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Thus far, Aarre had not been a particularly helpful reaver on her first viking. She was far more interested in covering herself with glory than she was in helping cover up evidence of the band's camping, or hunting, or anything not directly related to conquest or acquisition. This was her first viking and her father had been against it, just as he'd been against her participation in the pride's tournament a few seasons ago, and while she'd waited for a while before finding a captain to go with (since obviously her father wasn't going to take her), Aarre was unwilling to wait forever to earn her status as a reaver. She was also unwilling to return home without a prize to show off to her father to prove her competence.

She had taken to muttering under her breath about the captain's ability to fulfill his promise that all of his reavers would come back with thralls and bounty. So far on their outing they hadn't encountered anything. Even prey was hard to come by, and the cursed heat on her dark coat was torture. She wasn't the only one muttering, but she was the most outspoken, possessing the sort of confidence that only comes from being the warlord's favorite daughter. She had yet to actually confront the captain, but if things didn't change she planned to, and if he couldn't offer a reasonable plan to address her concerns, she planned to challenge him for leadership of the band. She was sure she could do a better job.

Probably it was her muttering which made it so she was frequently told to hunt. Or maybe because she was female. But it led to her finding signs of another lion in the area, and that brought a sharp smile to her face. At last!

Alia felt as if she'd been lost here before, but maybe not. After all, one endless sea of grass looks pretty much like another. She was better at navigating the savannah than her parents had ever been, as they had both been raised in a pride where it was apparently nothing but sand as far as the eye could see, but she was really pretty terrible at finding her way around in daylight. Only at night, by the stars, could she have any hope of success, and even then she got it wrong more often than she didn't.

At any rate, she was tired of wandering aimlessly and in a relatively foul temper not helped by the fact she seemed to be proving her sister Ashraqat right. She was hopeless on her own. When she'd left her family, including her twin, to strike out on her own, one of her siblings who wasn't a twin to her had taunted her that she'd be back in a matter of weeks, if she could even find her way. She and Ashraqat had never gotten along well, and it galled the dark-furred lioness to think that her sister might be right. She probably couldn't find her siblings' group at this point even if she wanted to. Which she didn't. Obviously.

But she wouldn't mind having someone to talk to. The seemingly endless hours of solitude were just as bad as being perpetually lost. Alia was used to sharing her thoughts with people and getting into spirited debates and having someone to curl up with in the night. She missed that.

Aarre had dreamed of this moment for some time. Her whole life, nearly. Now that it was finally here, she realized that there would be nobody here to witness it, and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Should she somehow fail to take this lion, nobody would know. Or if she couldn't accomplish it with the sort of ease she expected, it would also remain a secret. She could tell the rest of the band whatever she liked. Even if her future thrall tried to tell some other version of events, nobody listened to anything thralls said anyway.

She considered her options for how best to approach the capture. Obviously she first had to know what sort of a lion she was bringing in. A part of her hoped for a hulking male she could defeat and bring back as an impressive example of her skill. Another part hoped it would be someone she could easily overcome and intimidate, who wouldn't require her to do them serious injury just to keep them from fleeing at the earliest opportunity.

To that end, Aarre moved through the tall grass as stealthily as she knew how to spy out her victim. She was both disappointed and relieved to see that she was looking at a slim, thin-furred outlander with a muddy brownish-greenish coat who seemed wholly distracted. This would almost be too easy.

Alia didn't notice her wish for companionship had been granted until the moment a black and gold striped lioness emerged from the tall grass and fixed her with an unreadable look which nevertheless left her rooted in place. This was the first person Alia had seen since leaving her siblings, and she found herself suffering a momentary lapse of communication skills. Namely, she had forgotten the word "hello."

"Um," was what she managed instead. The idiocy of her utterance broke her from her startled reverie and she rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. "Sorry. Hello."

She had never seen a lioness like this one before, large and muscular, but still lithe, with long limbs and astonishingly thick fur. Alia thought the larger lioness must be dying in this heat and felt bad for her. Alia's own coat was thinner, though not as thin as some in her parents' pride, apparently, and well-suited for the heat, despite her dark coloration. Still, she was amazed by how fierce and beautiful this strange lioness looked.

"Are you simple?" Aarre asked, forgetting that she would have to speak in the common tongue if she wanted to be understood, and then going on to curse in Old Stormborn because it must have sounded like she was the simple one with her talking in a language unique to her pride.




"Hello," she tried again, aware of the marked difference between her version of the word and the smaller lioness's. Aware of, but unbothered by. Her father had been born an outlander and he spoke common beautifully, although he usually chose not to, and it had been from him that she had learned. She didn't speak it with his accent, despite her best efforts, but she knew she was perfectly comprehensible, and more than fluent.

