|
⚔️ Trubel: The First Captain of the Grimm’s Gaze ⚔️
Trubel is born to the young, colorful lioness Juliette, from a pairing with the pride’s monarch Jaskiier so the lioness could become a mother. As Juliette sees her daughter for the first time, she notices a tiny ridge of raised fur going down the cub’s head and back, all the way to the tip of her tail. She isn’t quite sure what this was, but luckily, in the beginning days of the pride, the moons where Doriian was the king, there was another lioness like this: Tissaia. Tales of that lioness have been passed down through the generations, especially since her descendants still reside within the pride, so Juliette at least knows a little bit of what to expect.
As the cub, now named Trubel, grows, her personality becomes evident to the pride. Trubel is a tenacious one, and is always practicing battle moves against the older lions when they cub-sit her. Whenever the other lionesses, including her mother, attempt to train her in hunting though, it is evident the young lioness isn’t interested. She thinks hunting is important of course, but she would much rather fight and protect her pride. Juliette brings this up to Jask, and after a brief conversation with Trubel and Monroe, it is decided that the primal male will teach the fluffy lioness how to fight, and after her training, she will be the first Warrior in the pride. Her duty is to protect the pride, much like a sub-male, though her skills are more equipped for times of battle, not everyday skirmishes. She finds a sword, gifted from the Heavens itself during an event one November. This sword, her prized possession, would be like an extension of her own body, like another limb with razor-sharp claws.
Trubel enjoys her new position, though she doesn’t get much action. She mainly aids Monroe in fighting against invading males, or prides that decided to attempt to take their territory. Her training was not a waste though, for one terrible day, she is forced to be the sole protector of the pride, after Monroe, Rosalee and Trubel’s own mother, Juliette were brutally murdered. Adalind makes excuses, but Trubel smells a rat. She sneaks around, noticing Adalind acting…odd. Bringing her findings to Jask, it is decided that they would continue monitoring the Mage, garnering support from other pride members before they confront her.
Trubel is elected leader of this ‘task force’, a position she takes in stride. She keeps watch over Adalind, even after Trubel herself has a cub, one who had inherited her grey-pink pelt, and who she had named Eucharis. Eventually one night, she is woken up by Jask and told to gather the lionesses, that they were going to put a stop to this once and for all. Trubel dons her armor, gives her reinforced claws a quick sharpen on a nearby rock, and grabs her trusted sword before marching out to war. The battle is longer than she had thought it would be, and Adalind fights well for a lioness who’d just given birth. Trubel even sustains a massive wound on her neck from Adalind’s fury, but, though she bled heavily, Trubel beat back the Mage, eventually dealing the killing blow. She slashes at the lioness with a vengeance, for her mother, for sweet Monroe, for poor Rosalee, for all the members of the pride who’d lost a loved one that day.
Adalind falls to the ground, hissing as she bleeds. Trubel sees an almost smoke-like presence drift away from her, though it must be a trick of the light since she blinks and it’s gone. The Warrior lioness has an odd feeling, a shiver down her spiky-furred spine.
As the time goes on, life returns to a somewhat normal state. The twins, Gloriosus and Heliconia grow under the watchful eye of Jask and Trubel, who is now the Captain of a new ‘task force’ of warriors, called the Grimm’s Gaze. She even trains Moraine’s daughter Achillea, who is on her way to becoming a more brutal warrior than Trubel herself.
One day, as Trubel is sparring with Achillea, she is approached by Gloriosa, Adalind’s now-daughter who had come out as a lioness a few moons before, changing her name slightly to fit her newly discovered identity. The young lioness asks Trubel if she could be trained as well. Trubel, still worried about the effects of Adalind on the twins— not that they even remember their mother, they knew her for mere moments— stops Achillea’s training, dismissing her so she can talk to the maned lioness.
Gloriosa tells the Captain that she knows she needs to train as a ‘sub male’, since the pride had been without one since Monroe’s murder, but that she wanted to learn fighting as well. She had seen the Championships during one of the events, and finds them fascinating. Trubel, not seeing any dishonesty from the young lioness, agrees on the condition that Jask also oversees her training. Gloriosa agrees, Jask…reluctantly…does as well, and her training commences.
