NOVEL NEXT Chapter 29: Strengthening
In the end, he was a little disappointed at the lack of fanfare – nothing seemed to happen in acknowledgement of his choice. Not until he noticed that the ameshek’s eyes were open and gazing at him. Evidently his theory about the creature being kept in an unconscious state until he’d made a choice was right.
‘Are you OK?’ he sent to the creature, feeling more than a little awkward. How was he supposed to start a conversation with a creature he’d just almost killed, and then turned into a vassal with no by-your-leave?
‘I ache,’ the ameshek replied, its – her – tone sounding pained. Dominic hesitated for a moment. If this had been one of his lionesses, he’d have immediately pulled a carcass over for her to absorb. But this wasn’t – this was a creature he’d so recently been fighting with.
Then again, she didn’t seem to be making any moves to attack, so perhaps this vassal thing had something to it which would protect him. In the end, Dominic decided that extending a hand – or paw – would probably be the best thing here. Treating the creature with automatic suspicion might have consequences later which would be better avoided – as long as his trust didn’t mean that he got his throat ripped out, of course.
Seeing as most of the carcasses lying around were those of the fallen ameshek, Dominic instead pulled the last ones out of his storage space. After having to empty half of it for the lionesses to fit in, and giving them some to heal themselves, he really needed to restock his portable health potions.
‘Here,’ he said, nudging them towards the ameshek. The large wolven creature hesitated, then stretched out her head to start biting into one of them. ‘Not like that,’ Dominic interrupted. ‘Just touch the carcass and think ‘consume’. It will disintegrate into a cloud of golden dust which you will absorb – it will heal you more quickly than just eating it.’
The ameshek looked at him, then hesitantly touched the carcass with her nose. A moment later, it indeed dissolved into golden smoke. The wolven creature reared back, perhaps in sudden fear or surprise, but the golden smoke followed her. As it was absorbed, Dominic saw her health increase noticeably, though perhaps only by about five percent.
That wasn’t too much of a shock – Dominic’s new vassal evidently had a bigger health pool than him, and the carcasses were some creatures he’d hunted in the area outside the forest, but nothing particularly big or powerful. Wordlessly, he offered the ameshek another carcass.
By the time Dominic was out of carcasses to nudge over, the ameshek had a little below half health. Still, she looked like she was feeling better.
‘So,’ Dominic said, at a loss of what else to say. ‘What now?’
‘I do not feel inclined to fight, if that is what you fear,’ the ameshek replied to him with a hint of amusement. She pushed herself to her feet, some pain still evident in her movements, but obviously a lot better off than she had been. She eyed the lionesses behind Dominic. ‘You can tell that to your pack.’
Dominic cast a glance behind himself. Sure enough, his lionesses were watching the action with the air of being ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.
They were all healed, Dominic was glad to see. The loss of Mara still hurt – he could see her body lying protected within the circle of lionesses, like they didn’t want her being desecrated by the ameshek. But he was glad that everyone else had survived. A couple had even changed a bit physically from going up a level or two.
‘They are wary, understandably so,’ he said to the ameshek leader, looking back at her. ‘This is new ground for all of us.’
Perhaps admitting his ignorance wasn’t the best strategy, but pretending to know more than he did was bound to come back to bite him later.
‘You need not be concerned. I sense the bindings on my actions. I cannot attack you if you have not attacked me first, nor can I order any of my pack to do the same.’
‘That doesn’t mean you can’t attack my pride, though,’ Dominic pointed out even while making a mental note of what she had said.
‘No, but I also sense that I am obliged to follow your orders – as long as they do not pass certain limits. Angering you by attacking your pack does not seem to be a very good idea.’
‘It wouldn’t be, no,’ Dominic agreed, ‘as then I would make sure that all of yours were wiped out in retaliation.’ He eyed the ameshek, seeing by the way her lips lifted a little off her teeth that his threat had landed. ‘But I don’t want to do that,’ he continued in a more conciliatory way. ‘I wouldn’t have chosen to let you live if I’d wanted to kill all of you. In fact, I hope that we can become allies in truth as well as just according to the System.’
The ameshek eyed him for a long moment, then straightened from the crouch she had shifted into, letting her lips cover her teeth once again.
‘Then what do you wish to do now?’
Dominic thought about it carefully, eyeing the massive tree which stood guard over the whole area.
‘The tree, the Place of Power. Tell me about it.’
‘It is better shown than explained,’ the ameshek responded. ‘You are the victor in our battle; you will have gained control over the source of power. Come and I will show you.’
Dominic hesitated for a moment, but then decided to take the risk. Yes, he would be going deeper into the wolves’ territory, but he had several tricks up his nonexistent sleeve that should at least ensure he got out alive, even if they decided to turn on him.
‘They shouldn’t be able to though, should they?’ asked Leo from the back of his mind. ‘The wolf said it herself that she couldn’t attack or order her pride to attack if we don’t do so first.’
‘That’s true,’ Dominic agreed, ‘but she’s not necessarily an unbiased source. What if she’s saying that she can’t attack only to be lying to lull us into a false sense of security? And even if she’s telling the truth, even if she can’t attack us directly or order her pack to do so, what if one of the pack takes it upon itself to attack anyway?’
