ALL NOVEL Chapter 71: This Dangerous World
The lionesses gathered around the bodies of the two dead pride members, making low groans and whuffing sounds. They nudged at the bodies, and those of the cubs too, licking them and seeming to try to encourage them to stand up, to show any signs of life.
But they didn’t. Dominic walked over to the two bodies. He was torn between the human urge to show respect for the dead and a new leonine instinct to follow the pride’s behaviour. In the end, he tried not to think too much about it, licking briefly at the lioness’s face. Then, using a delicately-wielded claw, he pulled her eyelid down to close her remaining eye: the other had been destroyed by the hyenas.
Avoiding the cubs, unable to deal with the thought of children having died in that way, he did the same for the other lioness. Then, following the unconscious urging of Leo’s instincts, he rubbed his head against the closest lioness’.
She rubbed back, the motion stronger than he’d been expecting. His move seemed to set off a chain reaction: the other lions started rubbing against each other, and Dominic too. For the first time, he felt like he’d actually become part of the pride, rather than just being on its periphery.
Even the remaining cubs got in on the action, reaching up as high as they could and rubbing themselves against the other lions’ legs, the older lions leaning down to nuzzle at them. When the first cub approached Dominic, the lion was aware of its mother tensing, her lips starting to lift from her teeth in warning.
When all he did was nuzzle at it the way all the other lions had, the mother looked confused, but a little reassured. Perhaps she was finally understanding that Dominic wasn’t a threat to her babies.
Finally, when every pride member had rubbed their scent all over the others, Dominic suddenly realising how much it changed his own scent, the lionesses returned to mourning. Though this time the tone was different. They seemed to have reminded each other that members of the pride had died, but not all was lost.
Or maybe that was Dominic being too human about it.
Either way, he could sense that Leo, despite being silent in his mind, was feeling a lot better after having been included with the rest of the pride in the bonding activity.
‘I miss it,’ he admitted as he heard the thoughts going through Dominic’s mind. ‘So…thank you. I understand that humans don’t…do the same sort of thing.’
‘Not nuzzling heads, no,’ Dominic agreed quietly as they watched the lionesses’ grief. ‘But a hug or a pat on the shoulder when someone is feeling bad is pretty normal. This wasn’t much different from that.’
Once more standing a little separate from the pride, though this time from choice rather than exclusion, Dominic noticed that one of the lionesses was limping heavily. He recognised her as the one who had been facing three hyenas by herself while he and the other lioness had been battling their own.
That’s no good, he frowned to himself.
‘No, it’s not,’ Leo agreed grimly with his thoughts. ‘She will be vulnerable for too long in this dangerous world, even though as part of a pride, it isn’t automatically the death sentence it would have been for me as a nomad.’ An idea sparked in Dominic.
‘This dangerous world…’ Leo’s attention sharpened on the former-human.
‘What are you thinking?’ he demanded.
‘Well, healing doesn’t necessarily have to take months now, does it?’ Dominic felt Leo’s sudden comprehension.
‘But how are you going to get her to do it?” the lion asked. Dominic shrugged.
‘I don’t know. But I’m going to try.’ It was definitely going to be hard to do without words, but he could only hope that the lionesses had gained the increased intelligence that the hyenas clearly had. After all, the hyenas had evidently realised that the way to increase in strength in this new world was to kill, and to kill other predators. There was no other explanation for why they had focussed entirely on killing the lions, and the most vulnerable ones at that.
Though he did wonder at the leader’s strategy. Why did the three ‘commanders’ stay back from the fighting? And why did they throw the lives of several hyenas away? Dominic and the two lionesses had killed all but one of the lower-levelled hyenas attacking them, and the other group had lost two of their members while fighting the dead mother. Isn’t that a waste? Dominic wondered. Or do they have some sort of ‘the strongest survive’ mentality?
Without being able to ask them, he was going to have to keep wondering instead of getting any answers.
Going over to the injured lioness, he nudged her with his nose. He wasn’t gentle about it either, and she rocked a little from his movement. She snarled at him a little half-heartedly, Dominic able to interpret her message as ‘go away,’ but not yet threatening violence if he didn’t. She’d probably get there since Dominic nudged her again, this time pushing her a little with his shoulder.
Her snarl was now a bit more threatening: she obviously didn’t understand why he was trying to separate her from the rest of her pride and didn’t appreciate it. Dominic snarled back at her, trying to communicate that he didn’t want to fight, but that he wasn’t willing to back down.
Moving towards her, she backed up. Step by step, he managed to manoeuvre her in the direction he wanted her to go. When they managed to make it to the site with dead hyenas strewn all over the place, Dominic stared at the lioness, willing her to look. Then leaning down, he touched his nose to the hyena corpse, and triggered Consume.
