A/N: Sorry, sorry! I swear I had this story nearly wrapped up, but then I started writing my other story again on the side and it turns out I'm really bad at multitasking. My only excuse is that I lost my job at the same time, which kind of threw a spanner in the works. But, here it is, for those of you who were still waiting: The climax to the story.

"Help!"

Kion opened his eyes, and found that he was at the bottom of a deep ravine, shrouded by a fog of dust that choked the lungs and obscured all vision. He knew where he was, for there was only one gorge like this in all the Pridelands, and yet he could tell right away that the scenery was wrong. The dust was too thick, the trees too sparse, the cliffs too barren. It was as if he was not looking at the ravine itself, but rather the impression of one; like a distant memory that was somehow more real than the thing itself.

He took an uncertain step forward, moving through the earthen fog without knowing where or when he was headed. His paws were no longer broken and his ribs no longer cracked, and yet the air still hurt to breathe – hurt him with such cruelty as if someone had put it there just to spite him, as if the sole reason for its existence was to hurt.

"Somebody! Anybody…"

He found what he was looking for underneath a withered tree in the centre of the valley. The king had draped his father's paw over his body as though the two of them were only sleeping. He was young. Younger, even, than he must have been when it happened, and impossibly small in Mufasa's arms.

"Father? Father, is that really you?"

"Son. I didn't want you to see me like this." The young cub turned away, abashed, as if he had been caught in the middle of some mischief. "I had thought to give you what was taken from me – to show you just a glimpse of what my father would have been had he still been around." He shook his head. "But maybe that was my mistake. Perhaps it would have been easier for you if I had just been myself from the start."

Kion looked at him uncertainly. "Father, what is this place? Where are we?"

"A memory," said Simba. "A connection. The place where magic comes from. Something like that." He looked at Mufasa's body with tired eyes. "Why can't I get him to answer me? If we're in a place of dreams, then surely anything should be possible. Could it really be the case that, purely because he died in my memories, he has to be dead here also? If so, that just seems terribly unfair..."

"Father, you've been here this entire time?" Kion's voice caught, and the pain in his chest grew twice as heavy. "You can't…" He swallowed. "Dad, you can't stay here like this. You have to move on."

Simba chuckled sadly, a wry sound that seemed entirely out of place coming from such a young cub. "I'm afraid it's a little too late for that. My body is slowly dying: I can feel it, even here." He took a deep breath, and as he rose he seemed to grow a little older, and the fog a little thinner around him. "Son, when you wake up, I want you to take your friends and run as far away as you can. I will use the last of my strength to distract Scar while you get away. His rage will wane in time, as it always has, and you'll be able to return to the Pridelands eventually. Kiara will need your support when you do."

Kion gazed at his father, or rather, at the young cub that had turned out to have been his father all this time. There was an incomprehensible anger stirring deep within him, coming from the same place that had also burned when he saw Zazu's body, and then Bunga's, and finally Simba himself.

"You want me to run away," he said. "You want me to run away while you kill yourself, pointlessly, in the hope that maybe somehow Scar will eventually stop wanting to torture all hyenas into insanity."

"Son…"

"You know, Scar once quoted Zazu as saying that hope is what you resort to when you no longer have anything left to believe in. At the time I thought he was just being cynical as always, but now I think I get what he meant. Hope! You're telling me to run away, just so you can convince yourself that your death has some meaning? My limbs are broken! Did you forget about that, or were you too busy mourning your long-dead father to see what was happening to your own son?"

Simba's eyes widened. "Kion-"

"Hope! That was the whole reason Ushari started all of this in the first place. Hope and dreams! He started an entire bloody war, setting the Pridelands alight and killing hundreds, just because he felt he needed something to believe in. When we have access to magic, actual magic! And here you are, giving up on life when we already know it's possible to live forever. How does that make any friggin' sense?"

"Ah…"

"You and Scar and Ushari, all of you kings and sages are exactly the same. Selfish, stubborn, stupid bloody animals, always complaining about how unfair your lives are without ever noticing the miracles that have already come your way!"

