My mind races quickly. We have one cub AWOL – what are the chances that Trouble is where the shriek came from? I wouldn’t take that bet. At the same time, we have two cubs here that we can’t leave on their own. I make a decision quickly.

“Bastet, you go ahead,” I tell her quietly but urgently. She sends me a reluctant look, glancing back at the other two cubs. “I’ll bring them with me, but the other cub could be in mortal danger right now!” She sends a feeling of grim agreement, and dashes off. The two cubs try to follow after her, letting out mewls of distress. I quickly scoop them up, ignoring their wriggling complaints, and tuck them back in the shirt sling: I may need my hands free.

Rushing after Bastet, I try to work out where exactly she went as there aren’t many signs of her passage in the undergrowth. Then a fracas breaks out not far ahead and I quickly move in the direction of the shaking and growling bushes.

I stop before I get too close, not wanting to be accidentally attacked simply because I was there and wanting to have more view on the situation. Not that I can see much – the undergrowth is too thick. I catch glimpses of fur and feathers and the odd flash of teeth or claw. As for sounds, it’s an unholy cacophony of growls and snarls and ear-splitting shrieks of pain or fear.

I feel annoyingly helpless: I’m not used to being a bystander to a fight. Actually, is it weird that I’m already used to being a participant in a fight? Desperately, I try to think of something I could do to help. The problem is that anything I can think of has just as much chance of hurting Bastet or the cub as whatever the attacker is. I need to see more.

Just as I’m considering completely uprooting the bush or whatever the undergrowth plants count as, Bastet rolls into view. She’s tussling with some sort of snaky thing which has its fangs buried deeply in our wayward cub. I say snaky thing because although it’s a long tube with no legs, it does have a sting at the end which it keeps burying into Bastet. I seriously hope that thing isn’t venomous, but it seems like a forlorn hope as I watch Bastet starting to slow and weaken.

Pulling my trusty mace and knife out of my Inventory and belt respectively, I start slashing at the snake-thing wherever I can see exposed flesh. I don’t dare use the mace yet for fear of hurting my ally, but if I can sever its spine, that’ll be a good start.

The snake-thing doesn’t take all this lying down, releasing its prey to come at me with both fangs. The cub drops down worryingly limp and I fear that it will be crushed as the combat continues. The snake-thing strikes at me more quickly than I’d anticipated; I barely manage to get my mace up in between us in time. Fortunately, I do manage to block the strike, and even better, the snake-thing’s fangs get stuck temporarily in the wood.

I use the brief pause to lean in and snatch up the cub, somewhat roughly tossing it to one side. If it’s still alive, I hope it will be able to hold on until we’re done with combat: I really can’t do anything to help it right now. Unfortunately, casting Lay-on-hands seems to require me to literally be in contact with the patient for the whole healing time, otherwise I’d toss one off now.

Reaching in to grab the cub has left me out of position, and the snake-thing’s second weapon comes into play. Before I’ve even recognised the danger, I feel pain explode in the back of my shoulder and glance over to see its sting sticking into me.

My usual battle-anger rising inside me, I slam the mace into the ground, the snake-thing’s head being crushed between wood and a hard place. It’s regrettable that I don’t have enough speed or momentum on the swing to literally crush its skull, but at least the strike stuns it a little. Its tail goes limp briefly and its sting slides out of me.

I take full advantage of the lull and grab its tail firmly, even though that means briefly dropping my knife. My mace pinning the head and my hand around the base of its tail, I extend my arms as much as possible, presenting the groggy Bastet with a perfect target.

“Kill it,” I urge her as she blinks a bit owlishly. She stumbles forward, aiming a strike with her claws and missing. The snake-thing, getting over its stunned state, starts wriggling, making it even more difficult for Bastet to hit. I try to formulate another plan seeing that this one isn’t working very well. I’m also very conscious about the injured state of both Bastet and the cub, not to mention the venom working through my own system from my shoulder wound. Time is against us.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Before I can come up with something, Bastet figures it out. She moves close to my mace, places a paw on the snake’s body – requiring a few attempts, but succeeding in the end – and leans in to start chewing. It takes longer than I’d like – the snake-thing’s skin must be pretty tough – but eventually the rest of its body goes limp in my grasp as she bites through its spinal column.

We’re both panting. The whole thing has probably only taken a few minutes, but like all time in combat, those minutes seem at the time to stretch into hours. I quickly cast a Lay-on-hands on my companion, worried about how groggy she seems. She perks up after two more repetitions and sends me a mental question about the cub.

