Silence.

Ever-there. A hunter that was steadfast by his side his whole life.

Ever fur-setting, fang-bearing. The killer that was silence.

Silence that had rushed in to suffocate his wondering: barraging his dam in kittenhood with question after question about his strange teeth and the felid diet and the way of things, only for aside glances and unhelpful, oftentimes admonishing answers to soon set the stage for no acknowledgement whatsoever.

Silence that had hung there, choking and baleful, as he’d registered the smell of Panthera’s unease, so oddly muted compared to that of his victim’s innards. Silence had both preceded and proceeded alongside his eviction from the prowl.

Silence that had preceded the arrival of the birds, the talons and beaks and noiseless wings that had driven them from another apparent haven, and the realisation that clawed into him alongside it--of the changes he couldn’t prepare for, only try to outmanoeuvre, to outstrip.

Silence laid the way for the most violent of changes.

Carnassial hated silence. He’d figured for so long that his words were useless, but after having fallen back upon his (admittedly growing) strength to deal with what came about, he wanted threats he could look in the eye and take by the throat. Something physical. He was so tired--he wouldn’t say scared--of those that relied more on what his mind filled in. Waiting for sounds to make him jump, spike his fur on end, and realise after the whole debacle that he’d only imagined them.

This wasn’t the way he’d imagined things. He may well have gotten this far by turning a blind eye to the obvious pitfalls. Thinking himself so strong and adept. Not quite saurian, but enough to climb toward their lofty heights. Tall and proud and fearless...in his dreams. It was an aspiration, but anything more? It was hard for him to admit that fear had helped him along just as much as his raw ability that acted in response.

A clump of ferns nearby gave a sudden shake. The felid froze, swiveling his ears and scenting the air...and relaxing again, the smell being one already dissipating into the undergrowth. Probably not a hunt worth starting. Didn’t look too large, what the movements implied was there. There was no point in trying to impress anyone other than himself.

And anyway, he wasn’t hungry.

Sunlight leaked through cracks in the thick canopy. His heart pounded away in time with his stride. Carnassial tried to keep his breathing steady--this pace was new to him.

All these notions of dynasties and nobility and peace got on his last nerve. Only the simple danger of hunger was enough to flatten such trappings to the earth, leaving them despoiled and bloodlogged in the rain, for the ever-there truth of ambition to build strong on their ravaged remnants. While he sought to go one pace further, and live without such supernatural aspirations to begin with.

What was the sin in being true to oneself?

There was...a tension, in the air. All of a sudden. Something creeping and crawling--and yet with definite power and conviction. As if some ancient deity had awoken, and started to reach its mossy claws across the land. If it were possible for the silence to thicken, that was what it did. The felid halted and turned his head.

Earth and foliage shifted--so much, all at once. Pounding, powerful paw-steps resounded.

The trees seemed to shudder as a hulking figure came into view.

Leaves disappeared with crackles and crunches under thudding paws. Errant roots snapped like rodent bones. Covering the ground the felid had traversed so quickly, while at barely greater a pace than a lollop. It was already upon him.

All lolling tongue and brutish breath: the whole creature seemed to stand in opposition to him. A pale brown in colour, fading to black around its rear, it seemed more a thing of the earth alongside the silvery wraith that it bore down upon. Sharp teeth were to be glimpsed in its jaws as it panted. Spiked ears, long snout, short, bristly fur...and, of course, almost four times his size.

Carnassial regarded the creature, and wondered whether it had ever entertained the same thoughts as he had been.

Plenty had been said, without much being said: the paltry words that the creature sought to get out, almost always when spoken to first, didn’t exactly imply much behind them. Half-formed words that slurred together in a molten mess, spewing out from a raw throat. Not that he’d underestimate the speaker, of course--he was done being taken by surprise. Like so many of the challenges that had met his prowl, this one had occurred not so long ago.

Quite a wake-up call for two dozen or so felids, striking out on a path over which a raw, primal scent hung heavy. Left with scarcely a few seconds before half a dozen monsters had burst into the scene, surrounding them with fangs bared. Having to come to terms with the fact that they weren’t the only beasts looking to their ‘fellows’ for food.

And yet...after having discovered that opposition lurked among his own kind, they had found the opposite true with these new beasts. It was striking to a felid that had been so certain that any other mammals could only serve a purpose as prey. As intimidating as the larger carnivore was, it had still needed his help to deal with the saurian settlements where they’d set their sights. A niche filled by brute force was still so inefficient in that regard. All the power in the world--where did it stand against cunning?

