Yellow eyes springing open, Alexander found himself alone within the bedroom of Nana Smith. Looking back and forth, a presence soon became known to him, yet still there was no one else here. Whose presence was this?
Soon a creature entered the room. An ophidian, a snake, more abnormal, more alarming and more abhorrent than any ophidian Alexander had ever seen, for this ophidian had the abhorrent cranium of an aged gentlemen in the place of its own and it was a cranium Alexander knew well. It was the cranium of Reverend Skinner, whom Alexander had met when the Reverend's equally evil-hearted nephew Caligula Filcher had stolen the Smith family's loving cup. Reverend Skinner was a massive individual, like a cyclops of old, bald as an egg, with an eyepatch over his right eye and teeth that looked more like they belonged in the mouth of a shark than they did a human being. To see his cranium in the place of an ophidian's was enough to make Alexander's fur stand on edge, especially since he had no eyepatch this time and Alexander could see what had been described by Captain Smith, who had seen the Reverend without his eyepatch. Reverend Skinner's right eye was completely covered by a wart so enormous, that in ages past it would have been believed to be an egg with a devil inside. The eyepatch was merely something to hide the wart.
The Ophidian slithered into the room, the forked tongue of his kind darting in and out of his human cranium. It was a most appalling sight, one that would have made ladies faint from fright and men to drop dead completely. Alexander was neither lady nor man. He was a caracal and they did not faint from fright or drop dead completely at the sight of a serpent so ugly that even Apep would have died of shame. He would fight and kill if need be.
Flattening his ears against his skull, Alexander narrowed his eyes and hissed at the Ophidian. All the serpent did was stare, tongue darting in and out of its mouth as it began to move its cranium back and forth.
Waiting for the Ophidian to strike, Alexander stared into the eye of his adversary. What he saw was the face of a man he had never met staring out at him, as if through a window. The man was pale white with black hair and eyes and a mustache, a handlebar that styled differently from Captain Smith's. Over his right eye was worn a monocle and on his left cheek was a horizontal scar. It was the face of Herr von Fell, whose picture Alexander had seen on a poster the very same day that he had first encountered Reverend Skinner. Could it have meant anything? Was there a connection between the clergyman and the big game hunter? Alexander did not know. What he did know was that Herr von Fell was as much an enemy as Reverend Skinner was and this was an individual that the Northern caracal had never even met before.
In a flash, the Ophidian struck! Lunging forward to bite Alexander, the feline struck back... Only to find that the Ophidian had completely vanished.
Hopping down from the bed, the Defender of Man looked around while sniffing the air and moving his ears back and forth. Sight, sound and scent told him nothing at all. The Ophidian was not here at all.
Then where was it?
Walking forth from the bedchamber, Alexander found himself in a world completely alien to him and that alone left him very confused. Here before him was a vast jungle. Where had Quebec Castle gone? Where was he?
He had heard of jungles. Places where stories written by Rudyard Kipling or Edgar Rice Burroughs were set. Alexander had heard Alan read them aloud with Gemma. Here were many an enemy of his kind, even if, as Captain Smith had said, those animals should not even be located in a jungle.
The lion was the greatest of these enemies. While long since extinct in Egypt, a caracal knew the Lion as the greatest monster to walk the earth. While some humans might say that humanity was the greatest monster of all, to caracals it was the lion, a creature that might as well have fallen down from the moon itself and Alexander could well believe it. Having grown up the offspring of two tamed caracals, champion hunters, Alexander heard the horror stories told of the lion, told by a man to his son, who had never even seen a live lion before. The Egyptian Lion was long gone, Alexander would never have seen its like had Captain Smith not come to take him to Canada, the home of a lions still, yet not lions as Alexander understood them. He knew not that the Mountain Lion was not a true lion at all. It was merely another name for the cougar like puma, panther, catamount and painter. Yet still, it was a name that Alexander knew, the appellation of a beast that lived not in the province of Ontario but in the mountainous regions of Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon, places so far away that they might as well have been another world to Alexander.
