[JRP] Amaranth (Voldemaras & Ruzanski)

[Princess_Feylin]

A large lion stood among those watching the Reavers spar. His coat was a dark color between sooty and black, and although it was tinged with grey and marked with scars his golden eyes were sharp and alert. Vol was no longer a young lion in the first flush of youth, but neither was he a decrepit old creature too far past his prime to put up a fight. More than a few young lions with aspirations had made that mistake and then learned the error of their ways.

Unlike most of the lions, Vol was not watching the match between a fair-maned lion and a dark-coated lioness - lionesses shouldn't be fighting, in his opinion. Instead, Vol's attention was on the audience. Specifically, he was watching a young lion who seemed barely to have achieved adolescence. There were scabs healing on his shoulders which had been healing for several days and had started out as very deep gashes.

Vol had begun watching this lion because he'd noticed the injuries and at first wondered who had failed to train their son to fight, allowing him to sustain such injuries in practice battles. It had not taken him long to realize that the younger lion was not the son of any lion in the pride, and so must have fought his way in. That interested Vol, in no small part because he wanted to know which of the Stormborn had lost a battle with a youngster like that. Standards were slipping.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Ruzanski came to watch the fighters practice every day, and had done so since his first day in the pride. The healer who had tended to him warned him not to do anything which would tear his shoulders' wounds open if he didn't wish to risk muscle damage or infection. Scarring, he was told, was inevitable, but it needn't restrict his movement in the future if he did as he was bid.

Ru obeyed the healer, but that didn't stop him from watching the fighters. Reavers. They called themselves Reavers. He knew that the Stormborn, like the pirates, left their pridal home, which they called the stronghold, to go raiding, which they called either reaving or viking. There was a lot of new vocabulary to learn, and with the difficulties Ru sometimes had with words it wasn't exactly easy for him, but he was determined to make a place for himself among the Stormborn, and that meant learning to speak their language.

It also meant learning to fight as they did, which had been his primary motivation in seeking the pride out to begin with. That would be a great deal of work, he knew, but he looked forward to the challenge. Then he would be able to avenge his sisters' death at the claws and teeth of the pirates. It would be a life's work, that; since he did not know which of the pirates had committed the act, Ru intended simply to kill as many as he could, as horribly as he could. Even imagining their deaths sent a thrilling shiver up his spine.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Voldemaras glanced at the pair fighting when the audience let out a collective groan. The lioness had been flung nearly a full body length across the sparring yard. Vol grunted, not at all surprised when she made no immediate effort to regain her feet. He doubted she was seriously injured. A broken rib at the worst, but more likely just winded. She'd be fine in a few minutes, or else she wouldn't and a valuable lesson would have been learned about a female's suitability for fighting. Vol didn't care.

He made his way through the gathered lions until he stood alongside the younger, smaller male. It was obvious this close that the green-eyed adolescent had been born outside of the pride and did not have Stormborn blood. He was slighter than a full-blooded Stormborn lion, and would never rival one for size, but he had won his way in somehow, which meant that he was a fighter. Perhaps his was a natural talent, in which case Vol was curious about what his opponent must look like in the aftermath of their battle

"I have yet to see you fight," Voldemaras said. "Do you intend to do so, or is enough for you simply to have won the title Freeborn?"

There was some challenge implied in his words, but Vol wasn't exactly inviting the younger lion to fight him. He could see the healing wounds as well as anyone else, and when he tested the fellow, he wanted him to be at his fighting best. There would be no other way to measure his ability. But there were other ways to get the measure of a lion, and Vol was in an inquisitive mood.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Ru turned and looked up at the lion who had spoken to him. Having spent his entire life being smaller than everyone around him except his sisters, it didn't bother him to look up. Not while he was still growing. He doubted that he would ever achieve this scarred lion's size, however, and that bothered him a bit. He had not failed to notice that most of the adult lions in the Stormborn were pretty damn big, and so it stood to reason that his smaller size would likely put him at a disadvantage when it came to fighting, unless he became very good at it.

He wondered if the golden-eyed lion was issuing him a challenge, or if he was simply someone who by nature tended to lean toward antagonizing in his remarks. Ru decided not to take the words as a challenge, even though he had a competitive streak that made him want to do just that. He still hadn't fully recovered and the healer's threat that he might not regain full use of his muscles if he didn't do as he was told had been effective. Ru had never before been tended by a healer and didn't know that sometimes they tended to exaggerate things for effect.

