‘I wish to discuss the issue you raise with my pride,’ Dominic announced to Berion. The elf bowed his head slightly, his dark green hair flopping forwards.
‘We shall be patient,’ he answered. Dominic wondered whether he might actually appreciate the time to talk to his own group himself as he immediately turned and started hissing at them in low whispers with even the clicks subdued.
Turning himself so that he could still see the elves out of his peripheral vision, but could also see most of his Pride members who had gathered closer to him when he’d stepped forwards, Dominic outlined the situation.
Giving them a moment to think and discuss amongst themselves, he stepped closer to Jenkins and rubbed his head over her back.
‘Jenkins, I’m glad to see you well and with most of your pride intact,’ he said warmly to the young lioness.
‘Good to see you too,’ she rumbled happily, returning his greeting by rubbing her own head against his shoulder and under his chin. Their size difference had never been more obvious. Interestingly, though, he saw two small additions to her back. Eyeing them closely, he tried to work out what they reminded him of. They were long, pink finger-like things, lying parallel to her spine.
‘What are these?’ he asked, overcome with curiosity. Jenkins rumbled a bit in contentment.
‘I want wings. Like you. Like my pride.’ With her words, she moved them, lifting the eight-inch long fingers so they pointed straight up. Dominic’s mouth sagged slightly in surprise. Now unfolded, he could see indeed that they were the beginnings of wings – bat wings. Though small, he could already see the elbow and wrist joints through the thin skin. There was no way she could fly with them yet, but that they were there at all was nothing short of miraculous.
‘But how did you get them?’ Dominic asked, flabbergasted. He’d only got his because of his chimeric nature allowing him to absorb them as part of a Challenge. As far as he knew, Jenkins didn’t have that option. Or was it not his chimeric nature which gave him the option to absorb body parts when winning a Challenge?
‘Difficult,’ she admitted. ‘Went hunting for creatures to collect power. Dedicated power to getting stronger. Took effort to find wings from strengthening. But wanted it. Wanted it so much I got it.’ She cast a glance at her back. ‘Started getting it,’ she corrected herself with slight hesitation. ‘Need to kill more creatures.’ She shot Dominic a mischievous look. ‘Happy to go help them – get me more power. Or happy to kill more of them for power.’
Accompanying a sense of nonchalance, she sent a sense memory of biting into an elf.
‘Mm, tasty,’ remarked Leo.
‘Ew, man, they’re practically human,’ Dominic objected, though he found it difficult to argue. The elf had been tasty.
‘Humans are tasty too,’ Leo pointed out, not abashed in the slightest. Dominic shuddered at that and then thought over what Jenkins had revealed.
If he understood her correctly, she had chosen either Transevolution or Devolution originally and had managed to find wings somewhere amongst her options for growth. But given how little had grown on her back, Dominic wondered whether the more divergent the choice was from the beast’s current form, the more level ups would be required to be dedicated to getting it. He guessed he’d find out as she levelled up in the future.
Now, though, he turned to the rest of his pride, wondering what their responses would be – Jenkins’ choice was clear. They had evidently finished their discussion a while ago, waiting for him to pay attention to them again. He was glad that his lion body was unable to blush.
‘Alright, so what are your thoughts?’
Sekhmet was the first to speak, as usual forthright in her opinion.
‘Tired. I want to rest for a bit. The dungeon was difficult.’
Procyon seemed to be of a similar opinion.
‘I would appreciate not being in combat for a bit. We have advanced quickly, and I feel the need to consolidate the power I have gained.’
Sirius didn’t agree.
‘We’ve gained lots of power. I’d like more,’ was his opinion.
Fang agreed with Sekhmet and Procyon.
‘We’ve worked hard. Time to rest a bit and mate,’ he yawned and eyed Sekhmet who, by this point, was clearly only hours away from her heat. Next to him, Lionel growled slightly, nudging his brother firmly enough with his nose that Fang sent him a startled look. Leo growled in the back of Dominic’s mind.
‘Mate?’ Leo repeated furiously. ‘Not in my Pride!’
Dominic had a sinking feeling that the situation with Fang might be coming to a head sooner rather than later. He should really take care of it as soon as they were somewhere safe – in the middle of a first contact with another race wasn’t the time or place.
