"Well?" Repeated the wizard, watching him carefully. "Did the spell work?"

"I don't know, are you speaking my tongue?" Adhabu replied. The question was sincere, but apparently the black-maned lion took it as sarcasm.

"Well, I know a couple of lizard-" He began to say before a growl and a glare from Adhabu. The lion, who despite being surprisinly not scared, still stepped a foot back and did a gesture with his hands, possibly preparing a spell.

This prompted Mufasa, the wemics and even the blue bird to reach for their weapons, but before anything serious could happen, Rafiki stood between them.

"Don't worry, he's simply offended by being called a lizard!" The shaman said as he put his hand on "His race doesn't like being called lizard men! You wouldn't like being called a cat all the time either!"

Mufasa looked at Adhabu, who looked back at him. Both stared at each other for a few moments before Mufasa looked at his guards and signaled them to stand down, sitting back on his throne alongside his mate.

"How was I supposed to know that? We've always called his kind lizard men! And I always though they were all, well, men." The wizard replied, and this time Adhabu managed to stop himself from growling yet again.

"You weren't, Scar." Rafiki admitted before turning to Adhabu to scold him. "And you! You can't just growl at someone just because they called you a lizard man! Nobody outside the Death Marsh knows!"

Adhabu, remembering that this was not the Death Marsh, where one could get angry at the chief as long as he was strong enough to fight, sighed in shame.

"Sorry, it was just... force of habit. Don't like being called a lizard, we jamaa don't call ourselves that." The Swamspear apologized.

"Apology accepted, just think before you do something stupid." 'Scar' said. Adhabu didn't care that the wizard let him speak their language, he already loathed him. It wasn't just his attitude either; he didn't like how those green eyes stared at him, as if they were trying to look into his soul. Didn't help he was a magic-user: jamaa didn't have magic-users among their numbers because they distrusted them and their magics, and preferred the more benign ones of shamanism.

There was also the fact that those were the very same green eyes that appared on his dream. He knew there were many red-maned lions just as big as Mufasa, but those eyes? That was something he had to mistrust by force.

It was at that moment when Mufasa finally spoke.

"Who are you, warrior, and why did you rescue the survivors of Nyumba Namu?" Adhabu knew of jamaa with voices just as deep as his, but all were at least a foot taller than the lion. "Your race and mine, and all those who live on the Pride Lands for that matter, have been enemies since the foundation of this kingdom."

"I am Adhabu, son of chief Mkuki, former warleader of the Swampspear tribe."

"Former?" He heard a female say behind him. Since he hadn't her talk before, it had to be Sarafina.

"Warleader?" Said Scar.

"Those who lead war parties. I don't think I have to tell you about what we do." He said to him before turning to Mufasa. "As for why I came here... It's because of a tawala."

While Rafiki gave a small gasp and looked at him with wide eyes, the others stared at him with confused expressions.

"'Tawala'? Scar, did your spell work fine?" Mufasa asked.

"Yes!" Scar huffed angrily before shrugging. "Well, maybe not, but he's talking and understanding-"

"Lizard King." Adhabu clarified. "Your people call them Lizard Kings."

This time, the reactions of those present were more pointed (or at least those that knew about them): Mufasa looked at him with a mixed expression of shock and resignation while also touchig the bite mark, Mnyama stiffened, Sarabi stared in shock, and Scar simply stared.

"A Lizard King, again?" Mnyama muttered behind him. He was referring to the last tawala before Mshindi, one that just like many others found his end at the hands of a Pride Lander, twenty years prior to be precise, only it decided to attack directly. Adhabu was sure that it was then when Mufasa got bitten by a majamaa. Aside from that, though, he didn't know much, only that the tribe that particular tawala took over was the biggest at the moment.

"Oh no." Said the bird for the first time. "Not another Lizard King."

"Damn those things." One of the wemics standing near the thrones said before spitting to the ground, forgetting, not realizing, or simply not caring that he was in presence of his ruler. "They're big, smart and are obsessed in eating lion flesh. "

"Lizard Kings aren't things. They are freaks." Rafiki said in a hateful tone which, given the stares he got from the other Pride Landers. "Unnatural union of evil spirits and mortals, they desire only to rule and fill their bellies with flesh. They're not just bad rulers either: if they don't get lions or mammals in general to eat, they eat their own people, starting with their lieutenants. None of that is done for survival, but the sheer enjoyment of eating other sentient beings."

Adhabu nodded grimly at that.

"And Mshindi, the one who attacked my tribe, is not just strong and intelligent. He's also a magic-user."

"Mmm, a Lizard King that can use magic is indeed dangerous." Scar said as he stroke his chin. "But, aside from being, well, a reptilian monster bigger than an elephant, smarter than the average lion and being capable of throwing magic missiles at anything it might piss it off, I can't see how dangerous could this... Mshindi be. Plus, since the day you were brought to Jikubwa, there have been no sightnings of liz-jamaa hunting parties."

"That's because he's unifying the Death Marsh."

Scar accidentaly drew his claws and cut himself, but he was too stunned to care. So where the other Pride Landers present.

"He's... he's building an army?" Mnyama said, and Adhabu didn't have to turn to know he was shocked by the revelation.

"Yes, to conquer the Pride Lands and, well, eat all the lions he wants, using also his words and intelligence to convince them to fight for him, not just fear of him, his magic, or his retribution to those who'd dare to defy him. That's also part of the reason I came to the Pride Lands. No, scratch that, I didn't come here by my own volition."

