Simba's claws retracted from Scar's shoulders, and sent him flailing into the darkness. In that moment, the smallest regret filled his darkened heart and rippled outwards through his core like a tremor. He clawed at the sudden night in front of him.
There were no stars. He twisted around, the heat burrowing into his pelt. No stars. The great kings weren't watching. Mufasa couldn't see. His father couldn't see. The smoke obscured everything. Simba stood above him, his teeth a tear of white against his golden fur. He didn't understand what he felt in that moment- a singular strange entity among the bevy of emotions that refused to resonate. Only later would that small rumble be perceived. The damage would spread in deep cracks and ravines throughout him, resurfacing everything he had ever known.
Hissing and howling rose from below him. Fire tore through the bracken and waste. His pride stood above him, rows upon rows of lions- deep gashes of fanged grins. Simba stood in front. Everything rushed forward in a spray of grays and blues, and reds as he collided with the dirt.
He gasped for air. With broken slowness he stood. The growls seemed like ghosts in the darkness; a whisper in the void. To his left. To his right. A branch snapped as the hyenas emerged from the smoke, their coats caked in blood and dust from the fighting.
"Ah my friends," he said. Fire glinted against their nails. Fighting Simba earlier had exhausted him, left the muscles in his shoulders trembling, but he stood and willed his stance to evoke authority. They still belonged to him. He didn't want to fight, but the fire was encroaching. The smoke stung his eyes. The whispered growls and threats saturated the air as thick as the coming rain. Thunder rolled somewhere above, and he looked upwards. Still no stars. Shenzi, her eyes red beads in the glow, stepped forward.
"I thought he said we were the enemy," she said.
His army comprised of shining teeth, and rending claws came to surround him. His heart stammered. He bared his teeth and claws. He was authority. He was their king. His backs legs quivered. He didn't want to acknowledge that it was anything more than exhaustion. He backed up, his tail brushing against the sheer rock wall behind him. He fumbled for words, more lost than he'd ever felt, his wit, his logic, his planning failing him at last, and all he could utter was no, no, no, you don't understand. Let me explain.
But there was nothing to explain. Everything had gone to hell, much too quickly, and his thoughts gave way to fear and rooted him to the spot. The flames and smoke rose high into the air. The sky opened and he could see through the smoke a starless sky, empty of its great kings. He knew that in death he would be obliterated.
Hot breath pushed against his face, stinking of rotting meat and decay. The abyss of darkness before him was so completely quiet, like the sky that the clouds once again swallowed. The shaking of his limbs, the burn across his face where Simba's paw had hit him, the dirt against his paw, the raw fire burning his flank, he wanted it all. He wanted more than utter calm and oblivion. He prospered in blood, and pain, in uncertainty. In himself. To lose it all to that golden king who stood above him cheering his death, his brother's son brought back from the dead and that these hyenas had failed to kill, was too much.
His skin boiled as if his fur had caught fire, and a sharp pain deep in his shoulder bit at his ire as the first hyena lunged. The world turned red, and he ripped into his attacker. His claws tore through flesh, and snapped bones. He beat them off. He tasted blood. He smelled it in the air, and all around him there was whimpering as they fell at his feet. The first rain drops sputtered from the sky, and the fire sizzled and popped around him, angry and enflamed, fighting an enemy sure to snuff it out.
His teeth dug into another throat. A sharp stab to his back leg and a snap almost brought him to the ground. He clawed his attacker, the hyena's teeth sunken into the muscle of his leg, and sent the whimpering beast running. But they continued to emerge. They'd never be able to say he lacked tenacity.
If he could get to Shenzi he could make them stop, but they flitted though the darkness and the smoke like shadows. His senses were dulled by it, but he knew her scent. She had been his go-between.
He lurched through the hyenas, and caught her scent at last. She was standing above the others, directing the fighting. A horde descended upon him before he could reach her. He couldn't see through the blood that ran from his torn ear. He twisted under them, sinking low to the ground and protecting his stomach. He lessoned his struggles, and as he hoped, they backed away. He must look dead, his body awash in blood. She wouldn't be able to tell. He forced himself to slow his breathing. His muzzle was scratched and bloody and stinging in the smoke. He watched Shenzi drop cautiously from her place and walk towards him.
