‘Later,’ Dominic answered the System, as always needing to consolidate things after the actual battle had finished. He suspected that the rewards would require less thought this time – he hadn’t killed any of them so his ability to seize the attributes and Abilities of his enemies might not have taken effect. Still, it was just as well not to get distracted right at this moment.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he sent at Nyx, casting his eyes over her form, searching for injuries. ‘Here, let me heal those,’ he insisted, moving closer and leaning against the spots where he saw that gleaming black armour had been broken, flesh visible in the bloody rents. Triggering Healing Cloud, he watched in satisfaction as her wounds started healing and her frustration lessened.

  ‘Better, thank you,’ she answered with a hint of relief in her voice. ‘That was…better than I thought it might be,’ she admitted. ‘We make a good battle pair.’

  ‘We do, don’t we?’ Dominic agreed. ‘I’m sorry for the times I left you alone, though. I wasn’t exactly fighting my best.’

  Nyx nudged his head with her own. ‘It was only the big beast which could truly hurt me,’ she dismissed. ‘And as you see, even then the wounds were not significant.’

  Dominic immediately answered the nudge with his own head rub. ‘No, but I still wish you hadn’t taken them. By the way, thanks, for choosing to join on my side.’

  ‘Of course. We are pack, are we not?’ Nyx asked. Dominic felt a warm feeling go through him.

  ‘Yes. Yes we are.’

  Feeling oddly flustered, he sought to distract himself – and Nyx. There was a good excuse not far away and Dominic looked over at the aftermath of the battle between his Pride and the force sent by the matriarch. The harashes were still being tipped back into the pit whenever they looked like they were emerging. Dominic sent a message in the Pride chat that the fight was over and his Pride-mates backed off to allow the harashes to emerge. The leader that Dominic had been fighting had finally managed to tip itself back over onto its feet, and was making that nails-on-chalkboard sound of its back legs scraping against its shell.

  The harashes stopped moving, even those which had succeeded in climbing out of the pit. A signal, of some sort, Dominic had to guess. The other leaders had moved away from the blood-soaked battlefield, their group members bunched around them. They were fewer in number than when they’d started, and many suffered from injuries. All were covered in blood – their own and that of others.

  As Dominic’s eyes played over the trodils and wild dogs, he saw them flinch or retreat from his gaze. The ulla didn’t back away, but he didn’t show the same aggression that he had earlier.

  On Dominic’s side, he saw that his Pride members weren’t much better off than their attackers, but they were quickly rectifying that with the help of the lionesses with Healing Cloud. He and Nyx quickly went over to add their own to the mix.

  Behind the lines, the elves were still there, several looking cautiously more hopeful while others appeared even more wary. Why, he didn’t know, since the battle was clearly at an end. Did they fear Dominic’s Pride turning on them?

  ‘As if we would,’ Leo scoffed. Dominic sent him a sense of incredulity.

  ‘As if you wouldn’t if you thought it would do our Pride more good than peace.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Leo agreed as if Dominic had made his point for him. The former-human sighed and decided to give up on trying to win that argument. There were other, more important concerns at hand.

  ‘Who did we lose?’ he asked Sekhmet, fearing the answer. He’d intentionally blocked any death notifications from coming through, not wanting to get distracted in the middle of the fight. Of course, he’d gone against that by checking with Leo whether anyone had died, but he justified it by the fact that he’d chosen the time and place rather than having it be chosen for him.

  ‘One of the primates, and one of the females,’ she answered, her tone solemn. While there were far more bodies littered around that showed the Pride had put up an excellent defence, losing even one of their number would have been too much. Losing two…. Dominic could only hope that the battle proved to have been worth it.

  A little more digging while he moved forward to collect the Cores that dropped as the bodies were dissolved to restock his healers’ reserves revealed that both deaths had happened in the early part of the fight. Dominic was unexpectedly relieved to realise that seeking surrenders instead of going for the kill hadn’t been the cause. The ullas had worked surprisingly well with the trodils and wild dogs to pierce their lines despite the pit in front of them.

