The lizard-man is staring at me, still wrapped in my bark-fibre cord. Unlike before, his eyes aren’t filled with rage and fear, though there is still some trepidation present. I can feel the Bond between us, thicker than any other I’ve formed so far, though it’s not as...dense as the one with Bastet. Is dense the right word? All I can say is that if the Bonds were boxes, the one with the lizard-man would be big enough for a toaster, but empty; the one with Bastet would be a chocolate box full of chocolates ranging from white to dark.
I have no idea how to start communicating with him. I’ve never had such a contentious Battle of Wills, nor one with a being able to discuss abstract ideas such as enslaving souls after death in order to protect a group from the encroaching threat of a forest of killer trees. And if that thought didn’t prove I’m on a different world, nothing will.
“Hi,” I say eventually, cursing at myself mentally for such a dumb start. I’ve engaged in a deep mind to mind – or soul to soul – communion with this guy, threatened him and his family, coerced his help, and ‘hi’ is the best I can come up with? “How are you feeling?” I ask quickly. As an attempt to cover up my awkwardness, it fails rather miserably. I suddenly itch to get moving – Lathani’s in terrible danger and here I am trying to work out what small-talk to use with my new Bound. I push myself to my feet abruptly, only considering as I start pacing that perhaps the lizard-man won’t actually understand. My words, I mean – he should be able to understand the impression of my thoughts in the same way Bastet does.
I admit I am feeling a little...out of sorts, the lizard-man responds cautiously, answering the question of whether he can understand me. It’s odd, though. Perhaps this is what he experiences when I talk, but he’s not speaking English. Actually, maybe it would have been stranger if he suddenly had started speaking English with a proper British accent.
What he’s using to communicate is not even something that I would recognised as a language had I just heard it randomly. He snaps his jaws together, clicks his teeth, grunts deeply in his throat, and uses the crest on his head to flash different colours – yes, apparently he has colour-changing spikes. However, I guess due to the Bond, the various signals are interpreted by my mind into English words.
Suddenly I wonder what would happen if I couldn’t see him and his colourful spikes – would it impede my understanding or not? Or if I couldn’t hear the vocalisations? Maybe not – I’m probably getting the meaning of his words across the Bond rather than the visual and audio cues. It may be important to know that, but I decide to find out later; now, we need to deal with the most urgent things, namely Lathani’s rescue. For now, I’m just glad that we’re able to communicate with more ease than I experience even with Bastet.
“Disorientated?” I ask.
A little, he admits. It feels very...strange to have my core values pushed aside and instead have the desire to obey and protect you fill the space they previously occupied. Huh. The first time Dominating a creature all too clearly sentient was bound to be a thought-provoking experience, but his very first words are already causing guilt to pool in my stomach. I push them aside as much as I did my earlier questions: we have more important things to do. And I mustn’t forget that this guy was at least party to the idea of killing and enslaving an innocent cub. Who I’m sure is also sentient and sapient, or at least could be so if her mother is any proof. That thought makes all remorse for my actions flee swiftly.
“I’ll get those ropes off you,” I say, moving towards him and matching my words with efficient action. I’m not rough, but I don’t try to be especially gentle either. “Do you have a name?” I ask shortly as I unwind the ropes. The lizard-man sits up and rubs at a few places where the cord dug in, managing to slip under his scales in a couple of spots.
You do not want to name me? he asks in surprise as he looks up at me from his seated position. I feel compelled to inform you that it would tighten the Bond between us and, subsequently, the control you have on it. I stare at him thoughtfully for a moment, leaning against a tree now the lizard-man is free. Turning that new information over in my mind, I have to admit that it makes a certain amount of sense – and holds no little attraction. I’d wondered at the time whether giving Spike his name had made a difference – it appears that it did. Bastet too, probably. Here though….
“I don’t want to take your identity from you and replace it with another,” I say finally. “If you have no name because your people don’t do such a thing, then I’ll give you one because that’s how my people work. But if you already have one, I won’t take it from you.” It may be more advantageous to tighten my control over this new member of our group in any way I can, but… Just like I don’t want to be the guy who just forces a Bond on a completely unwilling creature, I also don’t want to try to erase the personality of my new Bound just because he has accepted the Bond. Not even if he was intending on doing something similar to Lathani: if I let myself be brought down to their level, what kind of person will I become? “I’ll ask again: do you have a name?” The lizard-man eyes me curiously but soon replies.
I am called Runs-with-the-river. It was the first thing I did on my name-day, according to my brood-mother.
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“OK,” I accept. “Runs-with-the-river is a bit of a mouthful – do you mind if I shorten it to River?” Well, it’s a mouthful in English at least; who knows how he says it in his language – it might just be two teeth clicks and a grunt for him. Although I’ve tried to pay a little attention to how he’s actually been saying things rather than just what I’m interpreting, I’m completely lost. Being a language developed completely independently from any Earth one, it may have completely different rules from anything even vaguely familiar. Heck they may not even have recognisable words or syntax that conforms in any way to Earth languages. And that’s not even taking into account the physiological differences between a humanoid crocodilian and a human.
