A/N: In Buddhism there are three different realms in which a being stuck in Samsara can be reborn. Within the desire realm you can be reborn as a human, which is considered to have the greatest potential as you can use that life for good and thus be reborn as higher beings such as Deva. However, if you do not live such a good life, you may instead be reborn as an animal (Tiryagyoni).

Now if you're a big Buddhism fan, you might be saying: But Sophronius, surely the title of this chapter should be Manuṣya then, since Scar and Zira both clearly have the potential for spiritual development common to the Human Domain. To which I reply: They're lions, you numb nut!

They burst through the tunnel and leaped down the entryway, tumbling over the rocky ground as they tripped and stumbled in the darkness before getting back on their paws and running once more. Adrenaline carried them through the desolate savannah until Scar finally crashed and could go no more.

"Get up," growled Zira, nudging him with her snout. "Get up! They could still be behind us."

"What's it matter?" Scar groaned. He lay on the cold and barren ground, which was too dry to be called dirt. The last of the withered grass died beneath him with a sigh. "It's gone – it's all gone. It's over, Zira."

"Nothing is over until you're dead," said Zira, biting on his mane and pulling sharply. "Get up, damn it!"

"And go where?" Scar stared past her at the clear night sky, where the stars shone down on them just as they had back then, when his father first told him of how the Kings of the Past watched over them from above. He had felt so small then, in the face of a divine power that he might one day borrow but never truly wield, and the feeling had never quite left him. "They know, Zira; they know everything. The monkey played his game and won. We can never go home again."

"They know because you chose to give up and told your enemies the truth right when you had them on the ropes! What, did the thought of winning frighten you?" She looked at him in disgust. "You know, my son might be a weak and pathetic mess, but at least he's not confused about which side he's on!"

"Yeah," said Nuka, "you tell him, mum!"

Scar turned his head, not willing to look her in the eye. The stars were beautiful, and the press of the cold earth on his back was oddly soothing. Even the dry air smelled right, in that moment.

"That's it, isn't it?" Her voice had dropped to the barest whisper. "It wasn't the powder, and it wasn't the monkey's magic. You were thinking about the future, and you thought, you thought to yourself–" Her voice caught. "What about your vision, then? Do you remember, when we shared that meal together beneath the stars outside your cave? You told me how you thought the Circle of Life was foolish, and how differently you would rule if you were king and I your queen. Was all of that a lie?"

Scar shrugged. "It was a while ago." He was distantly aware that Zira was staring at him. He no longer had the will to hold back the effects of the red powder that still ravaged his system, and his mind swam with its effects – it had to be, for else he could have sworn that he saw tears forming in her eyes.

"Enough!" Zira bit his toe, and Scar jumped up with a startled yelp. "Anything worth saying is worth fighting for. Get up, you worthless coward! I will chase you all the way to the Outlands if I have to."

Scar ran, once again finding himself on the path of least resistance. Even young Nuka kept pace beside him – it seemed the fear of his mother was as well ingrained in the boy as it was in him. Maybe he is my son after all, he mused. He chuckled darkly at the thought.

You've lost, brother. All that effort with your drought and that damnable headache, and you still can't spite me nearly as well as I spite myself.

As they ran, Scar noticed the scenery growing darker and bleaker around them, and for the first time he looked to his companion as he spoke. "Zira? Where are we going?"

"To do what you should have done right from the start," she spat. "Gather an army, and win by force."

Her meaning soon became clear, as all around them the skeletons of great elephants rose. Scar did not know how old they were, but they had been around even when he was a cub. Somehow, those old bones were even more intimating now than they had been back when he was still young and foolish.

"Well look at that – a royal visitor! To what do we owe the pleasure of this distinguished company?"

The trio skidded to a halt at the sound of the voice, and turned to find a hyena standing on top of a skull several times her own size. Scar had convinced himself that those skeletons had grown in his imagination, but if anything they were even larger than he remembered. "Shenzi…"

"You've got some nerve, coming back here after what you pulled with poor Banzai." She leaped off the skull and landed in front of them with deceptive ease. "Did you come to give us that mountain of food you promised? No? Doesn't look like it – unless that scrawny cub there is your down payment."

