Voldemaras' entire body ached abominably. He was well aware that it was just one of the many side effects of growing older, but that did not mean that he was willing to accept the aging process or its effects on the body. He would continue to behave and comport himself as though he were still a young lion until he died or was killed. After all, he was still a Reaver of the Stormborn, and he was strong and virile. The fact that his old injuries pained him sometimes and he was perhaps a little bit stiff and slow first thing in the morning did not change anything.
As if to remind the gods and the pride that his increasing age had not taken anything from him in terms of vitality, Vol went through his morning ritual of stretching and working the kinks out of his body with deliberate slowness so that each stretch and flex would be both more painful but also more thorough. He would be very well limbered by the time he emerged properly from his den.
In the course of his exercises Vol managed to re-open a wound he'd acquired the last time he went out viking. That stung, but it was nothing like the discomfort he'd felt in acquiring the wound for the first time. The leopard who had slashed him behind his left elbow had not survived their battle, but he'd left him with a wound that was more than a little annoying, and very easily torn open by simple activities. He wished at times that he had killed him more slowly for the lingering irritation the wound would represent.
He licked the oozing blood away as best he could until the flow slowed to the point that its trickling would not prove to be a distraction or irritation as he went about his day. Vol supposed he was fortunate, in a way, that his morning exercises and stretches could only pull at the wounds on his body and were unlikely to open the head wound he had sustained on the last viking. That injury had actually caused him to hallucinate and lose consciousness for a time, and he had woken with his eyes glued shut by blood.
He had woken though, and that was the important part. Oh, that young Reaver Ruzanski had enjoyed making sport of him for allowing an enemy to strike him hard enough to knock him unconscious and produce hallucinations, but that was just how things were among Reavers. They made light of their injuries and those of others, for pain and scars were minor things that served to make a tale better told and a life better lived. A lion who died unscarred had not lived his life as life was meant to be lived.
And Ru had a good enough reason to be smug, Vol supposed. He had come out of that, his first real battle, virtually unscathed. Oh, he had a few scrapes and bruises, but none of them were any worse than the sort of injury he would have sustained in a hard day of sparring. Vol had been proud of that, since he credited it to the part he had played in training the younger lion. Ru had been a credit to the training Vol had given him. It had been time well spent.
Vol gave some thought to going to work more with Ru, but then he remembered that the viking they returned from had been Ru's first. Most likely the new Reaver was still sleeping off the effects of the mint and fermented fruit from the feast the night before. Vol remembered he had been hung over for what felt like days after his first night of celebration. Ru might have been more circumspect, but Vol doubted it. The young lion had the makings of a fine Stormborn, even if he had not been born to a lion of the Myrsky Syntynyt.
The older Reaver shook his head. It was good to be able to do that without feeling dizzy, as had been the case for a day and a half after that last attack on the mixed group of leopards and lions. Vol still could not understand what kind of insanity or stupidity would cause a lion to take up with a leopard. He would not be averse to relieving some stress and tension with one, but to actually form a relationship and raise cubs? That was just disgusting. Leopards were inherently inferior to lions, and by breeding with them it lessened the lion.
No, he would not be imposing himself on Ru so early in the day. That would be unnecessarily cruel, and Vol was rather fond of the boy. He would spare him that particular bit of torture. Perhaps. Or perhaps he would not. A grin spread across his mouth, curling its corners upward and exposing the sharp points of his canine teeth. The idea of dropping a chunk of ice into Ru's den was a very appealing though, and it would make the entire experience more memorable for him.
"Almost like I'm doing him a favor," Vol smirked as he made his way up to the ice melts in search of a chunk of ice he could carry back to the dens in his mouth. Maybe he could crush it on the way down so that it would be more difficult for Ru to escape the icy torment.
The walk up to the ice melts was a strain on the injury behind his elbow, but it did not bother his head any, and he was relieved. He had been avoiding the climb, just a little bit, out of fear that he would find it did not agree with his head. Head wounds were nasty, unpredictable things, and it could have been very bad for him. However, his fears were unfounded and he reached the ice melts with a minimum of pain or discomfort.
Once there he began to look around for the perfect piece of ice. It didn't take him long. He broke it off with a swipe of his paw and took what had fallen to the ground in his mouth and began to make his way quickly downhill so he could reach Ru before the ice melted. Oh, this was going to be fun!
