Dalric wasn’t sure how to respond. He’d completely forgotten the fact that him speaking the All-tongue would garner such a reaction. It confirmed a few facts that he may have started to doubt, he still didn’t know what to trust about his encounter with the Menos, but it also forced him to adjust his approach once more.

He thought of lying to the large black panther, of assuming the role of Aegeus’ descendant. It would come with extraordinary benefits in the immediate. The knowledge he’d gain access to would let him properly gauge the new Wylds threat and their place in the greater ongoings. With how vague and imprecise the criteria for the role was, it wasn’t impossible that he’d be able to keep the ruse up for quite awhile too.

But.

Failure to keep the con up could kill him. It was one thing to fight… all the colonies, he couldn’t even assume how many of them there were anymore, individually. A feat he couldn’t be sure was possible anymore to begin with. It was a completely different matter to engage them as a united front. If they could push back armies in the tens of thousands, they could most certainly slaughter the current him on his lonesome. Pretending to be their God would inspire just that kind of reaction.

Adlartok cut in while he thought, "Madam this is—"

"Silence!" Selene’s disbelief turned to suspicion, “What kind of trickery is this? I ask for an angel and you bring this… this… imposter. What are you?”

Dalric continued to mull it over, but responded in the meantime, "I do not appreciate your treatment of my people. You asked to see me yet you don't even know my name?"

"I asked for the angel, you are no angel."

Why?

That was an important question in all of this. Before he even settled on whether or not to lie about his ancestry, he should first understand what brought the panthers to him. Why did they seek him out? What did they want?

Dalric placed his hands on his hips, “Because there is no angel to begin with, just me."

"Lies! I know the angel was taken in here, I watched it occur just down there." Selene stretched her paw in a direction and Dalric turned to look. He did not remember the exact spot he’d been standing in when he fell unconscious, but seeing as the river was currently on his left, it had to be somewhere in the general vicinity. She continued, "Speak the truth creature! Or." The very same paw brandished its claws right above Adlartok’s head.

Dalric recognized the empty threat as what it was. He was far more concerned by the fact that she may have actually seen his capture. If nothing else, that meant she had tailed him. Since when? Since where? He’d hidden himself on top of a tree. Had she been shadowing him since then? Since before then? He had not sensed a thing.

That was alarming.

He stalled to think, “So you witnessed me pass out and get carried into the camp. What of it?”

After less than a blink of thought, the answer as to how revealed itself. The greatest advantage of mist-attunements was not combat related. At high tiered engagements, just the ahjer in a person’s body would block them from even passing through. Their true strength laid in stealth. Unlike the more common shadow or darkness variants, it was equally effective in broad daylight. It had just been so long since he’d encountered a mist attunement and even longer since someone successfully shadowed him that the correlation took a moment to see.

Her claws drifted closer to Adlartok’s face, “That. Was. Not. You.”

The force in her voice still didn’t bother Dalric. What did was the fact that this was the second time his sense completely failed him. He had mentally categorized Hiroto as a special case, but that was actually foolish of him. Spells, ahjer they were not what he once knew. Greater than that, he was not what he once knew.

Re-learning caution is going to be more arduous than I thought.

The first bit of his newfound caution would be to shoot down the ‘pretend to be God’s son’ plan completely. It was arrogant for him to even think of it. The danger involved couldn’t be properly calculated. Instead, he shifted to the ‘get information and get the panthers to leave’ plan.

"And how would you know? You stalk me through the jungle, demand for my presence, call me a creature, and then tell me I’m not who I am.” He folded his arms, “Many would find this insulting."

She hesitated in response to his outburst.

Dalric pounced, “What do you want?”

It wasn’t necessarily certain that she’d had no contact with Seventh. It was possible that he’d given her incomplete information and that was why she sought ‘the angel’ rather than Dalric. It was also possible that she wasn’t looking for Dalric at all. Maybe she truly needed or wanted an angel for a completely separate aim.

“If you are who I saw, I saw wings. Where have they gone?”

Hmm.

Dalric debated whether to cast the spell or not. He simply did not have enough ahjer to do it without an incantation. Even if he used the rest of what he had, it would still take an inconvenient amount of time for it to finish. On top of the fact that doing so would rob him of any offensive or defensive spells. Massively unwise on its own, even more unwise with mist attunements in play.

That said, if they weren’t specifically looking for him, but rather just any angel, the reappearance of his wings should temper their interest in him. It would also cut their conversation short and his path toward more information along with it. Inconvenient, though If he planned to use the camp as a base of operation for a while then there would be more opportunities to hunt intelligence in the future.

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Diverting hostilities while he built back his strength took priority.

“I can form them, if you wish to wait.”

It was surprising, at least compared to the tigers, how readable Selene’s expressions were. The panther clearly displayed a strong skepticism before she spoke, “Wait for what?”

“It is a long spell.”

Her skepticism grew, but she agreed to wait regardless.

“Be aware. The first step forms a spear.”

Dalric casted the Three Kings, in his native tongue of course. On account of her ahjer sense, Selene would still be able to ‘hear’ the intent behind his words. That was fine, no one else should.

As expected, the spear’s manifestation caused a bit of unease, but Dalric threw it down quick enough. The shield spawned a far more muted response. When it was the armor's turn to manifest, Selene sharply turned to one of the smaller panthers to her side. Dalric didn’t know why, but when she returned her gaze to him the skepticism had lessened tremendously. It seemed to have been replaced by some kind of concern.

