Leo approached the bodies of the fallen, the last to do so. They had swapped over because the former-human had some odd hesitations over consuming the flesh of one he had hunted with. Leo would say that it was a human-only issue, but he’d noticed that there was a sombre air which hung over the group.
With so much flesh laid out in front of them, Leo would have expected the feeling to be more that of a feast than what it actually was. Instead, almost everyone had had their bite, but a fair amount of the bodies still remained.
He understood the hesitation about consuming much of their own kind: lions didn’t tend to eat lions. However, the lions were being just as reticent about eating the ameshek bodies, and the amesheks were the same with the female lion who had fallen too.
As he approached and stood over the first body, one of an ameshek, he stooped down to take a bite. The flesh was tasty, though a bit tough. He had to tug fairly hard to break it free from the rest of the body, and it felt larger than normal going down his throat.
Having taken a bite from that body, he moved on to the next. As he shifted from one body to the next, the bites of meat that he’d taken seemed to sit more and more heavily in his stomach.
Abruptly, he realised what he was feeling: discomfort, regret. And he hadn’t even made it to the only one he was actually expecting to grieve.
Why? he wondered as he took a bite from the eighth ameshek body. Is it some sort of magic affecting me? He darted a suspicious look at the large ameshek leader. Does she have some sort of Ability to affect my emotions?
‘I doubt it,’ his brother answered his thought. ‘If she did, she’d have used it earlier.’ He was silent for a few moments. ‘Perhaps we’re feeling it more because something inside us is recognising them as part of the group. That was the whole point of doing this, after all,’ he pointed out. ‘Or perhaps it’s an effect from the Place of Power? We still know very little about it.’
Leo thought about it. His brother had a point – maybe. Certainly, the ‘movies’ which his brother recalled fondly from time to time had far stranger events happen. Though, what the implications of that might be, he didn’t know.
Not sure whether to accept the emotions or reject them, he moved onto the female lion. This one was far simpler: he could grieve her death without wondering whether his grief was real or forced upon him.
This wasn’t his first time losing a member of his pride, but it was odd to feel the emotions so strongly. He had felt loss when he had been chased out of his birth pride, and had seen mothers who lost their cubs grieve for them. He’d felt even stronger emotions when they had lost the two females from their newly acquired pride. Yet this was deeper even than that.
Instinctively, he nudged at the body of the female, licked her face, even though he knew that she was long gone. That there was no chance of her moving and pushing herself to her feet. Then, finally, he moved over to her shoulder where others had already taken a bite and sank his teeth into her.
There, he hesitated. He’d been a little contemptuous at his brother’s reaction to eating the flesh of another lion, but now he realised to his embarrassment that he was struggling too.
It felt like it would be the final acceptance that the female he had known was gone. Never to be mated. Never to have cubs. Never to hunt with him again.
And then Leo forced his teeth to bite down, forced his neck muscles to pull back to free the chunk of muscle.
The female…Mara…was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He could be angry at his brother for bringing them in when they were too low level, but that would be unfair. He had agreed with Dominic’s reasoning about not giving the canines more time to gain strength, about needing the numbers of females to help him.
So instead, he just let the chunk of meat slip down his throat, to sit heavily in his belly with the rest of the recently-eaten lumps.
‘We should Consume the rest of the bodies,’ his brother said quietly, his tone subdued.
Leo was honestly surprised that he had stuck around – he had expected the former-primate to beat a hasty retreat, just as he did whenever the lions started mating.
‘I felt it was only right to say goodbye,’ Dominic answered his unspoken thoughts. ‘I just…couldn’t have done…what you just did. So, Consume them?’
‘If everyone else is done,’ answered Leo.
‘I think they are,’ his brother pointed out.
Leo looked around. Lost in his own thoughts as he had been, he realised that the lions and ameshek had all gathered around him in a circle, each group distinct and separate. A frisson of fear went all the way from his head down to the tip of his tail at the thought of how they could have so easily attacked him without him being aware until it was too late. A human mind was a bad influence on him.
‘We should invite them to share the golden clouds,’ said the human mind in question impulsively. ‘It would be something else to make us feel like allies rather than enemies. And we would all feel a bit better, I think.’
Leo considered the question, but saw no problems with it. A part of him complained about beings outside his pride benefiting, but another part reminded him that Dominic seemed determined to bring them into the pride – especially after seeing the new enhancement which was available to them – Immunity. And Leo, dubious as he was about the ameshek in general, admitted that that was a way of getting maximum benefit out of them.
And if they were going to invite them into the Pride, they might as well invite them into this activity too.
‘Alright,’ he agreed after a moment. First sending a message in the Pride chat to his females to be ready to absorb the golden dust, he turned to the ameshek leader. ‘Prepare your pride. They must come close to absorb the golden dust,’ he sent to her.
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The ameshek leader tilted her head to one side.
‘You are different from before.’
‘We’ll explain later,’ Dominic cut in, projecting his mental voice to the ameshek leader. Leo knew from past experience that it was harder to do when not in full control of the body, but possible, where any physical actions were not.
The large ameshek female just tilted her head to the other side, eyeing them thoughtfully for a moment.
‘Very well,’ she said finally. ‘I will hold you to that. Now, you say we must come close?’
