[1st POV]
"I'll come back for you!" said the young lion without a tail towards the female that loved him.
...
"I promise, I'll come back," the lion was so young, still juvenile, even with his size. But there was enough fire to burn the world in his eyes.
...
"Scar!! Scar!! SCAR!!" a voice so enraged it was barely coherent.
"Please live well and survive for the next two years so that I can return and kill you myself," A promise stronger than fate or destiny.
....
Not a single day had passed without recalling that fateful day. I did not forget anything, not a single detail. I had only been suppressing them so far.
I never forgot my purpose. I knew why I was here, I knew what I was doing and I knew what I had to do.
A year had passed since I came into this new land, and it was about time I made my next big move.
I had a promise to keep so...
It was time to conquer.
....
"But first, we need a plan," I said while walking away from the region actively occupied by the Mbali brothers.
I left my scent inside their region, and that would be enough for now.
The idea of charging right at them and taking a fight against all three brothers was definitely quite an attractive proposal, but that was a fool's endeavour. I had to remind myself that no matter how big and powerful I got, my mind was and will always be my greatest weapon.
At this point in my life, I was quite confident in claiming victory even if I fought against all three brothers at once. After all, I had not been training and hunting buffalo for nothing.
I was strong, stronger than any African lion that ever lived, I was sure.
But what I was not sure of was a clean victory. The chances of losing were low but not zero. And even if I did win, I might suffer grievous injury or another disability while in the process.
There was no hospital in the wild so if I got a serious injury, it could hinder me for the rest of my life and I did not want that.
So the first thing I needed was a strategy and a coherent plan. And I'm pretty sure I already had one.
"What do you have in mind?" Grim asked me from behind. He was perched on top of my back while I walked through the savannah.
Vultures were giant birds that had difficulty flying too slowly and low on the ground. He could not adjust to my walking speed while flying, so I allowed him to stand on my back so that we could talk while moving away from the enemy territory.
He and the other vultures were vital for the plan I had in mind.
"In a battle of three against one, I will never be in control of the fight, even if I were twice as strong as I am currently," I said.
It was not a matter of strength but numbers. They had the numerical advantage to dictate the flow of the battle during the fight. I would be the one taking them on and challenging them.
"But what I can control is everything that happens before the fight," I said and a smile tugged at my face. "There are two ways to reduce the risk in this fight. And that is either to grow stronger, which I have been doing until now. Or make my enemies weaker, which I will start doing from now on,"
"Make your enemies weaker?" Grim asked, and I could see the confusion, "How are you going to do that?"
I could no longer stop the grin from spreading across my lips, "Back at home, we call it war crimes...."
...
...
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[3rd POV]
When evening came, the Mbali brothers set out to patrol their territory as per usual. Their entire kingdom was incredibly massive, making it so that even though it was technically theirs, they rarely visited some parts of it.
Four different lion prides could've thrived in their kingdom, that was how much territory they had under their rule. If they were to patrol their entire kingdom daily, it would take the whole day even if they separated.
So they mostly live in the best part of the region which was the southern and central part of Serenegti.
Baraka patrolled their region from the north while Roku started from the south. Makali, on the other hand, stayed with the pride as he was still recovering from the previous battle with a rogue.
Makali the ever-aggressive warrior had rarely seen days when he was completely unharmed and healthy. He had even become meaner ever since their encounter with Leo six months ago.
When rogues came, he aimed to kill them on the spot.
Speaking of Leo, Roku recalled his very first encounter with the young lion as he patrolled the edges of their occupied region. It had been a year since then, but the events still hung heavy on his mind.
The physical and mental wound he suffered from the juvenile lion never truly healed. They remained a fresh scar on his existence.
He remembered it had been like any other day and he was patrolling just like he was doing now. But then he ran into an abandoned kill and got the scent of the new rogue, and he decided to track it alone. It was a decision he regrets until now.
