Chapter 24: Death by Storage Space (Patreon)

The main thing that Dominic had to take into account was the fact that he didn’t want to be fighting on two fronts. As he’d already considered, if he took the war to the kesh first, there was no guarantee that the sonic wolves wouldn’t get involved. Not that he thought that they would ‘protect’ the kesh, but if the fight took them onto the sonic wolves’ territory, Dominic suspected they would attack. 

Thought through logically, that made the series of events obvious: the kesh could be kept docile with the hope of making a ‘deal’; the wolves could not. In addition, if the kesh were to be believed, the wolves were getting stronger all the time. Therefore, they had to deal with the wolves first, and then the kesh after. However, he was not keen on giving them loads of Prey Points – the pride needed those. 

On the upside, if they were successful with the sonic wolves, they should have more power and Abilities to deal with the kesh. Along with whatever the Place of Power might offer them. He still wasn’t sure how they could pull it off, but perhaps something would happen which would make their task easier. Either way, they shouldn’t be in a worse position unless they lost the fight and the kesh attacked them on the way out. 

Regarding a way of reducing the ‘tribute’ they’d have to pay to get through to the wolves in the first place, he had an idea, but needed to test it a bit.  

‘I’ll be back in a bit,’ Dominic told Sekhmet, pushing himself to his feet. She stood up too. 

‘I come with you,’ she returned firmly, clearly not willing to take ‘no’ for an answer. The former-human eyed her, then mentally shrugged. If she wished to come with them, that was fine. 

‘What are you planning?’ asked Leo in a rumble as they padded out of the area where the lions had settled. 

‘I haven’t tested my storage space nearly enough,’ Dominic told him. ‘I know that things appear touching the same place as they were when they entered it, and if I’m moving, they stay still, but what about the reverse? What if they were moving when I touched them? And I know I can put dead bodies in there, but can I put live ones? And if I can, is there a time limit?’

‘You’re not thinking about trying it out on the female, are you?’ Leo asked, alarmed. 

‘No, of course not,’ Dominic immediately refuted. The thought of what might happen if it went wrong…. ‘That’s why we needed to move away from the other lions.’ 

So saying, he stopped and pressed himself to the ground, listening. Sekhmet followed his lead, a question emanating from her. There. 

Dominic leaped lightly. He didn’t even need to engage any of his bonuses – his natural speed and power by this point was easily enough to take the small creature unawares. 

It seemed to be some sort of mousey thing, though with significantly larger back legs than any mouse Dominic had heard of. In fact, it kind of looked like what he’d imagine a mouse kangaroo would. 

It had tried to hop out of his grasp, but he was too quick for it, stopping its escape in its tracks. He was almost regretful about using this creature as his test subject – it was so cute. But he needed to do the test and this was the creature which had fallen into his paws. 

First test – would the storage space allow him to put a live creature in at all? 

Focussing on just that, Dominic was pleased when the small creature disappeared from his grasp. The answer was apparently yes. 

Second test – would a creature which had been put in his storage space alive come out unharmed? 

Not moving his paws, he withdrew the kangaroo mouse from whatever extra-dimensional space was contained within his gorget. 

A moment later, he felt shifting beneath his paws. Apparently the answer to the second test was at least that the creature stayed alive. Opening his paws just a little so that the head of the mouse-thing was able to poke through slightly, he saw that it was clearly terrified, but apparently unharmed. As far as he could see, anyway – if he opened his paws to look at its whole body, it would escape quicker than he could blink. 

Third test – could a creature stay in his storage space for an extended period of time without harm? 

Once more putting the mouse kangaroo in his storage space, he started counting. Once he got to ten, he pulled it out again. It seemed fine. Back in the storage space it went. Twenty seconds this time. 

Each time increasing the period by ten seconds, he found that the mouse was fine in there for at least a minute. Once he found that out, he returned it to the space and decided to test other things as well. Namely, could he put things in and take things out of his space while a living creature was in there without harming it? 

First he tested by pulling a carcass out then checked on the mouse – it was fine. He returned the mouse and the carcass back to the storage space, then added a couple of stones lying by his feet to the storage space, then pulled the mouse out again. It was fine. 

Well, for a given definition of fine – it seemed to be becoming a bit traumatised. Each time he took it out, it took just a little longer to start moving again afterwards. This time he actually lifted his paw so he could check whether it was still breathing, it had been still for so long. It was, so he covered it up again until it started moving, then put it back in his storage space.

‘Could this be considered torture of a sentient being?’ he wondered to Leo. ‘I mean, it’s not sapient, I don’t think, but it still has feelings.’

