The rock didn’t feel like it should. That was his first realisation. Instead of being a hard glassy substance, it instead felt like…jelly. But Dominic didn’t have very long to contemplate the oddly yielding nature of the rock as he realised something else far more alarming.
He found that he could still move the rest of his body, but his paw itself was absolutely stuck. He couldn’t pull it out, couldn’t even flex it or extend his claws. He could push it in more, but that didn’t help. Panic rising in him, worse was yet to come.
An inexorable force started pulling him in. Like he was a fish caught on a line, he was dragged into the jelly-like rock. He tried to push against the rock with his other paw, but it just sank in too, doubling the pull.
‘I told you it had to be experienced rather than explained,’ the ameshek said calmly, interrupting his thoughts.
‘I’ll kill you for this!’ Dominic yelled back at her, reminded of her existence. ‘I told you I’d kill you and your followers if you betrayed me!’
‘It’s because she’s a canine,’ seethed Leo, sounding just as panicked as Dominic was. ‘I told you we should have killed her!’
‘Relax,’ she said, not seeming to be too phased by the threat and still apparently unable to hear Leo. ‘I have not betrayed you. This is harmless. It did the same to me when I first touched it.’
Dominic tried to breathe more steadily, knowing that it wouldn’t serve anyone if he was too fear-stricken to even think.
‘You were pulled into the rock too?’ he asked after a moment of calming himself down.
‘I was. Pulled in and fully immersed. I don’t know why, but it seems like it’s a necessary part of the process of taking control. Afterwards, I was pushed out again, stronger than before. I suggest you just go with it – you will be well.’
Dominic breathed forcibly evenly, both front paws now in the rock halfway up his forelegs. It was true that his paws didn’t feel at all hurt – if anything, the slight pain he felt was more from him trying to resist its undefeatable pull.
His mind flicked busily through his options. There were few. He tried using some acid, but it didn’t even sizzle on the surface of the thing. Actually, it ended up getting absorbed without leaving a trace of its existence.
All his other Abilities required either mobility, his claws, or his teeth, none of which were available for use at the moment. At least, he didn’t think that getting his muzzle stuck in the rock would improve the situation at all. His tail mace briefly occurred to him as he thought about whether he might have something in his storage space which might be useful, but he somehow doubted that it would be any different. Plus, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to actually get at the rock with his tail, considering his position.
‘I think we should just get it over with,’ he said to Leo after several long moments of thought in which all that happened was that he lost ever more ground to the pull of the rock-that-wasn’t.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Leo.
‘I mean that we’re not succeeding in pulling free, and I don’t think we’re going to. I think we should do the opposite instead.’
‘Are you mad?’ Leo demanded, alarmed. ‘We’ll die!’
‘Maybe we will; maybe we won’t, but at the moment all we’re doing is postponing the inevitable,’ Dominic said grimly. Then he accessed the Pride chat.
‘We are in a bit of a difficult situation. Hopefully we will come out of here in a bit of time. If we don’t emerge by dawn, get out of the forest, rejoin the others. Get stronger. Then, if you get the chance, avenge us.’
With a cacophony of questions and alarmed demands from his Pride mates along with Leo’s rejecting screams ringing in his ears, Dominic summoned his courage, then dived into the rock.
It felt very strange. Everything was muted around him, and it felt like he was floating in something more buoyant than water. He wasn’t having any problems breathing, that was the first thing he realised with relief. The second was that, whether his eyes were open or closed, all he could see was blackness.
Abruptly, the buoyancy which had been cradling him started to press in on him more. The substance pressed worst against his eyes, mouth, nose, and ears, actually starting to push inside. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but it was uncomfortable for sure. Dominic did his best to keep his mouth closed, but the substance treated his attempts with the same disregard as when he was trying to pull free of it in the first place.
The substance didn’t taste of anything; it just had a presence in his mouth, in his ears, in his nose, in his eyes.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
A question seemed to appear in his mind. It was at that moment that he realised he couldn’t feel Leo’s presence and this lack made alarm bells ring.
Will you give a drop of blood to the goddess?
Give a drop of blood…? What? Dominic demanded mentally. Where’s Leo?
Will you give a drop of blood to the goddess?
The message vanished only to appear again.
What goddess? Dominic asked in exasperation. He wanted to know where his companion was, damn it!
Will you give a drop of blood to the goddess Selessa?
As if that was any better!
Damn it, yes, whatever, he answered, figuring that, like with the choice about vassalship, he wouldn’t be able to get any more answers until he’d given into the question. And what did a drop of blood mean?
There was a sudden stinging on his right forepaw but it dimmed quickly. A literal drop of blood, it seemed.
Suddenly the darkness exploded into colour, the nothingness around him expanding and becoming a jungle, though one with trees he had never seen before. It wasn’t even green, but different shades of red. In front of him was a partially overgrown pile of rocks, the top of it bathed in the reddish sunlight which otherwise filtered through the leaves.
