It had been a long and tiring journey. The miles had passed fairly easily, but for a lioness on her own, passing through so many different landscapes meant occasionally running into a resident pride or band of roaming rogues. While most were content to leave her alone, others had taken exception to her presence. Of those that had actually noticed her, most sought only to drive her away, but a couple had taken to the idea of having her join them either to prevent her from passing on knowledge of their existence, or as in one particular case, to own her for themselves.
No one owned Kyoko.
One large male had taken it into his head that just because he thought she was beautiful, and wanted her, that he had the right to claim her. When she had told him in no uncertain terms that he couldn't have her, no matter how many other lionesses he possessed, he had thrown a complete fit and attacked her. She knew she had been lucky to survive, only the timely interruption of another band of rogues had saved her as the male with the wounded ego had raced off to defend his harem of girls from the new males and promptly forgot about Kyoko, allowing her to get far enough away that when he finally remembered and gave chase, she was long out of his reach.
The claw marks she still sported from that particular incident throbbed when ever she thought about it, which only prodded at her already heated temper. Glaring at the miles of sand still before her she sighed and shook her head, wondering why the hell she had felt the need to undertake this particular journey in the first place.
Some distance away a dark shape stood outlined by the shimmering horizon. The silhouette was that of a male's, the muscular frame and thick mane unmistakable. He appeared to be standing and gazing out across the lands, having positioned himself on a slight rise that afford him a far better view than Kyoko herself possessed. Frowning as she watched him for a long moment she already knew that he had seen her coming from several miles off, no way would someone be able to miss her, unless of course he was simply incompetent. But she doubted he was, even at this distance he stood in a manner than simply said 'fighter'.
Dust swirled about her as she stood silently, watching the large male up on the mound. He seemed to turn away and speak to someone out of her line of sight beyond the little rise the male occupied, and indeed a moment later she caught a glimpse of another lion turning and jogging off, vanishing behind another small rise in the landscape. Curious by the rather unusual behaviour, she stayed where she was, watching the ale instead of doing the smart thing and turning around to take the long way around the strange pair. Belatedly she realised the dark male had turned and was watching her intently. Knowing that it was now far too late to pretend innocent and slip away, she stood her ground as the imposing figure left his hillock and started towards her. Never before had she felt intimidated by any male, even the idiot who had tried to kidnap her for his harem, but this male… he was in a whole different league than the usual rogues. And that other male who had left.. what had that been about? Puzzled, she stood quietly as he gradually drew closer. At least she hadn’t sensed anything malicious or evil about him, if anything he looked.. stern and maybe antisocial. Which made her wonder just why he was making the effort to investigate a single lioness out here on her own.
It had been a long night for Samar, the Toka had somehow caught wind of one of his numerous raids on the prison and had sent out more Slayers to patrol the area around the ravine. And while they didn’t quite know just how the prisoners were getting out and food supplies getting in, they certainly suspected that there was something going on. Thus Samar had been forced to dodge the unexpected increase of Toka patrols in order to get to the ravine in time and warn the other Forsworn he worked with. It had added hours on to the estimated time to run the rescue and supply missions and had increased the amount of risk interminably, as well as a lot of extra stress for Samar, who was the architect of the entire thing. He rather suspected the night had also given him a few extra grey hairs.
Needless to say he had not slept at all and had only finished overseeing the last supply drop just as dawn broke over the pridelands. Calling a swift halt to their clandestine activities Samar had helped the other Druids get away from the ravine and blocked up the illegal tunnels as usual. But with all the Toka still snooping about he had almost been caught as he made his way around the lip of the ravine with the intention of going home and to bed. The patrol that had caught him simply wouldn’t buy that he was ‘out for a walk’, so he and the last of his helpers had been forced to pretend they were going hunting, and had summarily turned round and left the pride’s main territory for the rogue lands, watched the whole time by the suspicious Toka Slayers. Samar had known that neither of them could show their faces back in the pride until evening at the soonest and so had led his companion on an actual hunt, though not surprisingly they had proved unsuccessful in their endeavor, tired and sore as they had both been. Samar had finally sent his accomplice home when he had spotted the dark-hued female standing alone out there on the plains and with nothing else to do but stare at the horizon for another few hours, he decided he night as well be a good little soldier and find out what she was up to.
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