The rest of their journey passed without much conflict. There were a couple of skirmishes, but generally once the attackers realised just what a big chunk they’d bitten off, they beat a hasty retreat – the survivors, that was. More interested in making it to their destination than chasing every Prey Point they could, both Dominic and Leo agreed to let them run. There was only one particular skirmish which almost led to the death of two Pride members – when the savannah ground erupted and closed on a kesh and, to Leo’s dismay, one of the newest lionesses: Bella.

  But with the rest of the Pride piling in to attack, the massive creature which had made its lair underground was soon killed. Oddly reminiscent of a flatfish, though with feeler-like legs that allowed it to move around, its only real advantage was its ability to camouflage itself against the ground – but there was no need to see the enemy when it had already been located. Unsurprisingly, its Core had given Dominic a few more percent towards that very Ability – the chances were even more weighted than normal towards getting its starting Ability.

  On the positive side, thanks to the fight with the toads and the other skirmishes which ended up in a few dead enemies each time, all of the level 1 lions that survived had gone up to level 2. A few others had increased by a level too. None of those Dominic knew very well, though. Dominic himself was still far from his next level – which wasn’t surprising.

  As the sun rose on the second day of travelling with the elves, their prediction of how long it would take to reach their home proved to be correct – apparently the speed of the Pride limited to its slowest and weakest members was not dissimilar from the usual travelling speed for the elves.

  The rising sun’s rays fell upon an interesting sight ahead of the Pride.

  ‘Another forest?’ Dominic wondered mentally at his companion. Then, when Leo didn’t respond, he prodded the lion mentally.

  ‘Hm? Are we doing something interesting that’s worth me waking up?’ Leo asked with the sensation of a wide yawn and stretch.

  ‘Well, you tell me, Your Majesty,’ Dominic told him with exasperation. Lazy lion – it wasn’t even that he’d done all the fighting. In fact, he’d been far more eager to take over when they were having a pause – so he could mate with the lionesses who were still in heat, or coming into it.

  To Dominic’s disappointment, Sekhmet was out of heat by now and didn’t seem interested in anything more than cuddling. Jenkins was still interested, but Dominic was already mentally preparing himself for a dry-spell afterwards – he still wasn’t keen on doing it with just any random lioness like Leo was. Though he’d found it rather embarrassing at first to do it within view of the elves, his partners hadn’t been cooperative with his desire to find a bush to hide behind so he’d had to either deal with the embarrassment or go without. He’d chosen to deal with it. Fortunately, the elves hadn’t seemed to consider two lions mating to be anything to stare at or he might have had some performance anxiety.

  ‘It looks like a forest…but not at the same time,’ Leo replied after taking his time to observe it. ‘The trees seem…unnatural in a certain way.’

  ‘That’s what I thought too,’ Dominic replied, glad that his companion was seeing the same things he was. The trees seemed to be normal insofar as they had trunks and canopies, but their proportions were odd. They were more like the baobabs Dominic had seen in a documentary at some point, their trunks were bulbous and their canopies were sparse. The real oddity was that the bulging of the trunks didn’t look natural at all. And as they got closer and the sun moved higher into the sky, more details became visible, all of which served as more evidence that this forest of trees wasn’t natural.

  They decided to take a rest when the sun was at its zenith to escape the worst of its heat – they didn’t want to arrive at their destination completely exhausted and they still had a while to go, despite how close it looked across the flat savannah. By that time, Dominic was sure that this forest was what they sought: Selanthis, the home of the elves.

  While they were resting, for once Dominic didn’t let Leo take over – he wanted information. He padded over to where the elves had formed a small circle, sitting cross-legged on the earth. They were drinking from their seemingly-bottomless water flasks and eating what appeared to be travel rations – a mixture of jerky and hard tack. Or at least things that appeared very much like those. It was a mark of how the relationship between them had relaxed a little that only Ruthror and Pelir tensed when he approached, though even those two limited their reaction to a slightly-hostile look as the rest looked up at Dominic. Luthor, the closest to Dominic, shifted to the side so he wasn’t right under Dominic’s head.

  ‘That’s Selanthis, right?’ Dominic asked, sitting down opposite Berion. Ruthror, who was the closest on his other side shuffled away from him – the golden-haired elf still wasn’t his greatest fan. But neither he nor Pelir had made any attempt to attack him or any member of his Pride, even when they’d had the opportunity, so Dominic was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘It is,’ Berion responded with a mixture of wistfulness and worry. ‘At least I can see some evidence that our people are still there. I was worried that it might not be the case on our return.’

  ‘So are those trees or are they houses?’ Dominic inquired curiously. ‘Either way, they’re where you live, right?’ That much seemed obvious – closer to the forest, Dominic could see that the trees bulged sideways in what appeared to be rooms due to the various openings he could see. They seemed to have glass or something of the sort since many spots reflected the light of the sun. There were even wrap-around balconies on the outsides of the bulges higher above the ground.

