It was hard to know who was more surprised at the sudden encounter: the Pride or the elves. Just a moment after Dominic reappeared from the dungeon portal, the elves shouted wordlessly and lifted their weapons – two spears, two swords which looked rather like the one they’d got from the dungeon, and a bow.

In immediate reaction, Fang, Sekhmet, and Lionel growled and crouched slightly, prepared to pounce, with their teeth bared. Procyon and Sirius reacted in a similar way, their chests already starting to thrum with barely audible vibrations, ready to howl.

Dominic knew he had seconds to stop this – he wasn’t keen on getting into a fight with the first humanoid creatures he’d met since the System had appeared.

‘Wait!’ he mentally shouted, doing his best to project it loudly to everyone present while pushing his way through his pride to stand before them. The strain made his head throb slightly, but he shook it away.

The shout seemed to have a decent effect. His own pride members immediately paused – the dungeon had done an excellent job of binding them together as a party and they trusted his judgement implicitly. In combat at least.

The elves on the other hand seemed to be sufficiently taken aback at the communication to pause for a moment too. Their eyes widened; their grips slackened slightly on their weapons. Evidently they didn’t come across a beast that wanted to communicate every day.

‘Leo, repeat what I’m saying to the pride, please,’ Dominic requested quickly – if he didn’t need to expand his telepathy to the members of his pride too, it would be much easier. The lion’s quick agreement was gratifying – even Leo realised that this wasn’t a time to argue or complain. ‘We don’t have to fight. If we fight, there will be deaths. Let us pass and we will not have to attack.’

The elves’ eyes widened a little, perhaps at his fluency or possibly at the content of his words. Certainly most beasts he’d come across since the System had begun had fallen into two categories – too weak and so running away without engaging, or believing themselves strong enough and attacking immediately. How many would sue for peace?

Of course, that was all assuming that the elves understood what he was saying at all. Luckily, his assumption that they did was proven to be correct just a moment later.

‘Honoured Brother beast, how can you speak to us? Are you one of the Ancestral Spirits of the land?’ the elf in the front asked. He had copper-coloured skin, green eyes, and dark green hair, reminiscent of the deep forest. He also probably didn’t have telepathy – he spoke his words aloud and somehow Dominic received them as mental words he could understand.

Dominic hesitated for a moment. Would it be better to pretend he was one of these creatures or not?

‘I am not,’ he answered after he’d decided. Pretending to be an ‘ancestral spirit of the land’ might gain him something in this particular negotiation, but what if this wasn’t the only interaction with the elves and was called into question later? ‘I can speak to you with an Ability,’ he answered, almost completely honestly. That his Telepathy didn’t strictly count as an Ability for him wasn’t something they needed to know. It did for Sekhmet; that was enough.

‘Then we are honoured you have chosen to speak with us,’ the elf answered, releasing one hand from his spear to press against his breastbone, bowing slightly over it. ‘I will admit that we do not want to lose any more of our group. This expedition has already claimed one of us and her loss will be sorely felt.’ His face twisted up as he was speaking, grief clear upon it. His other party members seemed equally miserable at the reminder, the other one holding a spear even more obviously upset than the one who had been speaking.

They were interrupted by intense growling suddenly erupting from…above them? The elves’ reactions were immediate: they moved into a defensive position with their weapons pointing upwards, expressions twisted with fear and anger.

Dominic immediately looked up and if his face were capable of it, a grin would have broken out. He recognised those wings.

The pack of albuhas dived towards them – at the elves, Dominic realised with alarm. His happiness at seeing the group – hopefully with Jenkins somewhere around – was shattered as he realised that their appearance was about to destroy the tentative truce that he’d established with the elves.

‘Stop! Don’t attack them!’ he shouted in the Pride chat. To his annoyance, they continued to dive until a roar cut through the air. Dominic couldn’t see Jenkins, but that roar couldn’t have come from anyone else.

The albuhas changed course at the last moment, angling to land in the space next to Dominic’s dungeon pride. However, just because he’d stopped the albuhas from attacking didn’t mean that the situation was resolved.

The archer shouted in anger as she released an arrow, the strike causing an albuha to whimper in pain and fall out of the air. Lionel leapt towards the downed pride member even as the archer nocked another arrow.

‘I said stop!’ Dominic shouted again, this time directing it at the elves, twisting his head quickly to look at them and baring his teeth. He accompanied it with a Roar designed to stun them. It was a bit of a chance, but seemed like the least damaging way of doing things. He still didn’t want to actively get into a fight with them, though if it came down to his Pride members or them, there was no question about it.

At least his Roar had had the effect he wanted as the whole group froze for a few seconds. It was enough time for most of the albuhas to land, and for Lionel to get to the injured one and blanket her with his healing cloud.

‘Take the arrow out first!’ Dominic told him sharply – even though he had little medical knowledge, he knew enough to be sure about that. The lion sent him a wordless acknowledgement and then tugged the arrow out of the albuha’s chest with a twist of his teeth and a paw against the albuha to keep her down.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Dominic fixed his gaze on the elves again, padding forwards quickly so he was between them and his pride members. When the stun wore off, he growled loudly and threateningly, his lips drawn back from his teeth.

‘They are mine,’ he told the elves firmly. ‘Attack them again and I shall answer in kind.’