The rogue lion remained in the Serengeti still but he had not shown any aggression or intent to challenge for the throne. Which was why the Mbali brothers also left him alone on his side of the Serengeti.
They couldn't rule the whole Serengeti anyway so the brothers wouldn't mind if Leo started a new pride in that part of the region. Their last encounter had left a permanent mark on their heart.
Prideful lions they may be, but they were slowly getting older and with age comes wisdom. There was no need to start a conflict and risk their life for something they didn't even have any use for, which was the land.
And yes, the three firmly believed that if it came down to a fight with the tailess lion, at least one of the brothers would perish. That was the promise Leo left in their last encounter.
The Mbali brothers were reaching 7 years old now. They were at their absolute prime at the moment but it would be a quick descent from here. An active lion king in the wild was lucky if it lived past 12 years old.
Due to the constant fight for dominance in their life, a lion's health goes down fast when they reach an older age. In the span of two or three years, they went from a dominant king to a barely functioning male.
"Hm?" Roku stopped his train of thought and came back to his senses.
His nose twitched as it caught a familiar smell. It was a scent that made his body tremble and forced his fur to stand. He felt goosebumps washing through his body and he had to make the effort to calm his heart.
He wet his nose with his tongue and took in the scent in the air once more. He needed to make sure that he was smelling this right.
But after taking another sniff, the scent was still there and lingered.
His lips peeled in an angry snarl, showing fangs that had taken a dozen lives of rogue lions like this one. Roku could not stop his bubbling anger when he identified the person behind the scent.
"Leo," Roku spat out, followed by a roar.
He released a train of guttural roars as he made his way towards the source of the smell. The sound of his roar echoed through the land, a warning and a decree.
But as Roku got closer to the smell, he realised that the scent was from the urine Leo had left behind, and he was no longer in the vicinity. He felt his anger being pushed back by something in his throat.
Roku reached the tree that was marked by Leo. Was it fate that he was the first one to discover his scent once more after a year had passed?
Whatever the case may be, Roku stood in front of the tree. His eyes looked, but they were unseeing orbs inside his skull. He was deep in thought and his brain did not have enough capacity to process vision.
It was all due to the scent. The stinking scent of urine that made Roku want to back off as far as he could due to the sheer intensity.
And it was not because the urine was actually stinking either.
Lions had a great sense of smell, and especially the males could identify much from the smell. They could differentiate individuals, get a hint of the diet and the hydration level of the lion, determine its health, but most importantly, they could smell the hormones in the urine. A lion could tell which one was female, whether she was in heat or ovulating, etc, from the hormones contained in the urine.
And Leo's urine might as well be liquid testosterone. That was the reason why it was stinking so badly in Roku's nose. But for a female, it might have been the most attractive thing in the world.
The testosterone he smelled from Leo's mark only hinted at bad things for the lion kings. The level of testosterone in the urine was one way to determine the strength and aggression of another male.
The smell of strength was the most intense in Leo compared to every single lion Roku had encountered so far.
After standing there for a while, Roku heard a movement behind him. Baraka came forward; he had responded to Roku's roar.
There were no words exchanged as Brakara could also smell Leo's mark. He only had a deep frown on his face.
It was dangerous.
So very dangerous.
Leo had finally decided to challenge for the throne like every other rogue. And for the nightmare of the Mbali brothers, it seemed the enemy had gotten even stronger.
"Let's go," Baraka said.
"We need to prepare,"
The brothers did not know, but it was too late for preparation. The war had already begun.
And on that very night and every other night that followed, they heard a thunderous roar echoing in the darkness of the night.
The volume of the roar seemed to be enhanced in the odd silence of the night. It was loud enough to tear the sky and shake the ground.
And yet it always ended there. Other challengers would have followed up with the roar and attacked the kings to claim the throne.
But Leo just roared now and then without any action. Yet that was enough to keep the kings on edge and alert, never getting a good rest in the days that followed.
...
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[IMAGE]
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Double chapter but next chap is a small one.