  ‘Yes, most of us live in the trees, though not everyone – the trees are limited in number and capacity. As for whether they are trees or houses…they are both. We have many among our number who are able to guide and support the growth of the trees into becoming homes for us. At the same time we care for the trees, ensuring that no rot, drought, or parasites cut their lives short. Thus, we live together in harmony, giving as much or more than we take.’ His mouth turned down with his eyes taking on a saddened glint. ‘At least, it used to be that way before the System arrived. Now…’

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  ‘Now we don’t know how to live,’ finished the violet-eyed Talathon. ‘The System appears to be one that encourages violence more than it does crafting, taking more than it does giving. And we are lost in this new land, so different from the one we knew before. Either we learn to live differently or we will fall.’ He looked around the group who were all staring at him, some of them unhappily. ‘You know I speak only the truth. If we are not willing to hear it, we will be destroyed.’

  ‘The truth as you see it. We do not want to descend into the savagery that long ago killed so many of our kind that we almost became extinct – and the world with us,’ rumbled the white-haired, dark-skinned Luthor. Dominic started feeling awkward – this discussion had the feeling of one which they had had many times before and never came to a satisfactory conclusion, merely postponing it to another time.

  ‘How long do you think it will be before we get to your home?’ Dominic asked, trying to divert the conversation back to something more productive. The elves looked at him, some appearing a little startled, as if they’d completely forgotten that he was there.

  ‘At the pace we have been making so far, as long as we go soon after the sun has moved past its zenith, we will be there before it has dropped much further.’ Talathon answered.

  ‘Alright, thanks,’ Dominic said, deciding to beat a hasty retreat before he was drawn into existential questions from the elves again. Though, as he did, he had to wonder how his fellow humans were dealing with the whole situation. He doubted there was much questioning about whether they should be using violence to solve their problems or not. If they’re also being attacked by waves of beasts, I hope they don’t end up using nuclear weapons and poisoning this planet for everyone, he worried to himself.

  *****

  They started moving as soon as it was bearable for even the weakest members of their group. Sure enough, Talathon’s prediction seemed to be accurate – the sun had noticeably moved in the sky but not by a massive amount by the time they were approaching the elves’ settlement. Forest city? Tree Town? Dominic wondered what to call it.

  There were at least fifty of the baobabs which, this close, appeared very much like downsized skyscrapers. Downsized in the sense of probably only having ten stories at most, but in real terms they were big enough to make Dominic feel small. Even the massive tree at the centre of their Place of Power was only the size of the smallest of these trees, and vastly smaller than the immense one he saw standing head and shoulders above the others. Around the feet of the giants were a number of earthen-coloured lumps, appearing like growths on the roots of the trees. They were probably more homes. So it could surely be considered to be at least a town.

  Then, as he saw what was happening, he dismissed the question about correct appellation.

  He was flying, wanting to get a better view of the settlement than he could from the ground. It also gave him a good view of the events in the city just ahead of them.

  Beasts were attacking right at that moment!

  Targeting the side of the city closest to Dominic was a large group of creatures. They were too far away and too tightly packed for Dominic to properly identify them, but they looked to be of all sorts of shapes and sizes.

  ‘Sekhmet!’ Dominic reached out to his favourite lioness – even if he knew he shouldn’t play favourites, she definitely was. ‘Tell the elves that their city is under attack. Ask if they would prefer to rush forwards or whether they would prefer to conserve our strength and hope that their people are still alive by the time we get there.’

  ‘Yes, Dominic,’ she acknowledged. That was one of the downsides of him not being able to bring the elves into the Pride – no direct communication with them when he wasn’t next to them. Fortunately, there was another lion in the Pride with Telepathy.

  While he waited for Sekhmet to come back with the answer, Dominic scouted ahead a bit more. He suspected he knew what the elves’ answer would be, but since it was their city, he thought that they should have the choice.

  Fleet Foot didn’t work in the air which meant that he was slightly slower there than he was running with his boosts, so Dominic angled his wings to land. On the ground, he dashed forwards as fast as he could with all his movement enhancers active, before leaping back into the air. Beating his wings a few times brought him laboriously higher into the air, giving him a better view of the attack.

  Now closer, he was more able to identify some of the creatures present. Predominant, interestingly enough, were hyenas.

  ‘Dirty scavengers,’ Leo snarled.

  ‘What do you think are the chances that these are connected to the group we tangled with before?’ Dominic questioned. The lion went quiet for a moment, but his growing anger was obvious to Dominic.

  ‘Bring up our map,’ he requested thoughtfully. Dominic wouldn’t have done so if he was running – too much chance of tripping or colliding with something – but while gliding, as long as he kept straight, the chances of nose-planting were reduced. At least as long as he didn’t do it for too long.

  ‘Alright,’ he agreed, pulling the map up in front of his eyes. Even more intrusive than the notifications normally were, this map completely filled his vision – only his peripheral vision could see anything else. There wasn’t much on it at the moment – a route which looked like two sides of a triangle showing where he had gone from the dungeon to the Place of Power and then from the dungeon to where he was now.

  ‘To get to our old territory, we went through the Place of Power, though we didn’t go in a straight line,’ mused Leo. ‘And then when we ran away from those hyenas before, we retraced our footsteps to return to the forest. It’s quite possible that we aren’t actually that far away from it. Perhaps one of the females would know – we didn’t stay protectors of our territory for long enough for me to be able to recognise it from here.’ His tone was rather accusatory. Dominic ignored it.

  ‘Which means that, in addition to helping out the elves, we might be able to have the chance to have a second round against the ones who drove us out of our territory before….’

  ‘And this time, the outcome will be very different,’ agreed Leo with a sense of blood-thirstiness.

  here!