Moonsong Glacier Take away everything I am

Aventus' hackles rose in peaks along his neck when Vesta's eyes dulled and the bear turned to his father and he. The beast was no longer a sentient thing, but doubtless ravaged by hallucinations and fears of its own. Foam dripped from its jowls. A towering, grizzly harbinger of awful things to come, and this only the first of several.

We cannot remain here, Aventus said, his voice a far-off echo in his own ears. His eyes had not left Vesta's mangled body. He hadn't even returned to Ursus soil from Moonglow yet and already this, but the cascading blackness of his unexplained fear continued to swirl in his belly. We cannot lead it back to Ursus, he added.

They had to run, lest they suffer the same fate as Vesta or the bear itself. Something primal told him that to let those jowls touch them was death. They could not fight this thing. It was suicide. The boy stepped back, two steps, three, willing Merrick to follow. They could lead it away from here, abandon it to its fate in the lowlands, and return for Vesta's body later when it was safe.