Zira growled and pulled Nuka back by the scruff of his neck. "Shenzi, we require an army. We need your hyenas to assault Pride Rock and reclaim King Scar's rightful place on the throne."

"Oh? Sounds like there's trouble in paradise. What, did that tricksy tongue of his get him in trouble again?" All around them, hyenas were emerging from the elephant graveyard – some squeezing between giant rib cages, while others drooped out of eye sockets like so many carrion worms. Some slavered, some snapped their teeth; all of them were chuckling hollowly. "Here's a better idea," she said. "We take our army, slaughter our way through any resistance, and take Pride Rock for ourselves. With Mufasa dead, the Guard disbanded and the new king and queen here all by their lonesome, there's nobody left to stop us." She smiled humourlessly. "Looks like we're at the top of the food chain now, boys and girls."

Zira turned and snapped at the approaching hyenas, swiping at any who came too close. Several of them yelped and jumped back with bloodied noses, and she snarled with vicious satisfaction. There was a desperation in her eyes, however; she knew she could not hope to win, not against an entire hyena war band.

"Shenzi," Scar said. An odd sense of calmness had come over him – perhaps the aftereffects of the red powder, or perhaps he simply found the threat of imminent death to be a more reassuringly familiar challenge. "Our pantry is still full of meat, and we have a pool of cold water for you to drink. All you need do is distract the lionesses for us, and we'll share it with you. There's no need for a painful battle."

"Oho, no need for a battle he says. Hold on, let me just consult with my advisors." She turned to the two slavering hyenas that guarded her flanks. "Ed? What do you think?"

"Eheheheh… eheheheheh… heh."

"I see," she said. "Hang them by their entrails, eh? What about you, Banzai?"

"Eheheh…. Heheh… heheheh."

She gasped. "Eat the adults first, and make the children watch? Oh Banzai, you're too much."

Zira leaped in front of her with a roar so full of bloodlust that the hyenas leaped away in terror. "I will slaughter your entire worthless species if you try!"

Scar took advantage of this change in momentum to clear his throat and step forward. "Listen to yourself, Shenzi, and then listen carefully to me. Throughout your entire history, the Lion Kings have made your people out to be savage, stupid scavengers. They forced you to live in this desolate wasteland for a crime your ancestors committed and which you had nothing to do with." He gestured up at the stars, which were as cold and silent as ever. "Those same Kings are looking down on us even now: Nothing infuriated them more than when I made you their equal, and nothing would please them more than for you to prove me wrong. Let our victory be your revenge."

"Sweet words." She gave him a look that indicated exactly what she thought of such. "And why exactly should I listen to the captain of the Lion Guard, the exact same group that hunted down and slaughtered us by the dozens? Why should we hyenas put our lives at risk for the king of our most hated enemy? For the very person who turned poor Banzai into this?"

Scar looked her in the eye. "Because when I had everything and you had nothing, I acknowledged you."

She glared at him a moment longer, and then turned away in disgust. "You have until dawn. After that I will slaughter every lion in sight, no matter what new scheme you're trying to pull off."

"Thank you." Scar dipped his head in acknowledgement, and then hurried back in the direction he came from, trusting Zira and Nuka to follow him. It seemed he had recovered some of his earlier energy, or perhaps the red dust had finally worn off, for he moved with far greater ease than he had before.

After a while, he heard Zira speak up behind him. "So… what's your plan then?"

"I don't have one yet," Scar admitted, "except that I know two things: We need to figure out how the spirits really work if we're going to have any chance of beating Rafiki, and I have to find Simba and beg him for forgiveness if there's to be any hope of a happy outcome for anyone in the Pridelands."

"Ah." There was another pregnant pause. "Go on, say it."

"What?"

"You were right. Trying to win with brute force didn't accomplish anything – instead I almost got us killed. I just thought, that maybe if I tried… but I guess I was just a stupid young lioness after all."

Scar turned to regard his mate, who was running behind him with her cub resting on her back. "No. You tried something, at least. Sometimes it's better to do something stupid than to do nothing at all."