There was the sound of someone scraping his throat in the tree above him. "Well spoken, young master. Now if only you could manage to include yourself in that list then I would find myself in full agreement."

Kion froze. There, perched atop one of the branches of the withered tree sat a red-beaked hornbill, staring down at them as though it were the most normal thing in the world. "Zazu? But, how?"

"I suppose I could make some quip regarding aerial flight and the advantages thereof, but I suspect that would be deemed inappropriate considering the circumstances." He held up a blue-feathered wing, examining it as if to confirm his own solidity. "Suffice to say, you have successfully made a connection with my spirit, which I gather happened a bit later than intended. Personally, I suspect it's your newfound appreciation for the particulars of the monarchical system of rulership that did the trick."

"Zazu," Simba said, sounding like he could not quite believe his own voice. "I thought we lost you."

"I was merely misplaced, it seems." He gave the king a curt but friendly nod. "It's good to be back, Sire."

"But Shenzi killed you," said Kion, still reeling from shock. "You died fighting to protect me. We tried to contact your spirit as soon as we could, but there was nothing there for us to find. What changed?"

Zazu gave a feathery shrug. "Your guess is as good as mine, young master. I was not joking when I said that your new insights might be the cause – it is possible that we finally managed to make a connection through our shared frustration with royal inadequacy. Present company excluded, of course."

"But you had no awareness of anything that was going on until just now, right? How could I possibly have made a connection with someone who didn't even exist at the time?" Kion remembered arguing as much to Scar back at Pride Rock in what now seemed like such a long time ago. If he had been wrong about that, then...

He choked out a laugh. "Father, do you realize what this means? All this time, we thought the Roar could only be used to tie yourself to the world and prevent your spirit from dissipating in the first place, but if this is true… dad, we might not have lost yet! We might not have lost anyone, or anything, ever at all!"

Simba exchanged a look with Zazu, who seemed just as confused. "I'm not sure I really got all of that, son, but I'll help you make a connection to whoever else you like, if that's what you're getting at."

"That's not a bad idea," Zazu mused. "If we could manage to connect with other fallen warriors, then we might be able to raise an army of spirits to fight alongside you. If it's really Scar we're up against, you'll need all the help you can get – meaning no offence, young master."

"None taken," said Kion. He still remembered how easily Scar had beaten him during sparring, and that had been before he absorbed Ahadi's power. The gap between them would be even more immeasurable now. "It's a good plan, but there's no time. Scar is down there right now, and any second we wait could result in him driving my friend insane forever." He had already wasted far too much time, in fact, and gained far too little in return.

He turned to leave, pointless as that was. In order to return to his body, he only had to let go.

"We'll lend you our power," said Simba. "We can support you from here as spirits, just as Zira is doing with Scar." He hesitated, seeming to want to say something else but proving unable to find the words. Perhaps it was the same as what Ono had been trying to say to Kion, just before he went out to risk his life for him.

"Thank you." He half turned and inclined his head towards the body of Mufasa, whose giant form still lay lifeless in the dust. "Say, dad. After everything you said about pretending to be someone you're not for the sake of the kingdom and your son – do you ever think that maybe the same was true for him? That maybe that's what he was trying to tell you, when he said that you had forgotten who he was?"

Simba stared at his father's body in shock. "But that's… That might be true for everyone else, maybe, but he was always the one who didn't need to pretend…"

Zazu gave him an appraising gaze. "Sire, I don't know if it helps, but I rather suspect he would have said the same thing about King Ahadi. And not to sound too hung up on it or anything, but he did order you to practice your pouncing lessons on me whenever he was annoyed. A flawless ruler he was not."

As Kion let go of his connection to the spirit realm, the tree and the cliffs and the fog all slowly began to fade around him. The last to vanish was the image of his father, who was still staring blankly at Mufasa's form, which seemed to be becoming ever so slightly smaller as it shrank under his gaze.

Kion awoke to pain and sweltering heat, bright spots and smoke stinging his eyes as he coughed up a lungful of dust. It was strange how being a spirit for such a short time could cause him to forget all of that. As he stirred, sharp warning pangs confirmed that his limbs were still broken and his ribs were still cracked. He could feel it all the more clearly for having felt no pain at all before.

