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~Newborn cub dialogue~
Vuka sat bewildered in front of the newborn Ferus prince. She swallowed hard, her Neutron eyes wide. It was impossible to mistake with anyone else. He wasn't Inkohlakalo, but he wasn't what they were expecting either. Ibada proudly displayed her son like a prize she had won, a smug grin on her face. Nearby, Nusu also glanced with admiration at their prophesized future king, not too unlike how Sababu had once smiled at her nephew when they left the pyramid kingdom. But that wasn't what had Vuka's attention, nor was it the reason why she called for Mjuvi and Sababu to join her immediately.
When her two age-old pride sisters joined her, Sababu stiffened, perplexed at what she saw. "It's not...him?" she asked carefully.
Vuka shook her head without looking at anyone but the Ferus cub. He drew all eyes regardless. "No. Not Inkohlakalo."
"Of course, not," chuckled Ibada sarcastically, the sound grating on their ears. "That pathetic beast was nothing more than a feline extension of the Chaos Serpent. But power...true power...that comes not from the skies and stars, but the depths of Hell, the fire that burns all life away and gives it at the same time. Lunga predicted it perfectly."
"Lunga?" Mjuvi's ears flicked. She saw through Kumbuka's eyes as if Ibada wasn't wearing her cultist hood. "That demon-worshipping lioness dancing around a flaming pit and singing her crazy songs?"
"Not songs. Prophecies. The fires sang to her, and she echoed their words into the air. Only ignorant, deaf fools disregard their significance." Ibada half-growled at Mjuvi. "You should know this. The eyes of the snake were given to you long ago."
"Only in my next lives did I learn to see," hissed Mjuvi. Sababu held up a paw to stem the argument.
"Vuka, what say you?" she asked. "Is this the end? Is this how the pride finally turns on itself once and for all?"
The Neutron-eyed lioness once again shook her head. "It's only the beginning." And as she looked down at the Ferus cub, she knew he heard every word, and that he'd remember their names once he could speak. He already had the beginning of strange nubs at his shoulder blades.
~Cub dialogue~
It was as if nature itself bent to his will. Animals of all kinds didn't harm the young prince; indeed, small prey willingly came to him to be eaten or otherwise sacrificed, mostly field mice and small birds big enough to be swallowed without much struggle. He was curious, like all cubs, about his world, and before he had even seen his first waterhole, he knew all the animals that lived there and their habits; he even learned some of their names, and this became frightening when he knew the same of the humans in Lesotho!
When Mjuvi, Vuka and Sababu came once again to see him, all the lions and lionesses in the Immortal Den accompanied them. They desperately needed answers, fearing something even worse than Inkohlakalo's evil. By now, the prince could speak fluently and smiled in a friendly way as he watched them approach. Even stranger still, he sometimes sat on his haunches more like a man or baboon than any cat, literally folding his paws into his lap at an odd angle. "Welcome, aunties, uncles, cousins. I have been waiting for you." His voice was deep and rich, like an adult male trying to claim a lioness. It was startling, unnerving, and dangerous.
Mjuvi bared her fangs first, daring to get closer to the cub. "Who are you to talk to us like that? You have been odd ever since you've been born. What are we supposed to do with you?"
"Do? Oh, nothing, Aunt Mjuvi. Lunga says hi, by the way." In a move that stunned the much bigger lioness, he suddenly reached out and pressed his padded palm to the side of her cheek; he revealed that he had opposable thumbs, just like a human! She hissed in surprise and backed away, eyes wide with horror and awe.
"Lunga?" It was Sababu who spoke in the silence that followed. "You know Lunga? How?"
"She sang my praises back when I lived in the fiery pit," chuckled the prince. "She sings them now, sings to know that she helped her lord and master into this realm. It has been a long time since I've touched Earth soil."
"Tell me," implored Vuka, looking strangely vulnerable. "Tell me who you are. You are not Inkohlakalo..."
"Oh, I get it!" He suddenly laughed like a great joke had been made. "You think I'm his successor! Ha! But no, no...of course, not. He was but a rat carrying fleas, and I was the plague that spread." He grinned, baring sharp saber teeth. "He was my servant, nothing more. Besides, I can't rule with a weak usurper like him on the throne, can I?" Another laugh escaped him, sounding harsh and cruel, like he thought nothing of the evil Tsavo king from long ago.