Eventually, the pristine white wings stretched behind him once more. The concern cemented itself as they did.

They fluttered a few times, “Can you see them now?”

He didn’t know what to make of the concern he saw. It occurred to him that it was possible he was actually reading her completely wrong, but it didn’t feel that way. Everything he inferred emotionally seemed to match her actions. Before he could become concerned about it, she purred. Instead of sharing in her concern, it was Dalric’s turn to be vigilant. Five more panthers, all more powerful than the three the flanked her, stalked out of the jungle. All of them came from within his ahjer sense’s range.

Fool.

The hope that they didn’t seek him specifically crumbled. He subtly took a defensive stance. The option to immediately go on the offensive was there, but there was still a small chance that things could be resolved peacefully. He wouldn’t make the first move, but he had to prepare for the worst. Especially since he now knew it wasn't just Celene that could brazenly hide within his sense. There very well could be even more still lying in wait.

Muscles tight and out of ahjer, he already couldn’t match the nine in front of him on his own. If there were more, things would get very dangerous, very quickly. Unfortunately, he had no way of signalling anything to Ryku behind him so he had to just hope he could read the situation and act accordingly.

Dalric mentally prepared for if he couldn’t.

Unbothered by the emotions her call had caused, Selene stepped forward. Dalric braced, but instead of attacking, she bowed her head, “I deeply apologize for my rudeness. We mistook you for something else. It is an honor to—”

Ahh.

“I’ll stop you there.” He quickly interrupted her, already aware of where she was going. “I am not the son you seek. I want no involvement in your colonies.”

The entire group of panthers stirred at his statement. It was mildly alarming to witness, but he understood their response. If he hadn’t lost his mind, he thought he saw some hope in a few of the panthers’ expressions. He hadn’t really spoken to many of the Menos, and he had almost destroyed their home, but for the non-archons he imagined the natural response to the arrival of their God’s son would be massive excitement. Suddenly denying them of that would cause some whiplash.

He could have strung them along for a little bit while he extracted information, but now that the danger levels had extended into catastrophic territory Dalric just wanted to safely defuse the situation as soon as possible.

Selene was sadly in no hurry to leave, “You want no… How do you know what we seek if you are not who we seek?”

Bits of information flowed all the same. That question in particular hinted toward her having no contact with Seventh. She would know how otherwise.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been mistaken for something I am not.”

“... How do you know the tongue?”

Dalric internally frowned. That she asked about the All-tongue rather than the first time hinted that she knew what he was referencing. There could be a follow up question though, so he didn’t jump to conclusions just yet, “I was taught. By a being you neither know nor have a relation to.”

Selene seemed unsatisfied by his answer, but she did not ask him to elaborate. She didn’t question him further at all.

No follow up…

Instead of questioning him more, she turned to her fellow panthers and appeared… to… whisper to them.

Intellectually, Dalric understood that meant that she’d put up some sort of undetectable barrier. It was just hard for him to accept the reality of that. His ahjer sense was something he had prided himself on. Obviously, he occupied a brand new body that had not been slowly rebuilt from its foundation over the course of two dozen centuries, so expecting even remotely similar performance was asinine. Pride was simply a difficult thing to kick.

“You said you want no involvement with us.” Her voice cut back in, “Why?”

Dalric refocused. He couldn’t immediately gauge the intent behind the question, but at this point he just wanted the panthers gone so he gave the best answer to accomplish that, “Why do I not want to be involved with those who stalk and accost others?”

“I believe you came to that decision before you became aware of us.”

“You can believe that. I believe in not bothering strangers.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Then a bit longer than a moment. Then a lot longer than a moment. Curse his human eyes, Dalric blinked first.

Selene took that as her cue, “Fine. We will leave you unbothered, for now.”

He didn’t let either joy or relief appear on his body.

“Before we do.” She gestured toward Adlartok, “This one claims you’ve taken command of this camp. Is that true?”

Hm?

“An exaggeration, but I did dispose of the previous ‘commanders’. Allies of yours?”

It could be called unwise to suddenly speak with such an antagonizing tone right as he was about to accomplish his goal, but for as much as a peaceful resolution took precedence, if the colonies had been working with the slavers in any way then that would change how Dalric dealt with them.

“You have ended the depravity here?”

Strange reaction.

He didn’t know what to make of that question. The word ‘depravity’ truly had disgust behind it. His immediate assumption would be that she referred to the previously ongoing slavery, Dalric felt much the same way about it, but he didn’t quite believe a panther would be invested in the bodily autonomy of humans.

Though, in a manner of speaking one could say he is a giant that’s invested in it. Maybe they had common ground.

He nodded, “Yes.”

“Good.”

With that sharp, final word, Selene disappeared. So too did her subordinates. Confusion tickled the back of his neck, but Dalric refused to relax a single muscle. To not appear on edge he moved to help the trio that still laid on the ground up onto their feet. While all three dusted themselves off, he casually scanned the jungle's edge.

Ryku ran up behind him as he did, “Are we safe?”

Dalric couldn’t spot anything, for as much as that meant. For as long as he stayed in the jungle, he could never truly let his guard down again.

I need to start training.