‘Why should we care?’ was Leo’s unsurprisingly callous response. ‘It’s not one of our pride, and a prey beast besides.’ 

‘Why you do this?’ The question makes me jump a little – Sekhmet had been watching quietly for so long that I’d almost forgotten she’d accompanied me. 

‘Because I want to know whether it would be safe for members of our pride to go in my storage space in times of need,’ Dominic answered honestly. 

‘I test?’ 

‘No!’ Both Leo and Dominic answered forcefully at the same time. ‘Not yet,’ Dominic added, though Leo sent some accusing feelings towards him. ‘Come on,’ the former-human said to the lion directly. ‘You know that we’ll have to test with pride members eventually.’

‘Only when we’re sure they won’t die,’ grumbled Leo a little threateningly. Dominic sent him a sense of exasperation. 

‘You think I want that any more than you do? Of course we’re only going to test on lions when we’re confident that it’s safe enough. Though,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘I do have one test subject in mind.’ 

Reading his thoughts, Leo sent a sense of gleeful agreement. 

‘I will not argue about that.’

‘I didn’t think you would,’ Dominic told him with amusement. 

‘Can I help?’ asked Sekhmet, breaking through their internal conversation. 

‘Actually, yes,’ Dominic said, an idea occurring. He’d wanted to test whether momentum would be conserved, after all. ‘Can you grab one of these rocks and then climb to the top of that tree, please?’ 

Without a word of argument, the lioness did exactly that. The tree in question was one of the same that the kesh lived in, but much shorter. OK, this bit’s going to be tricky, Dominic said to himself, trying to position himself under the lioness’ mouth. 

‘OK, drop the stone, please,’ he instructed the lioness.

She opened her mouth and did so. It fell like, well, a stone. Dominic held out his paw, pads upwards, and…missed. 

‘Damn it! Sorry, Sekhmet…can we do that again, please?’ 

The lioness sent him a sense of fond exasperation, but half-leapt, half-climbed down the tree, grabbed another stone, then leapt back up. 

They actually had to repeat the actions three times before Dominic managed to gauge the angle of fall accurately enough to touch the stone as it was falling. Then they had to do it again for him to trigger the storage space in time. 

Having finally succeeded, Sekhmet joined Dominic back down on the ground to see what the result of the tests was. 

Pointing his pad towards relatively clear space between the trees, Dominic pulled the stone out of his storage space. To his disappointment, it didn’t soar forwards with the momentum of its fall; instead it just thumped on the ground by his feet. 

‘Looks like momentum isn’t conserved, then,’ he commented to both the lions with him. Next, he pulled out the mouse again. This time it wasn’t breathing. ‘And the mouse is dead.’ 

Dominic frowned mentally. He hadn’t had any notification of its death and a quick check with Leo proved that he hadn’t seen one either. Looking next at his Prey Points counter showed that he hadn’t gained any more Prey Points since his previous hunt either, so it seemed like the kill hadn’t been credited to him. Either that or the mouse was such a low level that it wasn’t even worth any Prey Points. But given that even the meerkats had flashed up a notification even when they had only given him fractional Prey Points indicated to him that that wasn’t the case. 

A pity, he mused. Otherwise ‘death by storage space’ could have been quite a good tactic against stronger foes. Though, even if he didn’t gain Prey Points from the kill, he could still see its application in a number of situations. As long as there weren’t any limits against its use, which there probably would be. Otherwise half the murders in the System multiverse are probably caused by storage spaces. 

‘Alright, let’s head back,’ he said to Sekhmet. He did take a moment to Consume the small body of the mouse anyway, just to get at its pinhead-sized Core. It wasn’t like the body would offer much benefit to him in any other way. 

The Core itself turned out to be potentially interesting – if he could get enough of them, of course. 

[Hop (T0): Add extra distance to a leap with both back feet. Distance increases depending on level. Higher levels may offer extra benefits such as a double jump.]

The annoying thing was that he could definitely use this Ability against the arboreal kesh – especially the double jump which was highlighted as being one of the potential longer-term benefits.

Oh well, he sighed to himself as they padded back to the pride. At least it was a better Ability than some of the ones he’d picked up recently. He now had two Abilities in the course of being acquired which were to do with spikes – Spike Attack and Poisonous Spikes. He didn’t even have any spikes! 

As for Enhanced Scales and Loose Skin, two of the other Abilities he’d added recently, they were equally as useless, gained incidentally more than intentionally – Leo seemed to have an obsession with absorbing Cores, even when they were obviously not particularly useful. 

Speaking of not useful, Dominic’s eyes gleamed as he set his gaze on a member of the pride who was about to become useful. Willingly or not.

*****

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Chapter 25: In Sight