Name: Na'an
Owner's Name: oo DeD
Prompt Response: (Uh. Combination of prompts, I guess.)
They had seen so much blood.
Considering life in the Nergui, this would come as no surprise to anyone. The only thing the weathered lioness remembered of her old pride—the place she called home what seemed to be lifetimes ago—were days of brutes and bloodshed. It surrounded them. Encompassed them. Each detail engrained into her mind, turning her memories into a wasteland of scars. She and her kin weren't the only young who existed within the pride, but where others seemed to blend into the mold of the Nergui lifestyle Na'an could never grow towards. The ways of brutality seemed too far away. There was something wrong. For this, the youth received constant torment. Constant pushes into a direction in which she simply didn't fit. The Nergui, as strange as they seemed to her, was all that she knew. At the time, to not fit in this world was to not fit into her own birthplace. Her own home.
When her mother appeared before her, strange and elegant and powerful, what the young lioness viewed as mistakes in her character seemed to click into place. The goddess of blood magic. The question rose, then. What was she?
The answer was one Na'an decided on quickly. Her siblings, herself, they were monsters. A result of one of her mother's dealings. Child of blood and brute. The life she had been eager to leave, it seemed, was one she could not escape.
But this reality was one she swiftly grew to accept.
---
The frailty of the juvenile gave the lioness pause. Like so many, the Nergui had left him broken. There was a look of plea on his face, smeared across his expression along with the dirt and grime and blood. Seeing it, Na'an felt the muscles in her face try to pull into the same. This expression that felt so familiar.
Instead she stood, eyes sharp against the creature. The Nergui. The pride of monsters that left destruction in its wake. And in this destruction new monstrosities bloomed. It was a vicious, unstoppable cycle.
---
His mane was warm and rested around her lithe form, stark again her pale fur. "My sweet..." Nori was a strong lion with bright eyes and a pelt as dark as his past.
But still…
Her eyebrows raised and the edges of her mouth pulled back into a smile. A purr rumbled from the depths of her throat as she leaned against her frame. "Yes, dearest?"
---
The land around her had grown still and it seemed as though time itself had stopped. Even the winds paused, leaving only the lioness and the young lion alone. Na'an's shadow encompassed the delicate body of the juvenile as she leaned down, her muzzle brushing against the lion's face gently until it stopped to rest against his ear.
"Do you feel it?" Her voice was soft and serene and full of the grace she remembered of her mother that first day. "Do you feel it growing inside you? Your fear of today will turn into your will of tomorrow. All that has wronged you will warp to become your greatest strength. You will rise above this treachery. Temporary wounds will heal to become permanent might."
He could feel her smile against him and perhaps beneath it all he could feel the shimmer of hope. Of salvation.
"And that might, that strength, that overwhelming feeling welling inside you, it will turn you into a monster."
He should have considered this a charity.
---
"I love you, you know." He gleamed down at her, eyes soft and warm. Na'an met his gaze with her own as she raised a paw, brushing it against his cheek.
"I love you, too." She breathed back, pulling her head so she could meet his full gaze, her expression unchanging as his eyes widened. Her claws raked against his fur, digging finally into the flesh of his throat. And soon later, after his blood had been spilt and his body lat limp on the ground, Na'an raised her face towards the sky. "My mother. My soul, my purpose, I have done as you wished. I have taken this life, completed for you the deal you had made. For my mother I am but an extension of your claw and fang and soul, forever in your servitude…"
---
The form of the now lifeless juvenile was one far too familiar for the lioness. She had made a life doing the deeds of her mother where it was needed. But now? Now there was something that needed to be done for herself.
Na'an pulled a claw down her own cheek and drops of blood fell like tears into the already made pool. Her blood mixed with that already spilt and together they created a crimson stain upon the earth. "My mother." Her eyes fell shut and her head pulled back. "This blood I spill, this libation I give in your name. For it, I ask not strength nor courage, for these things I have already gained from your blood. Instead, my mother, I ask but for direction." Her head fell once more. Na'an's eyes opened, wide and bright and fierce. "My mother, I ask for you to show me the way. Bring me to my father."
---
And if the Nergui wanted monsters, she'd show them a monster.
