<div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/b/bb/Nord-Iljana-small.png)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Iljana Horviksdotter<br/><strong>Location:</strong>The Reach just outside of Markarth<br/><strong>Time:</strong>Early evening, dusk<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Open<br/><br/>Iljana glances up at the encroaching darkness and blinks as a snowflake lands in her right eye.  Icy breath is the only thing she sees for the moment however her nose picks up the scent of the bear she's been carefully stalking.  The crunch of the snow packed stony ground makes her wince as she steps forward.  Quickly traveling from a low lying juniper to a rocky outcropping, Iljana takes a peek around the stone to get a better view of the bear.  To her horror, she comes face to face with the animal and lets out a loud curse as she backpedals away from danger.  With a loud roar, the defensive bear takes the offensive role and the hunter becomes the hunted.  Briefly her gut dropped as she heard another less loud roar nearby that strangely sounded like words and worried for the moment there were two bears but there was no time to ponder it.<br/><br/>Iljana's initial instinct is to turn tail and run as if the vilest nightmare is chasing closely behind.  Right at this moment, it might as well be the monsters of her childhood terrors, but thankfully her fathers words slip into her mind.<em>Never run!  It triggers a strong prey drive.</em>Dropping her bow, she grabs for her great axe knowing she wouldn't be able to really get a shot off with an arrow.  As the bear rushes her, she lets out a scream and swings her axe at its head as she attempts to dive to the side.<br/><br/>The axe misses its intended target but bites deeply into its shoulders.  Her arm wrenches nearly out of the socket as the bear passes her but she managed to hold onto the axe as it pulls from its shoulder.  The bear staggers and then turns around, rising up on its hind legs letting out a second roar. Iljana takes that opportunity to try to find cover but the bear drops down and rushes towards her again.  It swipes out an arm but this time her dive isn't as successful.  Claws rake across her upper back and the force of the blow knocks her forward.  She lets out a scream of pain and spins wildly with axe out in front of her.  Blade of axe meets skull of bear and shears the top portion of its skull clean off.<br/><br/>Dropping to the ground, the bear's lifeless body slumps onto Iljana as she slips on the snow and falls flat onto her injured back.  Gasping in pain and from the adrenaline dump, she blinks again as a snowflake lands in her right eye.