Lionel, having finished chiding his brother, expressed an indifference between either option.
‘I will go where I am needed,’ he continued calmly.
Finally, the albuhas looked at each other and then the one who had surrendered in the Challenge with Dominic, and who was still the highest levelled of the them, stepped forwards.
‘Go with pack leader,’ he answered, looking at Jenkins. She lifted her head imperiously, as if that answer was only her due. Dominic once more felt slight apprehension, though this time it was tempered by amusement.
‘Alright, thanks everyone,’ Dominic answered. No one had argued against getting involved at all; for them it had just been a question whether they personally wanted to be involved or not – or just needed a nice rest first.
Turning around, he stepped forwards and sat down halfway between his group and the elves, waiting calmly. Well, as calmly as he could with Leo still muttering furiously in the back of his mind about killing Fang if the young male attempted to mate with one of the females. Which, Dominic realised, might actually be a very immediate question as his nose told him that Sekhmet wasn’t the only one coming into heat. That realisation agitated Leo so much that Dominic actually looked back to make sure Fang was not attempting something right at that moment, if only to calm Leo down so they could deal with the current situation.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
His thoughts were interrupted as Berion quickly approached him, clearly realising he was waiting.
‘You have an answer for me?’ he asked, clearly trying to appear calm, but just as clearly anxious beneath it.
‘I do. We will aid you,’ Dominic answered. The elf almost sagged in relief. Behind him, the lion saw different reactions among the rest of the elves. Relief from Talathon and the other sword-user; displeasure from Pelir and Ruthror.
‘Then come with-’
‘We cannot come immediately, however,’ Dominic interrupted. Berion looked slightly taken aback. ‘I have matters to attend to in my own domain.’ Perhaps that was a bit too fancy a way of saying it, but the formality of the elves seemed to be bringing out the same from him. ‘I will come and join you here in…’ he considered it. ‘Six days’ time.’ That should be enough for him to return to the forest, deal with whatever needed dealing with there, and then come back.
‘Six days! Our people need help now!’ Dominic could feel a pull on his conscience but he had made up his mind.
‘You say that you were expected to bring items back from the dungeon?’ Dominic asked pointedly.
‘Yes,’ Berion responded slowly.
‘Then surely your people would have expected you to take a few days to complete the dungeon. Six days is not much more than I expect you would have taken anyway.’
‘Still-’
‘And I am not asking,’ Dominic told him, fixing him with a fierce stare. ‘This is not repayment of a debt, because I do not recognise any debt between us. If anything, you owe us as you killed three of us while we only killed one of you.’ Yes, he knew that the elves would probably count one of their own as worth Dominic’s whole Pride but he didn’t and they needed to learn that.
‘You destroyed-’
‘We destroyed the dungeon,’ Dominic interrupted again. It was rude, but he was wary about the elf potentially being able to cast magic with his words, whether literal magic or just from his oratory skill. ‘But if you wanted to stop anyone from doing that, you should have guarded it better. When we entered, there was no indication that any other beings had claimed it as their own. You cannot call it a debt when we did not even know you existed. Just as you used the dungeon as a resource, so have we.’ He paused to let that sink in.
‘However,’ he continued. ‘We are willing to come and help you and your people. In six days. Not before.’
The elf didn’t try to speak after that but just looked at him with eyes that seemed far older than the face in which they were set. They almost rivalled Talathon’s violet ones for their intensity but they didn’t have the same implicit threat that his gaze had.
Finally, he touched the tips of his fingers together and bowed his head slightly over them.
‘Then we shall be grateful for your aid, honoured Brother. Perhaps we can come with you – it may be quicker to take a different route back to our home than to return here.’
‘No,’ Dominic answered immediately, not even needing Leo’s rejection of the idea to make his own decision.
Though Dominic was interested in making a connection with the elves in the hopes of building a future relationship with them. But it was far too uncertain for him to be comfortable bringing them back to the forest where the cubs and the Place of Power were, especially with some of them hating him and his pride and probably still wanting vengeance. And who knows what the elves might choose to do if they knew that such a place was there?