He reached out tentatively, forming a connection not to any other spirit but to himself – to the spirit he remembered being just a moment earlier, and which was really no different from any other that he needed to save. He took a deep breath, and tied the connection together, braiding his spirit like a rope until his own limbs were just another part of the world around him – no different from the grass or the trees and the water. Then he pulled on the connection, and he felt his limbs answering to his will, moving without any need to put weight or strain on his bones. Several more tries later, and he was on his feet.

"It is always so rewarding, so see a child take his first few tentative steps."

Kion raised his head and glared at his enemy. "You're the one who broke my limbs in the first place, you unbelievable jackass."

"And you sent your assassin to try and murder me from behind. I'd say we're about even." The golden lion had his back turned to Kion, and it took a moment for the smoke to clear enough to make out what was happening. A wall had been raised from the earth in front of Scar, and Janja's body was dangling from the top, suspended by his own paws which had been nailed in place there. He stared at the sight in horror.

"Kion." A dim shape that Kion had thought to be just a pile of ash stirred besides him, and he realized that it was Jasiri who was speaking. "I, I tried to stop him. I thought that I had stopped caring about her, about him, but it seems I was just lying to myself again. I'm sorry, Kion."

"It's not your fault," he sighed, and this time he meant it. "If you can walk, take the others and get out of here. And see if you can wake up Fuli – one of you will have to carry Ono, I think."

Scar was watching them bemusedly. "And why, exactly, should I let you do that?"

"Because you never really cared about them in the first place," said Kion. "And because you'll be too busy fighting me to stop them."

Scar gave a dismissive snort. The blast of wind that blasted from his nostrils pushed Kion to his knees, and he choked back a scream as his broken bones buckled under the pressure. Suddenly a wall rose up from the ground in front of him to block the wind, and when he looked up he saw that Jasiri was by his side, a fearful look on her face as she examined him. The expression did not suit her at all, he thought.

"Kion, are you all right?"

"Go," he ground out, biting through the pain in his limbs and chest. "I will deal with Scar."

"How trivial you make it sound." The wall crumbled and fell apart into pieces, each individual stone floating up into the air to circle lazily around Scar's head. One by one the stones began to hurl themselves at Jasiri, and she shrieked as she tried to dodge each of them in turn while grabbing Ono of the ground at the same time. Kion sucked in a painful breath as he prepared to roar in Jasiri's defence, but before he could do anything the stones fell lifelessly back onto the ground. Scar had gone perfectly still, his eyes unblinking as he stared straight past Kion.

"What have you done?"

Kion followed his gaze to his father's body, and for a moment he did not understand what his granduncle was referring to, but then he reached out with his spirit and realized that there was nothing there at all. No more soft groans were coming from Simba's body; no more did his chest move up and down as he breathed. Only an empty shell remained behind.

"What. Have. You. Done?"

"I didn't," said Kion. "I wasn't – I was just talking to his spirit, a second ago. His injuries…"

"His injuries should not have killed him for several more hours at a minimum! No, you did something to him: You absorbed his power as I did with Ahadi, and you killed him in the process!"

"That's not true," Kion said, though he remembered all too well how Simba had planned to sacrifice himself to give him and his friends the chance to run away. Could it be that his father had only pretended to change his mind? "I was just talking to him in the spirit world, or whatever you call that place where spirits talk to each other, and Zazu was there as well." He lifted his head, hoping against hope that Scar would see things his way. "He's alive, granduncle. You were right all along, and I was wrong: Spirits aren't just something we create using the Roar. All those spirits, everyone who died is still there, waiting for us to make a connection to them. We could save them all, granduncle! Not just the handful of people who learned to use the Roar, but possibly every animal who ever lived."

And it made sense, too: If the Roar's power ultimately came down to making connections with yourself and the world around you, if it really could be reduced to that one fact that we are one, then spirits would on some level have to be a fundamental part of the universe. And if that was the case, then there was no reason why they would just disappear upon death. All they needed to exist again was some kind of connection to tie themselves to the world around them, to replace the bodies that they had lost.

