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“How many other prides are there?” Ava asked.
“I’m not entirely sure. For a long time, we lost the ability to travel between worlds. My grandmother and father do have the ability though, so they have tried to make contact with the prides. Some of them have flourished while others have suffered. Some of them we cannot find at all.” Mika turned the boar and the flames hissed again as a layer of fat dripped down upon the flames.
“You have not found us. Can you tell us why?” Ava asked.
Mika shook his head. “I don’t know, but when we get to the tower you can look in the records to see if there is anything there.”
“The tower, this is where the pride lives?” I asked.
“It’s where most of us live. There is a village around the tower as well where people go about their business.”
“And what do you do with your time?” I asked.
“Anything we like,” he said. “Now I would like to know something. Tell me more about this world you come from.”
“There’s not much to tell. It’s barren and dry, offering little of sustenance. Our hunting parties have to travel for weeks and even when they return, they never find anything like this. We have learned to eke out survival, enduring great hardship because there was no alternative. Once it was like this place, but the world changed. The pride had to change with it,” Ava said.
“But if you can walk between worlds then you could have come here earlier, or you could have found another world,” Mika said.
“For a long time, I was not allowed to use my ability, but that is another story for another time. I believe the meat is ready now,” Ava said. She rose and walked towards the boar. I was ready to leap to her defense if Mika should try and pry, but he did not ask anything. Ava took his knife and reached above the fire, ignoring the heat that would have been uncomfortable on her skin. She sliced off a thick cut of meat and flung it in my direction. I caught it and immediately began tearing it with my teeth. The flavor poured over my tongue. It was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted, and there was a moment when I believed I had died and entered the Great Plains.
But afterwards there was a moment of guilt as I realized that while we were here enjoying this feast the rest of our pride were still suffering, starving through another night. The only consolation was that it may well have been the last night. Soon enough they would be here with us, but I still felt uneasy about enjoying this feast when others could not.
Chapter Thirteen
Mika
I enjoyed my meat quietly and calmly. The taste of boar was a common one to me, so I did not feel the need to moan and express my satisfaction as loudly as my two new companions did. At first it seemed a little overwrought, but after they had explained their world to me then I understood. There were times when I took Orestes for granted.
I had thought that we had made contact with all the estranged prides, so it was surprising that they had not received a visit from us. I was also intrigued why Ava had not been allowed to use her abilities. It would certainly have saved her pride a lot of suffering. Usually, people with powers like her were cherished and prized. They were special lions, blessed by the gods, and some even craved that power for themselves. Divad had been captured by a madman who wanted to steal Divad’s power through blood, so the fact that someone would actually deny the power was astounding to me. Ava’s tone was defensive though. It was evident that she did not wish to speak about it, so I wasn’t going to press, yet. But if she wanted to earn the trust of Orestes then she was going to have to be honest about her past and what her intentions were here.
We feasted on the boar until they had their fill. There was still plenty of meat left on the animal, for a boar could feed a dozen men.
“What do we do with the rest of the meat? Is there any way to store it?” Lanas asked. I furrowed my brow.
“There’s plenty of meat back at the tower. We can leave this here for the scavengers to feed on. I’m sure they’ll appreciate a little bit of charity,” I replied.
“You’re just going to leave it here? But what if it doesn’t get eaten? What if it just rots?” Lanas asked, his voice becoming strained.
I merely shrugged. “Then it rots. This isn’t the only boar we have in Orestes. There are plenty of others in the forests, and this isn’t the only terrain either. There is a jungle and there are plains and there are deserts. There are so many different animals in Orestes that one boar really isn’t going to make a difference,” I said.
I could tell by the look on their faces that they didn’t quite understand. If things were so desperate from their world, then of course they would need to keep every pound of meat, but things in Orestes were different. Even as I suggested we leave it behind Lanas had to tear himself away. He kept glancing back, acting as though he was committing a sin by leaving the boar by the ashes of the fire. They would soon get used to a new way of living though.
“I suggest that we run back as lions now, otherwise it’s going to take the better part of the day to return. If we shift now then we can make it back by nightfall,” I said. The words were barely out of my mouth before Ava shifted and began racing away, clearing intending to challenge me to a sprint. I took a moment to shake my head in disbelief, although my lips stretched into a smile. She had already annoyed me, but there was something about her that played on my mind as well, something that drew me to her. There was an intensity about her that was rare. She clearly approached the world with so much passion that nothing was ever dull with her, and I could see why she was the leader of her pride. She was so many things a leader should be, even to the lengths of being able to deal the killing blow to Gargann, something that I could not do. To be in her presence was to be in the presence of someone who expressed all the qualities that a leader should have, the qualities I lacked. She could hunt, she could fight, and she could travel worlds. It was as though all the qualities that should have been in me were in her instead, somehow having been spirited away across the cosmos, and now she was in my land, heading towards my pride, and I had no idea what everyone else were going to think of her.
In truth, I wasn’t sure what I thought of her yet. There were some moments when I burned with resentment and others where I could not help but look at her with awe, intrigued by the life she had led and the harsh conditions she had faced when leading her pride. Perhaps that was the difference between her and me; she had been forged by a hard world while I had been cosseted by one that had comfort in abundance. Either way, I did not want her to win yet again, so I shifted into a lion and sprinted after her, my paws crashing against the ground as I accelerated to my top speed in the hope of catching up to her. She might have been able to kill Gargann, but only I knew the way back to the tower, and I would see her looking at me with admiration before I was done.
Chapter Fourteen
Ava
The wind whipped against my fur and around my body. It was sweet and clear and refreshing. I was amazed at the world around me, a world filled with color and life rather than something that was barren and hard. I wanted to throw myself into every part of it and roll around, but there was time for that later. I had to find my way back to the tower and prove to Mika once again that I was his superior. I wasn’t about to let these lions of Orestes think that just because our pride had been lost to them that we were inferior, that just because we struggled in our world it meant that we were weak. I was going to show them how strong I was, and I was going to learn just why we had been forgotten.
It stung to hear how these lions had walked between worlds to other prides and found those lions who had been estranged. Why had they not come to us when we were in dire need of assistance? Had there been a mistake somewhere along the way, or was there something more nefarious going on? I would remain guarded until I found the tower and knew of the truth behind their actions.
I had been sated by the boar, and felt more energy surging inside me than I had felt for a long time. My muscles were given new vigor and my blood was fire within me. I ran faster than I had in a long time, stretching out my limbs to their full capacity. I thundered along the ground and breathed in the air. I glanced behind me to see that Mika was closing in on me, his mane flattened against his flanks. Behind him was Lanas, struggling to keep up with both of us. I felt bad for him, but I could not slow my pace for his sake. He would catch up eventually, and if we stayed in this place for long enough then he would grow stronger too.
Mika managed to catch up with me and we were neck and neck. I had to allow him to guide me as I wasn’t sure where exactly we were going. I was still getting used to the different scents in the air. I could feel myself being pulled in all manner of different directions, by all the different aromas in Orestes. Mika had spoken about all the different areas of the world, all the different terrains. I had once thought the same about my world, had hoped that by sending out hunting parties to the farthest reaches of the land they would find something other than the dry and barren desert, but there was nothing but rock and sand and grit. It wasn’t anything like this place, and the more I thought about it the more I resented my ancestors for ever leaving Orestes. How arrogant they must have been to leave without having a way back. Did they never think that the world they traveled to would end up dying a slow death? It was as though it was squeezing the life out of us, and I was forced to wrest control back, to try and drag my pride kicking and screaming through the void I could create and leave our home behind.