"Then...then...you are...." Vuka swallowed again, clearing her throat. "You truly are the king. Our king."
With a smirk, he corrected, "I am your god."
~Adult dialogue~
"Yesssss..." Sitting upright on his oddly humanlike pose, the prince raised both forepaws towards the sun and flexed them as far as possible, revealing clawed hands. "Yesssss..." He had to practice this day and night in order to draw in enough strength before it was time; if the sun was down, he did this to the moon, and if the moon wasn't out, he found the brightest star, be it clear or stormy. Whoever he was talking to didn't respond for mortal ears to hear, but he sounded encouraged, victorious, like an arrogant bully feeding his ego. To anyone who saw him, however, it just looked creepy...
"Immortal," he chanted to the wind. "Eternal. Forever." With flexible, clawed fingers, he made signs and gestured in the air, his eyes closed in concentration. It looked like some kind of occult meditation. He clapped his paws together loudly, and it was eerily similar to the crack of a gun going off. "Flawless perfection! Blood and lust and hate and love! All things good and gone above! Let them see that all's set right! From darkest deep, I bring the light!" He finished his chant with a thunderous roar that echoed across the plains, startling birds from trees and setting off any prey animals that could hear him.
But it didn't matter. The spells were taking place, and he could feel them growing stronger all the time. A new breed of big cat would rise when he took the throne.
~Coronation dialogue~
The body of Ghadhabu was left where it lay. The black primal king had willingly submitted to his son, for the prince convinced him that this was the way. There was no sign of struggle, not a drop of blood on his claws or teeth, and the bite through his maned neck was clean, as if he had been a tiny antelope fawn instead of a male just slightly larger than his heir. All those generations since Inkohlakalo, all those kings who'd come and gone before him...it had all come to this. Vuka saw his immortality, Lunga had known that he would arrive, and Ibada had been the one to birth him. He was perfection itself.
He looked at them, the Sign in his eyes, and smiled gladly. He sat upright and spread his arms like he would embrace them, fingers flexing to show his claws like human hands. The entire pride, immortal and mortal alike, gathered around their fallen king, looking up at their new ruler. "Oh, my beloved, treasured family," he said in a voice as smooth as honey. "I have waited so very long to see you all, and now I am here. You should know that now everything will be just as it was supposed to be years ago. From now on, there are no more princes, no more future kings. Unless I have a better body than this one, all there is...is me." He smiled broadly, flashing long canines stained with the blood of his father.
"Tell us," asked Sababu in a trembling voice. "Tell us who you are."
He grinned even wider, chuckling. "I am Luciferleo. Stay with me, and I will give you the world. Let us reign together." A pair of wings suddenly burst out of his back, prompting him to roar, and then he launched forward into the sky, spreading them wide. And then they all watched as their god-king soared above them all, the perfect balance of light and dark, good and evil, in one Ferus male that would change their world.
~~
The first Ferus cub born in the pride and apparently the reincarnation of Lucifer himself, Luciferleo takes his name from "light-bringer" and "lion" combined, hinting at his destiny, the first ever to not seek a distinctly African name. Despite his inherently evil nature, the winged Ferus seeks balance in life if not outright neutrality; he doesn't seek to kill cubs or lionesses unnecessarily, and he sees no greater purpose to contributing to the force of chaos. In actuality, perhaps like the Harbinger was, he had a "flawed" personality that couldn't coexist with the likes of the Chaos Serpent and other demonic creatures clearly on the path of evil. Instead, with strangely human traits and two-colored wings on his back, Luciferleo is the perfect evil disguised as the perfect good.
His first act as king was to lead everyone from the coldest regions of Lesotho back to the pyramid kingdom in Sudan. Once there, he put the pride to work tunneling out a new palace in the sands. If everyone expected death and destruction to befall them like Inkohlakalo had caused, they didn't know Luciferleo's hidden agenda; every time he took a step on the barren earth, flowers and grass grew from the light glowing within him. It was an exchanging of lives--for every life he'd taken previously, he would restore the land and make Sudan livable for them all again.
It wasn't just that he was something more than Inkohlakalo returned. It was that he was going to bury his memory beneath a pyramid of fresh flowers watered by blood, far above the fires of Hell and in the light of Heaven above. He was like some kind of dark, magical unicorn among felines, forever granting wishes and bestowing blessings as well as curses, but only if one asked politely and made a deal.
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