NOVEL NEXT Chapter 20: You Be Careful
‘You’re sure you don’t want to lead?’ Dominic checked with Leo.
‘After what you’ve put us through over the last few days?’ The lion scoffed. ‘I want to sleep.’
‘Well, since you’ll be providing directions, I don’t think you can do that anyway,’ Dominic pointed out. The lion huffed at him.
‘At least I can relax in our mind space in between giving you your heading, though.’
That was a good point, Dominic had to admit. There was a difference between popping in and out to check that he was still heading in the right direction and actually moving. They might have cleared out most of the predators and prey in the territory, but that didn’t mean there were no threats to keep an eye out for.
‘Alright, Mr Lazy,’ Dominic said finally, a hint of fondness in his voice. ‘As long as you keep us on track, you can relax as much as you like.’ It worked out well enough – while Dominic did like to relax in their mindspace from time to time, he would probably go mad if he was in there as much as Leo was. So if Leo didn’t mind, all the better.
The former-human looked around at the lions surrounding him.
‘You’ll be careful as you follow us?’ he checked with Sekhmet. She gave him a look. ‘I’m just making sure,’ Dominic said defensively. She huffed then came over to rub against him.
‘I will be careful. You be careful,’ she instructed him firmly, her eyes gleaming with intelligence.
‘I’ll try,’ he replied with a hint of a wry tone in his mental voice – he usually tried to be careful, but it rarely worked out that way. She huffed again as if she’d heard his more private thoughts and agreed with them. ‘Alright,’ he said, looking around at the lionesses who would be going with him as the vanguard. ‘Ready?’
Anuke, Hathor, and Jenkins all sent him a message of agreement, even if only Anuke’s was verbal. Turning to face the rest of the pride, Dominic stood up tall. Taking in a deep breath, he Roared, focussing on inspiring the pride and filling them with courage.
He saw several of them perk up, even more looking more eager to get moving. Over the intra-pride communication, he sent a feeling of pride in their progress, and determination to overcome their foes.
How well the message was taken probably depended on the level of the lions; certainly Prince, the lowest of the group, didn’t seem particularly enthused. But most of the others did so Dominic counted it as a net win.
Turning, he trotted off with his three accompanying lionesses. Sekhmet, Isis, and Mehnit would be staying with the rest of the pride: the two Tier 2 lionesses had the authority to direct the pride through their strength, intelligence, and proven leadership in hunts. Isis wasn’t as high a level as them, and still wasn’t quite into the Evolved category, but she had the gravitas of being the oldest lioness there. Kalista, the other matriarch, had settled into her role as Isis’ second in command without too much argument, which had definitely simplified the merging of the two prides.
By this point, Dominic felt like the prides were almost there in terms of merging – they just needed a bit more time and a few more fights to have them consider each other full pride members.
He’d taken the risk of bringing Anuke with him, one of the other recognised leaders, but he thought it would turn out alright. He needed at least one other Tier 2 with him – he’d have preferred to have had all three, but judged that that would have put the pride at too much risk. After all, if something happened, they would need intelligent leaders to give them direction.
So ultimately, he’d settled for only taking Anuke and having two of the level 9 lionesses with him instead. If he was lucky, he might even be able to get them Evolved before they actually hit the trees around the Place of Power. If not, killing a few of the monkey-like kesh might get them there.
He’d rather have brought an older lioness than Jenkins with him, but Neith had her cubs to look after and wasn’t keen on being away from them for too long. Anyway, at least Jenkins had seemed to have calmed down a bit since the tumultuous beginning – all the hunting they’d been doing seemed to have instilled some instincts in her. She still wasn’t as reliable as her sister, Anuke, but he felt fairly sure that she wouldn’t just jump into a fight as she had at the beginning.
Their mission was to scout the way to the Place of Power and to clear out any threats. If they hit a threat they couldn’t clear out, they’d need to follow their own tracks back to the pride to warn them.
As for why he was taking the whole pride with him? It was the same reason as he wasn’t expecting any trouble for at least the first couple of hours of loping: they had hunted the area around them almost bare.
It’s actually pretty disturbing, Dominic thought as they trotted through the grasslands hearing nothing but the wind and the chirping of a few birds or the rustle of some small creature. Even when he could see for miles across the savannah grass, there was nothing to see except for the landscape. Nothing was moving.
Should we tone down the hunting? he wondered a little uncertainly. Then a moment later, he dismissed the thought. They had to grow stronger. If they didn’t take down the animals around, something else would. Maybe even the hyenas that had driven them out of their original territory. How is the System going to deal with this?
It had to have some sort of way, surely? After all, it had upset the delicate balance of predator/prey by bringing in Prey Points. Even if it de-incentivised going after herbivores, points were points and if there were no carnivores around, they’d hunt the herbivores instead.
