NOVEL NEXT Chapter 51: I Stay?
‘I think we should leave one of the canines behind. Canines and canines should get on well enough,’ opinioned Leo.
‘Except that if something comes up while we’re in the dungeon, and the ameshek dies, Nyx will be heavily displeased.’
‘She’s the vassal – she’ll have to put up with it,’ argued Leo. ‘I thought the whole point of the vassal thing was that she serves us, not the other way around.’
‘In theory, yes,’ agreed Dominic. ‘But in practice, it’ll be much better if she wants to help us because she sees benefits in doing so, rather than just because she’s forced to by the System. She only has seven of her pack left – if we come back without one of the two we’ve brought with us, we’d better have a damn good explanation. And sending an ameshek off with a group of new Pride members while the rest of us went into the dungeon isn’t an explanation that would satisfy me if I were in her place.’
The lion grumbled inaudibly.
‘But the point is that she lost. I don’t see why we need to make allowances for what she thinks all the time.’
Dominic sighed, then decided to take another approach. The former-human himself wasn’t exactly experienced with politics, but he’d seen enough at the café he’d worked at for a while to know that not listening to the ‘underlings’ was a good way to get a manager hated and make the organisation go downhill. But Leo was clearly struggling to understand that since lions didn’t work like that.
‘Even if we don’t consider Nyx’s feelings, there’s also combat potential to think about. Due to their Group Enhancement Ability, the sum is greater than the parts. Separating the two amesheks just doesn’t make logical sense. And since they’re both level eighteen now, if we decide to instead leave them both with the albuhas, we’d be significantly reducing the combat potential of our group. Which I’d rather not do, going into unknown danger as we are. Do you?’
There was a brief silence as the lion digested all of that.
‘So you want to send one of our lions away?’ asked Leo with disgruntlement, answering Dominic’s question by not answering it.
‘I think we have to,’ Dominic answered.
‘It will be one of the males, I presume,’ Leo said pointedly.
Dominic hesitated. On the one hand it was the easy way out – he got to keep both the higher level lionesses in the group with him. On the other…it was basically a death sentence for the lion he chose, and he wasn’t keen on doing that either.
Leo seemed to be listening in closely enough to sense the direction of his thoughts.
‘Oh come on,’ exclaimed Leo. ‘You can’t propose to leave one of the females in such a precarious situation!’
‘At levels twelve and fourteen, they’d have a better chance of dealing with or escaping an attack by the albuhas if they decide to leave the pride than the level seven and eight males,’ argued Dominic. ‘Besides, we definitely don’t want to lose Lionel’s Healing Cloud.’
‘Then leave the other one! Who cares if he is killed off?’ demanded Leo, his tone a fearsome growl.
‘I do!’ snarled Dominic back at him just as fervently. Realising that his heightened emotions were actually making him growl audibly, and that his obvious irritation was alarming the rest of the pride, he did his best to calm down. ‘I refuse to just throw someone away because they’re ‘disposable’. Neither Fang nor Lionel have done anything to justify being kicked out of the pride, not in my book. They’ve done the reverse, as far as I’m concerned – after they got with the program and started actually working towards the benefit of the Pride. If they weren’t male, this wouldn’t even be a discussion.’
‘But they are male!’ exclaimed Leo, not backing down. ‘They’re potential rivals, potential competitors. And all we’re doing is helping them grow stronger and more capable of taking us down!’
Dominic felt abruptly weary. Would Leo’s feelings towards the two lions ever improve from reluctant tolerance?
‘The world has changed, Leo,’ Dominic said, that weariness in his voice. ‘What used to be the way of things before is no longer the way of things now. If we keep acting like it is, we will be ensuring our own defeat in the future. The two males have done nothing to merit your suspicion, except exist. Give them a chance to prove you wrong. And if they prove you right, I’ll be fully behind you kicking them out or even killing them if needed.’
‘And if they have become too powerful to do that easily?’ asked Leo, finally starting to calm down a little.
‘Considering everything, the chances of that happening are slim,’ Dominic told him frankly. ‘And if they do, they probably deserve to win because it will mean that we won’t have been doing enough to grow ourselves.’
After a moment of silence, Dominic felt the wall of aggression which Leo had built up between them fade away.
‘Then who are we going to leave behind?’ asked Leo, sounding wary.
‘Let’s put it to them and see what they think,’ decided Dominic, remembering an old story about a knight of Arthur’s court and a bride who had required him to answer whether he preferred her to be fair by day and foul by night, or vice versa. His answer had been the wise one: that it was her choice. Dominic didn’t know whether sapient female lions were as difficult to understand as women, but he’d rather not gain their annoyance nonetheless.
Directing his attention to Sekhmet and Jenkins, he explained the situation and put the question to them. The two lionesses each took a moment to think about it.
‘I prefer to go with you,’ replied Sekhmet finally, at the same time as Jenkins answered.
‘I stay?’
‘Well, that works out,’ replied Dominic, amused. At least the two of them were able to swiftly agree, rather than the elongated argument he and Leo had had.
‘Are you sure you’re OK with staying?’ he checked with Jenkins. She sent a sense of slightly excited, slightly nervous nonchalance.