‘When the golden dust flies, yes,’ the lion answered shortly, then moved into the centre. Setting himself a little off balance, he stretched out paws, tail, and nose to touch all carcasses at the same time. ‘Consume,’ he commanded and the bodies dissolved into a mass of golden dust.
For a moment, he could see nothing. The substance rushed into his body, and he felt a slight wave of satiation, even if his stamina and health bars were already full. Then he felt something brush past him on one side – turning his head, he saw it was one of his females. Then something brushed past him on the other: one of the ameshek.
The touches increased in frequency, until he could barely tell who was doing it. Apart from when the ameshek leader did the same – she was big enough to be unmistakable.
Slowly the cloud cleared, until the last of the golden dust was gone. Leo eyed the ameshek and lions.
Something had changed. Instead of the distinct groups they had been in before the golden dust flew, now they were all mixed up together. As he watched, he saw them drift back into their separate groups, but they didn’t seem so distinct any more. One lion was actually closer to the amesheks than to her own kind, and an ameshek was similar.
‘It seems that was more of a bonding exercise than I thought it might be,’ mused Dominic, his voice drifting into Leo’s mind. ‘Maybe this would be a good time to approach Nyx about the Pride. After absorbing the Cores, of course.’
‘Nyx?’ Leo asked, confused.
‘Oh,’ Dominic sounded a little embarrassed. ‘I just felt uncomfortable calling her ‘the ameshek leader’ all the time. I thought that Nyx would work well – she’s black as night, after all.’
‘You and your incessant desire to name others,’ lamented Leo. ‘Why can’t you just identify them through smell and appearance like any normal lion does?!’
Dominic didn’t answer, except to send him a wave of playful irritation which was all Leo had really expected anyway. The lion walked through the space which had been filled with golden dust until very recently. In its place lay several gleaming orbs – the amesheks’ – and Mara’s – Cores.
Already knowing what his brother wanted him to do, Leo nudged the first one, asking it for information. As expected, he wasn’t able to make much sense out of the message which flashed up – that he could make any sense at all was more of a surprise, honestly.
‘That’s odd,’ Dominic mused from the back of his mind.
‘What?’
‘I’ll tell you in a moment. Just go and get information from the next Core too.’ Puzzled, the lion did so, and then the next, and then the one after that. By the time he did it to the seventh glimmering orb, he was getting more irritated than mystified.
‘Are you going to tell me what’s strange now?’ he growled at his frustrating brother.
‘They’re all identical,’ Dominic replied, sounding confused.
‘What?’
‘All the options in the Cores are identical. I know we’re used to all members of the same species sharing the same first Ability, but there’s usually more variation with the second and third. But not here.’
‘Maybe it’s specific to this creature?’ suggested Leo.
‘Or it’s an effect of this place,’ countered Dominic.
‘Do you think it could be a problem?’ Leo asked next, slight alarm going through him. Although he didn’t obsess over Abilities like his primate-descended brother did, he did recognise the benefit of different pride members having different strengths.
‘We’ll have to keep an eye open,’ Dominic said in the end, communicating across an uncomfortable feeling of helplessness. Unfortunately, Leo couldn’t think of any better ideas either. ‘Ah well, at least it means we’re more likely to get the Abilities we want right now. Absorb the Cores, would you?’
Seeing no reason to object, Leo did just that, remembering to focus on the Abilities they wanted. He felt his brother focus too, and hoped that they were attempting to absorb the same Ability. It probably wouldn’t work as well if not.
‘Nice,’ his brother reported after he’d finished. ‘We’ve reached a hundred percent towards Sonic Attack and Vibrating Body, and we’re even seventy percent towards Group Enhancement. It looks like focussing on Group Enhancement has improved our odds of getting it, though unfortunately, just not quite enough. If we’d got it in our last Core, that would have been great, but we got Vibrating Body which was already at a hundred percent, so that was wasted.’ he sighed. ‘Perhaps we’ll get another chance later.
Privately, Leo wondered whether they’d get the chance sooner rather than later if the discussion his brother wanted to have didn’t go well.
‘Since we’ve finished all that, do you want to switch over for that conversation now?’ the lion asked, preparing to do just that.
‘Nah, I’m enjoying relaxing for a bit,’ Dominic answered easily, the feeling of a languorous stretch deliberately shared across their shared consciousness. That, Leo wasn’t expecting.
‘I thought you were going to talk to the ameshek leader about the Pride?’ asked Leo, confused.
‘I was,’ admitted his brother, ‘but then I thought that it might be better if you do it.’
Leo was even more confused.
‘Why? You’re the one who wants them there. I’m still not convinced that it’s a good idea to keep them around.’
‘I know that you’re worried they could hurt the lionesses accidentally. But if we take Immunity and they’re part of the Pride, then that won’t be an issue. But I don’t want this to be just me insisting. If you really think they shouldn’t be part of the Pride…I’ll go along with you.’
Leo grumbled to himself. He had, but that was before it was going to be down to him to convince another creature when he himself was not completely convinced. Though, he had to admit that his feelings of antagonism towards the canines had reduced with the recent events. And having the decision passed over to him to make soothed something inside him that he hadn’t realised was irritated.
Eyeing the ameshek leader, he huffed in resignation.
‘Fine,’ he agreed grumpily, moving towards the large ameshek and then lying down in front of her – given that they were supposed to be convincing her to join the pride, staying standing probably would give her the wrong message. ‘Do you want to join my Pride?’ he asked bluntly.