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Tough, rigorous warriors are not created on their own, just as villains are not born with rotten hearts. Everyone is subject to external stigmas that influence our actions, just as the elements dictate the future through the light temporal web. Dusk'Shade shares similar ideals, in herself she had never been a villain, much less a fighter, nevertheless life taught her to be one, only giving her this choice to survive, after all, those who end up alive in the end are the best adapted.
Born in a royalty, Dusk'Shade was one of the heirs of an imposing lion, marked by the whitish spots on his body, as well as black rosettes on his rosebush back. The king's eyes were bluish and deep, like the sea's hangover at the end of the tide, and a whitish mane in contrast with blue tufts. This was Akai, the noble and loyal king, remarkable for his fair and always controlled behavior, a true gentleman. Her mother was a renowned lioness, gifted with black spots and a gray coat, she was nicknamed Mist'Breeze, the Viscountess. Together with a small pride of lionesses they dominated the hills to the north, which bordered a verdant swamp where their rivals lay.
Akai made a grave mistake when he abandoned the edges of his territory during the dry season, focusing on trying to get his lionesses to survive, leaving an invitation for any bold invaders. Towards nightfall a troupe of invaders moved through the sticky swamp, emerging in the mountains that bordered the forbidden lands. In the darkness malevolent eyes lustfully watched the enemy lands as they grunted in excitement. Stone'Strike was guiding her followers into the clandestine territory without the consent of her king, but the lioness couldn't care less, she had a plan in mind.
At his most vulnerable moment, during the peak of the drought, Akai was forced to go on patrol, being followed by Mist'Breeze, his right-hand, leaving his pride behind. The lionesses were easily slaughtered by Stone'Strike's minions, even with the intervention of a Matata Pride lioness, Echo'Song, but she was knocked out in the fight trying to defend the enemy lionesses.
Stone'Strike and her sister Cedar'Fang went straight into the final confrontation. Both lionesses surprised the duo when they were near a cliff, and with one clean hit Cedar'Fang pushed Akai to his certain death. Mist'Breeze tried to escape, but her tail was grabbed by Stone'Strike, and she was also executed with a bite to the back of the head. In the blink of an eye the resident lions had been annihilated, and the Matata Pride had conquered new territory, or at least, that's what it should be. Stone'Strike had her own plans, that would be her secret base, where her king would not know of its location, and she would have the right to raise her army in complete secrecy. The lioness did not expect that another gift awaited her, Ember'Leap, one of her subordinates, found among the rocks a small nursery with three cubs, the beginning of the tyrant's longed-for dynasty. Dusk'Shade was among these cubs.
Stone'Strike never worried about being a mother to the cubs, and did not allow others to approach them, they were her servants and hers alone. Her relationship with the cubs was always abusive, her cuddling moments came only after hard work, which drove the cubs to exhaustion. Stone'Strike was known to inflict physical trauma on the cubs so that they would engage in their training, which ended in the death of one of them, while the other died in a test where he got lost in the middle of an arid region. Dusk'Shade, the sole survivor, always aspired to a mother figure, but was cast aside by Stone'Strike, and forced to perform horrendous acts, such as attacking other prides, kidnapping cubs, or even torturing captured lionesses. Dusk'Shade was forced to adapt to a hostile environment early on to avoid a similar end as her siblings, and probably if she showed traits of failure could be executed by her own caretaker.
Dusk'Shade, in an act of madness, attempted to poison a carcass that would be eaten by Stone'Strike and some lionesses, but the tyrant detected the strange odor and discovered the setup, severely punishing Dusk'Shade to the point of nearly killing her. In agony, the lioness was forced to go weeks without food, wandering in the wilderness.
The results of the training were truly promising, Dusk'Shade was proving to be a skilled fighter and hunter, managing to help her companions hunt rhinos, something rarely seen, through coordinated strategies and furious blows. She demonstrated dominance over hyenas, and grew to a relatively large size for a lioness. She was the warrior Stone'Strike had been waiting for, her chance to finally take the throne, the weapon she needed to compensate for her old age.
In the cloak of a dark night, where the moon refrained to hide amidst the clouds, letting the pitch of night consume the midnight, the army moved into the swamp, crossing its murky waters to reach the green plains, the heart of the Matata territory. Stone'Strike's target, where a strict, selfish and pitiful king slept.
Matata Pride was asleep when the invasion began, not alarmed by the familiar scent of the two sisters and the lionesses nearby, but surprised when another appeared in the brush, and together they ambushed Saber'Mane, the male king who ruled those lands. He didn't even have a chance to react properly, he was awakened with a bite to the back of the neck, while another lioness pulled on his thigh, jamming her fangs. He was cut open in his exposed belly by a lethal blow from Stone'Strike, creating a commotion circle of terrified stares from the lionesses there, especially Echo'Light, the kindly blue-furred and graced queen.
This was the moment Stone'Strike had been waiting for, climbing the rock, she declaimed her power, but appointed Dusk'Shade, her henchwoman, and now adopted daughter, as leader of the Matata Pride, holding to the presumption that she would still rule by her manipulative nature, in an indirect way, to prevent revolutions by the lionesses. Stone'Strike knew that should she appoint herself more revolts would happen, as the coup would become more obvious. For now, it was only convenient to blame Dusk'Shade as one of the masterminds of the revolution. The rebels, mainly Echo'Light and her followers after now noticing that her daughter, Echo'Song, was still unconscious because of those lionesses, were exiled and kept as prisoners.
Now was the beginning of a new reign, under the vision of a novice lioness, still at the end of puberty, who was now among a group of strangers, made leader of something she did not understand. Dusk'Shade's life had always been about surprises, but this was possibly the biggest plague that had ever befallen her. She had been made a warrior, not a leader.
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