This wasn’t a role that he could just slip into, however. No, it was no shadow of a cloud, immaterial but overbearing. Even as he’d been fearing for his life, growling and crouching in aggression as he’d fought the urge to run, his mind had been whirring away, wondering. He’d had his pride for so long: it was damn hard to cast it aside.

Carnassial’s mind still wandered now, even as the thick web of forest scents tried to ensnare it. This place differed so from the island they’d first struck out for, across the sand bridge. When he’d been led by such a tantalising smell to what may as well have been nothing but air: bones picked clean of flesh, wings arched sky-high as if still searching for escape.

But that scent, devious as it was, had still called him there, A dead quetzal, once the scourge of the skies. All show, no substance. He’d thought it foolish to dwell upon, and yet so often he did--while no food existed there, it had soon shown its face once they’d ventured further into the woodlands. Groundlings and birds alike. The chiropters...not so much, but their starting massacre had been a lesson for his felids in hunting.

While those odd predator birds had soon tightened their talons and driven them back to the mainland, Carnassial and company couldn’t call it a complete error in coming there. They had grown, it was undeniable; it could in some ways be called literal, given how his muscles had felt recently. And whether the larger carnivores had undergone the same ‘training’ as his prowl or not, perhaps having power ingrained into them, it certainly served them well enough in regards to what mattered. In the goal that served the felids too.

Besides, a quetzal’s wing over five times the size held just as much nutritional value.

It was all about the projected image.

Too long had he restrained himself. Too long had his true calling gone unheeded. He detested so dearly how his body moved beyond his command, to creep and flinch and defer to threats that never even existed. There had been time to think, for once. He needed to take advantage of that. Those chances hadn’t come around often these days.

There wasn’t even a brief moment of silence before the hyaenodons had stampeded into their lives.

Hadn’t been before the predatory birds had plunged into it on the island, either.

So quickly could the world change.

Carnassial tried to keep the pace up, picking his way through ferns and stalks that the bigger beast simply stomped his way through. Plants on top of plants, trying to reach the sunlight in any way imaginable. Expanses of roots spiralling out from the trees, creating more hurdles for the felid that his acquaintance passed over with barely a need to lift his paws higher.

No ptilodonts scampered. No rooters trudged. The song of the sandcoleus seemed more like a distant memory. The spreading wave of terror that Carnassial once exalted in only left him sullen and silent now. His stomach growled. The sickly blend of both of their sweat, the inescapable scent of bark and spore-rich air...it made his lungs heave.

Why were they taking this route, anyway? Hyaenodons certainly couldn’t hunt in such a space crowded with flora.

He wasn’t accustomed to spending so much time in silence--and the great passes of breath through the hyaenodon’s lungs weren’t enough, and nor were the relentless thumps of his ground-shaking paws. No, he wanted to take advantage of whatever malformed words saw fit to squeeze past the creatures’s lax jaws, by whatever measure he could. Whatever measure of...feeling like he was doing something. Taking charge. Just...hearing a voice. Anything.

He thought more and more of the rest of the prowl every second. The splintered faction of felids that hadn’t hesitated too long before following him into the future. With more outward sense between them than a hundred hyaenodons could hope for.

The two of us are sufficient.

...He’d made mistakes before.

Snapping up a hapless beetle, tasting the subpar meat on his tongue, Carnassial let the wings and legs flutter from his teeth as he spoke. “I have to wonder, Danian.”

The shadow slowed slightly as it passed over the plant matter, but didn’t stop.

“I do have to wonder, so often. About the way...the way you’ve lived. The way of things. For all of us.”

His chest was tightening slightly as he spoke. One wrong word, one wrong step, and he’d be practically offering the thing his neck. It was a risk. He knew that.

But risks had dug out a path for him so far...and as uneven as it was, it was still a path.

“It must be relieving. The feeling of it all being laid out before you.” Unless having it all in your paws from the start doesn’t leave room to be satisfied at all. “If, of course, you would elaborate at all. For it has been some time since we last--”

A soft rasp came from the hyaenodon’s throat, and the felid cut himself off. He wanted to seem respectful.

“It is what it is. We are here to reign. The saurians will no longer. Yet we eat, and we grow in their way.”

Carnassial smiled to himself. He couldn’t help it.

“We are born strong, and made stronger. To rule--”

“To rule over a crop of decay and mould, and to sup with insects, and to sleep upon a mound of cracked mud and sand,” finished Carnassial. “Every moment I spend in your presence provides me with another reason to envy you, Danian. Never thinking of how the future may change things around yet again…”

The ground-shaking thuds slowed even further.