‘Maybe fun,’ she answered. ‘Want to hunt. Maybe fun to hunt with new pride.’
‘Alright,’ agreed Dominic, then turned to the de facto sub-leader of the albuhas, the one who had first surrendered to him. He explained the situation to the canine and the fact that, even if they were technically the same level, he considered Jenkins to be the leader in his absence. There might also have been a couple of threats that if he came back to find her dead and any of the albuhas alive, they wouldn’t remain so for long. Jenkins was sometimes an irritant, but she was Dominic’s irritant.
It was a lot of responsibility for the young lioness, but she’d shown significantly more maturity than she’d started with, and she’d done well enough with the couple of hunts she’d led with Pride members recently. He had hopes that she would do just as well here.
The albuha seemed a little uneasy, though.
‘Not sure who the stronger,’ he tentatively pointed out when Dominic asked what was wrong.
That was…a good point, Dominic decided after thinking about it. The albuhas had surrendered to Dominic once he had proven himself stronger than their previous leaders, slaying two out of three of them. Jenkins hadn’t done that and if he wasn’t present to back up her commands he suspected that the coyote-like creatures wouldn’t obey.
Fortunately, Jenkins was perfectly happy to have a bout with the lead albuha. Actually, she seemed more than a little eager to find out who was stronger, one on one.
Backing away from the door a little, the two then squared up head to head. The albuha tried to use its fearful howl, but with Immunity in place, it had no effect. Jenkins did take a step back in reflex before she realised that the sound wasn’t actually having any effect.
After that first step back, though, the advantage switched to the lioness. Using her Quick Strike and Enhanced Speed, she practically blurred forwards, striking at the albuha before he realised she was moving.
A chunk was taken out of the albuha’s health bar and he tried to snap back at her as soon as he got over his surprise. Unfortunately for him, Jenkins was as quick to retreat as she had been to strike, and his teeth snapped shut on empty air.
Snapping backwards with his wings, the albuha propelled himself forwards – even if he clearly couldn’t fly, the action did give him significantly more speed. Jenkins was able to dart out of his way, though, and then turned on a dime to bite at his hindquarters and the backs of his wings.
It wasn’t a fight-ending blow, though – her mouthful seemed to be feathers rather than flesh, but she still made another small dent in his health bar.
The competition continued like that – the albuha attacking, Jenkins darting out of the way only to launch an attack of her own. It didn’t go all the lioness’ way – she got hit by a couple of surprise buffets from the wings themselves which each took a chunk out of her health bar. The albuha’s ability to make odd turns due to using his wings to help redirect his momentum also caught her out a bit. She’d earned a few bloody wounds within a few minutes of the fight beginning. The coyote-like creature’s Tearing Bite made the actual wounds worse when he managed to get his teeth into her.
Still, the ultimate victor of the fight was getting more and more obvious. Jenkins’ Quick Strike, Enhanced Speed, and larger size and mass meant that she was inflicting at least twice the damage per minute that the albuha was succeeding in inflicingt. She must have committed a few level ups into stamina too, since she was only just starting to visibly flag, five minutes or so into the fight.
After the albuha’s health dropped down below half, he evidently decided to call an end to the bout. Instead of launching another attack, he crouched down on the ground, lowering his head almost to the ground and looking up at the lioness, making a couple of quiet whimpers.
It was similar to what he’d done when Dominic had killed his leader and the other sub-leader, only not as fervent. He didn’t have his head pressed to the earth, nor did he press his wings flat, only extending them a little. His whimpers also seemed more…polite, than begging. But Dominic supposed that that made sense: this was just a practice bout which shouldn’t end in casualties, not a Challenge which almost guaranteed them.
Jenkins evidently understood what he was trying to communicate as well as Dominic did – she stopped her next attack and instead sat on the ground, licking at a paw. When the albuha slowly rose to his feet again, she stood up too and walked over.
The albuha looked rather wary, but she didn’t attack him, or even bite him or anything similar to show dominance. Instead, she went to rub her head against his and then her body along his length.
The coyote-like creature looked completely baffled by her actions.
‘Good fight,’ she chirped in the Pride chat. ‘Again later?’
‘...Sure,’ the albuha answered uncertainly.
Dominic couldn’t help his amusement, for once grateful for his lion conformation which meant his mouth wouldn’t betray him by twisting into a smile.
‘I think they’ll be fine,’ he commented to Leo. The lion sent him a confusing mixture of agreement along with irritation and threat. Something like a combination of ‘I agree’ and ‘they’d better’.
After Lionel quickly healed the two Pride members up to full, Dominic checked that there weren’t any more issues regarding lines of authority – there weren’t – and he made arrangements with Jenkins for finding her again. He wanted to make sure that they returned to this area by dawn every day – since he didn’t know how long this would take and didn’t want to be chasing after them all over the savannah.
Dominic and his small group approached the metallic door once more.
Hesitating in front of it, Dominic took a deep breath before walking straight into the goldish coloured metal. Or rather, walking through it as, instead of colliding with a solid surface, he just felt a tingle. Actually, rather like the ‘waterfall’ feeling he’d had last time.
Time to see what else had changed.
