When Gunnar hit the bottom of the slope, he picked himself up and fled directly towards what he thought was the center of the bear's territory.
Gunnar's thoughts raced as he sped through the trees. If he can even get close to the bear, it would scent both him and the chasing vampire.
If the bear smelled only him, it might just let him pass as he was weak. But if the vampire's scent gets to the Great Bear, it would instantly be enraged as the animals of the natural world despised the scent of demons. Especially so for hybrid demons such as the vampires.
'The whole situation was like stabbing yourself to harm the enemy.' Gunnar thought wryly. 'In fact, he had stabbed himself to drive the vampire into a feeding frenzy. So maybe he was just crazy.'
The closer that Gunnar got to the middle of the territory of the Great Bear, the more the sulfur scent of burning magma strengthened.
'Great,' Gunnar sighed to himself. 'It must be either a fire bear or a magma bear. Either way it is a weakness of a hybrid. Some demons can be fireproof, but vampires were definitely not.'
He followed the scent of sulfur intending to run directly past the bear if he could. As he came to a clearing where the smell of magma was strongest, he quickly looked around to see if the bear was present.
He ran to the middle of the clearing and saw only a large pool of magma lying there. He skirted the edge of the pit looking around at the abundant sign of the Great Bear coming to and from this spot, only there was no Bear present here.
'Damn it!' Gunnar cursed to himself, hearing the vampire quickly closing in behind him. His mind again raced to think of a solution to his plight.
He circled to the far side of the magma and searched his pockets for one of the ice sapphires that they had found on the trip up the side of the volcano. He held the gem in his hand and waited for the vampire to come into the clearing.
The vampire crashed into the clearing on the far side of the pit and came to an abrupt stop. The massive pit of lava shocking his senses enough to awaken him from his rage and hunger.
The hybrid demon smirked and then out right cackled, as he realized what the young human had hoped.
"You thought the Great Magma Bear would save you?!" He rasped as he stopped his laugh. "The Bear has been missing for days!! It hasn't been seen in the three weeks since we've been here!"
The vampire was stalking around the edge of the pit slowly. Gunnar circling around the opposite direction trying to keep the pit between them.
"Why are you here little fleshling? Your kind doesn't let their young wander off alone." The vampire seemed supremely confused.
Gunnar's eyebrows furrowed. Almost all of the races, demons included, knew of the practice of the forge worlds. The only way this demon wouldn't immediately connect his and Cassie's solo appearance out here was…
Gunnar's eyes sparked as he made the connection. "You have no idea where you are, do you demon. You have no idea what planet you ended up on."
"It won't matter to you soon, fleshling. I will eat you and then track down that little sidekick of yours!" The hybrid snarled. "In less than two days we will have been summoned back to our realm and it will not matter what planet we are on."
"You are on the first of the trium-forgeworlds, the planet of Kelton."gunnar spoke quietly, knowing that the beast would hear him. "We are here for our survival trial and that trial ends tomorrow."
'Even if I die now I want this prick to think he's safe until the very last minute when they drop a warhammer on his head.'
The hybrid looked as if a bag was handed to him labeled gold, and he opened the bag to find it filled with shit.
The second that the demon was distracted even for a second Gunnar threw the ice sapphire at him.
Without thinking, the demon swatted the gem away. But due to its fragile nature, it promptly shattered and sent a tidal wave of ice mana surging through the air.
The mana only partially froze the creature, but sending a surge of ice mana in the middle of a magma bears territory was a sure fire way to attract its attention.
Gunnar held his breath and listened for a roar, or some audible or senseable sign of the bear's approach. It seemed like his luck had fled from him today. There was no sound, no ground shaking from the weight of the bear storming this way, just abject silence and absence.
There was a great cracking sound as the vampire broke free and flashed across the distance between them to grab Gunnar and throw him bodily across the pit with a bone chilling shriek.
But before the demon could make another move, a great hulking bubbling figure surged up from the magma in the pit and slammed its paws down on the abomination, crushing it to the ground.
Gunnar looked up from his position on the rocky ground, unable to get up feeling numb from both the impact and the flood of mana from the Great Magma Bear and the vampire.
After crushing the vampire to the ground the bear roared out in rage at the smell of the abomination polluting its den. Gunnar only now realized that the bear was likely sleeping off the cold waiting for a bit of warmer wether to get out and about. The demon was in for a nasty time now that the bear had been so rudely awakened.
The great bear ripped into the vampire, quickly silencing its shrieks, before burning the creature to ash. The only thing left of the creature was the red mana crystal that the hybrids grew as a heart.