‘They killed my sister!’ the other elf with the spear shouted, his face a mask of rage. ‘If you stand in my way, I’ll kill you too!’ The archer seemed fully in agreement, drawing her bow quickly, her arrow pointed at Dominic’s face.

Dominic growled, with Leo doing the same in his mind. Behind him, he heard the same readiness to fight among his pride members. Sekhmet padded up to stand by his right shoulder, Jenkins appearing from somewhere to stand by his left. He didn’t move his gaze from the elves for even a single moment, but he saw the rest of his dungeon pride come and join them too, in his peripheral gaze – they had fought too much in the dungeon to be afraid of taking on another unknown foe now.

‘Wait! Honoured Brother, Please! Pelir, Ruthror, stop!’ The spear-wielding leader ran into the space between them, bodily putting himself between his group and Dominic’s Pride with his hands out to halt each party. Dominic admired his courage, at least. Dropping his spear to the ground, the elf turned to face Dominic’s group. Fisting his hands and crossing them at the wrists, he held them to his forehead, clearly making himself vulnerable. ‘Peace, I beg you all, peace.’

‘Get out of my way Berion,’ growled the spear-wielder, shifting so he had a clear view of the Pride. Dominic bristled and his growl intensified as he saw that the spear was aiming at Fang.

‘Don’t be a fool, Ruthror,’ Berion answered him furiously. ‘Do you want to kill us all? We had enough trouble with them before, and now we face even more! Put down your blighted spear! And you, Pelir. Put down your arrow too before you accidentally let it go and spark this fire.’

‘But-’

‘Now!’

The archer let out a wordless growl of her own before lowering her bow so it was pointing at the ground before loosening her grip slowly. But the spear-wielder’s grip just tightened. Dominic growled even louder at the sight and his Pride with him. The sound rolled across the flat ground between them and made one of the sword-wielders whiten even more than his naturally pale skin already appeared.

Berion paled too, sending an anxious look at the Pride. Then, showing immense courage, he stepped directly in front of the spear wielder, his back to the Pride. He grabbed the tip of the spear and yanked it so it touched his own chest.

‘You want to kill us all in revenge for your sister? Then start with me.’

Impressive, Dominic found himself thinking, as he relaxed a little, his growl reducing in volume. The others around him took his cue to release some of the tension in their own postures.

‘Not really. Clearly he doesn’t control his pride the way he should,’ Leo scoffed.

‘Uh huh,’ Dominic replied sceptically. ‘And you think every member of our Pride would obey us instantly? I don’t think so. I like this guy.’

Ruthror kept his weapon pointed at Berion for a long moment, his face twisted in a grimace of hate. Then he yanked it away and turned, storming off to the back of the group, facing the savannah beyond. The archer, Pelir, still looked mutinous, but she hadn’t stormed away nor had she raised her bow again. She still remained watchful, though, and Dominic suspected she would be able to get another arrow off quickly if she needed to.

Berion turned towards the beasts, his wrists once more crossed and pressed to his forehead. Dominic had to wonder if it was the equivalent of putting his hands up for humans.

‘My deepest apologies, honoured Brothers and Sisters,’ he said, bowing slightly. ‘I thank you for your immense patience. I can only try to excuse Pelir’s actions by saying that she was not aware the albuha was part of your group. We have already had a violent run-in with this particular pack and we feared that they would kill another member of our party.’

Pieces fell into place. The three albuhas who had died; this elf who had apparently died too.

‘Jenkins,’ Dominic asked urgently in the Pride chat while shifting his gaze towards her, ‘did you fight with this group before?’

‘Yes,’ she answered quickly, her mental tone filled with anger directed at the elves. She alone of the group near him had not relaxed at all, her teeth still bared; her posture still crouched and ready to pounce. ‘We come here to check you had exited or not. They came running towards us, claws bared. We attacked. They killed three of us. We killed one of them. They escaped – ran through big golden thing. Same you went through.’

Dominic mentally sighed, wishing he was able to rub his temples. He didn’t get headaches in the same way as he used to, but this situation was worthy of one.

‘My lioness tells me that your party ran towards her and her pride with your weapons bared. They attacked in response to your threat. They killed one of yours and you killed three of ours. Is this correct?’

‘It is,’ answered Berion nervously, obviously concerned that the news would restart hostilities. Clearly, he didn’t want that, seeing the Pride members together as being more powerful than their group. Which, honestly, was probably true. ‘We did not aim to fight, but they forced our hand. We withdrew as soon as we could reach the dungeon door. We hoped that they would be gone when we emerged. And then we were forced to leave the dungeon far sooner than we wished. Upon seeing the pack of albuhas again, we feared that they would try to kill more of us.’

‘It was a reasonable assumption,’ Dominic agreed, especially since if he hadn’t told them to stop, they would have attacked.

‘You mean if the female hadn’t told them to stop,’ Leo reminded him. ‘We need to discover what’s going on with that.’ Dominic agreed with him, but this wasn’t the time to question that. As long as Jenkins obeyed Dominic, there wasn’t an issue. They’d figure out everything else later.

‘It seems we are at an impasse,’ Dominic continued to say to Berion. ‘You have killed some of ours; we have killed one of yours.’

Berion opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by the archer.

‘Berion, look! The dungeon!’