||||| The orange sun shone over the vast grounds, grass swaying and tree leaves rustilng. Vultures cawed as they flew around for sight of any carrion or left-overs. Hyenas cackled as they trotted through tall, dry shrubs and searched for prey to steal. A river rushed, undoubtly unconcerned about the creatures frolicking beside it.
||||| Sleeping in a small rocky cave beside the river, was a smaller group of lions. There was a lioness, a larger male lion, and two tiny cubs cuddled beside the lioness.
||||| The male, leader of the pride, was big compared to the others, but not that huge in general. His tawny fur rose and set as he breathed in the cool, crisp air o the savanna. The lioness was skinny and small, such that she could be mislooked as an adolscent. Yet her gren eyes sparkled whenever she talked, and her pale fur was shiny in the dim light. And the two cubs, both male, slept beside their mother. They could not be more than a few months old, as their paws were still small and delicate, and their fur was soft. One was sleek and cream-furred, the other muscular and cocoa-furred. They were both as lively as piarie dogs, poking their heads into everybody's buisness whenever they could, and jumping and prancing around in the sunlight.
|||||This pride was not big, so they were often attacked for their territory. Occasionally, a small pack of hyenas or a pair of rusty lions would come and try to wrestle for their cave; but luckily, the pride would always manage to chase off those stragglers and call the cave home.
||||| Today, as the sun set, the four lions were in deep sleep. The leader of the pride grunted and growled in his sleep as if an opponent was battling him one to one. The lioness, whom we were told to be called Mother, had creases between her eyebrows, and, every few moments, she opened her eyes a bit to check if there was any enemy crossing into their territory. And the two little cubs; the cream one was named Caspian and the cocoa one Sunset; were restless. They mewed and twitched in their sleep, occasionally bumping against Mother's belly.
||||| Suddenly, there was a snarl and five huge shadows leaped onto the pride. The lions, caught by surprise, yowled and scrambled to the back of the cave, fur bristling and hissing. Caspian was clawing the ground in fear, and Sunset was baring his teeth.
||||| "Leave, leave far away, or die fighting," the largest lion in the front growled. He was huge and black-furred; his radiant teal eyes gleamed in the dark, he bared his strangely long fangs, and his white paws thumped the ground. His comrades, all huge, long-fanged and black-furred, hissed in agreement.
||||| The leader knew that whatever he did, how hard he tried, his pride would die in the paws of these strange, sinister lions. He looked at his lioness and cubs one last time before yowling to them, "You all run! I'll fend them off for now; RUN!"
||||| And, seeing his pride streak away in the darkness, and the big lions snarling with fury, his heart swelled with pride. Not until the leader lion snarled, "You will die in the grasp of I, Rutako, and nobody will ever remember your presence."
||||| Fangs ripped his throat, the smaller leader saw blood fly everywhere from under his chin...and, with one last loving thought, everything went black.

||||| Mother, Caspian and Sunset raced far, far away from the screeching, yowling cave, and the horrible sights inside it. The three lions were at a lost, unsure what to do, unsure where to go. Mother knew that the cubs needed food and shelter, but all she could smell was hyenas, a leopard and water.
||||| Wait. Water. They needed water.
||||| "Caspian, Sunset," Mother called, slightly softer because she didn't want to be heard by larger enemies. "Come; we need to take a drink."
||||| The two cubs, currently wrestling, broke up and after a few mews joined their mother. The first thing Caspian did was ask about their leader, or rather, Father. "Mother, mother," he meowed, "is Father okay? Is he gonna come to us later?" Caspian was soft and had a caring, good personality; he tended to take care of family and friends more than he should.
||||| Sunset, who already guessed the truth, told to his smaller brother, "We--we don't know yet. Father might come, he might have ran away... but it'll be hard to find him, wouldn't it? Maybe he's away, having a good, peaceful life somewhere else."
||||| Caspian nodded, convinced, and walked a bit faster. Mother nodded approvingly to Sunset, who gave a small, sad smile.
||||| Quite soon, they had arrived to the waterhole and started to lap up the water. Caspian was quite thirsty this night, as he didn't stop drinking the cool, flowing water. But Sunset had sensed something strange lurking near the waterhole. He opened his mouth to call out but the prescence dissapered immediatly. Forgetting about it, Sunset quickly lapped up his water.
