Chapter 1147: Sifting Through Treasures
“What a curious creature…” Nestor murmured as he inspected the enormous corpse of the monster Leon and Grandin killed around Kavad’s Lance. He most closely inspected the forehead of the creature, where the strange rune could still be clearly seen graven into the bone. “It displayed a measure of intelligence?” he asked.
Leon frowned a bit as he recalled the brief but brutal fight. “Some,” he confirmed. “Not like it was trying to talk to us, but I didn’t get the impression that it was a mindless beast acting on instinct.”
“And your impression of it compared to the… what were you calling it? The ‘Wailing Dirge’?”
“It seemed more aware of its surroundings. Given its power, I imagine it more than had the capacity for sapience. I’d guess it didn’t want to communicate with us, not that it couldn’t.”
Nestor cocked his head and wove a rune of light in the air. Little power was put into the rune, but when it pulsed twice, Nestor was satisfied and let it dissipate.
“Some believe that if one could teach a lion to speak, we still wouldn’t understand what it says,” Nestor mused aloud. “Our Clan and all those descended from other Ascended Beasts are proof that that’s not the case.”
“I think that’s just a commentary on the perspective that beasts have of the world being different than those of men,” Leon stated. “It’s not saying that the beasts are incapable of relating to and communicating with humans, just that they would communicate in different ways and have different priorities. Any sapient creature is capable of viewing the world from different viewpoints and finding some way to communicate to others—the issue is whether or not they have the desire to do so.”
“I’d argue that capability does play a role,” Nestor responded. “Tigers are solitary creatures, and wolves are not. I’d expect more earnest attempts to connect from a wolf than from a tiger. A tiger is so disconnected from social norms that teaching it would be impossible.”
“And yet we have a Tiger Tribe sworn to the Clan.”