Dominic briefly entertained the thought of running away, but if ever he could, that time had passed. He had no desire to find out exactly how the System might impose the conditions of losing on him even if he could escape the other chimera.
With retreat not a possibility, he looked warily at the creature itself, his eyes once more assessing, but this time looking for weak spots and vulnerabilities. What he found was worrying: there weren’t many.
The other chimera had sharp claws both fore and aft, and Dominic suspected that its lithe neck would be annoyingly agile and with a much greater range of movement than his own.
‘It may come down to who can inflict the most damage per second,’ Dominic murmured grimly to Leo even as he started circling around the chimera. The other creature seemed content to watch him circle, its long neck allowing it to easily see behind itself.
‘Try to disable it. Go for the vulnerable joints.’ Leo suggested. Dominic sent back a feeling of exasperation: as if he hadn’t already been considering that.
He circled a couple of more times, his eyes flicking predatorily over the chimera’s form. Perhaps his best advantage would come from using the chimera’s stolen body parts against it. It was not a natural creature whose body had formed from evolution to become ideally suited to its environment. Instead, it was composed of different parts of creatures, and was unlikely to move as seamlessly as the original.
Then again, there was a reason that this chimera had survived thus far, so he would do well not to underestimate it.
Dominic’s mind worked busily over his strategy. He was going to need to use as many abilities as he could to win this, give himself whatever advantages he had available. I wish I could use Pounce, he thought to himself. Then an idea occurred.
Turning tail, he ran away from the beast. He felt the surprise from Leo, and suspected that the chimera would feel the same.
‘What are you doing?!’ the lion cried in his mind. ‘If you run, we forfeit!’
‘I’m not running,’ Dominic told him shortly, his eyes flicking around to find the right spot. There.
‘What do you mean, you’re not running?! That’s exactly what you’re doing,’ Leo demanded, perhaps too panicked to read the thoughts running through his mind and realise what he was actually doing.
‘Just let me concentrate!’ Dominic snapped back at him, shoving the idea of his plan at his back-seat driver to shut him up. The lion went silent for a few moments, giving Dominic some welcome peace while he set the first parts of his plan into action.
He was taller than he used to be, but the bush he’d chosen to hide behind was enough to allow him to go to ground unseen, and the grass itself was just about long enough to be able to hide him.
Crouching as low as he could while still being able to move fluidly, he once more circled the chimera, moving closer at the same time.
The creature seemed to have lost sight of him for now – its head was turning this way and that, its wings flapping restlessly every so often. Every now and again, it would actually turn completely on the spot, seeming fearful that he might be about to leap on its back. Which was indeed his plan. Either that or somewhere else vulnerable. But he’d have to time it right.
Plus, of course, that neck meant that the creature’s head could lift significantly further above the ground than most herbivores’, so it would have a better chance of spotting him.
‘The chimera also seemed to realise we were close by before,’ Leo pointed out, significantly calmer now he realised that Dominic actually had a plan. ‘Maybe it has some other senses we’re not aware of.’
‘That’s true,’ Dominic admitted. It was a concern. As was the memory that the creature had managed to not show any indication of having noticed him until he’d spoken in Dominic’s mind. Which meant it had an ability to dissemble which might render his attempts at an ambush more dangerous for the lion than his opponent.
For a moment, Dominic really wished for the feature that appeared in some games which involved stealth – an eye either opened or closed, indicating whether the character had been noticed. That would be so useful at the moment. Without it, though, he was going to have to decide whether the chance was worth it.
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There was a bush not far from the chimera, and Dominic decided to use that as his coverage. Creeping towards it, he kept his belly so close to the ground that his fur was brushing against it with every step.
By the time he gained the cover, his muscles were aching a little from holding the position for an unusual length of time and his nerves were shot. He dared to look between the leaves to try to see whether the patchwork beast was showing any signs of having noticed him.
It didn’t seem to have: its head was still flicking around, its wings and tail moving restlessly and without any real objective. Dominic, for once, was entirely focussed on the hunt; fortunately, Leo was too. Their shared mind was therefore quiet and calm, their body tense and ready to move.
Then a moment came where the chimera was actually focussed away from them, its attention on the area in front of it, its back to the bush. Dominic saw his chance.
Breaking into a practically soundless run, he dashed over the short distance between him and the creature, then leapt, claws and teeth bared.