‘So you’re not going to go with her?’ Leo asked, sounding confused.
‘No, I am.’ Then, feeling the complete bafflement emanating from his companion, Dominic continued. ‘I’m just considering all possible eventualities and making sure that I have a way out of the situation if it goes downhill for whatever reason.’
Leo was silent for a long moment.
‘I’ll never understand the twisty thoughts of humans.’
‘That’s OK,’ Dominic reassures him. ‘I don’t understand humans half the time either.’ To his lionesses in the Pride chat, he sent a message about what was about to happen and asking them to relax a little. ‘We are allies for now,’ he explained. ‘How long that will last, I don’t know, but as long as none of us move to break the truce, it should be fine.’
‘Don’t like this,’ came from Sekhmet, her mental thought wary. ‘Enemies one moment, allies the next. Not trustworthy.’
‘Agree,’ chimed in Anuke, the others all sending in messages of agreement either with words or without. ‘Not pride. Not trustworthy. Lion not safe.’
‘I know,’ Dominic agreed, trying to placate them a little. ‘But for now it’s better than fighting. We’ll see where it goes. Just relax a bit, OK? Not completely – be prepared for if the amesheks decide to turn on us, but don’t be so tense that you accidentally restart the hostilities.’
After receiving acknowledgement, either willing or grudging, from the lionesses, Dominic turned his attention back to the ameshek leader. Perhaps she’d also been holding some sort of inaudible conversation with her pack as they seemed to have relaxed a bit, though relaxed in the same way as Dominic had been encouraging the lionesses to do. They looked like they’d been pulled back from the edge of being a second away from trying to rip the lions’ throats out again, but hadn’t relaxed to the point of lying down or becoming vulnerable.
‘Alright,’ he said to her. ‘Show me this Place of Power, then.’
‘Come this way,’ she told him, turning around and walking back to where she had been at the start of the fight. Dominic, after having spent so long in the body and life of a lion, appreciated the show of trust that it took to present him with her vulnerable spine.
He took it as a good sign – he had offered her a sign of trust when he had given her the means to heal, even revealing the secret of how to Consume a creature and receive its benefits far faster than by eating it the traditional way. Now, she offered him a sign of trust in return.
Following cautiously in her footsteps, Dominic was wary of the other ameshek. While he didn’t think it likely that the leader would attack him, not with everything she’d said and done since waking up, that didn’t mean he was safe. Just like he’d said to Leo, it only took one spark to set off the gunpowder. For all he knew, there was a ‘Jenkins’ among the amesheks who would go against their leader’s instructions in order to ‘take revenge’ or ‘defend the pack’s honour’ or simply saw him as a target.
Still, for all his wariness, nothing happened. They rounded a couple of prominent tree roots and then reached the base of the massive tree without incident. There, the ameshek leader paused.
‘When we first arrived in this forest, there was a creature here,’ she recalled sounding rather matter-of-fact. ‘It was big and strong, but we wore it down, ripping away bits of it until it succumbed to its wounds. As the leader, I ripped out its throat, applying the killing blow. Afterwards, I touched this rock at the base of the tree – I think it was by accident, but I cannot remember now. Memories of before I Evolved are blurry and at times hard to recall. My thoughts since then have improved, and should improve further with my recent strengthening.’
Dominic nodded slowly, thinking about his Tier 2 lionesses. Would they be the same? Then something she’d said caught his attention.
‘Your recent ‘strengthening’? Do you mean ‘level up’? Is that what you were doing earlier?’ he asked her curiously, turning his head from where he’d been inspecting the tree – and the massive obsidian-like boulder which was half-hidden between its roots.
‘Yes,’ the ameshek agreed. ‘I was in the process of choosing my threshold options when you arrived.’
Well, that explained why the ameshek hadn’t been part of the fight to begin with. Though it was a bit of poor luck – if they’d attacked ten minutes earlier, it probably would have been an easier fight.
‘What level are you at now?’ Dominic asked eagerly. The ameshek tilted her head to one side, her antennae waving slowly.
‘Level?’ she asked, sounding a bit confused.
Did she not know of levels? Dominic supposed that she hadn’t used that vocabulary, instead calling it ‘strengthening’. Was she not able to access her status sheet? Did Dominic and Leo only have a status sheet at all because Dominic was classed as a human mind? He knew that the Pride members had levels because they were on his Pride status sheet, but did the lions themselves know what level they were? Dominic suddenly realised that it was an oversight to have never asked about it.
For now, though, he had something more important to do.
‘Never mind. So, you just touched this stone?’
‘I did.’
‘And what happened next?’
‘As I said before, it is better experienced than explained,’ the ameshek replied a little mysteriously.
Dominic hesitated, eyeing the ameshek and then the stone. On the one hand, this could be a trap, the ameshek getting him to do something which would instantly kill him. On the other hand, touching the stone is probably exactly what Dominic would have done if he’d gone through with killing the leader and chasing out its pack.
‘What do you think, Leo?’
‘Oh just go for it,’ the lion told him grumpily. ‘Your paranoia is giving me a headache. We’re dealing with a canine here, not a human.’
He had a point there. Hoping that he wasn’t about to be flash-frozen or set on fire or something, Dominic reached out with one paw to touch the rock.