The lioness flinched as the body disintegrated into golden dust and swirled around Dominic, being absorbed into his skin. The lion felt his health bar jump a little and several injuries close. Turning, he showed off the newly-healed flesh to the lioness.
By this point, he was sure that the lions were gaining in intelligence just like the hyenas as the lioness was watching intently, now more curious than annoyed. Dominic had hopes that she might be able to do this despite not having the ability to communicate through words.
He nudged another corpse over to her. He’d intentionally moved over to the area where she’d been fighting: that way, the corpses should be ones she’d helped kill. He wasn’t sure if it was possible just to absorb random corpses or if they had to have been killed by the absorber or someone in the absorber’s party.
Maybe he should try…. It would be useful to know for the future. So far, it hadn’t come up, of course, since any corpses around him were ones he’d made.
The lioness stooped down to touch her nose to the hyena’s body, just like Dominic had, her golden eyes fixed on him at all times. Dominic tried to make an encouraging noise, a soft moan coming out in place of what he would have expected to emerge from his human mouth.
The seconds ticked by with nothing happening. Dominic started fearing that the fact that the lioness obviously wasn’t able to think ‘Consume’ might be the sticking point here. However, at the point when he was starting to fidget and wonder whether there was another way of Consuming the body, something changed.
The body disintegrated and swirled around the lioness. She flinched as she saw the golden dust surrounding her, but as her eyes met Dominic’s, he was surprised at the amount of trust in them. It humbled him a little to realise that she was trusting that the process wouldn’t hurt her because he’d done the same thing and come out better for it.
Dominic himself was curiously watching the injuries to her body healing at a visible rate as the hyena’s body offered the lioness a significant boost. Clearly her own health pool was much smaller than Dominic’s as he hadn’t gained nearly as much, relatively speaking, from the corpse he’d absorbed.
When all the golden dust was gone, she inspected her paws, then checked over her shoulder as if she was expecting something to have changed after absorbing the dust. Licking at a wound which had half healed on her paw, Dominic could practically see the gears turning in her mind.
It was no surprise at all to him when she turned to the next hyena corpse beside her, put her nose down and absorbed it. What was a surprise was when another lioness approached them and watched curiously as the body disintegrated.
A moment later, she too had touched a corpse with her nose and done whatever the other lioness had done to start Consuming the body. As he studied her, he saw an almost heart-shaped spot on the fur near her arm-pit – perhaps a holdover from her cubhood. He recognised her by her scent as being the other lioness who had been with him when killing the buffalo.
Recognising similar-looking beings by their scents was not something he was used to doing as a human, but his significantly improved olfactory senses as a lion were nothing to sniff at – pun intended. Even with everyone’s natural scents covered with a layer of ‘pride’ scents, Dominic could still tell who was who in the zoo.
However, still being a good bit human, he found himself uncomfortable – and without the vocabulary – to identify other beings by scent alone. So he decided to think of some names. While tempted to just call the one with a heart-shaped spot ‘Heart’, he decided that that would be too lazy.
Sekhmet, he decided for the one who had fought off three hyenas by herself. And Hathor for the one who has a heart-shaped spot – she was the Egyptian goddess of love, after all.
As for the others, he decided he’d wait to see their personalities before he decided on names. I’ll probably follow the theme of goddesses, though, he decided. And Egyptian ones work pretty well considering they’re at least from the same continent! Though not any more, I suppose….
Curious about whether he could absorb carcasses of creatures he hadn’t killed, he activated Consume on a hyena lying dead near the deceased mother. To his pleasure, it worked. So no limits on which corpses we can Consume. I guess that kind of makes sense: pre-System anyone could eat any carcass which they found.
‘We should Consume the bodies of the females.’ Leo said suddenly. Dominic frowned at him.
‘What? Wouldn’t that be…disrespectful?’
‘Less disrespectful than leaving her body to be Consumed by others.’ Dominic still hesitated.
‘But maybe her sisters should do it instead.’
‘Do you see any of them doing so?’ Leo pointed out. Dominic looked around. The other lionesses had all moved away from the site of the massacre.
Some of them had returned to eating from the buffalo carcass, but a few were investigating what their pride-sisters were doing, and Dominic saw more and more clouds of golden smoke rise into the air. None of them seemed too interested in coming over and Consuming their sister or any of the other leonine bodies.
‘I’ll give it a few minutes. Let all of those who have been Consuming the corpses of the hyenas finish clearing up, and then decide whether or not they wish to do the same to these two lionesses. Agreed?’
‘Very well,’ Leo agreed, the sense of him stretching and then settling down to wait patiently coming over the link.
