‘Dominic, you’re better?’ Sekhmet asked, obvious relief showing in her body language as she padded to him. She rubbed her head against his in greeting.

  ‘Much better, thanks to you and the others,’ he replied, eagerly rubbing back against her. He was startled to realise that his fur was nice and clean.

  ‘The females cleaned us up,’ Leo informed him with a mixture of pleasure and something Dominic had rarely felt from him before: embarrassment. Dominic understood the pleasure bit – he knew all too well how pleasant grooming felt; to have it being done by his ‘females’ had to have been a great experience. Dominic regretted that he’d missed it. But why shame?

  It took a little bit of mental prodding, with Dominic visualising poking his companion with a hard paw, but the lion finally answered, lashing out defensively.

  ‘We should have been grooming them as they groomed us, not lying there like some dead prey-beast.’ The shame rose hot and uncomfortable within both of them at the image Leo sent across.

  ‘Well, maybe we can do that later,’ Dominic suggested, satisfied now that he’d got an answer and sensing how much this meant to his companion.

  ‘That…would be nice,’ Leo admitted, showing just how off-kilter he still was from their experiences earlier. Dominic was reminded that Leo was still really young, even for a lion. It was hard to tell exactly how old, but he was probably about three years old since he remembered three periods of cold and four periods of intense heat. And besides, Dominic himself was still feeling a little shaken at how close to death he’d got.

  After he’d greeted Sekhmet, he moved onto the rest of his Pride who all seemed eager to reinforce their intra-Pride bonds.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Isis when she rubbed against him and then again to Saffron – the two lionesses who had both lost one of their daughters. The two lionesses both expressed grief, but no blame – they knew as well as he did that life on the savannah had always been dangerous, and even more so with this new System.

  Saffron was a younger lioness – this had been her first litter – so she was more upset than Isis. The matriarch’s grief was tired, the memory of many other griefs echoing through her words of understanding. In return, Dominic promised to do better, guilt wracking him. If he’d stuck with the Pride instead of leaping ahead, he might have been able to save the juveniles before it was too late.

  The albuhas greeted him last, and he apologised to them too.

  ‘Is way of life,’ Howler said philosophically. ‘We much bigger pack before world changed. Maybe we have pups and grow again. Maybe we last of our kind. We hide and not fight, we die all same. We fight, we get more powerful – maybe we not die later.’

  It humbled Dominic to realise how much more understanding animals were than humans. He wondered how the elves would deal with the deaths of their own from this battle.

  But for now, they needed to have their own funeral rites. Dominic padded over to the dead Pride members who still lay where they had fallen. They were the only bodies left on the field and with that easy to spot. Carefully, he carried them one by one to a spot beyond the hedge funnel where it was flat and clear. He could have put them in his storage space, but he felt that they deserved to be treated as individuals. As he moved back and forth with the bodies in his mouth, their cooler flesh all too obvious against his tongue and lips, the rest of his Pride gathered around. Those who hadn’t been part of this the last time followed the lead of those who had.

  Dominic hesitated as he looked at the three bodies before him, so much smaller in death than they had seemed in life. He suddenly wished that he hadn’t brought the juveniles with him – only their second true battle and already two of them had died!

  ‘We asked for too much from them, too soon,’ Leo said solemnly, grief and disappointment emanating from him. Dominic suspected it was more because the two juveniles were female ones, and therefore potential mates for him later, than because he mourned the lions themselves. ‘That is true,’ Leo admitted, ‘but they were mine…and we didn’t protect them.’

  Dominic was a little surprised at the possessiveness – the juveniles certainly weren’t Leo’s by blood. But if he was starting to see even the cubs as his own, that could only be a good thing. He decided not to argue.

  ‘We need to come up with some training program for the cubs,’ Dominic decided. ‘Some way for them to increase in level as fast as they can, but without risking their lives.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Leo replied quietly. Dominic moved forwards to say goodbye to the three, licking Devi and Bella’s heads and nosing at Speedy’s muzzle. Her wings were crumpled and limp, dirty and bloody. Dominic hated seeing them like this.

  ‘Has everyone said goodbye to them?’ he asked, stepping away. When several lions and albuhas stepped forwards to mimic his own actions, it was clear that they hadn’t. While they said their final farewells, Dominic was deep in thought. Last time, they had all taken a bite from each of the carcasses. But perhaps they shouldn’t do that this time.

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  His reasoning was partly because of the numbers. Last time there had only been a small group of lions and amesheks. This time, it was a much larger group of lions, albuhas, kesh, and amesheks. Actually, did the kesh even eat meat? Dominic pushed that question away for later.

  The other concern was about what the elves might think. Would they be concerned with what they’d see as cannibalism? Or would they just see it as something animals would do? Dominic himself was even more uncomfortable with the thought of doing it in front of them than he had been about doing it at all, and that was saying something.

  But ultimately, he didn’t want to let what other people might say get in the way of what his Pride needed. And there were only two who would be able to answer this better than him.

  ‘Isis, Saffron, they’re your cubs. Do you want everyone to take a little bite from them before we Consume their dust, or not?’

  The two lionesses were silent for a long moment. Then Saffron sent a picture of golden dust swirling in the air, and the sense of being content with that. Isis followed shortly after with agreement. Dominic dipped his head for a moment. He felt a little guilty about his relief that he wouldn’t need to do something he didn’t really want to do. But practically speaking, it was the best option.

