Warning: This is an ADULT story and may contain profanity and violent/sexual themes and or content. It was not intended for children. You've been warned!
Author's notes: This will be sequel to my Legend of the storm and son: Asyron's war, leading from that story to just before the original Lion-king movie, and will be the last story I intended to have in my Legends Lion King series. I've been writing this series off an on for six, maybe seven years now and reading them all I think you can see a definite evolution to my writing (hopefully for the better). I'm excited to be doing this last one because I've taken great pains to improve the technical aspects of my writing since my last fan-fic and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with it here. To put it another way: I'm expecting this to be the last fan-fic I write so I'm going to try to go out with a bang.
Thank you to everyone whose read my earlier stories and please enjoy this one, all comments are greatly appreciated.
Rohad –
The Legend of Rohad - Book two of the Legend of the storm and sun
By Rohad
CHAPTER ONE: Worse times to be young.
Some great cat was hunting worlds out there in the void. He was so well hidden in the dark all that could be seen by his prospective prey was one huge silver eye. She'd been watching the moon, and dreaming.
Cicadas had been singing in the distance.
Now the moon was gone, the stars too. All the Cicadas had run away leaving the cave dark and quite.
She dozed, shivering, cold on the bare stones. The breeze blew in.
His kiss was light and gentle, barely disturbing the fur on top her head. She purred, a smile slipping across her face. "You're late."
"Sorry," he whispered, "long way tonight."
"You must be tired." She reached out and patted him, feeling the sticky warmth of blood. No! Her eyes snapped open and she was scrambling to her paws.
He sat there beside her. A monster was perched on his shoulder all teeth and claws, tearing into his neck, feverishly ripping out flesh and gobbling it down. "NO!" she pleaded stumbling back. "No, no, no, please!"
"Nylili listen to me." His voice was rising in urgency. "You're in danger, you and Jainia both."
"NO!" She threw her paws over her ears. It always, always ended with that horrible scream and she couldn't hear it again. "Oh please no!"
"NYLILI!!"
"TEHT -" Nylili awoke choking from the suddenness of her scream. Trying to jump up, one leg failed her and she nearly crashed into a wall.
A young lioness was at her side, catching her. A strong young lioness, she was stronger then her mother now, strong enough to hold her mother still when she had these fits.
"Mom it's ok." Jainia cooed, patting her. "Everything's all right now."
She steadied herself on Jainia's shoulder, readjusting herself to this place. It was bright: a stark and empty cave.
"It's ok mom."
"No it's not," She whispered patting Jainia back. "But I'm better now, you can let me go."
Jainia stepped back and smiled, ever the happy thing. "I brought you breakfast, good bison leg. It's past midday now so it'll be my lunch…but it's your breakfast. I've got something I can't wait to tell you."
Nylili nibbled at the food despite feeling sick to her stomach. It made Jainia nervous when she didn't eat. Once, she'd forgotten to eat for several days on end, maybe more then a week, and had gotten very ill because of it. She'd been cave ridden for about a month while her strength returned. It hadn't been intentional and certainly she didn't plan on doing it again. Nevertheless, Jainia had been watching her eating habits like a hawk ever since, worrying at the slightest change in her diet.
They'd taken their meal out onto the path in front of the cave. It was an ideal summer day, weather wise, warm but accompanied by a pleasant breeze. The sky was blue and filled with huge inverse mountains of white clouds.
Nylili studied the landscape and tried telling herself that all her problems where just shadows from the dream-world. He's dead, move on already. There are other widows in the world. The voice scolding her in head sounded too much like her daughter.
"Anyway," Jainia was saying, "you know Queen Marri's been teaching me and a few of the others hunting techniques so we'll be ready next year. Well, after this morning's lesson she called me aside. She thinks I'm ready now! I'm bigger then the others and I've been working so hard, she wants to try me with the hunting party tomorrow and I can keep up, that's it I'm in."
Nylili cursed the Queen's name under breath, a habit she'd gotten used to over the years. "Honey, you're still very young. Hunting live prey isn't like practice it's dangerous. You need to have the weight in order bring the animal down quickly. Doesn't Marri have enough adults to make up her parties?"
She'd just pissed Jainia off; she could tell by the way the girl's face fell.
"Mom, it's not about Marri needing me to help hunt. She wants me, and I want to help. I'm honored. I'll be playing my part in the pride, doing something productive with my time. I'll be considered an adult; I can have my own cave."
That last part caught painfully in Nylili's chest. She knew she was a bad mother, really she did. It still hurt to have the proof presented to her. She's willing to fight bison just to get away from me. Hell, she's excited about it.
Nylili made herself smile. "If this is what you want then I'm happy for you."
"You're not mad?"
"No, or course not. I mean your stronger then me right?" She tried to laugh. "I just don't want you to feel like you have to, ok? I mean if you change your mind."
Earth and sky, the dichotomy of the world was in reverse here. The grasslands were so far bellow him as to be devoid of detail, just vague sheets of color, where as every fold in the clouds could be seen seemingly so close he could tear them down with a swipe of his claws. More then three quarters of the rock up it was like being a part of the sky. Almost in jest he raised one paw and thought he might try.