There was the sound of unfamiliar birds and insects in the air, and the humid breeze that drifted around him was fragrant with the scents of flowers, animals, rotting detritus, and damp. Looking up, he couldn’t see anything but the leaves of the trees around him and the sky up above – at least, he thought it was the sky. It was a greener blue than he’d ever seen on Earth before.
“Where am I?” he wondered, then suddenly realised that he was speaking aloud. Looking at himself, his eyebrows shot up as he saw his human form again, dressed in his favourite Nirvana t-shirt and soft blue jeans, the outfit that he’d been wearing when he’d…died. This was the first time he’d been in human form outside his mental space since this whole thing had happened.
Or perhaps this was his mental space? Was the fact that he was in his body a key indicator that that was the case? After all, he had seen it as a blank space, then turned it into a study, and then Leo had transformed the area around the study into a savannah area – why couldn’t it become a red-coloured jungle?
Out of curiosity, he tried to change into his leonine form. It worked. Was that another indicator that he was in his mental space? But then where was Leo? Dominic looked around himself, then changed back into his human form so he could get more height. No sign of the other lion, neither mentally, nor physically.
“You are in the space of dreams,” a voice came from ahead of him, making him jump. He looked over, but couldn’t see anything.
“Who’s there?” he asked warily, his eyes searching for the speaker.
“I preferred your other body,” the voice sighed, once more seeming to come from no apparent source ahead of him. Then, the one who had spoken moved and Dominic abruptly saw them. The creature was exceedingly well camouflaged against the rock. It was bathing in the sun, but before it had moved, it had just looked like another part of the formation.
Now, moving, Dominic could see that it was a feline-ish creature. Almost leonine except not, in rather discomforting ways. As it stepped towards him, he saw that it had two sets of eyes. One set was a darker shade of red than its fur, a pupil in the centre of each, much like his. The others were set above them and were bigger, but were an unnerving white with no pupil.
It had a mouth full of sharp fangs which more than rivalled his own, obvious when it yawned and stretched. It had four paws, all of which clearly hid scythe-like claws. As for its tail, it had three, each more like a leopard’s than his own thin and tasselled tail. Its body was heavily muscled, like a tiger's. As it bounded to the ground far more lightly than something as hefty as it should be able to be, Dominic realised that the rock must be bigger than he thought – the creature was at least twice his height as a human.
And as it approached, Dominic felt like he was a cub cowering before his father again, or a child being approached by an angry-looking headmaster. The aura, or whatever it was, preceded the creature, making it seem even bigger than it was.
“Who are you?” he couldn’t help the question slipping out of his mouth.
“I am the goddess Selessa,” she answered imperiously, stopping a few paces away from him and sitting. It was an odd illusion: while her physical body – or whatever it was in this ‘dream’ world – was the only thing visible, Dominic felt like he was standing at the foot of a massive feline, one taller than the trees themselves.
“Hi, I guess,” he said warily, not sure how one was supposed to act with a ‘goddess’. “What do you mean by the ‘space of dreams’? And where is my companion?”
“Is that how you address a goddess?” she asked, with the hint of amusement.
“Uh, your goddess…ness?” he offered uncertainly. This time, the hint of amusement was far more pronounced.
“You are fortunate that I am not a stickler for the formalities. The correct address would be ‘your divinity’.”
“Right….” Dominic replied. “So, uh, your divinity, care to answer my questions?”
The goddess sighed.
“Definitely fortunate I’m not one for the formalities,” she muttered as if to herself. “You, a petitioner, a possible convert, summoned the sponsoring deity here by offering me a drop of your blood. Since I’m the one who sponsored this Place of Power, and am in the market for new followers, I decided to appear. This is a space which is neither your world nor mine, neither your territory, nor mine. It is a neutral space, though I, as the far more powerful goddess that I am, obviously have far more influence over it than you.”
Dominic didn’t like the sound of that. How was it a neutral space if she could influence it?
“Fear not, I cannot harm you here,” she answered him knowingly. “No, I can’t read your mind,” she continued, seeming to prove the lie in her own words as she did so. “Your expressions are just very easy to read.”
“I see,” Dominic answered, doing his best to school his expression into blankness. Not something he was used to doing, he wasn’t sure how well he was succeeding with it. “And my companion? Where is he?”
“Dormant, I imagine. He does not fit the requirements to appear in this space.”
“Which are?”
“To be either classed as a sapient race under the System, or to have reached Tier three nobility.”
“I see,” Dominic said again. He didn’t, not entirely, and he wasn’t sure that this ‘goddess’ wasn’t just lying straight to his face. But, much like with the ameshek after he’d touched the ‘rock’, he didn’t have a huge amount of choice.
“Now, let us get down to business,” the goddess said briskly. “We have little time: the drop of blood only gives you a short audience as it is. What say you to becoming my follower?”