  ‘Alright. Do you want to activate the golden dust for your cubs?’

  Saffron immediately stepped forwards, but Isis hesitated for a moment before joining her. They each paused next to their cubs. Saffron leaned down to nuzzle at Devi a final time. Dominic stepped forwards to touch Speedy. He did wonder whether he should ask Howler or even Jenkins to do this, but decided not to. Saffron and Isis were a different question – they were the mothers and the dead were juveniles. Speedy was a full adult.

  Touching the edge of Speedy’s wing, Dominic triggered Consume. The two lionesses followed his lead a moment later and golden dust flew into the air. Those who had taken part in the funeral before led the dance, trotting into the dust and then out of it again, some only touching the cloud on the edges. Those who were new to the rite quickly followed after. Since, with only three bodies, the cloud was far smaller than before, Dominic didn’t stay in it and instead joined the rest of his Pride in their dance as they brushed past each other in the cloud, only to emerge, turn, and then dive back in to do it again.

  The golden dust was soon gone, but the Pride members continued rubbing together, wordlessly reinforcing their bonds with their living companions. The rubbing soon turned into licking and soon everyone was grooming everyone else within reach. Even the kesh were combing through the fur and wings of their Pride-mates.

  It seemed like Leo had got his wish for some mutual grooming, even if it wasn’t only with the lionesses. Within the grief that Dominic felt for the dead, he also felt a bit of amusement at Leo’s ambivalent reaction to being groomed by ‘males’, ‘primates’, and ‘canines’.

  He personally found it all soothing, reminding him that death was just another part of life, yet life was for the living, not for the dead.

  It was a wrench to pull himself away – he was still tired despite his forced nap. But he’d left the elves to wonder what was going on for long enough. Hopefully by this point Berion would have managed to tell them that they were here to help, but Dominic felt that he needed to speak to them too.

  Dominic briefly considered whether to approach the elves alone or with a small group, but in the end he decided that he shouldn’t just be conscious about the elves’ sensibilities, but his own safety as well. As a result, after a few words from Dominic, the whole Pride formed up together and walked across the former battlefield between them and the elves.

  Dominic found their slow pace almost unbearable, eager as he was to talk to the elves. However, considering everything, he felt – and Leo agreed with him – that running towards the elves might scare them. Though the lion didn’t fully agree with him that they therefore shouldn’t do it.

  ‘Prey might turn and run; predators might present their claws. It would be interesting to find out which of them these elves are,’ the lion remarked. Dominic couldn’t deny that the question he posed was an interesting one, but ultimately disagreed with choosing it as their course of action.

  ‘But since we don’t want the elves to see us as threatening to them, we shouldn’t test them now,’ Dominic responded, pointing out, ‘If elves are anything like humans, they tend to kill those they fear just as much as they would kill things they see as weak.’

  Leo didn’t have any issues with that as an approach. In fact, he approved of it.

  ‘Destroying the danger before it can threaten your Pride? Very proactive. If we’d done more of that with the hyenas, we wouldn’t have been forced out of our territory,’ he needled at Dominic.

  Dominic refused to give him the satisfaction of an argument. Instead, he looked forwards, the slow pace giving him all the time he needed to get a better idea of the situation.

  The battlefield was still there, bloody and already stinking in the hot sun. There were no carcasses, though – between the Pride members absorbing some for health and stamina recuperation and the elves carting the remaining ones away to somewhere else, the field was bare. The blood and viscera that had soaked into the earth, however, was another question.

  The hedges remained in place too. Perhaps they were permanent installations and the beasts had been lured into their embrace. Or maybe they remained as a precaution against their Pride. The elven fighters hadn’t moved far either. A number of them were laid out on the ground with blankets to make them more comfortable while what looked like healers attended to them. More sobering, there were three bodies to the side which were all too still and covered from toe to hair by a green cloth. Dominic felt a twinge of guilt at the sight.

  More elves had come from the city, either to help treat the fighters or to clean up. Already, Dominic could see several walking slowly through the cleared battlefield, the earth shifting beneath their outstretched hands. Seeing magic in action was no less wonderous than the first time Dominic had seen Healing Cloud being used. More so, perhaps, since this was actually making the earth move without them even touching it.

  Deciding that even if he wanted his Pride relatively close by, it probably wouldn’t be too diplomatic to take them right up to the elves, Dominic asked the majority of them to halt where they were. He could already see that the elves were a little alarmed – their heads were turning more towards the Pride and, drifting to his ears on the breeze, Dominic could hear that their voices had become louder than the murmur they had been before.

  ‘Sekhmet, Nyx, Howler, Jenkins, Loud-Hoot, come with me please.’

  Between all of them, he had representatives of each of the Pride’s races. And of course he just simply wanted Sekhmet to be there. Jenkins was also not strictly necessary since the albuhas would now follow Dominic’s commands without question, but again, he just wanted her to be there. Besides, she clearly liked her position as leader of the albuhas and it made sense for them to have a commander who could focus on them.

  Leading the mini-pride, Dominic kept padding forwards until he’d reached a mid-point between his Pride and the elves. There he stopped and sat on his haunches, waiting patiently. The rest of his Pride did the same.

  here!