The Hunter And The Lion

In the midst of snowy landscape and mountainous terrain, there stands a mighty nation, the kingdom of Ragnar, while the center of this kingdom is cheerful and happy with all the food they can eat, all the beer they can drink, and all the money they could ever want, the common citizen didn't share such prosperity, a village located next to the border of Bellator the forest kingdom is always swarming with soldiers.

Knock!! Knock!! Knock!!

"Open the door, Now!" a man's voice yells sternly, the man was wearing a large fur coat and held a rifle tipped with a bayonet in his hand.

"You were 100 shillings short paying your taxes this month". Just then a woman's voice calls out from behind the cracked wooden door

"What are you talking about?" she questioned, "I've been paying the same amount for years; how in the hell was I short?"

"It's quite simple, really," the soldier answered.

"It has become clear that your child has come of age, so by the law of the great chief you must now pay 100 more shillings towards your monthly taxes. Failure to comply is a federal offense and punishable by death"

The woman opened the door and stepped barefoot into the dark snowy street. The woman's hair was messy and full of dirt and she was wearing a tan dress covered in holes and makeshift patches. It looked as if it was made using old potato sacks. The woman herself was very short and malnourished; her ribcage was visible through her pale skin.

"You don't understand!" the woman yelped with tears running down her skinny sucked in face

"The 100 shillings I've already paid you is all I had this month. I can't even buy bread or tea right now" she cried

"That's not my problem, either pay or we're taking u to jail"

The woman balled up her fist and struck the soldier, but since she had almost no muscle mass, all this did was anger the man. He turned over his rifle and sent the woman crashing down with a hard blow to the head.

The woman, now bleeding from a cut on her eyebrow, screamed out

"Just give me a couple of days, please" she pleaded

"I'll pay in full. I just need time"

"Very well, then" the guard sighed

"As long as you can pay, I don't have a problem with it. This conversation is irritating me anyway; just know that the Chief doesn't like waiting so we'll be back same time tomorrow"

"Th- the same time tomorrow?"

"Yep" the soldier said as he began to leave

"I just said I needed a couple of days! Where am I supposed to find enough work to earn 100 shillings by tomorrow?" the woman shouted

"As I already said, that's not my problem bitch," the soldier exclaimed while walking away.

The woman stood up and walked back into her small wooden shack and laid down on the floor; still crying. she removed one of the floorboards she was lying next to and revealed a rusty metal flask; she opened it and chugged the whole thing; just then a small boy stepped out from behind a corner only dressed in a pair of oversized ripped shorts and a rope he used as a belt

"Mm- mommy, a-are you ok?"

The boys' mother looked at him furiously

"No, I'm not ok, Leo!" she screamed

"I spent my entire monthly income on my taxes, and now I have to scrounge up another 100 shillings to pay for you! You have done nothing but ruin my life since I was sixteen; you're the reason my parents kicked me out, and you're the reason I can't find a man to rescue me from this hell hole. If you're old enough to get taxed ur old enough to live on your own, so get out of my house right now!"

"B- but mommy," Leo said with a tear coming to his eye

"I don't want to hear it, get out now!"

She threw the empty metal flask at Leo's head hard enough that it made him bleed; the boy took off out the door crying and running as fast as he could toward the forest. After tripping over a large rock, Leo fell unconscious. Fortunately, the snowfall was heavy. It covered the boy like a warm blanket and hid him from whatever predators were lurking in the dark shadows of the forest.

* * * *

Ten Years Later in a small village of the Bellator kingdom two soldiers were having a conversation, each soldier was wearing a green button up long sleeve shirt, with a white t-shirt underneath and both wore a brown satchel and a steel plate strapped to their chest with thick leather straps that was used for blocking projectiles, one of the soldiers was smoking a cigar

"So word around town is that the 'Andreia incident' was a group effort between the four kingdoms," he stated then puffed his cigar.

"and that's why it happened so fast without so much as a peep from the government"

"You would have to be an idiot to believe that" the other soldier snickered

"Tensions between the kingdoms have been increasing daily and you really think that they would team up"

"Hey I never said I believed it, so there's no need to be so harsh ok" the man sighed before puffing his cigar again

While the men talked they saw a flock of birds fly quickly away from a spot in the nearby forest the two soldiers were curious and decided to walk over and see what was going on

Krthump! Krthump! Krthump!

The soldier heard as he watched ashes fall from his cigar.

Krthump!! Krthump!! Krthump!!

"It's big whatever it is"

suddenly the ground began shaking as if it were an earthquake

"And I think it's getting closer"

Krthump!!! Krthump!!! Krthump!!! Krthump!!!

The soldiers pointed their rifles toward the sound

"I'd advise you to put your bayonet on," said the soldier with the now half-smoked cigar

"this could get messy"

The man scrambled to reach for his bayonet which was lying in his satchel.

Just as he looked away a blur ran past.

"What was that," he asked.

"I don't know it was too fast for me to make out but it looked like a child"

"A child running from that noise?" the other man questioned.

"What business does a child have with a t-"

"Now is not the time for questions brace yourself" the other man interrupted.

Then they saw a giant creature in the forest, a shadow of what looked like a giant snake moving through the trees while uprooting some in its path.

Finally, it stepped out of the trees, a giant reptile covered in feathers everywhere beside its face which had massive jaws filled with serrated teeth. This is a tyrannosaurus, one of the biggest and strongest predators walking on the planet.

The men began to fire but to no avail as its hide was too thick for a bullet to do any serious damage. It quickly swatted both guards away with its muscular tail suddenly the child that the soldiers saw previously was now running towards the dinosaur. the boy had long dark hair, with green eyes, and he wore old shorts with a rope tied around his waist, and a tooth necklace. the boy ran holding only a common wood-splitting ax, it was Leo.

he jumped in the air with the ax in both of his hands he wrenched down as hard as he could right at the monster's ankle the tyrannosaurus was furious and wiped Leo away with its tail sending him flying into one of the citizens' log cabins, Leo laid there for a minute before standing back up.

In the time it took him to get to his feet, the tyrannosaurus was on the ground and already swarmed by soldiers chaining it down.

While the two soldiers Leo ran past earlier are walking toward him...