Quicker than he had anticipated, the other chimera reacted. Instead of heading for its vulnerable neck, Dominic found the mouth full of teeth approaching him with frightening speed.
They collided in mid-air, the force of Dominic’s momentum driving the chimera’s head backwards even as its teeth ripped at him.
The chimera was pulled slightly off balance as they met the earth with a thud and a rising dust cloud. Dominic had managed to keep his enemy’s head below him, so he landed on it. Unfortunately, that meant that those sharp teeth dug deeper into his chest. Fortunately, his gorget was shielding his neck a bit, but he still saw an uncomfortably large chunk of health be lost as the teeth shredded his flesh.
Leaping off the chimera’s head itself, Dominic quickly reversed direction and struck at its neck again, this time his own teeth meeting its flesh not far below the head. Hopefully like that, it wouldn’t be able to bite at him.
He poured stamina into his bite to enhance his damage. At the same time, while he was using one front paw to cling on, he used Powerful Swipe on the other, ripping and tearing at the creature’s neck.
The larger beast clearly had no desire to put up with such treatment for long. Instead of ripping its neck free, it showed an uncomfortably human intelligence overriding the instinct that had to be screaming at it. Instead, it used its own front legs, batting at Dominic with claws probably twice or three times the length of his own.
For a few attacks, Dominic held on, figuring that he was doing more damage than the creature was doing to him. Then it shifted and the balance changed.
The chimera shifted so its weight was on its back legs, freeing up both its front legs to swipe at him properly. Dominic moaned softly in pain as the claws raked over him again and again and again. He doubted that any of his sandy fur would be showing through the blood before the fight was done.
More importantly, each swipe took off a small chunk of Dominic’s health and he was rapidly approaching half-empty.
Should I let go and take another run at it? he wondered, feeling a little bit desperate. With his teeth buried in the creature’s flesh, he couldn’t see its health bar. He had no idea if it had lost more or less health than him.
But if I let go, then am I likely to get a better grip? He already had the neck beneath his teeth; what was better than that? I can’t just keep pouring my resources into this: my stamina is already starting to run low.
It was the last fact which decided him. If he let his stamina be completely used here and he didn’t kill the creature, then he would be a complete sitting duck. Such an all or nothing strategy wasn’t worth the risk.
He let go and immediately leapt back, then leapt back again when the creature’s head snapped at him.
There was a momentary pause in the battle as the two regarded each other with increased respect. Dominic took a look at the creature’s health pool: it was down past half, but still a good third remained. Perhaps it was just as well he’d made the decision he had. Certainly, he’d have run out of stamina before he’d have eaten through the health points the chimera had remaining.
‘Your teeth and claws are strong. I shall enjoy taking those for my own when I win,’ the other creature said. Dominic bristled at the words and the arrogance implicit within them, but he didn’t feel like it was intentional taunting – he felt like the creature was just so clearly confident about its chances of winning.
Has it used any sort of abilities yet? Dominic wondered suddenly. Does it have any? Surely it did, though there was no guarantee: if his own apparent inability to gain Abilities ‘naturally’ was the same for any chimera, then perhaps it just hadn’t hunted enough of a single species to gain their Abilities.
Then he saw something that made him set his teeth and growl. The chimera’s health bar was ticking up. It wasn’t like in the dungeon with the warthog guardian where the health bar refilled itself with alacrity; this was more that it was ticking up a couple of health points every second or something, only noticeable when looked at for a few moments at a time. But it was the last thing Dominic wanted to see.
Still, the chimera wasn’t exactly unscathed. For every couple of health points it gained, it lost one to the heavy bleeding still coming from its neck wound. That, at least, didn’t show any signs of closing soon.
The creature wasn’t attacking, though, and Dominic understood why. His own health wasn’t worsening very fast, fortunately, since most of the wounds inflicted on him were relatively minor and were already clotting. Some of the initial wounds on his chest were deeper and were still bleeding sluggishly, but they would take a while to kill him. However, time was still on the side of the other chimera since it was actually gaining overall health points.
Dominic would have to be the aggressor here. But to be fair, his offence was far better than his defence anyway.
Alright. Warm-up’s done, he said to himself, in his mind’s eye stretching and cracking his neck. Time for the real fight.