  The ullas, as Dominic had experienced with the leader, could jump surprisingly well. In fact, it was surprising that the injuries hadn’t been worse considering that an ulla had jumped straight into the middle of the Pride and started goring any it could reach with its horns while the wild dogs and trodils took advantage of the opening it gave them and streamed around the edges of the pit to protect its flanks.

  Worse, the ulla had proven itself invulnerable to Fearful Howl, resisting any urge to retreat even as its allies ran with their tails between their legs. Unfortunately, even with that opening, the ulla was as dangerous as any buffalo – more, even, considering the System’s enhancements.

  Isis’ Protective Mother Ability had been absolutely necessary – offering a group of five Pride members temporary invulnerability which allowed them to drive the ulla back and into the pit without getting run through by its horns or hamstrung by the smaller predators fighting to return to its side. Stuck in a pit with its horns bashing into the earthen sides every time it shifted its head, the ulla had proven to be far more vulnerable to the Pride’s attacks. Once it was dead, absorbing its body cleared the pit – after all, a pit filled with a mountain of flesh wasn’t a pit at all.

  Fortunately, it wasn’t long after that that Dominic had been able to force the surrender of the ullas’ leader so no other ullas had attempted the same manoeuvre. And without the massive bison-like ullas providing the thrust of the attacks, the trodils and wild dogs were far more manageable even with their Abilities – the Pride had enough of their own to repel most of the attacks. And as the last few minutes of the battle attested, the harashes by themselves were easier to manage.

  So, in short, exchanging two lives for at least fifteen should have been a fair trade, but it definitely felt like Dominic had been robbed. Time to make sure that their sacrifice wasn’t in vain.

  After checking on his Pride, making sure that their wounds were healing quickly, Dominic decided to speak to the leaders he’d forced to surrender. He didn’t want to have to repeat this – being so outnumbered. And the only way to ensure that was to make sure that their numbers kept growing even as they bled their enemy.

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  He knew he needed to speak to the elves too, but he thought it better to make sure he had a complete view on the situation himself before reassuring them.

  Leaping into the air. Dominic glided over the pit and a good half of the distance between it and the defeated groups of beasts. The harashes had retreated to form a separate group to the side of the others. All of the groups were now standing beyond the hedge funnel, in what Dominic could only describe as neutral ground. Dominic himself stood just inside the embracing arms of the hedges, staking his claim on the ground on which he stood.

  ‘We defeated you,’ he projected as widely as he could, though made sure that at least the leaders were included in it. ‘I defeated you with the help of my ally, and my Pride killed far more of you than you killed of us. Although I will not deny that an all-out battle would cost us dearly, it would cost you far more.’

  ‘We do not deny that,’ the ulla rumbled. ‘You have proved your might. We wish for no further conflict for the sake of our herds.’

  ‘Does he speak for all of you?’ Dominic asked, turning his head so his gaze settled upon each of the leaders for a long moment.

  ‘I wish for no further conflict,’ the wild dog leader said when Dominic looked at him. ‘I have lost more of my pack than I expected this day.’ Sure enough, at least half of the caracasses lying on the ground were wild dogs. Dominic briefly wondered why that was the case – were they particularly fragile, or was it that the others were more difficult targets?

  ‘You and your family managed to prove yourselves cunning enough to not make further losses worth entertaining,’ the harash leader admitted, cleaning its front legs with slow and careful movements. Apparently Dominic’s acid was still hurting it if its movements were anything to go by.

  The only hold out was the trodil who appeared more than a little angry at the turn of events. He was back to his normal size, and was probably suffering the after-effects of Rage. But that didn’t seem to be enough to make him agree with his allies. Dominic padded closer to him, his head automatically lowering, his lips pulling away from his teeth.

  ‘And you? Do you wish to resume the fight? Me against you? My Pride against your pack?’

  The trodil leader appeared to be a heartbeat away from taking up the challenge. Then a whining sound from a trodil just behind him, one that was smaller and slightly more delicate, made him back down, lowering his head and his gaze to the savannah ground.