“But at least,” he swiftly cut himself off, “I would be grateful at the opportunity to help you on your…” he paused, his chapped lips curling. “...venture.” He’d never really been the best at...not so much holding his tongue, but being mindful of it. “Honour is honour. And I will take what I can get. As for now, the world is ours.” He dipped his head, flattened his ears, and glanced the hyaendon’s way without looking him directly in the eye.

Although Danian seemed to have lost him early on, he also seem satisfied with the general aura of submission that Carnassial carefully constructed and emitted: so, with a nip to the felid’s ear from jaws that could snap the trunk of a live sequoia in two, he continued his curmudgeonly romp.

Carnassial trotted around, craning his neck to try and meet the hyaenodon’s ever-watery stare. He hopped with each earth-shaking clump of paws, feeling for a moment like a kitten again. He didn’t expend any effort in seeming passive, in an act that surprised him…

Hunting and feasting alongside a beast like this? Sharing territory with it? The thought made him fight back a snort. Even a newborn could figure out which way the wind was blowing. He gathered he’d be dead once he’d served his ‘purpose’.

Panthera had been the one to remind him of this--not so much ‘inform’ as ‘remind’ given how obvious it was. Felids and hyaenodons may well hunt different prey, as well as those new avian predators and the diatrymas he already knew of--but would Danian think of that first? Would his process be more along the lines of what Carnassial thought to begin with...to nip potential threats in the bud? Or to kill, merely to prove a point?

Having dropped behind, he stopped near a tree, getting onto his hindlegs to drive his claws into it. The bark separated so cleanly under them. Leaving his mark felt like shifting a great weight off his shoulders--making a claim for this land he may well return to. The prey was there: it just knew to flee the blatant approach of such an enormous predator. Even if it did the same for a felid, it would be ample grounds for training. A home for his prowl. No saurians, and no hyaenodons.

His mind was in the other future again.

It was a more pleasant place.

Thinking positive despite all that played out around him--he’d started that young. Even as he’d lounged around in the poisonwood, watching and wondering about the world, he saw the path laid out for him like a well-used scent trail. Looking over the scampering paramys and thisbemys and grubbing nyctitheres, all so blissfully ignorant of the niches beyond...or either too intimidated or lazy to try and imagine them.

Surrounded by pretenders in felid skins, while knowing he was one of the select few true…

He didn’t want to think these thoughts, but he just had so much time and so little to do. That one prospect beat down on his brain like the shadow of a stomping rooter, filled with horrible threat and equally horrid promise--he didn’t want to, but...at least I have Panthera--

“Carnassial.”

His name sounded so garbled, frothing up from those phlegmy, rough depths. It sounded more like ‘carshawl.’

Danian had halted too, and had turned his head slightly. Wet canines flashed as he spoke. “You want to know. I can tell you.”

The hyaenodon had been threatening before. He didn’t need to speak to be that way. From their first encounter his presence has been warning, threat and promise enough. Trying to show your own brand of those had been a challenge. He’d stood tall--up to Danian’s knees--and had admitted to who he was, refusing to deny his past and his true lifestyle yet again. He’d held fast. He’d shown strength.

...With nearly twenty other felids alongside him.

Carnassial pulled away from the tree, dropping back to all fours. He straightened up. Tried to stop his tail from lashing. Tried to claim common ground. “They say the birds are closer to saurians than any other. Have you tasted their eggs, Danian? Perhaps the way of things for them will amount to a future as exotic treats--“

The hyaenodon had turned now.

Had taken a step towards him.

Then another.

“You, ah…” Carnassial paused, then felt a surge of indignation. He hadn’t even misspoken that way in front of that delusional ‘leader’ he’d once believed would encourage him on his journey. And now he could feel the ditch he’d thrown himself into. Carnassial, famed saurian hunter, fulfiller of the Pact. Tongue-tied like a kitten caught misbehaving.

It wasn’t...entirely unwarranted. The thing staring down at him may well be able to swallow him whole.

“You have your duty. We are allied so you can serve it. No duty…”

Danian broke off. Blinked. Then began again.

“No duty...No mate.”

“Danian...yes. I can gather that. I already have…” Petering off, the felid felt he wasn’t saying anything not already known to them both.

“This is the way. You follow. You understand. Then you serve.”

...But that may have been the hyaenodon’s intention. He could read between the lines. The...sizable lines. Hanging overhead, the jaws exhaling searing breath over a vulnerable jugular.

The way of things. He’d thought he’d come to see them.

They were as malleable as anything else in this world...and not just between his namesake teeth.

“Saurians first. Then your other duty.”

Then silence. Congealing in the already heavy air. Not even the leaves gave a rustle, framing the tense scene of two predators trying to see eye-to-eye.