From a visiting Jewish gentleman by appellation of Abimelech Mattathias, Alexander had heard it said that God created the lion, yet from Mr. Freddy Asquith, one of the teachers, had said that all good things came from God. God created all good things, but the lion was an enemy of Alexander's people, the caracals, therefore the lion could not have been created by God.
Then who did?
He had heard Agatha, one of the students, refer to Herr von Fell as a devil, if not the Devil. What was the Devil? If God was the creator of all things good then was the Devil the creator of all things bad? If Herr von Fell was the Devil, then did he create the lion?
Alas, Alexander knew not.
Creeping through the underbrush, Alexander was fully alert. He would be ready. He would hear, see or smell an approaching enemy, especially the Ophidian.
The Ophidian Alexander believed he could face, but a lion? He was left to wonder where Tarzan of the Apes or Heracles, slayers of lions, were now. Heracles was said to have become a god and went on to dwell on Mount Olympus, but where was Tarzan? Alexander did not fully understand fiction. He did not understand that Tarzan was simply a creation of the American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs. He only understood that Tarzan had fought and slew lions.
The maneless lion was a beast that Alexander had heard of. A male lion either without a mane or having a weak mane, two notable individuals, the Tsavo Man-Eaters had been monsters Captain Smith had encountered eighteen years prior and seen slain by John Henry Patterson, ending a reign of terror said to have resulted in the deaths of over a hundred men. Alexander could only wonder if in this jungle, besides the Ophidian, a maneless lion stalked as well, in wait for something smaller than itself.
Suddenly a scream pierced the air! With eyes wide and ears flattened against his skull, Alexander looked back and forth. That cry sounded as if it had come from all around him and yet it had come from a single individual, not multiple. How could that be possible?
Emerging from the underbrush, the Northern caracal looked back and forth. That scream had been familiar, but why? Whose voice had that been? Had it been Hippolyta's? Was she being menaced by something new or had Miltiades returned? If he had, then which Miltiades was it? Was it the Miltiades that was flesh and blood or the Miltiades that was stone?
What if it was the Ophidian?
Leaping into action, Alexander followed his instincts, which told him that that the owner of the scream came from the east. How did he know when the scream seemed to have come all around him? How was he supposed to know? Alexander was trying to figure out why there was suddenly a jungle outside of Nana Smith's bedchamber. Where did the rest of Quebec Castle go?
Coming to a clearing, Alexander saw Hippolyta, on her knees in the grass while the Ophidian stared her in the eye. Crouching, Alexander prepared to strike. He was not a mongoose named Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, but still, he would slay this Ophidian. He would defend Hippolyta to his dying breath!
Leaping at the Ophidian, everything else faded away until there was nothing but a dead, grey forest around the two. Striking the serpent in the head, Alexander proceeded to bite down into his opponent's neck, only for the Ophidian to vanish.
Looking back and forth, ears pricked up and nose sniffing at the air furiously, Alexander tried to find some sign that the Ophidian was still there. Where was it? Where was he? Where was Hippolyta? What was going on here? It was as if the entire world had grown strange.
Then a new sound pervaded the air. A rattling sound. Alexander had heard of rattlesnakes, but he did not recall the Ophidian having a rattle on its tail. Had it and he simply did not notice? He did not know and was suddenly worried that there was not one but two of those serpents now. If there were two then did the other have the head of Reverend Skinner's nephew Caligula Nero Filcher? If it did, Alexander looked forward to leaving his mark upon that purloining cretin's countenance.
Emerging from behind a tree, so old and gnarled that it seemed to have the face of a tortured old man, the Ophidian hissed at Alexander, its tongue flicking in and out of its mouth. Crouching, Alexander prepared for the inevitable strike.
When the strike did come, it was something the Northern caracal had no time to react to.