the snow as the Bear roared in pain and thrashed around, trying to get them off, snapping its jaws at them. Kat and Lara yelled as the strength of the bear threw them off and over the edge of this cliff.

They hit the ground their backs, knocking the wind out of them from the six-foot drop. They gasped on the cold air and Lara grasped a hand on her cut arm in pain from the claw slash. They looked up at the bear that grunted and huffed looking down at them. As the Bear started to leave, Lara's vison danced more and the world around her turned black and started to close like a tunnel. She heard Kat's voice, tried to answer her but all light went out and she was plunged into darkness.