The pressure against me in this space is almost the weakest I’ve ever felt. A breeze rather than a gale or torrent of water. Walking forward is easy, barely any resistance keeping me back. The samuran has a lower Willpower than me, but not so much lower that I would expect this to be the consequence. No doubt it’s the result of his physical defeat.
I decide to do something similar to the Pathwalker and walk forwards until I stand only an arm’s length away from the big Warrior. There are none of the attempts to attack which I encountered with the Pathwalker. He doesn’t even resist as much as the other creatures I’ve Dominated did. I find myself baffled, even suspicious.
Standing before him, I see nothing but acceptance; even his emotions are calm. There is no anger, no resentment. If anything…there’s respect.
“Why aren’t you resisting?” I can’t help but ask.
Should I? He asks in return. You have proven yourself a worthy Pathwalker. Several of my kin have already been defeated and bowed to you; why should I not do the same?
It…takes me a little aback. To have someone be so matter-of-fact about it. But then, I suppose it’s more normal in their society – if they have ranking fights on a regular basis, being defeated must be a familiar experience. This defeat is different, though, and I’m not completely sure the Warrior has recognised that.
“Do you sense what will happen upon this defeat, though?” I ask him. Maybe it’s stupid to do so; maybe I should just take his resignation and go with it. But I don’t want him feeling later that he’s been tricked into something.
I sense the weave poised around me, he acknowledges. It waits only for your decision to tighten and confine.
OK, so maybe he does know what’s happening.
“And you’re OK with that?” I ask, the question almost slipping out without permission. But then, this is the moment for honesty, for clarification. When we’re soul to soul, no deception can last long.
The strong decide, the weak obey, the samuran says with equanimity. You have proven yourself a worthy Pathwalker, albeit a strange one fighting with both magic and weapons as you did. I have demanded obedience from those weaker than me; now I have been proven weaker, it is my turn to yield to the one stronger than me. My Pathwalker has acknowledged you as her leader meaning that there is no shame in me doing the same.
I nod slowly, a frown making its way onto my face – this might not be the physical world, but that doesn’t mean my sense of self or reactions have changed. While it works out well for me right now, I fear that this absolute philosophy might cause issues for me in the future. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Without another word, I reach out and touch Leaps-from-fright on the bone that runs between his eyes.
So lost in thought am I that I barely notice the world reshaping itself around me. I do notice the pain that suddenly spears through my chest, though, Sensation Management having apparently been reset or something while I was otherwise engaged.
My mana has regenerated a little, so I send it to immediately repair the still-serious wound in my chest. Then, moving to sit by the now-aware Warrior, I send a quick message to River, Bastet, and Catch, letting them know of my success. The first two should have deduced it at the very least: they know what happens if I fail a Battle of Wills. Catch, however, might not.
“I’ll heal you once I’ve regenerated some mana,” I tell Lee – Leaps-from-fright is both far too long and doesn’t suit the burly Warrior at all. I’ll check with him later as to whether he’s OK with the name change – given his graciousness in accepting defeat, I figure he has earned the right to object – but for now that’s what I’m sticking with.
After a quick mental warning to my ‘managers’ I drop into Deep Meditation, resting within my Core space and watching the waves of Energy come flowing in. It’s relaxing, removing the remaining stress from the battles recently, both physical, mental, and in my soul.
Once my stores are full again, I ‘rise’ out of my meditative state, though maintain Light Meditation even while I finish my own healing and then get to work on Lee’s.
Fortunately, even though I’d acted a bit like a bull in a china shop while damaging his joints earlier, they aren’t too difficult to fix; I’m already very familiar with the joints of River’s body, so I just have to reinforce them a bit more to match the bone around them and what I see in the undamaged joints, and it’s fine. After sorting out the joints, I heal the light burning to his jaw and face.
When I come out of my healing trance and look at Lee, I find him bending his right elbow with a look of wondering surprise on his face and flashing in his spikes.
“What?” I ask. I don’t think I’ve made a mistake – especially as his reactions seem to be positive, but it’s always possible.
This joint has been painful since I broke it in a fight last winter. Yet now, it feels like new.
“Well, I guess it kind of is,” I reply, feeling a bit awkward, though also a little bit pleased. Are there more undiscovered or unhealed injuries in the samuran’s village than I’d thought? Well, perhaps that’s one way of me winning everyone over.
Standing, I hold out a hand to the now-healed lizard-man. He looks at my hand in confusion, then pushes himself upright and lifts his chin.
I thank you, Honoured Pathwalker. What command do you have for me? I shrug after a moment.
“I need to deal with the rest of your group, so perhaps come and help me convince them to accept me as a Pathwalker so I don’t have to fight all of them.”
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You fear their strength? he asks, hints of red and orange flickering in his crest of spikes.
“No,” I tell him, my eyes narrowed. “But I have better things to do than beat them one by one to prove my own strength.” Is the whole ‘might makes right’ thing going to bite me sooner than I thought? He certainly seems to be more than a little offended by my response, though appears trying to keep it off his expression – the Bond between us doesn’t lie, though.
If you wish to earn the loyalty of my brothers, you must prove yourself to them, as to me, he answers, his tone almost neutral if it weren’t for the distaste I can still read in it. I hesitate for a moment, then dip a bit deeper into his emotions than I normally would – I don’t like doing it since I see it as an invasion of privacy, but at the same time, I need to know where I am with this new guy. If there’s an issue here, I need to know what it is and how to deal with it before it becomes worse.
