As I turned toward Mufasa, I couldn’t help but notice something… off about him. As he roared in my face – my poor ears – I couldn’t help but point something out:

“Since when was your hair pink, bro? I gotta say, it suits you perfectly!” I foolishly stated.

“ROOOOOOOAR!!!” Mufasa eloquently retorted in a learned, and not at all primal, manner. Obviously he was thankful for the compliment. So thankful, in fact, that he tried to knock my head clean off my shoulders.

I shrieked before hitting the grass belly-down. “What the hell, man!? Can’t you take a joke?” I chirped from my now prone position.

Another roar was Mufasa’s answer. I distinctly remember this one being of murderous intent as he leapt backwards before impaling the earth where I lied only moments before. I rolled out of the way, somehow predicting the attack, before bringing myself up to my knees. The moment I came out of my B.S. combat roll, a claw met me on my ascent, leaving behind a rather nasty mark across my chest. The bastard had clawed through my hoodie, torn my shirt beneath my hoodie, and raked his dirty, razor-tipped claws across the top of my skin.

I released a pained yelp and grasped my chest as I felt something warm flowing shallowly down my belly, the cold wind seeming to freeze it in place. With the sensation of my life-fluid spilling out onto my flesh, I was surprisingly calm. I don’t know what came over me, but I guess I’d just been doing enough running for that day and was finally getting sick of this world’s nuisances.

I stood my ground, slightly hunched forward in both a small amount of pain and in anticipation of Mufasa’s next attack. We both circled one another, sizing each other up. I wasn't stupid enough to believe I could go toe-to-toe with a predator that literally kills to live, but I was planning on fending the beast off until I could think up a way to get out of this situation without being ripped in half. A small part of me noticed that, for some reason, Mufasa was glowing a faint blue as he eyed me from afar. I would have thought that strange if my life wasn’t yet again on the line.

As Mufasa lunged forth, this time with his sizable teeth leading him, I jumped to the side, landing heavily on my left arm. A small grunt escaped my lips before I once again lifted myself off the ground as fast as I could; this time, however, Mufasa wizened up and stayed right in my personal space as I attempted to dodge out of the way. There was rending, scratching, and hollering, all of it coming from me as I poorly attempted to outmaneuver something larger and quicker than myself.

I threw a wild punch and, surprisingly, it landed. An enraged howl blared from the wild man-eater as my fist made contact with his sensitive nose, giving me a brief amount of time to catch my breath after suffering such a ferocious beating.

I found that opportunity short-lived as Mufasa once again pounced, using his wings to propel himself forward ever swifter. He was still glowing, and he seemed much smaller than before, but he still was proving himself to be no slouch in the hunt.

As the menace tackled me to the ground, attempting to gnaw at my face, I managed to grab him around the maw and direct his flesh-rending teeth away from my neck. My valiant efforts were rewarded with a sharp jolt of pain traveling up the arm I had landed on earlier. I was winded after having the air knocked out of my lungs at the hard fall, but I was intent on making myself as much of a nuisance as possible if Mufasa here was planning on gobbling me up for dinner. Still, despite my resistance, the distance between his dangerous jaws and my exposed neck slowly but surely grew smaller. You remember how I said my first encounter with Mufasa was the closest I’d come to death? Yeah, well this, which I thought would surely be my last run-in with him, was all the more terrifying.

I felt my chest warm up once again, and this time it wasn’t because of my spilt blood. As the dull glow brightened, I could feel myself growing stronger and stronger, and eventually I was holding Mufasa’s head back to where he could no longer advance. Saliva spilled from his mouth in anticipation at having his next meal, but a feral hiss reverberated from his throat as he realized that I was actually putting up something of a fight.

Eventually, he raised that god-awful tail of his over his head in preparation for turning everything from my collarbone above into red mush and grey matter. I wasn’t gonna have any of that. When the tail struck, somehow I’d moved my head enough out of the way to keep it on my shoulders where it rightfully belonged. I drew myself up from under the lion-bat-thing’s stomach and kneed him under the jaw, finally getting the savage off out of my breathing space.

A surprised shout left the candy-coated killer as he looked back toward me with a dumbfounded expression, a dumbfounded expression that quickly morphed into absolute fury at my continued survival. I could tell Mufasa was beyond done with my shenanigans, and the feeling was mutual as far as I was concerned.

