text: [Themes: family friendly, animal perspective]
  
  You feel uneasy about the crystals. You decide to move past them and explore deeper into the expansive cave. You walk down a hallway and stop as something sticky drops onto your head. You look up and notice a black substance covering the ceiling. It doesn't seem important, so you ignore it for now.
  
  You travel downwards until you reach a pit. As you move closer to the pit, a smell of decay emits from it. It's as if hundreds of rotting bodies lay at the bottom, though the liquid is too dark to know the truth.
  As you stare into the abyss a voice calls out to you.
  
  "Come on in, join us."
  
  You shake your head in disbelief. Isolation from your tribe must be playing tricks on your mind. You decide to turn around but stop dead your tracks. From the way you've come, stands a gigantic beast with unnatural proportions. Its movements are jerky as it makes its way towards you. Once it's close enough, it's in full view. This is a creature straight from your nightmares.
  
  Its outer fur resembles that of a black bear. Sticking out of its stomach and back are an assortment of dead animal bodies. A fox head pokes of its stomach, a wolf leg out of its neck, and a seal flipper on the back. All body parts are surrounded by a black liquid as if glued to the bear. This creature is at least twice your size, there's no way you can beat it in a fight. The question is; what do you do instead?
  
  > wait for it
  You stand still as the creature comes within breathing distance. You turn into a stature as it stops right before you. Its breath smells of rotten egg and fox droppings. You squeeze your eyes shut in fear, somehow believing that will protect you.
  
  The beast rushes at you, sending you flying into the black liquid. The liquid rises and covers your eyes, mouth, and ears. The unholy bear stares at you and talks as if inside your mind,
  
  "I had no choice; my mind is rotting from the inside out."
  
  Your brain comes under attack as a flurry of voices scream into your mind. The unrelenting screaming does not stop as you struggle to breathe through the tar. You blackout.
  
  When you wake up, your body is incredibly heavy. The black tar has dried over your eyes. You hear heavy breathing that is not your own. You crawl away from the sound with your paws.
  
  "I bet you're wondering who exactly I am."
  
  You turn your head towards the voice and stop moving. Despite your racing heart, you keep your cool and say.
  
  "That wasn't my first concern. But go ahead, who are you?"
  
  The voice laughs at your candidness and says,
  
  "The name's Bearington. Or as the stories say 'Sir Bearington.'"
  
  "The Sir Bearington? The bear who pretended to be human and got away with it?"
  
  "The one and only."
  
  Wow, you can't believe it. This creature has to be lying to you. While Fross didn't describe him in much detail, this isn't at all what you pictured Bearington to be when he told you the story.
  
  You scratch at your eyes and try to pull the tar off. It rips off like a bandaid, stripping off the skin surrounding your eyes. A white layer of eyeball flesh rips off, as you finally rid yourself of the tar. You stare at this beast as black tar leaks from his pores. How could this be the legendary Sir Bearington?
  
  "I didn't always look like this you know. I was a master spy before I had a curse of death cast on me."
  
  "Curse?"
  
  Sir Bearington stares at you with his hollow eyes. His body leaks of decay as a seal flipper slides down his stomach.
  "After years of living amongst hairless apes, I was appointed a knight. A dinner was held in my honor when someone saw straight through my disguise."
  
  Sir Bearington starts to get choked up.
  
  "I should have known magic was at play! No one ever saw through my deception until this man! When he was kicked out, I thought that was the end of it."
  
  Sir Bearington roars as he smashes a fox head against the floor.
  
  "After the reception, I went for a ride on a horse. Everyone was convinced I was human and thought the horse was lazy for not carrying me! Well, everyone except the man who got kicked out. He jumped out of a bush and put an incantation on me..."
  
  "What incantation?"
  Sir Bearington weeps aloud.
  
  "The man screamed 'If you want to pretend to be a human, why not become every creature'. A purple mist shot out of his hands and fell upon me. My body convoluted as my eyes rolled into the back of my head. When I came to, dead animals formed in my skin. They broke through my flesh and poked out all over my body."
  
  You are silent as you take it all in. The legendary Sir Bearington has been reduced to this?
  
  "The humans finally saw through your disguise?"
  
  Bearington laughs as black liquid flies out of his mouth.
  
  "The fools were still convinced I was one of them. They burned the man on the spot. I thought everything would go back to normal, but then I heard the voices for the first time. Every waking moment the voices filled me with doubt and paranoia. They told me that my disguise would wear off any second and I'd be exposed as a fraud. That's why I went to hide in this cave, and I've been here ever since."
  
  You stare in awe at the undead Sir Bearington. The only question now is...
  
  "What are you gonna do with me?"
  
  Sir Bearington smiles and says,
  
  "I'm not sure, let me ask the voices in my head. Oh yeah, did I mention that the curse also made my mind just as fucked up as my body?"
  
  You stand still as Sir Bearington nods to himself.
  
  "They're telling me to...KILL YOU!"
  
  Sir Bearington walks towards you with bloodlust in his eyes. He's twice your size, you can't beat him. You run away and don't look back. The dark cave is extremely narrow and you're only getting yourself more lost. Who cares though, the only thing that matters is surviving.
  
  After running deeper into the cave, you duck around the corner and take a rest. With your back against the wall, you breathe through your nose so Bearington doesn't hear. After a few minutes, you try to make your move. A sticky substance glues your back to the wall as you attempt to squirm your way to freedom.
  
  The substance moves all over your body as if it has a mind of its own. Eventually, you start screaming in horror. The substance has entered your mouth and is trying to clog your throat. Sir Bearington makes his way towards your screams and appears in front of you.
  
  "I waited so long to release myself from my curse. I needed one of every animal to throw into the black tar pit of decay. Polar bears are known to live in snow dens, not caves. I thought the day would never come."
  
  You scream again as Bearington picks your up by his teeth. He drags your body like you're a cub and throws you off an edge. You land in black liquid and sink all the way to the bottom.
  
  Suddenly a purple explosion occurs all around you. All the dead bodies lying in the water rush towards you and mold themselves in your skin. Are you transforming into the same life form as Bearington?
  
  You scream as bones form within your body. Animal heads pop through your skin as your fur turns purple. Your body grows larger as your flesh expands. While your body goes through a transformation, your body does too. Your head pounds as you hear whispers in your mind.
  
  The whispers get louder until they become indistinguishable from your own thoughts. What the hell is happening to US?
  
  "Thanks to you, I can return my old life."
  
  Who the hell is this guy?
  
  "Sir Bearington is back baby!"
  
  > Epilogue 1: The cure for madness is death
  It has been years since we became inflicted with madness. Our vessel most resembles a purple bear, but many animal parts are embedded in our flesh. We have no need for food. The black ooze that grows in every nook and cranny of this cave is more than filling.
  
  Once in a blue moon, a poor creature enters this cave. They never leave, instead becoming part of our growing body. We built ourselves quite the collection. One day a creature so rare, rarer than every other one combined, entered the cave.
  An emerald green giant looking lizard stood before us. It had massive wings and scowled at you.
  
  "Sir Bearington? You've really let yourself go."
  
  We turned towards this creature in confusion.
  
  "Who the hell is Bearington and what the hell are you?"
  
  The giant lizard laughed and said,
  
  "Your spy tricks don't work on me; I know exactly who you are. And as for me, I'm Malygos the mighty dragon!"
  
  Malygos roared as he breathed fire.
  
  "Time to end the curse once and for all. There's not enough room for both of us."
  
  Malygos fire caught quickly on our tar filled body. We were burnt to a crisp, finally releasing our souls from the curse.