  ‘I surrendered,’ he answered shortly, ‘We will not continue the conflict between our packs unless you attack us.’

  ‘Good,’ Domini responded even as Leo scoffed in the back of his mind, relaxing his body language a little and padding back to where he had started. ‘Then I will offer all of you the opportunity to be on the winning side. I intend to challenge the matriarch for leadership of the beast wave. Join me and be at my side rather than hers.’

  The four beasts exchanged nervous looks between themselves.

  ‘The matriarch is powerful,’ the wild dog said carefully. ‘She beat even you.’ This seemed to be directed at the ulla. The bison-like creature threw his head up in the air.

  ‘She was too quick for me,’ he admitted. ‘And too vicious for the rest of you,’ he continued pointedly. The wild dog whined and the trodil flinched violently.

  ‘You should have just pressed yourselves to the ground and withstood her attacks with your strongest defences,’ the harash pointed out placidly.

  ‘I would have lost anyway – you did when she flipped you over and threatened to rip off your head.’

  ‘But at least she didn’t bite off my front paw,’ the harash answered with a pointed look at the trodil’s left front leg. The canine flinched again, shifting that paw as if to hide it. And if Dominic was interpreting their discussion correctly, the trodil had somehow managed to regenerate a lost limb – through levelling up, he had to guess.

  ‘At least she didn’t feel the need to emasculate any of us,’ commented the trodil with a shudder. The wild dog matched him and whined at a clearly traumatic memory. It took Leo a moment to understand what the comment referred to, but when he did, a shiver of disgust and outrage emanated from him.

  ‘We need to kill this matriarch!’ he told Dominic firmly. ‘No one who does that sort of thing should be allowed to live on this savannah! Unless they are doing it to other male lions.’

  Of course. Dominic rolled his eyes at Leo.

  ‘More to the point,’ the ulla said with an impatient snort, ‘could this other leader beat the matriarch?’

  Suddenly, their looks were all on Dominic, examining him carefully.

  ‘He beat us,’ the wild dog offered with a hint of doubt.

  ‘So did she,’ the trodil pointed out slightly fearfully. ‘And she did it on her own – he had the help of that bigger beast.’

  ‘We were all attacking at the same time,’ the harash remarked. ‘We faced the matriarch individually.’

  ‘Am I understanding you correctly? Are you afraid of the potential retribution from the matriarch if I lose against her?’ Dominic asked. The beasts before him indicated agreement with their body language that even Dominic could read.

  ‘If we side with you and you lose, at best we will be chased out of the attack – and the rewards that we gain in it both every day and when our side wins against the two-legs. At worst, the matriarch may set those still loyal to her against us, destroying our herds completely,’ the ulla explained solemnly.

  ‘I see,’ Dominic answered slowly, then fixed them with a hard look. ‘The thing is, you lost the Challenge. All of you chose to surrender to me instead of dying beneath my teeth and claws. Which, frankly, eliminates the chance of you returning peacefully to the matriarch as if nothing happened.’ He could understand where they were coming from, and the desire to sit on the fence. But he wasn’t going to accept that, not when two of his Pride had already died to win them the Challenge which should have determined the beasts’ loyalties to begin with. He didn’t want those lives to be wasted by a bunch of fence-sitting beasts deciding that the matriarch’s side was more powerful and that they wanted to return to it.

  ‘As far as I see it, you have two options. You join me and gain whatever rewards are offered to the winning side when I win,’

  He paused for a moment, letting that sink in.

  ‘Or…?’ the wild dog asked cautiously.

  Dominic turned towards the wild dog and fixed him with his gaze. ‘Or you run away right now with your tails between your legs and go back to wherever you came from, hoping that both the matriarch and I have better things to do than to hunt after you.’ His lips lifted away from his teeth. ‘And don’t even think about reporting back to the matriarch – I’ll know and I’ll come to slaughter you. Because she’s not the only one whose retribution you should fear. So. What are you going to choose?’

  here!