Lucian didn't see the older kids around, probably already training to become the new generation of hunters.
Firstborn didn't mean that they would inherit their father's throne.
Savage and Scythe were actually brothers with different mothers. Their father fell from grace after he failed to tame his beast, and their whole family had to go through a period of struggle.
One really didn't have a choice in the South. Either they conquered or were conquered.
There were two ways to become a King in the South.
First, wait for a hunter king to become a feral and sign up to participate in a tournament for the title, the one the hunter king's army chooses wins. Both hunters and hunter kings could participate.
Second, fight a hunter king and his army directly. Once every three years, the hunter kings were obliged to accept any challenges, but only from other hunters. It was expected that the hunters had their own army to face him.
Rivalry among the kings was not encouraged by the Alliance, which was also why one King couldn't just win all the tournaments and unite the Alliance.
If the only king became a feral, the only kingdom would crumble to dust.
That's why smaller kingdoms existed, to keep order and stability in case the bigger one collapsed.
People lived with a mindset of losing their rulers at any given moment.
Not only that, the threat of being ambushed by neighbouring kingdoms was always present.
Men who ran away were looked down on and called cowards. Men without marks were laughed at and called weaklings.
Men had to earn the respect, and that was done through their strength or wealth in Fishbone's and Roland's cases.
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Jax waited for Lucian at the entrance, holding reins to two horses in his hands.
Lucian pulled the hood of his robe over his head, climbing onto the second horse. He caged Togo inside his carriage and ordered Roland's men to guard it like their lives depended on it.
"How many failed to tame their beast?" Lucian asked.
"Three have failed so far," Jax said solemnly.
Nobody was interested in hiring ferals, who only acted on their instincts and desires.
Lucian, however, had always found value in what others dismissed.
Broken and discarded things were his favorite way of repurposing and creating something new, so he had to make sure the ferals were useful before being branded as trash.
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Jax took Lucian to the ruins of a temple.
A drunk man was singing and dancing around a fire, one of those who failed to tame his beast.
He lived on what little food he could hunt or scavenge. The bare minimum to survive and be free.
The moment he saw Lucian, his aggressive aura made the horses rear.
It was hard to believe he used to be Roland's underling at one point.
Ferals were often used as first in line soldiers, to die before the real soldiers could. They didn't listen to orders, but one could direct their uninhibited lust, hunger, and aggression toward the enemy.
Jax dismounted and calmed the horses. "He is quite docile during the day, but at night, you have to stay clear of him."
He told Lucian that various experiments had been conducted on them by the South before, to see if ferals could be turned into humans again. They were all unsuccessful.
Lucian walked to the feral, making Jax stay behind.
If southerners could help northerners with a blessing, then northerners could also help southerners with taming their beast. The question was what it would cost Lucian, and how long it would take.
Lucian stopped a few steps away from the feral, watching him dance.
He didn't feel like talking to him because it would have taken more than a few sentences to get through to him. It was better to get straight to the matter.
He took out a syringe from his bag, flicking the needle to remove any air inside, and then approached the feral from behind.
The feral growled, turning around and lashing out.
Lucian jabbed the needle into his neck and pushed the plunger, injecting the liquid into his vein.
He jumped back to avoid a follow-up punch to his face, the feral's body following Lucian.
He had been thinking about how to take advantage of his individual strength, as it always looked like it didn't matter in the face of greater threats.
Always training, always sparring, always preparing, but never actually putting it into real use.
This was a chance to change that.
Lucian dodged, ducked, weaved, and evaded as many of the feral's punches as he could, until the man's movements started to become slower.
His fist slowed down enough for Lucian to catch it in his hand, and he pushed the feral onto the ground with a shove to his shoulder.
When was a person considered dead?
Was it when their hearts stopped beating? When the brain ceased to function? When the blood stopped flowing? Or when the soul left the body?
Lucian wasn't sure and tried to push his consciousness into the feral's body continuously.
The moment the feral's heart stopped beating, Lucian felt as if he was in the middle of a sand storm. He couldn't see anything.
The sand stung his eyes, his ears, his mouth, his skin. An illusion of pain that wasn't really there. His mind should be much stronger than that of a zero-marked.
Lucian's body was still sitting on the ground, holding the feral in his arms, but his mind was somewhere else entirely.
The sand cleared after a while, and Lucian found himself standing in front of a giant beast. Its body was that of a lion. Its mane was on fire.
The creature roared, and Lucian was blown away by the sheer force of its voice, rolling through the sandstorm, but then, he appeared in front of the beast.
Chains appeared under the beast, wrapping around its limbs, controlled by Lucian's will.
The chains dug deep into the sand, restraining the creature.
Tricking it was definitely easier than tricking Voice.
Lucian quickly summoned more, binding the creature once again before the first chains snapped.
The creature roared in defiance and tried to stand, but the chains were too heavy, pulling it down.
"Since the time I lost Seline, I've been reluctant to take in a new pet," he said, walking around the creature. "I didn't want to go through the pain of losing something important to me, again."
He stopped in front of the creature and summoned more chains. He pulled on the chains, and the creature's head was forced to face him. He looked into its eyes.
"But...now, I have a new purpose," he stroked the creature's head, his usually gentle eyes now resembled those of a mourning man, "I can't be afraid of losing what I care about anymore. My life is no longer my own. It belongs to my lady, and I would do anything to see her smile."
He pulled on the chains harder, forcing the beast on the sand, "And I will not let anything stand in the way of that."
Anything but his own idiocy, at least.
'I hope she doesn't remember the promise I made her...' he thought, '...The promise of marriage once she wakes up.'
He wasn't in his right mind when she laid motionlessly in his arms. Slipping between grief and madness at that time, he was unable to control his emotions.