"I will fight when the healers tell me I'm allowed," Ru answered. "In the mean time I'm trying to learn more of the Stormborn style of fighting by watching the warriors here."

He didn't want the older lion to think he was malingering or weak or useless. He didn't know who he was, but he carried himself as if he was someone important. Ru wasn't all that much for authority figures, and rarely found them intimidating, but he could recognize the good sense in being polite to them until he learned who they were and how badly they could screw up his life if they took a dislike to him. It was fun, though, to see how far he could push people. He'd been doing that for most of his life.

"I don't know your name," he said.  

[Princess_Feylin]

"Hiding behind the healers' orders? Pfaugh! No Stormborn with iron and salt in his blood would admit to such, even if they were soft enough to do it," Vol said, shaking his head in disgust at this mild-mannered freeborn. The standards for the pride were definitely slipping.

"Healers may be freeborn, but they are not reavers, and a reaver is a warrior through and through. A true warrior would not give up any opportunity to better himself and hone his skills just because some healer told him not to." He fixed Ru with a golden-eyed stare that seemed to accuse the younger lion of being a craven and worse. "We have a saying for that. Flowers in the blood."

The older warrior looked the young freeborn up and down. He must have defeated somebody to get in, but who had it been, and how had he done it? Vol was finding it difficult to believe that this under-sized lion who spoke so carefully had beaten any of his Stormborn brethren, and yet he must have done so. It was impossible to sneak into the Stormborn, and even if someone had the balls to try it, they wouldn't succeed, and then the Stormborn would tear the fool limb from limb.

"What sort of blood do you have, anyway? I don't think you're viking-born. You're too small for that."

Whether he was actually ignoring Ru's statement about not knowing his name or simply hadn't heard it, being distracted by his own thoughts and words, was anyone's guess. He wasn't likely to give his name until he got some answers though.  

[Princess_Feylin]

The fur along Ru's spine twitched its way from the base of his skull to the base of his tail and then shivered its way to the tip of his tail in the form of several brisk, angry lashes. Much of what the larger lion was saying was alien to him. Salt and iron in their blood must be the pride's way of describing bravery and toughness, he supposed. And it certainly made a contrast to the saying he shared next, flowers in the blood. Ru knew for a fact that was intended as a goad.

"I'm not hiding behind anyone," Ru said, barely keeping the growl from his voice. "There's no shame in preferring not to make injuries worse. Just common sense."

He stopped himself just short of saying that if the larger lion was so keen on seeing him fight, Ru would be happy to oblige him. There was a trap in that. Ru was not so angry that he couldn't see it. The other lion was larger, stronger, and more experienced. It was unlikely Ru would win that fight, and if he lost too spectacularly, maybe they would throw him out of the pride.

He wondered what viking-born meant, but he probably wasn't that. Though oddly enough it seemed to be better to be viking-born than not. Ru really didn't know enough about this pride and its ways, and he would have to do something about that soon, before he found himself in another situation like this, where he only understood about two thirds of what was being said to him. It didn't help, of course, that his ears sometimes played tricks on him and made him mishear things.

"I don't know," he said. "But I don't see why it would matter. I'm not my ancestors, and whoever they are and whatever they did doesn't change who I am."  

[Princess_Feylin]

Vol watched as the younger lion very obviously tried not to react to his incendiary words. He couldn't help feeling a measure of pride, though it might have been misplaced. It had been bothering him that he couldn't get a rise out of the green-eyed lion, no matter what he said or implied about his courage (or lack thereof). It was good to see that the youth wasn't a craven, but instead seemed simply to be able to hold his temper in check to a point. Vol could respect a lion who could control his emotions. He could not respect someone who had no emotions to control.

"You'll get more. Maybe once you're used to them, you won't pay them so much mind." Having determined that he wasn't dealing with a coward, Vol felt it would be all right to ease off a little bit. He wasn't actually in the mood for a fight right now, after all, and if he kept needling the young freeborn he might just end up with one. Not that there was any danger of him losing.

He had to disagree with the lion's views on ancestry though. A lion's parents, grandparents, and other forebears were important. While it was true that who they were and what they did might not change their descendants' personalities and abilities, it did set a standard for descendants to live up to. Without that standard it was hard to know how hard a lion would have to strive to achieve their level of greatness. Lions whose parents were unknown ought to work much harder, since they were essentially the beginning of their line as Stormborn and had to give their cubs something to be proud of and aspire to.

He said as much to the younger lion, and then went on to add, "I can tell you the deeds of my ancestors for four generations, and if I had any cubs they would have my own deeds to list, too, and could do so with pride. What have your parents done that you can boast of after a viking? What can we expect from you?"  

[Princess_Feylin]

There was still more than a little challenge in the older lion's words, but Ru could tell that he was backing off for whatever reason. Perhaps it had been because Ru had taken a more aggressive tone rather than simply trying to mollify the golden-eyed fighter. So did that mean that the older lion was trying to avoid a fight or that he had simply been trying to provoke Ru into reacting? Ru didn't get the impression that he was speaking to someone who avoided conflict on the whole, so more likely it was the latter. He was being tested.

"Actually, my plan was to become such a good fighter that no other lion can lay claws on me," he said. As he spoke his voice returned to a less bombastic tone and timbre. Now he was joking, though the only hint of it came from the twitch of his ears as he amused himself, if not the lion he was speaking to.

"So I suppose you can expect that from me. And you can expect that I will kill any pirate who crosses my path as slowly and painfully as possible, and that I will take more pleasure in it than most. Is that enough for you?"

His green eyes burned just a little with unholy pleasure as he envisioned the destruction he hoped to one day visit upon the pirates who had killed his sisters. He had always found the pain of others thrilling in a way no one else seemed to, and lately he had learned that he experienced a similar thrill when it came to his own pain. However things turned out, he would enjoy exacting his revenge.  

[Princess_Feylin]

The casual confidence with which the young male proclaimed his plan to become such a good fighter that he would be untouchable made Vol laugh aloud. That sort of bravado was exactly how a Stormborn warrior ought to talk. Though there was nothing wrong with scars. Vol had acquired many of them over the course of his life and he was not ashamed of a single one. They were all earned in battle or in training, and each one had a story attached which would make his descendants proud, when he someday decided to take a mate.

"Is that so?" he said, now grinning. He had not noticed the amused twitch of the younger lion's ears which signaled that he was joking, and so he could not help but be amused by his naivete. No lion was that good, even among the Stormborn.

However, Vol did not find much to laugh at in the way the green-eyed lion spoke of his intention to slaughter any pirate he came across. While Vol himself had no objections to that particular goal in life, he was just a little unsettled by the gleam in the younger lion's eyes when he mentioned it. It wasn't just the determined gleam of a young lion who wanted to make a name for himself. There was something else there. What was it he'd said about taking more pleasure in the killing than most? There was more to that.

"It will do." He nodded.

"My name is Voldemaras," he said then. "And someday I will kill you. But not today."

And with that Vol turned away and began walking up to the ice melts for a drink. The last few moments had brought him to the conclusion that this young freeborn would be worth watching, and so watch him, he would. Perhaps he would even step in and do some training with him.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Ru had no idea that his eyes took on that sort of terrifying gleam when he spoke of wreaking vengeance on the pirates, but even if he had known, he would not have been able to say whether it was the prospect of vengeance which caused the gleam or the prospect of extreme pain and violence. All he knew was that whenever he thought of it he felt a burning heat low in his gut which he would someday learn was very close to arousal. He wanted this in many ways.

At last! A name! Though now Ru realized there was nothing he could do with it since the lion who had given it was walking away from him. He certainly wasn't going to chase after him; he was too proud to go chasing after anyone. So he would just have to wonder who it was he had just spoken to. He'd already met the Warlord, so he knew that wasn't it, but he couldn't believe someone with that much arrogance was just a rank and file warrior. Not knowing irked him.

It irked him, too, that he didn't understand Voldemaras' parting words. On the surface they sounded like a threat, but they lacked any sort of tonal or facial cues to indicate that they were intended in such a way. There was an almost ritualistic sort of sound to them, but he didn't know what it signified. Just like it had taken him unforgivably long to realize that what Voldemaras wanted to know was whether he was a fighter or not, and to see some proof of it other than his words.

More and more he was coming to realize that he really had no idea what he was getting into when he fought his way into the Stormborn, and he got the feeling he would not get by on sufferance for too much longer. He would have to learn more. The trouble was he didn't know how to begin, even. His ignorance irritated him.