She nodded, though it was hard to tell if she was really satisfied. "So, where are we going?"

"To the secret lair of the Lion Guard," he said. "There's something there which I suspect we'll need, if we're going to figure out how these spirits really work. Speaking of which: Zira, you never did tell me what happened when you found Rafiki's hideout. Tell me exactly what you saw there."

She did, and by the time she finished Pride Rock stood looming over them. Scar cursed under his breath as he brushed aside the vines that obscured the entrance. "So that's how it is… I'm such an idiot."

"Scar dear, you're doing that thing again where you're calling yourself an idiot for failing to realize something which I still haven't realized yet."

"Sorry, I'll explain in a second." He ducked low as he darted through the tunnel, taking care not to trip over any of the rocks and stalagmites that littered the cave system. The starlight that poured down through the hole in the cavern's ceiling was barely enough to make out their surroundings, and it took Scar several moments longer to find what he was looking for between the rocky outcrops.

"Rafiki's staff," Zira said in amazement as Scar pried it from between the rocks. "You kept it."

"Of course I kept it," Scar said. "It's a mystical object of undefined power – I wasn't going to return it just because I couldn't figure out how to use it. No, I just left a similar looking stick in its place when I took it, though I don't think it fooled that cunning old mandrill for a second." He tossed the staff onto the ground in disgust, the dried red fruits attached to the top clattering along with it. "All this time I tried to figure out how to use the staff, and I entirely failed to notice the blatantly obvious. The crimson smoke he used back in the chamber, that powder he gave Simba to show him visions of Mufasa, and finally the mural paintings he used to reveal Nuka's plight to you." He gestured at the walls of the cave which displayed all around them the history of the Pridelands, with crude drawings picked out in shades of red.

"They're all the same colour," Zira said in realization, drawing in a sharp breath. "It's not the staff – it's the fruits that are attached to it."

"I would have realized it much earlier," Scar said bitterly, "but I had already pinned all my hopes on that bloody staff when I was younger, and my fears of being wrong prevented me from considering any alternative." He pried the fruits loose from the stick, and began smashing them apart with a rock. "The only animals capable of communing with spirits are the lion kings and the royal mjuzi. Why only those?"

"Because they are the greatest and wisest animals in the kingdom," Zira said automatically.

"Yes," said Scar, "but then why do only the Lion Kings go on to the afterlife? Why is only the captain of the Guard able to use the Roar of the Elders?"

Zira stared at the fruits which were rapidly transforming into a red paste under Scar's workmanship. "That powder… Rafiki used the same colour paint to mark Simba during his presentation! And also during Mufasa's royal ceremony – and I'm guessing the captain of the Guard is marked with it as well."

"Exactly." Scar spat on the paste to make it a bit more gooey – he could only hope the end result would somewhat approximate Rafiki's true product. "All of his rituals and over-the-top theatrics were merely intended to disguise the obvious truth – that spiritual power comes from being enlightened, not from any mere stick. What we have here is the only known substance that can help with that." Acting on a hunch, Scar smashed two pieces of flint together to set the staff on fire right on top of the smashed fruits, and finally a thin trail of smoke started to rise from the red paste he had created. "Now, breathe."

She gave the smoke a dubious look. "What's the point? I'm no king or captain, and I'm not exactly mjuzi material, now am I?"

"You are," said Scar, observing her reaction closely. "I watched you back at the royal den. You resisted the effects of the smoke, maintained your sense of self, and kept a clear distinction between how you felt and what you thought to be true despite the situation. Even I couldn't have managed that without my years of training. All you need now is to find your centre and focus on the mind-altering effects of these fruits, and then you will be able to intercede with the spirits on my behalf."

"Focus?" Zira laughed bitterly. "Scar, you know me – I get distracted the moment I see anything I can pounce on. I'm not like you: I've never been able to control the way I think, or how I feel."

"You're wrong," said Scar. "I've seen the way you hunt – you are absolutely relentless in your pursuit once you have your mind set on a target. All you need is to find something worth focusing on."

"Something worth focusing on…" Zira hesitated for a second, and then beckoned to her cub. "Nuka! