by Jan Stryvant
"I wonder if this means Sean is dead?" Joseph asked after he'd been shown to a seat in Arthur's study while they waited for their guest to show up.
"My niece has told me he's alive," Arthur replied.
"Then why the new lion?"
"I'm guessing that's what this meeting is about."
James came into the room then.
"They just arrived, Arthur. Frank will be bringing them up shortly."
Arthur nodded. "Thank you. Some coffee please, James?"
"Of course."
Shortly after James left to take care of that, Frank came in with the new lion, as well as his niece, Roxy, and Daelyn. Arthur noticed that they all looked tired, but no one seemed to be grieving.
"Arthur, Joseph," Jolene started as they both stood up to shake hands, "this is Adam."
"Pleased to meet you," Arthur said and looked Adam over as Joseph took his turn to shake hands. Adam looked to be a bit smaller than he remembered Sean to be, but he also looked to be much more refined. His mane was brushed out to near perfection; his clothing was well made and impeccably styled. Nothing was out of place, and the relaxed, easy smile on his leonine face showed a level of confidence that Arthur had rarely seen from Sean.
"It's an honor, gentlemen. Sean thinks highly of you both."
"Oh?" Arthur and Joseph glanced at each other. "He's mentioned us?"
"What one lion knows," Adam said with a wink.
"You all know," Joseph sighed. "Sean has told us that more than once."
"So what brings you here today, Adam?" Arthur asked as James returned with a pot of coffee, Dean carrying a tray with cups on it.
"Simply put," Adam said, taking a cup as Dean handed it to him, then holding it as James filled it, "we're pretty sure that everyone thinks Sean is dead. It could be months before he can find another gateway to make his way back here, and, well," Adam shook his head, "we just can't afford to let all the work he's done for us here unravel in his absence."
"So you're saying he's not dead then?" Joseph asked. "Does that mean you've talked to him?"
"No, he's not dead, and we're having trouble talking to him. No lion has ever gone to the Onderwereld before, and he's obviously far too busy figuring things out there to take the time to talk to us."
"Then how do you know he's alive?" Joseph pressed.
Adam smiled. "Oh, that's easy. If he was dead, he'd be with those of us awaiting reincarnation."
"Reincarnation?"
"We're gods, Joseph. We can't die. If we lose our body, we just get another one."
"How does that work?" Arthur asked.
"Very well," Adam said with a bright smile. "Been through it myself. But we're straying from the point. Sean had been talking with the rest of us about those two that got away from us last week. Seems there are a few weak points in our armor, I guess you could say. He wanted to see if we could get Sapientia and Eruditio to help with securing some kind of border around the war zone."
"A border? We have to be talking about something hundreds of miles long," Arthur said. "I'm not sure we could block that, even all of us working together."
"Not something to lock them in," Jolene interrupted. "Something that would tell us when somebody got out. Sean was considering some sort of magical fence based on enchanted items maintained by a group of magic users."
Adam nodded. "What she said. I'm not a magic user, sorry if I misspoke."
"Oh! A magical ward!" Arthur said and looked at Joseph, who was already considering the idea.
"I think it's possible," Joseph said slowly. "Sean was right about our needing something like that, obvious now of course. Pity none of us thought of it earlier."
"Don't blame yourselves," Adam said with a dismissive gesture. "I think we were all caught a little off guard this time around. Normally they don't start to really push through in big numbers until the main gateway has opened. In fact, they're still following the old rules down in South America, where I just came from."
"You were fighting them in Brazil?" Arthur asked, surprised.
Adam nodded. "Of course. No one wanted to come up here, really." He sighed dramatically then. "But I drew the short straw, so here I am."
"Why didn't anyone want to come?" Arthur asked, looking concerned.
"Because I'll lose my seniority in the fight back there," Adam said, sounding a little dejected. "Once Sean comes back, there really isn't any need for two of us here. But being gone for four or five months is a lot in a war zone. So I'll lose my command and get stuck back at the bottom."
"Do you really think he'll be gone that long?"
"Until the main gateway opens, the odds of him finding one of the temporary gates before it collapses are pretty slim. But once the main one opens? Well, he won't have any trouble finding that one, unless..."
"Unless what?" Arthur asked, noticing that now Jolene, Roxy, and Daelyn, were starting to look worried.
Adam looked at Arthur and smiled. "This is Sean we're talking about, Arthur. How does that line go again? 'I'm not trapped in here with you; you're all trapped in here with me.'"
Roxy watched as Arthur and Joseph considered his words. While none of them had wanted to admit to the possibility, the simple truth was, they needed a story if Sean didn't turn up, or worse yet, was killed. Sean had mentioned Chad's ideas on invading to her, as well as the First's thoughts on seeing if they could assassinate the demon leaders to sow dissention in their ranks.
Plus not a one of them would put it past Sean to become a complete asshole and do something like that, if the opportunity presented itself. Adam had been fairly certain he could sell them on it, because they all knew it was the kind of thing he was capable of.
"Still, I would think a young man like Sean would be far more interested in returning to his young wives," Joseph said, causing Roxy to worry.
"Sean's a lion now, Joseph, and for all of us, there is one thing far more important than our lives, or even being able to come home to our women."
"And that would be?"
"Our children. Sean's a father now; he has children, with more on the way. Protecting them is what drives him most now. We're lions; our prides are what motivate us to defend our territory against the invaders. We don't just do it for the challenge of it, nor do we do it just to protect all of you humans. We do it because how can our children, not all of whom are lions, grow and thrive if we do not?
"You once asked Sean why lions didn't rule the world, did you not?"
"Erm, yes, we did," Joseph said, looking a little embarrassed.
"We did once, long, long ago. We were not made to rule the mundanes, the humans. We don't understand what it is you want from life, just as you don't understand what it is we need. Your numbers suffered from that misunderstanding, and we eventually came to realize that it would be better for us to let you rule the world."
"Seriously?" Arthur asked.
Adam laughed. "Look around you! Look at all you humans have wrought! Can you deny that it was the right decision?"
Roxy held her breath as Adam went completely off script. She hadn't told him about their asking about the lions running the world, in fact she'd completely forgotten about it. But the effect it had on Arthur and Joseph as they looked at each other, then back at Adam, was undeniable.
Jolene was right; Adam had an innate ability to play people.
"So we can count on your help with this ward, right?" Adam asked.
Arthur and Joseph started slightly in their seats, and Arthur turned to Joseph.
"What do you think, can we do it?"
Joseph nodded slowly. "We'll have to get some help from the other councils, but I think the idea has merit." Joseph looked up at Adam. "We'll do our part."
"Good! Good!" Adam said and took a long drink of his coffee, then set it down on the table. "Well, I hate to drink and run, but there's a lot to do and never enough time to do it," Adam said, standing.
"I do have one last question," Arthur asked.
Adam smiled. "Ah
, Sean told me about this. Sure, ask away."
"What will you do if Sean hasn't come through the gateway six months from now?"
Adam frowned. "Then I guess I'll just have to go and get him." Adam winked then, and lowered his voice in a mock whisper as he nodded towards the girls. "Because they'll beat me to death if I don't!"
Roxy noticed that both of the men smiled then, as she and the others got up and followed Adam back to the car.
"So," Adam asked as they drove away, "do I pass?"
"You know we're gonna hold you to that little promise of yours if Sean doesn't come back," Daelyn said with a grumble.
" I guess that means I passed. So now what?"
"Now let's see how you handle Claudia!" Roxy said with a smile.
Adam snorted. "That'll be easy; I'm more worried about his friends Chad and Steve. The First warned me about them."
#
Sean was in his hybrid form fighting a group of four bonde he'd come across. He would have bypassed them, but they were in the process of eating somebody's soul. Remembering his last vision dealing with this, he slew the soul first, sending it hopefully to its just reward. Then he turned on the four bonde, and when he killed them, they stayed dead.
He paused only long enough to relieve them of what he thought was their money. Nothing else seemed of value, so he quickly moved back into the forest, moving carefully through the black trees. He'd been going long enough to be able to tell the difference between daytime and nighttime. The ever-pervasive 'light' went away during what passed for night here, but his night vision was good enough as a lion to be able to see a few feet before him. That, combined with his other senses, meant he could still continue on if he needed to, just slowly.
But he had more than enough mana, so he simply cast a night vision spell on himself, and was pleased to find it worked.
He'd noticed his incoming mana levels had died back down to a trickle, and looking at the spell he'd been using, he suspected it was the opening of a gateway that had increased his mana, because it appeared to have only lasted about twelve hours. That made him wonder, if the gate he'd come through had collapsed when his bomb had gone off, would he have died?
It was all very curious.
Also, for the first time in longer than he could remember, he was lonely. Growing up as he had, Sean had learned to do without other people, because he'd had no one else in his life, beyond his mother, who was always working to pay off the outrageous debt they'd been saddled with. After a year of Roxy, the girls, and even the First being in his head, Sean had grown quite used to the company.
"Talk about your unintended consequences," Sean muttered to himself, his voice not carrying very far in the heavy woods. He wondered what the girls were up to, and how his children were doing. At least he'd gotten to see Jo and Dae's children before he'd left. But Peg and Sheila were due in a couple of weeks, and he seriously doubted he was going to be there to see it.
He started to worry then if he was doing the right thing, trying to track down this brown stranger. If he'd stayed in the area where the gate had been, sooner or later another one would show up there, right? Or was it just bad luck for him and his people that the gate on this side had opened up so close to a major stronghold?
Sean sighed and shook his head. He was a stranger in a strange land, without the slightest clue what anything meant or how anything worked. He needed an ally, or barring that, maybe he just needed to catch some live demons and question them.
He noticed then that the trees were starting to thin out. Slowing down, he made his way carefully through them. He saw it then, there was a clearing up ahead!
Moving even more cautiously than before, Sean ducked down low and approached the edge of the clearing. He saw it then, the larger tower with the two smaller adjoining towers! This was where he'd seen the brown figure in his last vision!
Looking around, Sean could see that there were demons, gnashers mostly, working the fields, apparently looking for something? He wasn't quite sure. Suddenly one of them called out an alert, and they all started to hurry back towards the tower. Sean watched, wondering what they could be running from. He didn't see anybody approaching on the roads leading to the place; the clearing he'd come to was actually the end of the forest and it was plains now for as far as the eye could see.
When the brown figure came out and spoke to one of the gnashers, who was gesturing towards Sean, he suddenly realized they'd been running from him. Apparently they'd spotted or detected him somehow.
Shaking his head, he stood up straight, stepped out of the woods, and started to walk slowly down the hillside towards the keep. The other figure had dismissed the gnasher it was talking to, and was striding quickly towards him.
Sean took the time to examine them as they came closer. The armor they were wearing was some sort of black plate. It didn't look well fitted, though it did look like it had seen a fair deal of punishment over the years. The helm they were wearing didn't quite match the armor, and the shape of it was rather odd.
What he did notice was that they had short brown fur over the parts of the body he could see, with a lighter colored chest that was definitely female, from the way the armor was shaped.
They also had a tail.
With a tuft on the end.
Sean blinked. He looked at the approaching figure, and blinked again.
It couldn't be.
Stopping, he waited until they'd gotten to about fifty feet away, where they'd stopped as well. Each of them taking the time to look the other over.
"Hello," Sean said slowly, "I was wondering if you might be able to help me."