||||| Thirst quenched, the three lions padded away to find some prey, as the cubs were complaining. Caspian said that his belly was empty as a dried-up river and Sunset said he couldn't walk from hunger. Mother sighed and agreed. "Stay here, and remember to hide if you have to."
||||| She returned with a plump, small gazelle carcass. It was delicious: the cubs eagerly stuffed themselves, taking in every single bite of meat, because the next meal could be very far away. Mother ate too, once the cubs lay down on their backs and rolled asleep. She licked the rest of the plump meat off and wondered, with lots of thought, whether her mate was actually alive or not. Eventually. she fell asleep, her tail wrapped protectively around her two sleeping little cubs.
||||| The days passed quickly, and the three lions managed to find a scrap or two every day, and sometimes the mother would make a succesful hunt and they would feast. But they always had to walk into enemy territory, with their lives at huge risk because they were weak and few. They had never seemed to find a territory to actually stay and live in, partly because the river was dry and prey was scarce, and partly because the cubs were now getting bigger, hungrier and restless.
||||| "Mother, this place is so cramped! We're not living here, right?" Sunset meowed as their mother led them to a leopard nest to look for any leftovers. "I do prefer te cave more, to be honest. You see, the cave has a LoT of water and ShAdE, and look at ThIs..."
||||| While Sunset was rating and commenting the enemy territory, Caspian was running amok. He jumped over thick bushes and scrambled up trees. He was chasing his tail when he bumped into Sunset's long commentary.
||||| "...and this place has literally nO source of ClEaN wAtEr--ouch!" Sunset squeaked as his younger brother collided into him. They collapsed into a heap and started to squabble at eachother, pummeling their hind paws into each other's belly.
||||| "Stop it!" Mother growled, ears pricked. These males were nearly adolscents now: eleven months old and soon, their manes would be growing. She wondered what colour and shape it will be, before snapping her attention back to the frolicking cubs. "We need to go now! Stop it!"
||||| The males grudgingly stopped their play-fight but kept bickering all the way to the shrubland. They were so loud, that even the zebras and gazelles had left, shaking their ears throughly as if a bug was crawling in it.
||||| "Hush!" Mother hissed, her ears pricked again. She could definetely hear something...only if they weren't meowing so loudly...
||||| Suddenly a heavy weight jumped on Mother and her knees buckled to the weight. She gave a cry of surprise and saw her two cubs, eyes huge, run to her with claws unsheathed.
||||| Mother did not know what was on her, but the cubs did. They slashed and bit, but the two-tusked creature was so huge, grey and thick that they barely made a dent. The only thing they did was anger it more; the creature swung it's head with a CRACKing sound.
||||| Caspian yowled with fear as a single tusk, white like moonlight and sharp as fangs, slashed inches from his face. Sunset snarled with fury, his yellow eyes gleaming, as he pounced onto this strange creature.
||||| The creature immediatly shambled off his mother but started to attack him. He dodged expertly but he was aware that his kin were watching, terrified, behind him. He didn't want this skinly creature to squash his brother or mother, so he tried to avoid making the creature stumble backwards.
||||| Sunset clawed and pounded the creature, making sure it was far away from his dwindling family. At last, exhausted, missing a tusk and bleeding, the grey creature gave a low growling sound and slowly ambled away, huffing to itself.
||||| "Caspian! Mother!" Sunset cried, running to the small huddle of lions. He wanted to see both of them safe and alive, he wanted to cuddle with them and maybe hunt a wildebeast fawn for them too.
||||| But heonly saw Caspian, his body wracking with sobs. He was huddled over something...something large...something pale-furred and barely moving...
||||| "Sunset..." Caspian looked around and faced him, tears streaming down his cheeks and his eyes focused on the ground, "Mother's dead."
||||| Sunset saw the huge, bloody rips on Mother's side, and a tusk was impaled into her stomach. Her eyes focused briefly on Sunset, and she meowed something unaudible.
||||| Then they glazed over, those bright green eyes, and she spoke no more.