"He's dead," she said. Not quite a question. "How anticlimactic."
She drew closer, still keeping her distance and stepped around the blood and pink froth that had dribbled from the hyenas' fangs. He could feel his energy returning, the ache in his lungs less pronounced and filled by other pains. He listened to her pawsteps circling his body. She might try to hurt him, and he readied himself for the pain, readied himself to remain inert. Power surged through his muscles. He kept his eyes locked on the rock above him. Hyenas growled, and he could see their feet move in and out of his vision. They circled him in much the same as way as Snenzi. His eyes watered.
"You," he heard, "make sure he's dead," and then she was directly in front of him, still too far for to him to reach. If he could propel himself forward he would have her. He felt the hyenas shift around him. His throat burned against the whisper of air he pulled in as the smoke poured down from the burning detritus. He fought his twitching muscles, and the need to breathe. She leaned close, her throat exposed.
With all of his remaining power he lunged towards her. There was no time for her to react, and he knew he had her. The hyena she had instructed moved at the same time. He barked as his target lurched , but he was fast and he dug his fangs into Scar's throat.
Scar grunted as the fangs sank into his mane just as his own teeth latched around Shenzi's neck. She pulled back in surprise. Blood leaked into his mouth, but he knew what he was doing and the damage was superficial. He tightened his bite, blocking her airway, and she whimpered and shivered under the vice of his jaw.
"Call him off," he said, his voice wispy, and muffled by her fur and constricted by the jaws around his own throat. The hyenas around him barked, and cackled, snapping at his haunches. "Call them off," he said, this time biting down into her flesh. More blood ran from his muzzle dripping onto the dirt below them. "I'll kill you," he said, "now call them off."
She froze in his grip.
"Stop," she whispered.
"Louder," he said.
"Stop," she shouted, hoarse from the smoke, and her wounds. "Back off," she said.
Thunder resounded in the background. The hyena underneath him unlatched his jaws and backed away.
The muscles in Scar's jaw shook, and he knew he was close to collapsing, but he couldn't let her know. Just a few more minutes.
"Send them away," he said.
She growled, and he felt the reverberation.
"I'm losing my patience Shenzi. I'll bite straight through your windpipe if you don't dismiss them this second."
"You'll be dead soon enough," she whispered.
"Lions lock their jaws in death," he said. "You'll suffocate, long and slow. You'll suffer for hours, days." He could smell her fear through the acrid fire.
"Back to base," she said and wilted in his grip. He heard snapping of branches in the distance. The stench of rotting meat faded. He found he could barely hold on. His back leg protested the awkward position. Blood ran into is eyes; it filled his mouth.
"Leave now and I won't kill you," he said. "But, if I let you live, you still work for me." His jaws loosened, and he felt himself drifting, his own body distant. "I bite through your neck, or you work for me," he said, his voice echoing weakly, the throb of his own heartbeat, dulling all other sound. He didn't have the strength to kill her. His head dropped from her throat. She spat and bit his ear. He barely felt it. When he looked up she was gone. The night crackled, the fire still burning.
"Demon," she had said.
The rain fell in torrents, and he felt himself weakening, sinking into the rush of water under his feet, a great deluge breaking. The fire around him succumbed and went up in thick suffocating swirls of smoke. The sky was covered in clouds. Rain droplets stung against his many wounds. His back leg protested the weight he demanded it should support. It shivered and trembled. His shoulders stung and burned and his breathes came in fast gasps. He pulled himself into the bracken and collapsed in a small dark cave underneath Pride Rock. The blood in his body seemed to turn to sludge as the fire outside extinguished. It would smoke for days he thought, but it would go out.
A/N I suppose the seeds of this story originated sometime back in 1994. I guess you could say the story has been stewing for the last twenty or so years. I can't tell you where it's going to go, but I have some ideas in mind. Tell me what you think. Thoughts, critiques. Hated it loved it. Noticed my butchering of commas/the English language and want to help (laugh at) me, anything and everything. Just shoot me a review.
Edit: 10/20/14 Taking advice from some great reviewers from The Reviews Lounge, Too, I've cut a lot of excess from this first chapter. I think it flows better then before.