All is relatively well, until one day. Trubel, angered from memories of her mother and the three lives cut short by the Mage, acts harshly towards Gloriosa. The young lioness stops the training, simply asking Trubel -why- she and her sister were treated so differently. This leads to an argument between the two, one Jask observes but doesn’t stop. Trubel, in a moment of rage, raises her paw, slicing down Gloriosa’s face with her reinforced claws. At the adolescent’s scream, the Captain freezes, looking at her silver claws, now tainted with the blood of the young lioness whose only sin was being born to a terrible mother.
Jask separates the two and whisks Gloriosa away to Triteleia to be healed, leaving Trubel to think about what she had done. How could she have done that to the kind adolescent? Trubel sits by herself in the training area for a bit, before Jask returns with an update: the cub would never regain the sight in her right eye, and would always have a scarred face. The monarch and the Captain speak, working through Trubel’s emotions and actions. Finally, Trubel realizes that she has been holding onto biases surrounding the twins, ones that Gloriosa, being the one around the spiky-furred lioness the most, bore the brunt of. Jask listens, telling Trubel what she needs to hear, but not much more than that. Then, Trubel asks if Gloriosa would speak to her, understanding if the young one wouldn’t.
Jask shrugs. They didn’t know, and Trubel would have to ask the maned lioness herself. This was something the two of them needed to sort out. Of course, Jask had their reservations about the twins as well, but they’d never injured one of them for no reason because of it. Trubel nods a goodbye to the monarch, heading to what used to be Rosalee’s den and was now the one in which Triteleia and Delphinia conduct their work. Memories flood back, of her mother lying dead on the floor of this very den, of Rosalee and Monroe lying beside her, but Trubel keeps walking.
She nervously— an emotion unfamiliar to the spiky-furred lioness’s face— pokes her head in, getting Triteleia’s attention. The purple-hued lioness narrows her eyes, her canid familiar baring its teeth at the intrusion. Suddenly, Gloriosa notices who is at the entry to the den, and turns fully— her wounded face on display. She sighs, nodding for Triteleia to let the Captain in. The purple-furred lioness obliges, leaving the two alone to talk, though she glares at Trubel on her way out.
Trubel and Gloriosa talk. Tears and truths flow from both sides, and both lionesses emerge out the other side with a better understanding of the other. Trubel knows her biases now, and will work on -never- using her strength against a pridemate again, unless warranted. Gloriosa tells Trubel that she will have to work on gaining the younger lion’s trust back, but that training would be a start. Talking, even, would be a start. Gloriosa doesn’t know a lot about her mother, and she’d like to learn. Trubel agrees, it’s the least she can do.
Eventually, their relationship mends, or at least, as much as it realistically can. Trubel had disfigured the young lioness for life, and there would always be a bit of anger there, but they work through it. Trubel finishes training Achillea and Gloriosa. Gloriosa becomes a champion in the arena, and Achillea is promoted to Commander of the Grimm’s Gaze once Trubel starts to slow down. The spiky-furred lioness eventually witnesses the end of another era of the Daybreak Pride as Jask dies yet again beneath a natural phenomenon happening in the sky, this time a meteor shower. And yet again, the ruler was reincarnated, though this time they remember almost everything.
Finally, not long after the death of Jaskiier III, Trubel’s life reaches her end. Surrounded by family and friends, the former Captain of the Grimm’s Gaze accepts that, when dawn broke, she would not wake with the sun. As she lays in her nest, basking in the palpable love from her pridemates, Trubel senses something…a presence she has not felt since the day she killed Adalind. Perhaps it is due to her time finally being up, but the Captain spots a smoke-like form narrowing its glowing eyes.
Her widened gaze connects with those of Achillea and Gloriosa, as well as that of Jaskiier IV. They look to where the apparition had been, but it had vanished. The two lionesses and the ruler glance towards their Captain, expressions filled with confusion. Trubel manages to croak out a final message to them.
“Protect the pride…It has returned”.
With her warning given, Trubel breathes her last breath, joining her mother amongst the stars, finally.
⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️
*’The ever-diligent Captain, fierce with her sword,
Has succumbed to age, though a final caution she roared’*
*’The end of an era has arrived,
Can those left behind defeat the spirit revived?’*
|