"Impossible…" For just one second, Scar seemed to hesitate, tempted by the lure of hope – but then his jaw set and his eyes blazed once more. "What are you basing all of this on? Some frenetic fever dream you had? If Simba's spirit is truly still around, where is he now? Can you show him to me?"

Kion vainly searched for the connection, but he already knew that it would be hopeless. "I needed the red fruit to do it in the first place," he said. "Now that his body has faded, it'll be harder…"

"The red fruit works by lowering one's inhibitions," Scar said. "It has no magical properties of its own. All it does is make you stronger by increasing your suggestibility and causing hallucinations."

"It wasn't a hallucination," Kion protested. He motioned desperately for Jasiri and the others to leave, for they were all still watching silently from the crumbling entryway. "Granduncle, even if I can't prove it to you right now, you have to admit that if there's even a small chance it's true, it has to be worth a try! There's no reason to give up on hope."

Everything seemed to fall silent, and Kion could swear that even the pools of lava bubbled a little more softly, though whether it was because of Scar's power or his own imagination he did not know. Then the old lion burst out laughing; a mad cackling which echoed throughout the great stone chamber and spoke of endless despair. "Hope! You defend the hyenas who murdered my son right in front of me, rob me of my only chance to save his spirit, and now you talk to me of hope?" He turned towards Janja's dangling body, and reached out with a claw. "I will show you what I think of hope."

"He's not your son," Kion spat, as he drew on a power he had not felt before. "He was never your son. You murdered his real father right in front of him when he was just a kid, you demented lunatic!"

The aura around Scar lit up, but this time Kion did not try to dodge: Instead he searched for his connection to Scar, to the fading old lion who he had alternately called his granduncle, his mentor and his enemy, and pulled on it right as the beam of light struck and scorched the earth all around him.

"Kion!"

The light was painfully bright, but it did not blind him: The golden lion behind that radiance had no more love for Scar than it did for Kion. He remembered it, welcomed it, and faced it with both eyes open – catching once more a glimpse of that old and pitiful king who had fallen so far down into the earth.

"Go," he said to the figures behind him. He did not look back to see if his friends heeded him.

Scar roared, and the earth around him shattered. All across the chamber the stone ground burst apart and blew into the air as lava spewed upwards. The heat was so blistering that Kion thought his fur would catch fire on the spot, but instead he reached out and wrapped the flames and the fumes around him like a cloak. Then he gathered it together and hurled it back at his enemy like a bolt of pure defiance.

His granduncle disappeared in the resulting explosion, but Kion did not wait to see the result: He reached out to the stone splinters that nailed Janja's paws to the nearby wall and pulled them out one by one. Not a second before he was done he found himself being hurled backwards again, and he had to use the roar to catch himself before his body could be hurled into the pools of molten lava behind him.

"You're still trying to save them? If you truly wanted to stop me from passing judgement, you should have simply killed them on the spot. You are still naïve..."

Scar walked out of the smoke and ash. Flecks of fire and golden light still clung to his fur, but the look in his eyes had changed. There was no more hesitation there, no more fear for Simba's life to hold him back. The last of his compassion had been snuffed out along with the person who had inspired it in him in the first place. From his brow Ushari's screams still rang ethereally, while the dim lights of hyenas ran laps around his skull, alternately cackling and shrieking as they were chased by a burning ember.

"Not just Janja," said Kion. "Shenzi too. And Jasiri, and the rest of my friends. And my father, and Zazu, and Bunga, and my sister, and my mother, and their families as well. Everyone who lived and everyone who ever died; all who were ever loved, and even those who were feared and hated by all…"

Scar roared at him, and the lava began to bubble up as if to rage at the heavens alongside him. Demonic talons of pure magma reached up from the pools and lashed out at Kion, but he pulled on his own connection once more and willed himself to go up. He felt his paws lift from the ground as he rose, just as Ushari had done in his own fight against Scar, just as Kion had known on some level should have been possible all along, for the magic he drew upon was just as much part of him as it was the earth.

He opened his eyes and stared down at the raging demon that had risen up front of him.