Interrupted by a loud cough, whatever great thoughts he had been thinking flickered out all at once, and were replaced by a dull pain in his temple from too quick a transition.
Her tone was accusative. "And what would you be up too?"
Rohad took a long breath and let it out in a sigh. "I was meditating mother, and now, apparently, I'm talking to you."
"Look at me please when we're talking."
He turned to face her. Marri, his stepmother wasn't a very long lioness, but her frame had been layered with muscle from years of hunting, giving her a compact look that could be viewed as intimidating. She wasn't scowling; visibly she was making an effort not to. So in return he didn't glare.
"You can tell father it won't rain for at least another week." He forced a smile.
"Look at the sky. I could have told you that."
"Ah, but the difference being you think it's so, where as I know. That's why he asks me."
She sighed. "I didn't walk up here to learn this week's weather. I was looking for Jainia. Have you seen her?"
He shrugged. "Possibly. Would she be the one with blonde fur?"
Marri looked down at her paws to hide some expression, shaking her head. "Tell me do you think the spirits could spare their mediator long enough for him to eat dinner with the rest of the pride tonight, for once."
"I'll ask them."
"Come to dinner!" She looked up, and had switched to her queenly tone. "I mean it! Come eat with the pride, try talking to some girls for a change. You're going to be nice to the ones who talk to you, and in the very least you're going to quit lurking around up here! You make everyone nervous."
Still, she hadn't scowled so he fought the urge to sneer. "Will do mother."
Again she shook her head. She started to say something, then stopped, and finally just headed off back down the path in search of someone else to bother. He watched her go until she disappeared around the curve, then he glared. The wind blew up behind him, berating the ledge, and sending pebbles skittering after her.
"She's right you know."
His heart jumped hard in his chest, and he came very close to showing that he'd been startled. Jainia had snuck up behind him. Looking around, he found her laying up on one of the rock shelves above, her head resting on her paws, and a silly grin across her face. She was comic sight. Jainia was defiantly no beauty. She was still young so maybe the future held hope, but life thus far had left her starkly out of proportion. She was long both in body and legs with the weight to match only about halve that length. Her paws were huge and when not in use seemed to dangle.
Amazing in the hunting practices at an unprecedented age, Jainia had true grace in full sprint and at absolutely no other time. The rest of her day she moved too fast, pushed or pulled to hard, and tripped over her own paws whenever she tried to slow down to what was considered an acceptable pace for the paths. Combined with her personality, desperately joyful, always grinning and babbling jokes a mile a minute, she made you smile because you really wanted to laugh at her.
It had taken him two conversations to realize her bubbling happiness was an act she was using to hide how miserable she really felt. Of course she had nothing to be happy about. And, like him, respectively, most of her problems were her mother's fault.
"You could use a little social time." she was teasing him. "A couple lionesses just might be more fun then your spirits. You can touch lionesses. Or, can you touch the spirits? -Then again, now that I think about it -" She looked him up and down. "-the male form's rather impressive carved out of ivory. You just might impress some girl if you're not careful, and then you'd never be able to meditate for being pestered. That would just be horrible for you wouldn't it?
"Yes, quite." He replied, turning back to looking out over the ledge. She jumped down beside him. "How's your mother," he asked.
She sighed. "Better – I think. Not like I'm expecting her to get well anymore." She skipped a rock off the ledge with her paw, looking over her shoulder like she was worried someone might overhear. "Kind of been feeling guilty about it lately, like I've given up on her. But then if I get to hoping I know that eventually she's going to lapse and it's just too hard – you know?"
"No, not really, how could I know? I've never experienced anything similar. Or, were you asking me if you'd made the right decision?"
"That's what I'm asking," she said frowning.
"At some point you have to decide whether you're going to give your whole life to others, or take the time to care for yourself."
She kicked a paw full of pebbles; they made a sound like water bouncing off things on the way down.
"There are paths beneath us you know," He said.
"Oh…crap." She leaned out looking for casualties.
"Did you tell her?" He asked, bracing himself in case he had to catch her.
"Yea…she pretended to be excited."
"Are you excited?"
"I was."
"You wanted this; I know you did" He laid a paw on her shoulder. "So here it is. Are you going to let her take it from you? Or do you think that you've earned this one for yourself?"
Jainia sighed and then nodded, small fragments of her smile returning. She patted his paw with hers. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. Now, if you will excuse me I was trying to meditate and as my mother just informed me I don't have all evening to do it."
It was pouring down rain outside, leaving the commons cave come diner time, dimly lit, and smelling strongly of wet fur. Rohad sat by the wall working on what had once been a Zebra's calf, picking meat off from around the hoof in small bites. It was slow salty work.
The king and the queen were in the crowd's middle, paws hung around each other, smiling. Asyron was telling a story to the cubs gathered around him in a circle, fenced in by their mother's.
"I should have died right then, lying there stunned. I shouldn't be here to tell you this story. He stood me over, and I swear there was a flame in those green eyes, He'd raised one paw for the final blow and was down a curse from the dark gods on my head before he slew me.