‘We shall return here in six days. Do not follow us!’ he warned, fixing the elves with a hard glare at his last words. Ruthror and Pelir glared back at him, but the others seemed to take his words to heart.
Berion sighed. ‘One with his hand held out cannot dictate when something is put in it, nor what it is, I suppose,’ he answered philosophically. ‘We will meet you here again in six days and hope that we can return in time to help our people.’
With the decisions made, Dominic didn’t want to waste any more time in getting out of there. He dipped his head very slightly to Berion, and then kept a careful eye on the elves as they moved away, not wanting to risk any of them getting an arrow in their backsides. The elves, however, just watched them go, and then disappeared from view when they rounded a hill.
After they got beyond the next little rise in the land, he ordered an albuha to fly up and check whether the elves were following them or not. When the albuha looked to Jenkins before obeying, Dominic huffed in annoyance – he really needed to do something about that soon.
The albuha scout confirmed that the elves had remained near the dungeon, so Dominic ordered the albuha to slowly fly in a slightly different direction, just in case the elves were watching – that way they’d start with the wrong heading. Then, after a while, he told the albuha to descend and rejoin them on the ground.
Finally, tracks reasonably well-covered, Dominic turned to Jenkins herself, curiosity practically overcoming him.
‘So what happened while we were away, Jenkins?’ Dominic asked the lioness in the Pride chat. She launched into a story of the various creatures they had hunted and killed. Apparently Dominic and his party had been in the dungeon for four days which seemed a little too much to him. Yes, they had completely lost track of time in the dungeon, but it hadn’t felt like four days. Also, although they hadn’t slept properly, his maximum stamina hadn’t started to reduce yet. Though he could definitely do with a good sleep. A pity he didn’t feel like doing it so close to the elves still.
But he trusted Jenkins’ retelling – she didn’t explicitly say how many days it had been, but she told him when they’d hunted which creature and whether it was before or after dawn. When she seemed to forget something, the highest-level albuha chimed in to add to her story. Dominic would definitely need to give that one a name. Or find out if he already had one.
The growing wing on her back weren’t the only change for Jenkins. She had matured even in those last few days. She moved with a confidence and a self-assuredness which hadn’t been present before.
Dominic remembered her being a young lioness with more eagerness than sense. Although she’d calmed the impetuousness, she’d still had an alarming tendency to jump into things without fully considering the consequences. Her stories, though, showed that, in the short time they had been apart, she had learned to look before she leaped a lot more.
The encounter with the elves seemed to have been key in that change: losing three of her pride members had been a real blow, and had taught her that not all consequences could be healed away with a level up. Just as it had been the same lesson for Dominic all that time ago when he had first found and won his pride.
‘Odd, though,’ she commented soberly as she told the story of how the three albuhas had fought and died. ‘Was in fight with the one with purple eyes. Was difficult, thought I might die. Was too quick, cut me up everywhere. Then was like he slowed down. Or, not him. I sped up. I cut him up, and then we killed the one with the long claw. Then they ran away.’
‘And you didn’t use your speed enhancement?’ Dominic asked, knowing that she had both that and Quick Strike.
‘No. Already overused,’ Jenkins denied. ‘Was why I was too slow. Had to release it because used too much.’
Curious. Dominic’s mind went back to that moment in the dungeon where he had been so desperate that Jenkins would survive whatever was facing her that he had prayed to Selessa – bargained even. Was that what had happened? Divine intervention? He decided he should try to ask her once they were back in the forest.
Deciding that they were far enough away from the elves to stop and everyone needing a good rest, they found a good tree to shelter underneath – it wasn’t yet that hot but it would only get warmer as the sun rose higher.
Of course, having told her tale, the young lioness wanted to know what had happened in the dungeon, especially since she could tell that even the males who had been weaker than her going in were now stronger. Dominic let the others give their own accounts of the dungeon. He had something else he wanted to do and since they were resting by now they shouldn’t get into too much trouble. At least, none that Leo couldn’t take care of by himself.
‘Alright Leo, you take over for a bit. You can do your favourite thing – sleep,’ Dominic suggested with a hint of teasing. ‘I want to catch up on everything we’ve missed in our statuses.’