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Feyrahl, SoFurry Edition

So it Begins, Ch 0.1

The short-maned Lion took the lead in all directions, not that it made much difference to Mac since he couldn't understand either of the two. The long-maned Lion spent most of his time standing passively to the side with arms folded across his chest while the former only seemed to get angrier and angrier with Mac's inability to follow instructions. In the end, Mac eventually stopped and looked at the short-maned Lion and said with exasperation. "Listen... I can't understand you. I'm willing to do whatever you need me to do, but I can't very well follow directions if we're not speaking the same language!"

The more aggressive of the two Lions stepped right up to Mac, peering down at him and, with a sneer on his muzzle, spoke slowly and loudly, his voice reverberating in his chest with a growl. Off to the side, the long-maned Lion addressed the other casually and, if Mac wasn't mistaken, the comments were more than a little flippant, aimed at the short-maned one. The loud Lion's voice was redirected at the passive Lion, leaving Mac free of his ire... at least for as long as it took for the loud one to get his point across to someone who COULD understand him.

The two Lions continued to argue-- or, more specifically, the one with the short mane (named Khosk, if he understood the other Lion's address of him) did most of the arguing while the long maned Lion (referred to as Vihas by the other) seemed to hold his own with far fewer words. Mac attempted to follow along as best he could, and liked to think that Vihas was trying to calm down Khosk with reason despite the fiery-personality of the very verbose Lion constantly shouting back. In the end, Mac realized that they were getting nowhere and, if he was their 'prisoner' of a sort, the least he could do was encourage them to move things along in the hopes that he'd at least find some chance of understanding what was going on.

"Hey! You two! Are you going to be at this all morning? I'm still standing here, you know. Could we maybe try to find some way to--"

Every other word Mac was considering fizzled right out of his brain when Khosk glared at him, roared, and a blast of fire emerged from the Lion's palm and struck the ground by his foot, blackening the sand and causing a wisp of smoke to rise up from a small flame that seemed to be burning the ground itself. The Human had trouble processing that; did the Lion have some kind of torch or mini flamethrower or something with him? "W-what was that?"

Khosk finally went quiet, his frustrated sneer replaced by a self-satisfied smirk and he said a simple two or three word sentence in his strange language. The long-maned Lion stepped forward, holding his armored paw out over the scorch mark and water cascaded out of his palm as if it were a shower-head. While decidedly less flashy than Khosk's display it was no less fantastic or confusing. Mac had trouble rationalizing what he was seeing-- phenomenon that could only be described as "Is that.. magic?"

Vihas reached out with his unarmored paw and placed it on Mac's shoulder. The long-maned Lion spoke calmly and slowly, his voice neutral and without any real inflection. Due to his mellow sentence structure, Mac was able to pick up on some of his non-verbal cues-- the way his eyes glanced toward the horizon, the guiding gesture made with his plate-covered arm, and the casual gesture of his head back over his shoulder toward Khosk. Once Vihas said his piece, his amber eyes gazed at Mac, making the young man feel uncomfortable, not because of apparent intent-- merely from the intensity.

Nodding, Mac turned in the direction indicated by Vihas, he nodded and glanced over his shoulder. "Well.. whether I'm your guest or your prisoner, I suppose we're not really getting anywhere unless we start walking." and he started forward.

Khosk barked another series of what sounded like directions as he stormed toward Mac, but Vihas intercepted him. Despite the fact that the two were arguing again, they were, at least, walking with him. The Human realized that he was more an accompaniment to the Lions' travel and he was able to help with forward motion without getting growled at if he kept a reasonable pace and kept moving in roughly the direction Vihas had indicated. Khosk's voice continued to rumble deep in Mac's bones, but he knew better than to try and make an issue of it. Instead, the moment there was an apparent break in the Lions' discussion, the Human decided to take the opportunity to chime in.

He continued walking face-forward, but it didn't keep him from speaking. "So... I've figured out that you-- the loud one-- you're Khosk, and--"

The moment he said the short-maned Lion's name Khosk was beside him, growling out a series of statements in obvious displeasure. It took several repeats of the statement and what almost appeared to be threats of physical violence before Mac realized that there was another part to the name, and, at the Lion's obvious demand, tried again. "Roon Khosk?"

Khosk snorted, apparently appeased, and he turned toward the other Lion, gesturing Mac's way before making a flippant comment. Vihas, on the other hand, simply huffed, and added almost chidingly. "ROON Khosk."

The short-maned Lion scowled deeply at that, and the argument started up again, but froze mid-sentence as Khosk grabbed Mac by the shoulder and spun him around, pointing at the long-maned Lion, speaking again in the language the Human didn't understand until he heard the name Vihas, at which point Khosk related "ROON Vihas."

Mac nodded. "Roon Vihas. Right." He looked back to Khosk. "Roon Khosk." He looked then to the second Lion. "Roon Vihas."