Carnassial felt the edges of stones poking his belly. He was scarcely aware of the way he must look. Lower than the beetles and grubs that crawled there, and their ‘predators’ that never looked any higher than what practically bloodless excuses for prey they could snap up.

Only after the vibrations of hyaenodon footsteps had faded did he come back to himself, fur frizzed and tail tucked, teeth bared as if he were caught between threat and submission. He drew his tail out, stiffly. As a dead branch rolled back his way, kicked up by a departing paw, he hissed at it as if it were a reptile lurking in the grasslands.

He fought the urge to vomit. He was supposed to be the strongest.

And yet how long had it taken for things to change? The first encounter with the pack flashed through his mind--the long-ago of a few nights. The pounding of massive paws that had shaken the earth. Overturned the world in seconds. Left Carnassial and his felids crouching in threat and in fear, and refusing to call it cowering.

Just like he cowered before his ‘leader’, so foolishly deferential as the doddering old fool stuck so steadfast to his principles of unity and...what could be dressed up as self-control. What control was there in denying what the changing world gave you, and spending weeks after weeks on a near-empty belly while others sped ahead on the wings of change?

He grit his teeth, feeling the shearing set clash uncomfortably against one another.

There wasn’t much to life without a little challenge, was there? That was obvious to him from the beginning. To the hyaenodons, once they’d come to blows with the saurians. To the saurians themselves, refusing to be cowed. To any mammal that thought it would be an easy world to move into, free of tyrannical saurians; to the birds that found themselves backed further and further over building edges as the mammals moved to conquer.

Yes, Danian and his pack had their role, alright. But not the role they’d intended.

Carnassial straightened up. Shadows dappled his pelt, dancing across the undergrowth in the wake of the sunlight. He took a deep breath. Made himself let it out gradually. Forced himself into a tidy rhythm, of steps and of breaths and into those feelings of reassurance and passion welling back up in him as if he were breathing them off her fur.

Carnassial paused in his stride. Set back his ears. Gave his sinuous body a shake, trying to cast aside those thoughts as they gained an eerie shadow.

Panthera. Back with the prowl. For too long had he been ignorant of his partner’s knowledge. Her suggestion of overthrowing their old leader had been dismissed at the time, and Carnassial could likely chalk that up to his own wounded pride. But he couldn’t help but believe that he’d missed an opportunity there. With scores more felids to command...and the difficulty of doing so, but the privilege of being able. He told himself he was content with his lot in life, his prowl of supposedly trustworthy hunters. But the memories still pervaded his thoughts.

There was so much to learn from his fellows. Not just from Panthera, or from Danian and company. He needed to hold off on the close-mindedness--not just seeing birds and beasts alike as either potential prey, threats or background noise.

Food that fought back wasn’t much to honour--except for the predators shrewd and strong enough to wear fresh scars while they feasted. Yet they gave back in physical gain as well as loss. Would other carnivores arise in this new world? There was only so much room to move in. The prowl had first-paw experience of how the birds were fanning out too. Diatrymas were formidable enough...more saurian than avian, just like those creatures that had almost damned him and his prowl to extinction on that not-so-idyllic island.

He’d seen a ripple in the water once. Danian had, too. And after the words ‘swamp saurian’ had tersely passed those dark lips, Carnassial hadn’t heard much past the reminder that those terrible lizards were still clinging with such vehemence to their life after the Pact. The Pact that would have cast a shadow on their rule for good. The Pact that was turning new factions against them.

The felid smirked. How he wished that grey-furred old sot were still here sometimes, to see how the world had changed.

Oh, yes, he was just as stubborn. He wouldn’t deny that. Just as he had been done denying his righteous position for so long.

Very vividly, the sight of six hyaenodons downing prey over twice their size danced before his eyes again. The strength of those looming root-eaters, so assured in their safety...they’d had it ripped away as they were ripped into pieces.

Alongside another lingering image. That of the chiropters. Sailing away from them, leaving so many to die in their hungry bellies.

It had been enjoyable at the time. While now...just as sumptuous on his tongue, yet also arousing his absent wonder at how his hunts had started so small. Groundlings and wannabe flyers alike...were they only the beginning?

Carnassial idly snapped at a grub before it vanished into the earth; driving his claws in, he felt around but turned up nothing. The annoyed gurgle from his guts didn’t seem quite so painful now, however. He lifted his head and tasted the air, ready to follow Danian’s trail. Both felids and hyaenodons alike waited on them. Things were coming together in his mind. Slowly, yet surely. The way would change. He could change it. Not alone. But with which allies?

He didn’t know quite how yet...but he would rule.

He HAD to rule...