"Zira," he whispered, searching not for her connection but Scar's, since the two of them were one. "If you and Scar are truly bound together, then you must know him better than I do. Your husband is not fighting me; he is fighting himself. If you really want him to win, there is only one thing you can do."

The burning claws hesitated, pausing in mid-swipe as the burning visage that had formed in the flames glanced back at Scar uncertainly.

Scar snarled and swiped with his paw, bursting the molten demon and scattering her into countless fiery droplets that would have burned straight through Kion's body if he had not pushed himself away in time. Scar roared again, and this time the whole building shuddered as the ceiling cracked and the very tip of the pyramid burst open. Kion stared at the sky in horror, for the stars were flickering out one by one as an all-consuming cloud of volcanic ash eclipsed the sky.

Drawing on all his power granted to him by his friends and family, Kion summoned forth a hurricane gale to blow the ash away. There was a distant sound of something rumbling, and Kion only barely managed to throw himself out of the way before a bolt of lightning speared down from behind the cloud of obscuring ash. There was a deafening clap as the blast roughly tossed him aside, and the world blackened before his eyes as he landed, red spots flaring in his vision as his broken bones buckled and nearly pierced through his flesh. Yet even that searing pain threatened to retreat to a dark corner of his mind as he lay there, and it was becoming harder to remember why he needed to feel anything at all.

"Son? Son, you cannot rest yet. You need to keep fighting."

"Father," Kion whispered dazedly. He only barely remembered to project his thoughts rather than speak them aloud. I thought you were gone. Scar said– for a second, I really believed… He felt tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

"I fear Scar is beyond reason. You cannot reach him any longer. You must not hold back, my son."

Kion shook his head, trying to clear his vision. All around him the world was black with ash and soot, and it was all he could do not to cough and give away his location. I can't beat him, father. He's too strong...

"There is no need for you to defeat him, young master." This time, he thought he could make out Zazu's thoughts inside his head. "King Scar has always been his own worst enemy. You need but offer him the chance and he will defeat himself."

Easier said than done, thought Kion, though he was not sure if anyone could still hear. He forced himself up through his connection and half-limped through the sea of ash to where he thought he could sense Scar, on the other side of the crumbling ziggurat which was all that still remained of the ruined chamber.

"Given up on hiding?" Scar was holding Janja's wriggling body above a pool of brightly glowing lava, seeming to take the time to torment him, or possibly just making sure their connection was in place in order to grant his foe immortality. "Stay there and you'll have a prime spot from which to watch."

"Kion…" It was Janja's voice that rasped, though Kion was not sure how he could tell that it was really him and not Shenzi. "Don't, don't let him do this. Don't let him hurt my mum. Please…"

Kion dipped his head slightly, though he had no idea how he could keep true on the promise. His eyes drifted towards the brazier at the top of the ziggurat, which still billowed out a plume of red smoke.

"Hey Scar," he said. "You fancy yourself a rational animal, don't you? How about we put that to the test?" He reached out with his power and pulled the brazier from its plinth, causing it to tumble down the steps and spill its fuming contents on the ground between them. "You said the red fruit brings out your true self, right? Then if you breathe it in, you should revert back to who you really are. If I'm right, you won't be able to deny that you're being influenced by Ahadi. If not, then no harm done."

"An old trick. The royal mjuzi once tried the same thing on me – challenge me to a battle of wits, and then when my wits start fading you change the rules halfway through. I shall not fall for it again."

"It's not a trick," Kion said. "Just an honest experiment. You do believe that I'm honest, don't you, uncle? After all, that's the entire reason I'm fighting you in the first place – unless you're choosing to lie to yourself about that as well?" He made a show of shrugging lightly. "Well, I guess if I'm right and you're just deluding yourself, it makes sense you'd also convince yourself not to listen to me…"

Scar glowered at him. "Think yourself clever, do you? I don't suppose your father ever explained to you what happens to clever little lions?" He eyed the crimson smoke warily, as if it were more dangerous than anything that had been thrown at him so far. "Fine. In that case, if I'm proven right and nothing changes, you'll agree to do nothing and watch as I grant Shenzi the afterlife she rightly deserves."