He then told them about how Mkuki refused to bend his will, of how the Swampspears conducted a guerrilla against Mshindi's growing army for weeks, about their discovery by Mshindi and his army, and the beating he got as his father was electrocuted and his tribe slaughtered.

They didn't need to know that his mate and child died. Nor how.

"Well, that explains the broken bones." Rafiki whispered to himself. "Although not why did you survive those and having your skull smashed." He shrugged. "Probably spirit intervention."

"Let me get this straight." Sarabi said for the first time. "You woke up in a riverbank, walked delirious for a bit alongside the river debating whether or not return to the Death Marsh and get revenge on Mshindi for what he did to your father and your tribe, settled on fighting our people because you didn't want to die of starvation yet were unwilling to live without your tribe, discovered by chance a village being ransacked by cavemen, and then rescued the survivors, my handmaiden and friend among them."

"Yes."

"But... why?"

"I told you already. I won't say more" He said curtly.

"That's the Queen you're talking to, lizard!" Growled one of the guards, incidentally the one who spat before, only to receive a glare from Adhabu.

"Call me that one more time, and I'll make you a normal lion, monster." He snarled.

The wemic growled and went for the sword on his hip, but before things could escalate, Mufasa stood up.

"ENOUGH!" He bellowed, his shout echoing through the chamber. He sighed and sat back. "Adhabu, I understand that you're still hurting from your loss, and that since you're not from the Pride Lands you owe us no respect, much less to lions, but that doesn't mean you can't have some courtesy, espacially with the Queen... nor insult my men for their appearance. Life for wemics is already hard without you pointing out their forms."

Adhabu grunted stared at him, then at everyone else, before sighing.

"I'll answer your question. I saved them... because Sarafina and her family reminded me of..." He said before trailing off.

"Of?" Scar inquired. The others, on the other hand, already had an idea of what the Swampspear was talking about. "C'mon, don't keep us waiting."

"Scar!" Mnyama.

"What? He just said he would answer the Queen's question, didn't he?" Scar pointed out.

'Screw it, you want to know how they died, you'll know how they died' Adhabu thought.

"Of my family, my mate and newly hatched son specifically. Both of them had green eyes just like Sarafina and her children... and whose screams as they were eaten alive by that monster were the last thing I heard before I was half beaten to death by."

"Now if you excuse me, I'm going to the tallest point of this rock. I think it's high enough to kill me when I'll jump." He said before walking out of the throne room, shoving Mnyama out of the way. Bele and his fellow wemic tried to go after him, but a gesture from Mufasa made them stop.

Adhabu missed the stares of horror, pity and shame they gave him as he walked out into the darkening exterior of Pride Rock., but knew they were looking at him

...

"Well, I think that went rather well." Scar said as Adhabu walked out of the room. "I mean, I di scratch myself, and there was screaming, but no deaths. I'd hated helping him only to fight us."

Sarafina thought that it was anything but well, and by their expressions, neither did the others.

"'Well'?" Zazu said in an skeptic tone as he approached from his spot now that there was no danger. "We've got an ambitious Lizard King, who if you forgot is also a magic-user of sorts, rallying the tribes of the Death Marsh!"

"Oh, Zazu, please." Scar said in a disimissive tone. "You talk as if you doubted the fighting prowess of our warriors."

"I don't, it's just that I don't doubt the jamaa's either. And let me remind you, if what Adhabu said was right, we're not talking about a few dozen hungry lizards and a big one, but thousands, tens of thousands of warriors."

Scar scoffed. "And? Some roaring, some killing, thirty or so hippos and a bit of magic stronger than that thing has, and they'll crawl back to their swamp with their tail between their legs. After all, just having a Lizard Man and its enforcers behind him doesn't mean they won't flee anyway."

"Something tells me that it will be different this time." Mnyama said. "You hear Adhabu, that Lizard King isn't just using fear to motivate them. It's using words, and as vague as that sounded, it also means that just killing some will not stop them."

Sarafina, however, wasn't paying attention to what was being said. She was still looking at the entrance of the throne room, and remembering Adhabu's words of being forced to watch as his family died horribly in front of him without being able to save them.

"So, what do we do?"

"Zazu, I want you to go to the other leaders. Tell them what we've been told and ask them to prepare their troops. Then, go to the villages closest to the Death Marsh to see if there has been raiding and. No one has said anything about lizard raids of disappearances, and I want to keep it that way." Mufasa ordered his majordomo. "After that we'll wait and see if Mshindi makes his move.

Zazu gave a salute and then flied away to do as he has been tasked, leaving the leonines alone in the hall.

"Sire, what do we do with the-with Adhabu?" Asked Bunga, the other wemic.

"Leave him be, at least for the moment."

"But he said-"

"I know, but I fear what would happen if someone got in his way." Mufasa said. "I don't want him to kill himself after all we did to keep him alive and hearing his story, but I don't want to hear that someone got seriously wounded or worse either. Besides, in the end he might not do it."

Sarafina, who was still staring at the entrance, felt someone touch her arm. It was Rafiki.

"Go after him. He'll be needed for the battle ahead, and dying from jumping from the Summit is not a way for a warrior to die. Besides, after watching you caring for him day after day, you are the best suited."

Sarafina nodded and then ran off after Adhabu, hoping to stop him before he did actually kill himself.

"Say, Rafiki, does he know he's butt naked?" Then, he turned to his brother. "And did you forget that Simba and his friends wanted to see Adhabu up close?"

Mufasa put two and two together.

"Damn it!"