Either way, since it’ll be me saying his name, I’d like to at least know if he’s willing to deal with a nickname.
River, he muses. Yes, very well. Symbolic in many ways: that I am not the same under your leash as I was before, but that I have not entirely been made anew. That...wasn’t exactly what I was intending, but I’m not going to argue. He’s a lot more verbose in person than he was in our Battle of Wills. Again, that raises more questions: is it because of the nature of communicating through thoughts and emotions, or is it more to do with the context of the conversation? But those are questions for later. There’s a more pressing situation right now.
“OK, great. So, River, tell me everything about Lathani’s situation,” I order him grimly. “I need to know where she’s being kept, in what condition she is in, who’s caring for her, what’s being done to her to prepare her for your shaman’s...thing. Everything.”
*****
My foot catches in a tree root, and I almost trip, the hobbling vine wrapped around my ankles not helping me keep my balance. I take several stumbled steps that threaten to have me on the ground at any moment.
Keep moving, I hear growled from in front of me as a clawed paw pulls at the vine around my neck. The binding around my wrists bites into my skin as I automatically try to balance myself with my arms. Unfortunately, with them pinned behind me, that’s not possible. I almost gain my balance before another hard pull at my neck threatens to set me tumbling once more.
For what feels like the nth time in the last half an hour or so, I touch the Bond between me and River to ensure that it’s there. He’s the one dragging me along by the neck, his actions rough only to sell the fiction. Or what I hope is fiction, at least. I comfort myself with the thought that even if River actually betrays me, Bastet is staying close enough to us to swoop in to help me if it becomes necessary. I can feel her presence through her own Bond, though don’t even catch a hint of where she might be with any other sense. She’s got the cubs with her, since there was no way I wanted to let them get caught up in all this with me, and there was no safe place to leave them. Fortunately, we’re not moving fast – my bindings ensure our slow pace.
After finding out all the details I could from River about Lathani, we came up with this plan. Well, I did. Needless to say, none of us liked it. Or at least, neither Bastet nor I liked it. River is a mess of contradictory emotions, even now; that’s one reason I’m finding it difficult to completely trust him. At the same time, I know that worst came to worst, I could order him to do something and he would be forced to obey. Even if I was gagged for some reason, I could order him through the Bond. I have to hope that that’s enough of a safety net, because I’m genuinely going into the hornets’ nest here – or the crocodile’s nest, more like.
While perhaps the most sensible thing would have been to let River carry out the whole of the rescue, I couldn’t bring myself to agree to that. I don’t know him: a Battle of Wills doesn’t exactly allow me to have the knowledge of a person that years of acquaintance give. He could be a complete dunce, someone who it was only so easy to capture because he was already prone to falling over his own feet. Or claws, or whatever. I’m not putting Lathani’s life in his hands any more than I absolutely have to.
No, even if it means me putting myself in more danger, I’m willing to accept that risk if it increases the likelihood of us successfully rescuing Kalanthia’s cub. To that end, I allowed River to wrap quickly woven vine fetters around my wrists, ankles, and neck. I also gave him my only remaining spear, my mace, and my roughly-crafted pottery water pot; I tucked my bow and arrows away in my Inventory along with everything else, including my armour. While it might seem counter-intuitive to go into a dangerous situation without the protection of my armour, I don’t want to risk it being taken from me and us not being able to retrieve it when escaping with Lathani.
The reason why I let him take any weapons at all was the whole basis of the plan. He recognised their form and function, but the construction of both the flint head of the spear and the pitch holding the stone in place at the head of the mace were completely unfamiliar to him. He assured me that the other members of his tribe would be as curious as he was – the crafting-focused ones even more so. Enough, at least, to not order my death immediately to feed the tribe.
Apparently it’s happened before, when the tribe has managed to catch a sentient being who presents the opportunity to learn new crafting. Sometimes this has been another lizard-kin from a different tribe; sometimes it’s been another creature entirely. In each case, either the leaders of River’s tribe learned what they could from the being and then killed them, or they kept the being in servitude to craft for them if it was something they couldn’t learn for themselves. I guess I should have expected that kind of behaviour from a tribe who steal a cub, feed her herbal concoctions, and then plan to kill her and enslave her spirit.
As a result, the plan is simple, but still fraught with danger. Allow myself to be ‘captured’ and enter the village that way. Hope that the curiosity about me and about the weapons keeps me alive for at least a night and allows River to work behind the scenes to free Lathani. Then, as soon as possible, get the hell out of dodge. It’s a fairly bare-bones plan, but there are too many factors to account for to plan for everything.
So far, the guards we’ve encountered along the route have let us pass with a couple of grunts. Hopefully that’s because they believe our story, not because they know that we’ve got no chance of doing anything anyway.
After stumbling through partially worn tracks which still manage to have enough ground-cover to threaten to trip me every couple of minutes, we’ve made it onto something a little easier for me. We seem to have reached some sort of path: the ground has been worn down to bare earth and the littering branches have been cleared by the passage of many feet over time. My balance now easier to keep, I raise my head to look at more than just my next step. My eyes narrow as I see the mostly-camouflaged huts ahead of me. Now, the game truly starts.