Kion hesitated. "That, that's not…"

Scar bared his teeth in a humourless smile. "What's the matter, lad? Not so sure of yourself once there's something of value at stake? So much for the iron certainty of youth!" He seemed to hesitate one more moment, and then he stepped into the crimson smog and breathed deeply, allowing the noxious fumes to wash over him. "There. I have done my part of the test. Are you convinced yet?"

"The test is not done," Kion protested, feeling any semblance of control slipping away from him. "We still have to to find out if your mindset has changed any. You might just not have noticed."

"Good point." He reached out with his paw and snapped one of Janja's hind legs in two. There was a horrifying shriek as the hyena watched his own bloody bone pierce through his skin, and his screams of pain were even more horrible than his laughter had been. "Now let's see how honest you really are."

Kion felt something pull him forwards, and then Scar's claws closed around his neck and shoved him face first into the crimson powder. He tried not to breathe, but a creak in his bones caused him to gasp and inhale some of the smoke, and then there was no stopping it. The pain in his chest flared up like never before as the toxin seared his lungs, and he screamed in agony as he fell into a choking fit that forced more and more of the red powder down his throat.

"Well? Do you still believe that the hyenas and I are good, deep down? That we are all the same as you? Scar let go off Kion and grabbed Janja instead, dangling him by his shattered hind leg to the sound of animalistic screams. "What about you, Shenzi? Are you still in there?" He gave Janja a shake for emphasis. "You did not stop watching just to spite me, did you? That would be rather petty of you."

Kion moved his head away from the red powder and gasped painfully. "I… I was wrong," he breathed. Through blurred and swimming vision he could see his father's body not too far from him, unmarred by the fire and lava all around it. "Goodness doesn't come from within, but from without…"

"What are you babbling about?"

"I'll show you." Kion focussed on the smouldering dust, blowing it towards them with a gust of wind and forcing the crimson fumes down Scar's throat. As his enemy choked and reeled in surprise, he reached out for Simba's connection as well as Scar's and hammered them together with sheer brute force. "I'll make you see the goodness inside your heart, even if I have to put it there myself!"

Scar roared, and for a second Kion's vision blurred as Scar's will crashed against his. "Insolent boy! Time and again I relent for the sake of your father, and each time you betray me..."

Kion gritted his teeth, pushing back against the unstoppable avalanche that was Scar's will. But Kion was a rational being, and no thinking creature would ever surrender to a mere force of nature. Where Scar pushed he gave way even as he redoubled his efforts elsewhere, tearing at his opponent's defences with a thousand whittling blows. Slowly, through sheer bloody-minded determination, he could feel the connection taking hold, and a whisper spoke from within both their heads.

"Uncle? Uncle Scar, is that really you?"

There was a scream from Scar and the sound of something breaking, and then the world collapsed around them. The walls of the chamber shattered and the lava faded into nothingness, until only the stars above them remained. They were standing in a field of grass, grey and blue in the colours of night, the endless savannah stretching out before them just like it had in Kion's vision of Ahadi.

"Lies," the old lion choked out. "Lies and trickery. Again you attack me where it hurts the most…"

Kion stared back in Scar's green eyes, which contained as much doubt as they did hatred. "Why are you so afraid of winning, granduncle? Do you think you don't deserve it? Do you really hate yourself that much?"

Scar roared in reply, his screams of fury no longer resembling that of any animal. Lightning flashed down, and Kion hurriedly raised up a pillar of earth in response, catching it with a mighty crash and a shower of burnt rocks. As Kion countered each of Scar's attacks in turn, he dimly realized that they were no longer in the savannah: They were duelling on the peak of Pride Rock as all around them the Pridelands burned. Scar's aura flared up, the golden light rendering him almost unrecognizable.

"You are not Ahadi, granduncle," Kion shouted. "You're not your father, and neither am I." He had not been there to see the duel between Scar and his father at the top of Pride Rock, but looking at Scar now it was hard to miss the similarity. "Simba told me in our vision how for the sake of his kingdom he'd been pretending to be someone he was not. Do you really think Ahadi was any different, granduncle? Do you really think you're any different?"