||||| After the burial and vigil, the two downcast brothers trudged through the dry, tall grass.
||||| Their mother had just died from a creature--Caspian said it was called elephant-- and now they were alone, with no other elder lion for help or comfort. They barely had any experience in hunting, and way less in fighting enemies and attackers. All they each had now was a brother.

||||| Three months had passed since the death. The river was rushing with clean, fresh water, saplings and vivid green grass had growed, and best of all, this was the season of plenty. Plump prey had sprung up in all sorts of places, and not only big, risky buffalo and wildebeast, but slow, fat gazelle and impala fawns too.
||||| The two brothers traced around the river, following the shoreline. They had just finished a hare carcass with some half-eaten fawn they scavenged. Caspian had now grown sleek and stream-bodied, somewhat like a cheetah, while his brother, Sunset, was bulkier and muscular, brown fur rippling in the bright sunlight. Caspian had a very light-coloured mane that looked quite scarce; Sunset's mane was already growing in thick, dark-brown tufts.
||||| They were not well-fed, but not starved either. They were living quite fine, managing to find scraps every day and sometimes Caspian would even hunt a fawn or rabbit, but there was one problem: they could not find territory to live in. That was the reason why they were always exploring, looking for a suitable and safe place to live.
||||| They kept walking till they found a small shrubland, the territory just slightly larger than the cave they lived in as cubs. While Caspian waited at the edge, Sunset stalked in and sniffed the trees and grounds carefuly, trying to scent any trace of ownership. There was none, and after seeing the nod, Caspian trotted in the land.
||||| It was bordered by thick, green bushes. A few large trees looked over them, giving plenty of shade and shelter to rest during hot sun and heavy rain. A fresh river and pond were flowing close to this shrubland. And best of all, there was always prey wandering near here to taste its delicious plants. Sunset smiled and the two brothers padded to the trees and sprayed their urine and clawed on the barks to mark their ownership. Hopefuly, no lions would challenge them for their territory, for now.
||||| They were lucky. No lions had come to attack for their territory. The brothers grew fast over the passing five months, because of the plentiful prey and the large spaces to run. They ate a lot because the dry season was coming in a few weeks or so, and it wasn't that their shrubland had all the delicous grass for prey to eat.
||||| The brother's manes had grown, too. Caspian's mane type was definetely scarce, and it was the colour of a young fawn, to his wishes, as he did not fancy big manes. Sunset, on the other hand, had a deep-caramel coloured mane that was thick and slightly glossy. He shook this mane often, as if trying to impress someone.
||||| Today, since their hunting skills had grown mightily, the brothers decided to hunt a wildebeest. The herd was going to cross the river any day, and they wanted to taste the laste of them. After a small drink from the pond, Sunset leaped on the termite hill beside their tree and scanned the grounds: yes, there was a herd nearby, grazing near the river. He told his brother, and Caspian nodded and they walked there.
||||| When they were an ample amount away, they started to stalk. Caspian chose the target: a fat female wildebeest with one of her horns broken off. She was limping from a wound on her hind leg as well, which was a bonus. Sunset nodded and they pounced.
||||| The herd scattered and snorted when the young male lions charged at them. They were about to pounce on the target when there was a small cry of pain and terror a few tail-lengths away from them.
||||| This sound had reminded so bad about mother that they abandoned hunt. Immediatly running to the sound, they saw a young lioness lying on the grass, green eyes huge with terror and sun-yellow fur spiked with fear. They looked up and saw a huge, male, horned wildebeest charging to her.
||||| Without thought, Sunset leaped onto the wildebeest with a roar. He scratched and bit the huge monster, barely noticing Caspian as he joined hastily. Sunset didn't fight just because of the lioness, but that he could not stand seeing lions getting killed by their own prey. He finally connected his fangs into the wildebeest's neck and clenched it, while Caspian held down the legs and head. After a few struggles and a grunt, the huge wildebeest fell still and limp.
||||| Slightly groaning, Sunset removed his his bloody fangs from the dead wildebeest's neck. He slightly staggered but felt a warm, strong weight steady him. He turned around to see the pretty yellow lioness smiling at him.
||||| "Hi," she purred, green eyes shinign with admiration and looking very smitten, "my name's Sunrisebringer. And you?"