She was fluent in common, but that didn't mean she planned to use it to hold an extended conversation with this thrall-to-be. In fact, her plan was to deliberately speak as if she had not achieve much mastery of it in order to seem more mysterious and intimidating. Besides, Aarre figured they'd already done more than enough socializing. There was no way this capture would prove to be a battle for the ages, and so she wanted to get it over with as efficiently as possible so that she could return to the band with her prize that much sooner.

"Come with me if you want to live," she ordered.

Alia blinked at the large lioness as she said something garbled that definitely sounded like speech, but not any speech she'd heard before. It was a relief when the lioness tried again in a much more easily understood language, although her accent was still thick enough that Alia had to take a moment to decipher what was said beyond that initial greeting.

"Um..." she said again, hesitating to obey without more information. "Obviously I want to live, but what's going on?"

She worried for a moment after that perhaps she'd spoken too quickly or something, but it seemed the other lioness had been prepared for her question, because she moved with alarming speed to close the distance between them, bringing her face uncomfortably close to Alia's neck. Alia was even less reassured when she actually received her answer:

"If you don't come with me, I'll kill you."

Perhaps it was a tad melodramatic on Aarre's behalf to phrase things the way she had, but the impulse had been irresistible. Besides, it would mean that when she later told the story of how she had captured her first thrall, she wouldn't have to make many changes to the actual dialogue to add interest and excitement, which was certainly a plus she felt.

There was little time to reflect on how she would tell the tale at this very moment, however, as the green-brown lioness decided to do something monumentally stupid, and tried to run. In this heat, Aarre was certainly in no mood for chasing people, but she was fortunate in that she really didn't have to. Her quarry had started off far too close to her, and had not had the sense to run toward her, instead wasting precious moments in trying to pull away and change direction. Aarre took advantage of those moments.

She jerked her head to the side and lunged, easily catching the smaller lioness's flesh in her jaws before sinking her claws in to drag her down before she could get her legs beneath her for a leap. In a matter of seconds Aarre had forced her captive to the ground using mostly her superior size and muscle mass.

"Do you want me to kill you?" she growled. Her mouth was free for speech, as the foolish creature beneath her had inadvertently torn free of her bite, leaving a ragged wound just above her shoulder. "I will."

Alia couldn't believe how quickly she'd been brought down. She had never experienced anything like the terror and pain that came in the seconds that followed her aborted attempt to flee. How quickly the striped lioness had moved, and how heavy she was as she pinned Alia to the bloody ground below! Not to mention the screaming agony at the base of Alia's neck where the larger lion had ripped a chunk of flesh from her, it felt like.

"Please," she whimpered. "Please no. I'll come with you."

It seemed to take an age for the larger lioness to decide that Alia's word was good enough and shift off of her. While Alia was still adjusting to the freedom to breathe once more and trying not to cry out in pain at the slashes down her chest and side that she'd just become aware of, a massive paw came crashing against her face, knocking her to the ground with the force of a thrown boulder. The world spun and went black for a second, but all too soon Alia regained consciousness to find her position unchanged.

Aarre wasn't sure what had driven her to hit her new thrall like that. It hadn't really been necessary, but it had felt like the right thing to do. A part of her wanted to do it again, and maybe keep doing it until it stopped feeling so thrilling or the life light went out of the smaller lioness's golden eyes, whichever came first. Her green eyes gleamed at the idea.

She didn't give in to that part of herself though. She knew it for what it was, for her father had warned her about the bloodlust that ran through his veins and turned violence into an erotic act. She would substitute a quick roll in the grass with one of the reavers, perhaps, or take care of herself, but later.

"Get up," she said hoarsely. "And keep up. I would rather beat you unconscious and drag you than slow my pace. Do you understand, thrall?"

Alia climbed unsteadily to her feet, gingerly testing her ability to bear weight on the foreleg nearest her bite wound. It hurt worse than anything she could have imagined, and she considered briefly if it might not be preferable to be dragged while unconscious, but she had seen a terrifying gleam in the larger lioness's green eyes which warned she might not survive the threatened beating.

"I understand," she replied, surprised at how meek her tone was, just as she was shocked at the violence she had just been a part of. "I will keep up."

Apparently that was all she had needed to say, and all that would be said between them, for the brutal green-eyed lioness turned then and walked away, assuming that Alia would follow her. She was correct. Alia did not even for a moment consider the possibility of another attempt to escape. She knew now that it would only be an exercise in futility which had the potential to turn fatal. She concentrated on putting one paw in front of the other and tried not to think about what awaited her when they reached their destination, wherever that proved to me.