Khosk nodded, the Lion's paw tightening around the back of the Human's neck, squeezing it hard enough that Mac's knees went weak, and Khosk pushed him over so that he was leaning forward. The short-maned Lion then added another harsh statement before letting him go. It took a second before Mac came to realize what he was being bodily instructed to do. "Am... am I supposed to bow? Is that it?"

Trying to figure things out, Mac turned to the long-maned Lion, and he offered his best facsimile of a formal bow as he spoke. "Roon Vihas."

Smirking, Khosk gestured at Mac and said something with a self-satisfied smirk. Vihas rolled his eyes and stopped, adjusting his stance so that his foot paws were a shoulder's width apart, held his armored paw to his chest, and let the other float almost weightlessly out from his shoulder as he bent his torso forward several degrees. Mac was surprised at how incredibly graceful the entire thing was; it almost looked like a performance.

Khosk's smile disappeared and the short-haired Lion repeated the gesture with as much poise and panache as the long-maned Lion. He then had several more pointed words for Mac and gestured onward. When the Human didn't move fast enough, Khosk moved up beside him and gave him a nudge forward; Vihas stepped in to guide Mac on the opposite side. Despite all of the young man's reservations, the one thing he held onto was, despite how roughly he was being treated, the two Lions didn't have quite the right air about them to suggest that he was a prisoner-- at least, that's what Mac hoped.

Once they were on their way again the two Lions moved forward at pace, both falling silent. Unwilling to leave things at that, Mac decided to fill the silence. He began explaining his situation to them, talking about driving off the bridge and finding himself where he'd been plucked from the water by Vihas. He explained he had no intention of invading their land, or messing with the status quo, or doing any of the other things that would normally require someone be detained. Mac really wasn't sure what to say but the simple act of banishing the silence helped him feel a little better, even if he full-well knew that neither of his 'guides' could understand him.

For the most part, the Lions let him continue his monologue for quite some time. Mac had never found it a problem to find something to say-- it was, in fact, an objection many who knew him had. For Khosk and Vihas, however, it didn't seem to be a problem... until it was. He didn't know how far along their journey they were save that the sun was nearing its zenith, barely visible through the thick canopy above them. Both Lions came to a stop and Khosk snarled at him words that weren't able to be understood but in a tone that left no doubt: it was time to shut up. The fact that the short-maned Lion had also moved his paw to the hilt of the weapon at his side further reinforced that problem.

Wondering if he had rubbed his company the wrong way, Mac was about to try and ask for clarification when Khosk reached out with his left paw, palm slamming into the Human's shoulder, sending him stumbling back just as an enormous, dun-colored, scaled body rocketed past through the space Mac had occupied mere moments before. Falling back and away, the young man landed in the dirt as the creature that had attempted to pounce him spun about, reptilian eyes staring him down with pure feral hunger.

The beast had some minor resemblance to a canine or a large hunting cat, but looked far more like a Komodo dragon... save that its lower jaw had a hinge in the middle so that, when it opened up to hiss at him, its maw looked all the more imposing. Its body tensed and it lowered itself down on its four legs, making ready to pounce again, but the quick arc of a red-hot blade cleaved its head cleanly from its shoulders and the thing dropped to the ground, blood sizzling as the half-cauterized wound wept red. Even as Mac was trying to regain his sense of what was going on, he was quickly hefted back to his feet by Vihas, who suddenly had a crystalline blade in his free paw, other one gripping the Human by the shoulder.

Khosk moved in with intent, saying several short words with a growl, eyes scanning the undergrowth around them on the forested path. Beside him, Vihas let go of Mac's shoulder, reaching down to draw a curved blade the length of the Human's forearm. With a flourish, the weapon spun around in Vihas' paw, handle pointing toward Mac. The long-maned Lion said a few brief words and profed the weapon. Although Mac still wasn't entirely sure of what was happening, the growls from within the surrounding brush left him with the impression that whatever had attacked him was not hunting alone. He accepted the weapon, despite having absolutely no idea how to use it, and he felt his heartbeat picking up speed.

The two Lions moved in a slow circle, one on either side of him as they stepped in perfect tandem, facing outward from the Human in what could only be described in Mac's mind as combat stances. A single screeching roar was the only signal that a fresh attack had begun, and four of the beasts came barreling out from where they were hiding. Each was just as big as the first-- larger than wolves, and all apparently quite hungry. Mac shouted out in alarm, but the sounds from the Lions were far more like battle cries.

Although he'd seen both of his guides do strange, inexplicable things that could only have been referred to as 'magic', Mac was still somewhat surprised when Khosk and Vihas began using their weapons in concert with fire and ice effects released from their open paws. The first clash resulted in the four beasts being repelled with no apparent injury to either Lion and only minor wounds to the lizards, but Mac could tell that whatever the creatures were up to, they weren't about to give up that easily.

Bracing himself, Mac realized that the battle was far from over...