Ru didn't know how it had happened, really, and he didn't honestly care. That was not the important part of the situation. The important part was that somehow the juvenile who had been training himself, pushing himself harder and harder each night to the point of exhaustion and then spending the days hunting to provide food for himself and his two sisters, had managed to lose his siblings.
He really did not understand how it could have happened. He had left the pair of them in the same place he always did and asked them not to wander too far from that area because it would make it more difficult for him to find them when he returned from his hunt, and then he had set off. Because it had been early morning, he'd hoped to maybe have a few hares or rodents to bring back by noon, but the hunting had been poor and so it was late afternoon when he returned to find his sisters gone.
With an impressive amount of pragmatism for such a young lion, the dark juvenile made himself sit down and eat a good portion of the prey he'd killed before deciding what to do next. He couldn't do anything on an empty stomach, after all.
Neltharion'd seen the situation of the three young lions from high above. And, being the kind and just god that he was, he'd decided to help the boy--to an early end to the suffering his missing siblings sure must have brought upon him. He'd waited until the boy was busy with his meal before slipping from his heavenly seat, and down to the ground.
In silence he wove himself an illusionary form, casting off his own for that of a small female juvenile--one of the very sisters that had run off. Ah, yes. He was terribly good at this sort of thing. Disguises and trickery. With a snort of amusement he took off at a run for the male, yelping and yowling and sobbing.
"B-brother!" He wailed in an appropriately female voice. "They...they took her!" He made his illusionary form pant and heave ,as if she'd been through a terrible fright. "I...I got away but...but why didn't you come when we yelled for you, brother?"
Ru's green eyes widened with alarm and his ears went flat against his skull when he heard the sounds of one of his sisters in distress. He dropped the meat he was tearing at, spat out the piece he was chewing, and got to his feet, bracing himself to fight whatever came out of the grasses after his sister, should it become necessary. He had no doubt that she was being pursued by something, or else she wouldn't be making so much racket. He thought he had trained her better than that.
"A'ta," he said unnecessarily. She knew her own name, but he needed to speak it aloud just to reassure himself that he'd actually found her. "Slow down, please. I don't...You're talking too fast."
He hated to admit that his mind simply confused words when people spoke them too quickly or slurred them together, as A'ta was doing at this moment. Her lack of enunciation was forgivable, of course, but Ru's aural dyslexia made it a challenge to understand her.
"Who took her?" He didn't need to ask who had been taken. "Where? Can you show me?"
Aha. So his name was now A'ta. Good to know, Neltharion thought. He'd been counting on the male cub trying to calm his sister to get that information. It'd ruin the effect if he didn't respond to the right name.
He effected panting and gasping, trying to become calm and talk clearly. "Th-the bad lions! They were so big and they smelled like satl and they laughed and oh!" She sunk down, curling in a little ball and shaking. "They tried to take me away too...they said...said they were gonna do bad things to us. We yelled and yelled but...they told us to be quiet. They hit me when I yelled again..." ON the cheek turned away from the boy, a bloody spot formed. Perfect, the dark god thought.
"I...I'm scared..." She shuffled closer to her brother, pressing up to him for comfort. "What...what if they do those bad things to her?"
A growl rumbled deep in Ru's chest. He wasn't old enough for it to be anything like intimidating, particularly not if he were to confront an adult lion or anything like that, but coming from a cub his size and age it was an undeniable expression of "someone is going to die for this."
"They smelled like salt?" Ru repeated. That was an interesting thing for her to have noticed, but also very useful. There couldn't be too many lions who smelled sufficiently of salt that a frightened cub would notice the odor. He could probably trail such a lion easily. That there was a group of them would make it even simpler, he was sure.
"I don't know how I didn't hear you yelling," he said, his voice made quiet by his shame. He had allowed this to happen by leaving A'ta and Najia alone while he hunted. Now he had to do something about it.
"I'm going to find Najia," he said with a great deal more confidence than he felt. "And I won't let them do any bad things to her. Do you want to come, or would you rather I found you a place to hide?"
Oh this was just going perfectly. Neltharion had no real clue where the sisters of this lion had gone, but surely they wouldn't miss anyone as dumb as he was. He managed to hide the twisted smirk that even his illusion body fought to betray, then sniffled and stood. "I'll go...If they take you, then I don't wanna stay here alone! I'd rather them do bad things to all of us than not know what happened if you don't come back."
Ugh. Disgusting mushy talk. Probably about on par for a cub though, especially a female one. He waddled slowly in one direction. "That way, I think...They were going to the sea. And...they talked funny. One of them said 'arr' a lot...Oh brother, what will we do if we don'tget her back? I don't think I'm strong enough and maybe..." She paused then, loking a little ashamed. It was clear she was worried even her brother wouldn't be a match for the 'arr'ing salty lions.
"Do...do you think we can do it? Alone?" She simpered and rubbed her bleeding cheek. "I don't want them to hit me again..."
A part of Ru had been sort of hoping that A'ta would say she wanted to stay here and hide, but he certainly couldn't blame her for not wanting to be left alone. If he had been her, he wouldn't have wanted to be alone, either. He just happened to be him, rather than her, and Ruzanski was a lion who worked much better when he was left to himself. And he didn't think this was going to be a fun, friendly encounter. He would have preferred to have his sister somewhere safe for it.
"All right," he said as if he didn't mind. "You should have something to eat. I don't know how long we're going to have to follow their trail."
He looked longingly at the meat and wondered if he could at least finish the bite he'd spat out. Probably A'ta would be disgusted if he did. She and Najia had absorbed a lot more of their mother's lessons on correct behavior and comportment than Ru had. It was hard for him not to sigh when he thought about how little their mother's lessons had served them once she abandoned them.
"If we don't get her back, we'll figure out where Mother's pride is and I'll take you there. You'll be safe there. Then I'll keep looking. It can't be that hard to find a group of lions who smells like salt and speaks oddly. When I find them..."
He paused because he didn't want to get too explicit in his threats, not only because he didn't know if he'd be able to follow through, but also because he didn't want to upset his sister any further. The pause gave him time to get the growling out of his speech, too.
"Remember the prarie dog? They'll go a lot slower."
Hmm. So these cubs weren't totally abandoned. They knew where their mother was. "But what if she won't let me stay there? Or what if something happens to you and I have to go by myself? What...what if I forget mother's pride's name?" Oh yes, he would make a special trip there later to tell 'mother' all about the slaughter of her son.
She took off slowly, acting tired from her frantic escape before, but turned back around when he told her to eat. As a god he had no need to eat, but it would help with the illusion. He fell on the meat with gusto, gobbling it down far faster than it was likely a well mannered cub would have...he didn't care. He was too excited for the boy's coming battle--surely there would be one.
Deciding that his fake body would be sated with what he'd eaten, he stood and brushed his face off. "Can we go now? I don't want them to get too far ahead! Come on brother...!" She was feeling more confident with her brother in tow, and she waded away through the grass. What was the sister's name now? Ah. "Najia! Najia, can you hear me?"
"Mother loves us," Ru said, though he had some doubts on that matter, personally. He and his sisters had been trying reassure themselves that their mother had a good reason for leaving them. Ru's thought was that her reason was that they were not, for whatever stupid reason, good enough for the pride she'd mentioned once or twice, and that she had left them because she missed her home. It didn't leave him well-pleased with her, but he wasn't going tell that to a half-hysterical sister, now was he?
"Well, unless she told it to you, there's not much to forget," Ru pointed out. He'd never heard their mother mention the name of the pride. He had only heard her mention one, usually in the course of their lessons, and he had assumed that the pride was hers.
Ru watched A'ta eat with some amazement. He had never seen her attack food like that. Their mother had very definite rules about how a lady was supposed to eat, and what he'd just seen A'ta doing made him feel guiltier. He wasn't providing well enough for his siblings, if they were able to get so hungry that they would forego their usual good manners when eating. One more thing he'd managed to screw up.
"Yes, let's go," he said. And then wished he hadn't as she began walking in the direction she thought they'd gone in and making enough noise to wake the dead by calling out to their sister. So much for stealth.
The boy's discomfort didn't bother Nelly at all. Probably because it was his intention. He waddled on and on in his false body, leading the male ever towards the sea. Eventually he decided they'd gone far enough, and, in a fit of over the top emotion, she sat back on her haunches and started to cry.
"Th-this is where I got away! But they're gone! And I don't smell them! Wh-what'll we do? What if Najia's gone f-forever?" All the better to further distress the male. "M-mother left us and Najia's gone!" She bawled at Ru.
During this display Neltharion was actually intensely inspecting the area. He knew that two prides were near here, and both were at war with each other. One had the traits of the lions he'd said Najia had been taken by--the others were even stronger, and didn't take well to newcomers who couldn't put up a fight. This was probably the best place to abandon the boy to his fate. And then he could watch for the sisters to return. Sadly it didn't seem that he'd be able to tell their mother...ah well. He had his cake, even if he couldn't eat it.
He decided that, as soon as the boy looked away after comforting his sister, he would simply vanish into thin air. Yes, that'd do. He didn't have to make a big show each time...and perhaps he'd be luck and the boy would think he'd been led to this spot by the ghost of his supposedly already dead sister.
"That's not going to happen." Ru told A'ta. His patience was beginning to wear thin with her weeping and distress. It wasn't that he didn't love his sister, but he also had very little patience for people who repeated themselves, and less for people who made things more difficult than they had to be, as A'ta was currently doing.
"You're making enough noise that they can probably hear you, you know," he remarked, hoping it would silence her. "And I can't hear anything over you. It's going to make tracking them difficult. Unless they come back to investigate."
All right, that had been unkind of him, but sometimes people just needed to hear what they needed to hear in order to get the desired results. He would make it up to her later, he told himself. It was more important to get Najia back, though. At any rate, it was more important to him than A'ta's feelings.
"Can you be still and silent for a few moments while I see what kind of a trail I can pick up?" he asked, already turning away from her to sniff at the wind for traces of salt.
Aha...perfect. The boy'd been rude to the end, and dutifully she fell silent. Glancing around, Not-A'ta spotted a serval watching them. It was almost exactly the same color of Neltharion's assumed form...and an idea struck him. A horrible, wicked idea.
She snuffled, crying quietly, and then frowned at Ru's back. "F-fine. I th-think they were going that way..." She pointed and then, with his back still turned, twisted and leapt, eerily silent, onto the watching serval. Normally it would have been a fair fight, but this juve wasn't just a juve. It was really a god, and the poor serval was soon so torn that it was hard to tell if it'd been a serval..or a young lion. He was sure to shred the fur where the patterns hadn't quite matched, and the tail, as it was not tufted.
He sat upon the corpse and suddenly wailed. "Why did you leave us, brother? We were so hungry, but we waited...at least I got to eat...one last time..." Surely the boy would look...and Neltharion willed his illusion-body to start to fade into nothingness, revealing the tattered body below. "I'll tell...Najia...you tried to find her...Even if you were...too late..."
Laughing, Neltharion slipped out of his invisibility high high up in the air. He'd had too much fun leading the cub on to even care now if he tried to take on his sister's 'murderers'.
Ru had been trying to pick up the scent of salt on the breeze, but what came to his nose was something entirely different, and it made him very deeply concerned. He whirled around quickly to see whether or not his sister had picked up on it. If she had, he didn't think she would react well. Given that they were on the hunt for lions who had threatened to do "bad things," the fact that there was a great deal of blood, newly spilt in the air didn't seem to bode well at all.
"A'ta?" he said as he turned, his tone one of query as he hoped to gauge what mental state she was in. He should have been worrying about her physical state, it seemed.
The gore made it hard to tell at first, but Ru's mind was an odd one when it came to how it functioned, particularly when it came to pain and blood and fear, and it was easier for him than it should have been, perhaps, to recognize his sister's coat markings in the mutilated corpse. Nevertheless, he wasn't completely calm, cool, and collected. Beneath his very still, seemingly-controlled exterior his heartbeat sped up and his breathing became quicker, and at the same time deeper. He hadn't heard anything. Not a thing.
Obviously vengeance was in order, he decided, trying not to dwell on the words A'ta's spirit had directed at him. They implied that Najia, too, was dead, and furthermore they reinforced his suspicion that he had failed them. He didn't need to think of that right now. He couldn't bear to, really.
"I will avenge both of you."