As he glowed, seemingly ignoring the fact that he was still shrinking, he looked deeply into my eyes the same way he had when we had first met. The red in his eyes once again made contact with the brown of my own as we stared one another down, each waiting for the other to make their move. I coulda sworn I saw a glimmer of respect somewhere deep within those strangely alluring eyes. Past all the hatred and hunger, I could see the look of veneration one gives to a worthy adversary. Only we weren’t truly adversaries. I was only something meant to line his stomach for a day’s time as he went on to search for another unsuspecting prey the next day. I wouldn’t allow myself to die in such a way.

As the both of us stood, him in a position primed to once again launch himself at me, and I ready to jump to either side, another cold wind passed over the many trees of the all-encompassing forest surrounding the clearing. I became acutely aware at this point in time that, along with the rushing of water in the waterfall, I had my back to the edge of the cliff. I quickly threw a glance behind myself at the long drop that awaited me if I were to lose my footing, breaking eye contact with the pink predator, before Mufasa made his presence known through a low hiss. I snapped my attention back towards him before gingerly reaching toward my back pocket for something I could potentially weaponize.

It was at that moment that he sprang toward me, wings erect and jaw wide. I pulled out my iPhone and threw it in his general direction, actually hitting him in the nose with the piece of human-engineering. Mufasa roared as his already sensitive nose was yet again bopped, pawing at it as the course of his flight was knocked wayward. I again dove out of the way as he collided with the ground, still clutching his face. I took that opportunity to stomp on one of his wings, eliciting a deafening screech of agony, before grabbing him and hoisting him up into the air by his mane in a feat of strength I never knew I was capable of.

Mufasa responded appropriately, scratching at my forearms – reducing the cloth to shreds – roaring, and frantically shaking his wings, including his now-broken one, in a futile attempt to escape my grasp.

“You shouldn’t’ve messed with me,” I growled, tightening my grip on his head as I idly noticed that my wounds were glowing. “You coulda picked a fight with any other creature in this forest, but no, you just had to play the ‘big cat’ and try huntin’ my ass down! Well, guess what, Mufasa!” I exclaimed in righteous fury as I moved his head closer to mine, glaring into his feline eyes.

“Long. Live. The king.”

Then, just before I could let him fall to his untimely demise in what surely would have been a badass end to this altercation, I heard a whimper; a plea; the sound of something that once stood proudly begging to be spared from damnation. It was a pitiful sound to hear coming from such a fierce predator, once immobile as a mountain in the wind; once mighty in the face of adversity, now bested by a common man. And it fueled me.

The first time this beast had tasted fear, the first time this haughty creature had faced death, the first time this pathetic excuse for an apex killer had lost. Oh, how his whines sung to me. How euphoric it was to hear the frightened sounds he produced when the reaper had his hands wrapped around his throat!

With renewed vitality, I removed one hand from Mufasa’s mane, moving the other to his neck as I stared into his pleading eyes, the mad laughter I’d been growing more used to echoing in my mind.

… And I dropped him…

No, no, not off the cliff you morons, I mean at the edge of the cliff. I may have felt better than ever after seeing the realization cross Mufasa’s face, but I still had a conscience. And although he had tried to kill my ass, I wouldn’t sleep right knowing that I went and killed someone or even something in cold blood, even if they deserved it. This decision would likely come to bite me in the ass, quite literally in this case, but at the moment I didn’t care. Besides, even if it wasn’t I who struck the final blow, Mufasa’d have no chance surviving the wild with an injury as serious as the one he was now sporting. I gave him a week at best.

Mufasa coughed and sputtered after I dropped him, looking up to me once again with all the malice of before being replaced by fear and respect. He lay his injured wing to one side as he allowed himself a moment of respite after his failed endeavor. I stared back before finally turning around, picking up my phone and the makeshift lantern that I had dropped during the scuffle, and walking the other way - I even could see through all of this that a few of my deeper cuts and gashes had been somehow healed - thinking as much as I could with the mad laughter eventually fading away.

As I stepped back into the forest, Mufasa carefully stood. He considered tracking me down and killing me in my sleep for my faux pas, but decided against it after thinking how I had shown him mercy unlike any other hunter of the wild would, choosing to walk off to another direction entirely.

At long last, all that could be seen or heard in the beaten clearing were the ghostly rays of the bright star and the rushing waves of the waterfall.