The ground cracked and shattered beneath their paws, and then Kion was falling, tumbling through the cool air even as Scar swiped at him blindly. He fell into ice-cold water, and for a moment he thought he was drowning, but then he remembered to simply will it all away. The two of them had fallen down into the lair of the Lion Guard, standing in the now-empty pool from which he used to drink whenever they returned from patrol. All around them, the paintings of the past seemed to be moving: Countless shapes of lions and hyenas biting and clawing at each other, locked together in eternal combat.

"Ahadi was never a god of evil until you made him into one. And hyenas were never destined to be evil until he decided it was so." He gestured around at the moving images all around him, which seemed to spell such a gloomy fate. "A history of lies and self-deception, all for no more than a pleasing story…"

Scar charged at him, and the scenery changed once again. Inadvertently, Kion's thoughts had wandered back to his battle against Ushari's minions, and now he was standing at the top of Flatridge Rock as Scar ran up the hill towards him. As he turned, Kion saw that the herd animals were there as well: All the zebras and antelopes, giraffes and wildebeests that had fallen in that final fateful charge. It was not so hard to see now, that the fragile connection he had pulled on back then had always been there.

"I have no right to ask this of you," he said, looking at each of them in turn. "But you helped me fight Ushari before, and now I need your help again. Will you run with me, one more time?"

One of the giraffes nodded slowly. "Princess Kiara told us to fight. We fight."

"We trampled the king once," the lead of the wildebeests muttered. "We run for Prince Kion, now."

Kion smiled gratefully, and then he turned and charged down the hill. Scar was rapidly making his way towards them, too blind with grief and rage to stop. The stampede crashed into the old lion before Kion could get there, and the old lion howled in pain as he was trampled beneath a thousand cloven hooves. The herd threw up a cloud of orange dust, and soon the entire valley was covered in it, until it choked the lungs and obscured all vision like a poison mist. Their surroundings had changed once again.

"Do you see now, granduncle?" He tried to make out Scar's form amongst the stampeding herd, but the orange dust obscured all sight. "This is how you killed your brother, right in front of my father's eyes. You're the one that convinced the hyenas to do that, just as you're the one that trained Shenzi and Ushari to use the Roar in the first place. Everything you hate about the world, you created yourself!"

Scar roared, and all the wildebeests were flung backwards as claws of pure nothingness raked them, tearing them to pieces. Kion recoiled, not knowing what effect this would have on their spirits, and right as he remembered to banish them another blast of force hurled him backwards. As the ground yawned up beneath him he scrambled with his claws for purchase, and he suddenly found himself dangling from the edge of a cliff, a primordial terror overtaking him as he desperately searched for a foothold.

Above him, a pair of green eyes set in an old and withered frame stared down at him.

"Don't," he whispered. "There's no point in punishing people who are just like you. We are the same, granduncle. Sisi ni sawa."

"Do you think I don't know that? Everything you accuse me of, I've cursed myself for a hundred times over. You've told me nothing knew."

"I know," Kion said, closing his eyes. "But you still needed someone other than yourself to tell you that."

Scar's paws closed over his, digging into his fur with ethereal claws. Kion did not wince.

"Why?"

"Because if you can accept that you are guilty of the same crimes as Shenzi, then maybe you can also admit that you have the same qualities. She loved her son so much that she was willing to die for him, even though she couldn't admit it to herself until the very end, and the same is true of you." He opened his eyes and stared back at Scar without flinching. "We are the same, granduncle: All of us. We're capable of the same evil, and the same grace. And if you can imagine yourself acting in the exact same way as the people you fight, then it's irrational to hate others – and just as irrational to hate yourself. You understand, don't you granduncle? Mufasa had it right from the very beginning. We are one."

Slowly, the hardness in Scar's eyes gave way, as his claws retreated from Kion's paws. In that instant, as Scar's oppressive force of will weakened and waned, a familiar shape appeared behind the old lion.

"Uncle…"

Kion felt the claws retract in shock, and as he fell into the abyss he could feel the world of the living calling him back once more. The last he saw was Scar facing two other lions, none of them quite knowing what to say, but seeming to be glad that they were there.