Right then a bolt of fur struck him in the chest, knocking him back. Can you imagine our pretty queen here fighting like she'd gone mad?
He had the cubs entranced, their eyes wide.
"What's that you're whispering?" A lioness with a clipped ear leaned into his vision. She was older then him. Soaked from the rain, water was still dripping off her pelt. The fur on her head had been ruffled into spikes from where she'd been running her claws through it, and that was apparently all the effort she'd made to dry herself. "Is it poetry?" She asked. Her paw came to rest on his knee. In the low light no one would notice what they did. It all reminded him too well of some cub-hood fantasy of catching a lioness bathing alone then being offered an invitation to join her.
The sudden arousal gave him a head ache.
"No," He muttered. "It's not poetry."
"What is it then?"
He shrugged, pointing up with one claw, indicating the sky. Although, he seriously doubted she understood that. "I hear it."
She walked off.
The rest of the meal was just as enjoyable. Several more opportunities for utterly pointless polite conversation arose; each he avoided as quickly as the first. By the time his zebra bone joined the others in a growing pile his head was splitting and he craved silence, the ability to hear his own thoughts and those few other voices, be them from this world or the next, better suited to speaking on his level.
It wasn't until he began to get cold, soaked through to the skin, that he realized he was outside, standing in the path, staring out into the storm. All his life he'd loved to watch the storms. However complicated and frustrating the rest of the world could be, their power was very, very simple.
"Your mother said it wouldn't rain," Asyron said, taking a place beside him on the path. His stepfather was a big lion, nearly a foot taller then him, heavier, always talking in a great baritone that rumbled like he was about to laugh.
"I told her it was going to rain," Rohad replied.
"I should have asked you then. Your mother's been pestering you a lot lately has she?"
He took a deep breath before answering. "Yes, yes she has."
Asyron nodded. "Try to humor her - please. She just worries about you. All mothers worry, and Marri has never been shy about butting heads with her loved ones if she thinks it's for their own good." Asyron smiled. "That – might be my fault actually. I've had my own share of pestering, but what I've found over the years is that she's usually right."
"Right? It's not about her being right or wrong, it's that she worries about the most trivial things. Meals with the pride?" he gestured at commons cave behind them. "Crises avoided I'm no longer hungry. What difference does this make?"
"Rohad, there is something special about you. Your mother and I have known that since you where a cub." Asyron patted him on the back near hard enough to knock him from the ledge. "You think on a grand scale where the rest of us are a little simpler. I'm a simple lion. But, there's merit in the simple things too, good food, pretty young lioness. This is your youth and I've seen worse times to be a young lion, believe me. Your mother just wants to make sure you take the time to enjoy it, in between debating the world's mysteries."
"You're a wise King father."
Asyron patted him again, just as jarring as before. "I'll talk to her too; see if I can't broker a piece between the two of you. That would be something wouldn't it, even for a wise king?"
The air smelled of rotten fruit from the huge oozing berries that littered the foliage here. Washed by the rain, the foul juices were brought dripping down on him sticking tight to his fur. Bristled thorns crunched painfully under paw.
For two days he'd tracked them through the barrier hills all the way north to where they ended and the grassland became littered with sand. From there they turned west and fled another day to the Paultipi ledges where the only growing were black bark thorn trees in huge sprawling thickets. Here he'd chased them most of the morning, and here run up against the north river to deep to pass at this point, they'd finally cornered themselves.
They were hyenas, five siblings. Like a litter had eaten its parents then run off as a pack, roaming ever since over and through anything, chaotic and ravenous. Their last kill had been a litter of leopard cubs while their mother was out hunting. Having lost her mate the year before losing the cubs was the last she could take. After finding her children dead, the pieces scattered she drowned herself in Lake Guli.
The lions thought of all lands outside their control as being lost to complete anarchy, but even in the outlands some things just can't be tolerated.
"HAWD!! WHATS WRONG WITH YOU!? THREE FUCKING DAYS, YOU DON'T SLEEP, YOU DON'T EAT, HAWD! HAWWWD" One of the hyenas a particularly disheveled male, was screaming at him, and having a nervous breakdown by the looks of him, punctuating his sentences with angry garbled wails.
They'd backed themselves into one of the thickets, literally up against the river bank. Now there was no way to go, but through him.
He made no reply. Instead he flexed his paws and popped his neck, getting ready. He never spoke to quarry and he never spoke to hyenas, here the two rules just happened to overlap.
"You're Satteis aren't you?" One the females asked, sounding a little calmer then her brother. She nodded even though he didn't reply. "I knew it was you that first night. You didn't stop once. You're a legend even this far out."
"HAWWD, HAW!"
"Well you caught us." She smiled. "Oh, I'm scared now. Did you think we were fleeing you? We just wanted to get home…"
"HAWWWWD!!
"So what's your plan now?" She asked. "I'd like to know cause…there's five of us."
Satteis popped his shoulder.
With a manic screech, the male who'd been yelling dove for him…
-WILL BE CONTINUED (next chapter coming soon)