A moment later, I have my answer, and it’s probably one I should have realised before now. Essentially, for a society like the samurans to exist, one where the strongest rules, the strength of the ‘boss’ must be undeniable. That’s why they have the regular ranking fights within the Warriors, so only the strongest Warrior would lead the group, and why they have yearly fights with all the Pathwalkers so it was clear who stood where in the hierarchy; who could command who.
I was hoping that, having used magic in the fight, I could be considered as the ‘top Pathwalker’ fighting the ‘top Warrior’. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way – I am not of any established group like the Pathwalkers, and they haven’t seen me fight for my place even among my actual group. So that means I have to prove myself.
Me saying that I had better things to do than fight all the Warriors had been tantamount to spitting on their culture and announcing my own lack of conviction.
I wonder for a moment why I haven’t run into this issue with River or Catch, but it doesn’t take me too long to work it out. They’ve never really been part of the hierarchy, not really. As hatchlings, they were the bottom of the pile – no hatchling could command another, apart from perhaps another of its own age-group.
Then, as adults, Catch remained at the bottom of the pile because of his disability; River did rise up, but that was purely to do with the choice of Herbalist to take him as her assistant. It wasn’t because he’d fought and defeated the majority of the unevolved adults.
It didn’t seem like that kind of strict hierarchy actually came in until they’d crossed the tier threshold. From what River had said, and Catch a little too, the unevolved adults had a selfish outlook for the most part, scrambling for the resources that would give them access to more meat, but not actually targeting each other that much. I can’t help but wonder why not – wouldn’t it make more sense for the stronger to take the weaker samurans’ resources? But it didn’t seem to happen particularly.
I mentally shake the thoughts away – right now I need to deal with the samurans in front of me. And apparently I’m going to have three more fights. I feel exhausted already.
“Very well,” I say finally to Lee with a hint of a sigh in my voice. “Let’s get to it, then.”
Without waiting for a response, I walk over to the still-bound samurans. Stabbing the butt of my spear into the ground, I cross my arms and glare at them, still annoyed that my strategy of challenging and winning against the most powerful of them and therefore having them all decide to obey is not going to work.
If I’m going to have to fight them all, I’m going to Dominate them all too, I decide. It might be a little unfair, but right now, I don’t care. Especially now I know more about how the Warriors in particular are structured, I probably shouldn’t risk any of them having Tame Bonds, anyway. Too much opportunity for betrayal if one of them decides that I’m vulnerable.
“Right then,” I say, concentrating on being able to communicate with the non-Bound lizard-folk. “Who’s next?”
The three Warriors look at each other, a little more uncertainly than they did before.
“I shall challenge you,” responded one of the lithe ones – Eats-dirt, I think it was.
“Fine,” I say, then turn to Joy and indicate that she should release him from his bindings.
Once more we head to the ‘duelling field’, but this time, I don’t mess around with fire, Flesh-Shaping or even my spear. I’d done that before because I’d hoped that by showcasing exactly what I could do, I’d prevent the fights from even starting; now that that strategy has failed, I don’t see the point in wasting more time.
Instead, I just use Dominate as soon as my opponent meets my eyes.
The resistance is stronger this time: defeating Lee in the physical world had definitely made his battle easier. It’s not all that difficult though, either. A torrent of water, yes, but one that I can wade through without too much difficulty. Perhaps the fact that Lee had been identified as stronger than Eats-dirt but had still fallen to me has had an effect on Eats-dirt’s own feelings of likelihood of success.
Whatever the reason, I force my way forwards from my starting spot. Once I’m more than a third of the way towards the samuran on the other side, he speaks to me, though his words aren’t exactly what I was expecting.
Hey, I thought that you would use some of that cool magic; maybe have a bit of a spear against javelin battle. Not…this. It’s more the tone of the samuran’s words than the content which gives me pause. He sounds…sulky. Disappointed.
“You’re objecting to my way of beating you, rather than the fact that I’m beating you?” I ask, just checking whether I’ve heard correctly.
Yes! I mean, I knew I wasn’t going to win – Leaps-from-fright beat me within ten seconds during our last ranking fight and he still says that my aim with a javelin is little better than that of a hatchling, but I was hoping for more of a fight, you know?
I eye him dubiously. That…wasn’t what I was expecting. But I’ve been learning enough new things today that I decide not to question it further. Instead, I start moving forwards again, even as I speak.
“We can fight like that another time. We do plenty of sparring to improve our Skills,” I promise the samuran. The crazy lizard-man actually perks up at that.
You do? Awesome – I love it when one of the older Warriors is willing to teach me some things. Hunting is all well and good, but sometimes you don’t know what’s wrong until someone points it out, you get me?
“I do,” I agree, starting to like this one, crazy as he seems. “So, do you accept the Bond? You sense what it’s about, right?” I check even as I come to a stop in front of Eats-dirt.
Sure, he says with a hint of a shrug. You don’t need my agreement anyway – I can’t stop you. Probably wouldn’t have been able to even if we’d had our fight first.
“No, but I’d rather have it,” I tell him, though I feel myself to be a hypocrite even as I say it – if he said no, wouldn’t I do it anyway? What other choice do I have right now?
I touch the bone between Eats-dirt’s eyes and the Bond snaps into place even as the discomfort within me grows.