||||| And from that day, a pride was born. Sunset renamed himself to Sunsetbringer, just like his newly found mate. Caspian had joined as a submale, helping him patrol the territory and look for new lionesses to claim and persuade to live with. This was highly succesful: three lionesses, Yule (a dark-brown), Daisy (a bright-yellow with a strangely mossy-coloured back), and Hannah (a glossy orange-cream). And when he turned three years old, Sunrisebringer gave birth to two beautiful female cubs: Lily (a pretty white-fur with bright green eyes and with overgrown teeth) and Honeylake (a honey-fur with grey eyes like Caspian). And the other three lionesses did too, over the years: Yule (a male cub named Sand), Daisy (a female cub named Yellowpelt), and Hannah lost her cubs right after they were born, because of a hyena attack: they defeated the hyenas but both of Hannah's cubs were killed.
||||| And Caspian reported of a place called the 'Trade Route', where different kings were selling, buying and offering for lions, items and food from other kings. Sunsetbringer visited the Route and, with a few silver beetles as currency, bought a pretty silver-blue lioness named Celestia and a few toys for the cubs. He sold the extra food that his lionesses had hunted and his pride, Sun Pride, always had a great living.
||||| And one day, while Sunsetbringer was exploring the lands, he stumbeld across a shaman lioness with glowing blue wisp growing around her. "Finally, I've found the strong lion I've been seeking," she says. "The spirits are disturbed, joined suddenly by the ones who were killed as mere trophies... too early, too many." She speaks deeply in her trance, whilst a feral spirit begins to manifest before his eyes. "The hunters shall become the hunted. These humans must pay the price for their cruel, evil deeds. You must spawn a cub that will be used as the tool for our revenge. This tool will let us, the ancient spirits, rise up in the form of a Ferus, to bring a devastating end to all poaching." The shaman approached and handed him a pouch of herbs before vanishing. Sunsetbringer opened the herbs and sniffed deeply: it emmited a sweet yet sharp scent, and it looked like a bundle of white roots. Sunsetbringer looked at the spot where the shaman had once been, then trotted back home.
||||| He immediatly went to the Route to buy a pretty lioness to feed the herb, named Mukombero, to. He didn't really care about generation; he was generation one, after all, and he never get any good cubs except Lily; so he bought a lioness named Garlicpatch that was in heat, who was quite skilled, and immediatly brought her home. After discussing the pros and cons she agreed and he fed her the Mukombero. Using a quarter of his savings, Sunsetbringer bought an Instant Birth Feather and gave it to Garlicpatch. And immediatly, she had two cubs: a dusty female with thin rainbow stripes and...yes...a cute-looking male with two little sharp fangs poking out of his tiny mouth, a stub tail and he was much larger than the female.
||||| Sunsetbringer heard of these 'applicators' before in the Routes: they were items that changed your genes of look. There were base applicators (which changed your base fur colour, which was below all your markings), marking applicators (which removed or added marking colours and types), and eye applicators (which chaned your eye colour). He was deciding to buy some of these applicators to put on his Ferus cub, which he was debating of doing something very special for him. He also heard of stat increasers which made the user gain in his/her stats. He decided to buy some of those too.
||||| So in the end, he bought a Red Lace app, a Proteles Heavy and a Nacre marking app. He used the Red Lace on himself, and the Proteles Heavy and Nacre on the Ferus. He didn't really care how the Ferus looked except he HAD TO BE MARKING-HEAVY. Because he heard about this 'Stud Requests' thing that other Kings sometimes make their own lionesses breed to other kings for a cost of silver beetles or gold beetles. He wanted his pride to be not too poor, and very happy and satisfied every day. Yes, his pride was good and strong (he had even sold one of Celestia's cubs for a good 100 and that cub was going to be a broodmother), but he wanted his Ferus cub to be better. So he named the Ferus Moon Rising, to Garlicpatch's delight. Moon Rising was a real, frisky cub. In no more than a week his rose-coloured eyes had opened already and he was frolicking all around the territory, chasing the older cubs and hunting butterflies. Although sometimes, he would acciedentally (Sunsetbringer convinced himself) bite or scratch a cub, he was amazing. And Sunsetbringer knew that Moon Rising would become his next heir.