Dominic had to shake his head, his long mane ruffling around his ears. He had no answers. All he knew was that this new world was even more cutthroat than the last one which had been bad enough. He had to put himself and his allies first. Hopefully that wouldn’t lead to an ecological disaster. Starving to death because he’d hunted all the prey in the area he could reach before his satiation level reached 0 would not be a good way to go.
What it meant for them in the short term was that the pride was following them for now. He needed to find out the situation with the Place of the Power to decide just how far they would follow him. He had three plans to cover the various contingencies.
Plan 1: to move steadily through the forest, picking off kesh, and then go for the Place of Power straight away. This plan would only be if Dominic judged the majority of the pride of a level able to do that without casualties.
Plan 2: to pause at the edge of the forest, take hunting trips into the forest to pick off the kesh and wait until more lions were Tier 2 before going for the Place of Power itself. That was if he judged the lions to need to gain strength, but figured that they would be able to encroach on the territory of whatever held the Place of Power without any reprisal that they couldn’t meet.
Plan 3: to pull back from the edge of the forest completely and hunt around it instead, gathering strength until able to follow the first plan.
He supposed that there was another option too, if the guardians of the Place of Power proved to be both too numerous and powerful: searching for more lions to join the pride. But he hoped that that wouldn’t be the case since that plan seemed like it would waste a lot of time.
For now, though, he kept trotting onwards with the three lionesses. They would have to see what happened.
*****
They had set out as the heat of the day started to fade, and the sun had set before they started seeing signs of other creatures. More curiously, they had also started to see the trees of the Place of Power.
‘Are we closer than you thought?’ Dominic asked Leo, surprised. ‘I thought you said we were more than half a day’s travel away? We weren’t expecting to get here until later, were we?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Leo. ‘I didn’t think so, but scents on the wind can be deceptive.’
They travelled closer to the dark area ahead of them, the trees preventing the moonlight from reaching the ground. When the lions saw herbivores, they ignored the creatures. Typically, the animals were perfectly happy with that reaction, hastily withdrawing into cover or going still, hoping they hadn’t been noticed.
The savannah started changing around them as they got closer to the Place of Power. The same mini versions of the trees and bushes that Dominic recognised from the forest itself started sprouting through the grass, and then becoming the dominant flora.
There was a whisper of sound and Dominic felt his hackles rise. At the same time, Jenkins sent a sense of warning into the pride chat. Dominic focussed on his senses but couldn’t tell much.
‘What do you sense?’ he asked the lionesses urgently. There was a pause and then both Jenkins and Anuke sent a sense of beasts hiding in the bushes around them. They looked like they were just hiding away like the dozens of other prey animals that they’d come across, but instinct was telling him that it was something different.
It was a sense of concern which proved itself to be right a moment later.
The seven beasts, perhaps realising that their ambush wasn’t going to plan, suddenly jumped out of their cover at the lions. Funnily enough, they looked almost like smaller versions of the lions themselves, about the size of a cheetah but with dark brown mottled coats.
A little taken aback by their appearance, Dominic snarled at them, baring his teeth and knocking one of them out of the air with a quick swipe of his paw. It twisted surprisingly agilely, landing on its feet and throwing itself back into the action, despite its evident pain – Dominic’s blow had probably broken a few ribs even if it hadn’t killed the creature.
The lionesses snarled too, facing off with their own opponents. They were slightly outnumbered, but that didn’t mean much: they were powerful enough that opponents like this should be easy even if they were outnumbered two to one.
Should have – that’s not what seemed to be happening. The other felines were agile, dodging most of their blows and responding with attacks of their own. Dominic’s lionesses were starting to be painted in red even if each attack wasn’t actually taking all that much from their health bars.
Dominic himself found it difficult to land a blow: they were just so fast. The thing was that Dominic himself could match them, even surpass them when it came to base speed. What he was lacking, though, was the reaction time. The other cats could change the direction of their attack, or twist in midair to avoid him just as quickly as they could dart forwards to snap at his fur.
In frustration, Dominic Roared. He didn’t necessarily want to scare them away; he just wanted them to stop moving.
He’d been experimenting a bit with Majestic Roar and had found out that it was surprisingly adaptable to his desires. While he couldn’t quite only use one aspect of it, he could certainly focus on that aspect, reducing the effect of the others.
As a result when he Roared, though these cheetah-like beasts were no-doubt lower level than him, he didn’t immediately scare them away. He did seem to put the fear of god in them, though, and they cowered away from him, pressing their bellies against the ground.
The lionesses took full advantage of the lull and leapt forwards to snap at the closest beasts to them. Dominic was about to do the same when suddenly he heard something.
‘No! Please!’