"Go away. Now. Or else," Den Brune En said. No one had yet figured out just what she was, because only males had a mane. And while the lower ranks didn't know what a lion was, all the lords and kings certainly did. If he stayed here, though...
"Do you want to have sex with me?" Sean asked with a smile, interrupting her thoughts.
"What?"
"I asked if you want to have sex with me," Sean said with a grin.
"What the hell is it with you males looking to screw everything!" She growled and again waved the sword at him.
"It's a simple yes or no question. Do you?"
"No!" she shouted. The nerve of this guy!
Sean smiled and nodded. "Great. Then I suggest you put the sword down," he started to growl then, "before you get fucked."
"Listen, you little upstart! I was kicking the asses of lions older than you way before you were born!"
"First lioness I meet face to face, and she has to turn out to be an uptight, stuck-up bitch," Sean said. "Now put the sword away and let's go inside and talk."
"Time for somebody to learn a lesson!" Den Brune En said and attacked.
Sean saw it coming; it would have been hard not to. Apparently she had some kind of issue with the male of the species. What it was, well, he was sure he'd find out. Stepping back, he drew his own sword in a fluid motion, and quickly parried her attacks.
She was definitely better than him; he figured that out rather quickly. But she was still angry, so she wasn't fighting at her best. He had reach on her, he was at least a foot taller, and he was stronger and heavier. So he immediately used that to his advantage, fighting at the edge of his reach and trying to stay out of hers. He didn't want to hurt her, after all.
She was pissed. After all these years, the first guy she meets just has to be a total asshole, thinking he can just waltz right in here and take over! Oh, she was so going to teach him a lesson!
"You know," Sean said with a grunt as he blocked a strike with one of his vambraces, "if you're a lesbian, I'm totally okay with it."
"What!" she screamed at him.
"Well, it just never occurred to me that you might not be into guys, but if you aren't, that's cool."
"I'm not a lesbian!" she yelled back at him. "You're just a complete asshole!"
She redoubled her attack on him and smiled as she realized she was the better fighter
. He was good, probably more than a match for most of the devils he might meet, but she'd been living by her sword for over a millennium now, he wasn't in her class at all.
"I've got you now, you little..."
Den Brune En froze up suddenly, and found she couldn't move!
"Oh, by the way, I'm also a magic user, and I'm notorious for cheating," Sean said and smacked her on the side of the face with his sword, staggering her, breaking the paralyzation spell with the strike.
"You'll ruin everything!" she yelled and lunged at him again.
Sean paralyzed her again, and smacked her in the head a second time.
"Everything is already ruined!" Sean growled. "Now stop fighting, or I'm going to get nasty!"
She was quick, she was very quick, and she got him good, right through the abdomen and out the kidney. Sean twisted away, which yanked the sword out of her grasp, and backhanded her hard enough to send her flying away from him. He then hit her with a heavy-duty sleep spell while he grabbed the sword, and with a loud roar of pain, pulled it out and cast a cure poison on himself, followed by a heal, as he checked his mana pool.
He was close to zero, his regeneration having kicked into overdrive to repair the ruined organs. Thankfully he hadn't hit zero. The cure he'd cast on himself had helped immensely. But with the way mana ran around here, it would be a couple hours before he was back at a hundred percent.
Putting his sword away, he picked up the lioness's sword and, walking over to her, he picked her up with his other hand and tossed her over his shoulder. She'd wake up soon enough, he was sure. But he wanted to be somewhere a lot more comfortable first.
Walking down to the keep, he looked at the demons gathered around the door, all of which were looking at him in shock.
"You slew Den Brune Dame!" one of them said.
Sean growled, "No, I didn't slay her, and I'm not going to slay her. This is just how we say hello. Now show me to her rooms so she's not all pissed off at you when she wakes up!"
That got him a few looks, but it also got one of them motioning to him to follow them down the hallway.
"What is another brown one doing here, in this land?" the demon asked after they had moved away from the others.