Grizzly Bear Attack!

Suddenly, I felt a terrible pain in my shoulder. One of the Hork-Bajir had slashed me. I glared with nearsighted eyes and saw nothing but a tall blur.

I had never morphed the bear before. I had never learned to control its brain, its instincts. The bear mind was focused completely on one basic fact - it had been challenged.

There was exactly one response to being challenged.

Attack!

"Grrooowwwrrrr!" I roared. I charged the Hork-Bajir.

He cut me again. It didn't matter. I barreled into him, eight hundred pounds of very angry grizzly.

The power!

I was a truck doing seventy miles an hour!

I was a tank!

I was the largest carnivore on land and nothing, NOTHING challenged me and survived!

I could barely see the Hork-Bajir through the bear's weak eyes, but I smelled him and felt him, and I swung my massive paw and hit him full in the chest. I struck him with a blow that would have knocked a train off its tracks.

The Hork-Bajir went flying.

More came.

More discovered why part of the Latin name for the grizzly species is horribilis.

I barely remember what happened next. I gave myself up to the bear's rage. Its anger and my own became one. All the tension within me, all the uncertainty, all the doubts were swept away as I gave myself up to the bear's violence.