“I don’t know,” I tell her, staggering over to the cub in question. My Constitution must be lower than Bastet’s as she was hit more times than I can count by the venomous stinger, but was still able to act; I was hit only once and already feel like I’ve had a few too many vodkas. It makes me worry about the cub: if the snake-thing’s fangs are as venomous as its stinger, what chance does such a small body have?

I drop down next to the limp body, fearing the worst. I don’t bother searching for a pulse – that would just waste time. Instead, I cast my channelled version of Lay-on-hands, searching for the area of most damage. Worryingly, it actually seems to be the brain that is most affected by this venom. Not feeling remotely able to direct the healing correctly when dealing with the brain, I just flood the area with healing mana, hoping that the cub’s body will know well enough to be able to help itself.

Still, if nothing else, I can tell that it’s holding onto life. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say that this venom isn’t actually that lethal, at least not immediately – its purpose seems to be in reducing the victims coordination and consciousness. The cub ending up in a coma isn’t much better than outright death, though.

I run out of mana before the cub is healed, but my efforts do seem to have made some difference. Before I ran out of energy, I detected that the venom concentration had reduced, or its effects had been partially healed – I’m not sure how to interpret the feedback I received from my spell. The fact that the cub starts shifting slightly and making quiet noises of discontent is also a good sign.

By this point Bastet has come to collapse next to me, keeping guard on us at the same time as anxiously watching over my patient. I’m exhausted: running through the whole of my mana store in such a short time does that to me, apparently. When I stop moving for a moment, the protective adult raptorcat looks up at me questioningly.

“I ran out of mana,” I explain briefly. When she prods me again mentally, I sigh once more. “Trouble is still alive, for now, and hopefully will last until I get enough mana back to continue his healing.” And yes, this cub has now definitely earned the name ‘Trouble’. It’d better be glad I’m not calling it ‘Strife’. It’s not blond enough for that, though.

I need to work out what sex each of the cubs are. So far I haven’t seen any physical differences that could indicate male or female. Then a thought crosses my mind which makes me want to face-palm. Why don’t I just ask the creature who will know?

“Bastet, are these cubs female like you, or male, or a mixture?” She cocks her head on one side, clearly not quite understanding. Not really surprising, I suppose, when I realise that my own concepts of male and female are a bit confusing based on recent cultural developments. I try to form a clear thought of males as being the ones to sire new offspring and females being the ones to bear them, hoping that raptorcats don’t have a more complicated arrangement like seahorses or snails.

Fortunately, it seems like raptorcats are neither hermaphrodites, nor do they have unusual child-rearing arrangements, so she understands what I want to know this time. She sends a series of images: Ninja and Stormcloud playing together as cubs; Ninja and Stormcloud as adults hunting together as a pack; Trouble as a cub; Trouble as an adult on his own, fighting with another raptorcat; the winner of the fight approaches Ninja and Stormcloud and mates with them – making a light blush rise to my cheeks at the sheer unabashed nature of Bastet’s approach to sex. I can also now attest that raptorcat mating is not that dissimilar from lion mating, something I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. The last image is of Ninja and Stormcloud relaxing with cubs running around them.

So, Ninja and Stormcloud are females, and it’s females that form the pack. Or pride, if we consider them to be this world’s analogue to lions. The males, of which Trouble seems to be one, wander around and are fairly solitary, only meeting each other to fight or mate, depending on if they met a female or male of their species.

Unlike lions, I didn’t get the impression that a male will associate with one particular pride for any length of time – it definitely seems more to be that a male will wander around to try to spread his genes as widely as he can, assuming that he is capable of defeating whatever male he might encounter. It’s interesting, and might explain why Trouble is always the one to go exploring where the two females are more likely to play near Bastet.

My mana having regenerated enough, I cast another channelled Lay-on-hands, this one being shorter as I don’t have as much mana to work with. Fortunately, my increased Wisdom does mean that I regenerate mana a bit more quickly otherwise the chances of the cub surviving would be a lot lower.

It’s still a bit touch and go for a while, but eventually the cub opens its eyes and blinks blearily. My heart having had far too much strain this morning, and not feeling great since I didn’t use any healing on myself, I make the executive decision to head straight back to the cave. Hopefully we won’t meet anything else dangerous on the way back, I say to myself. This has got to be our fair share for the day. I then curse myself – that’s an invitation for Murphy to come and intervene if ever there was one.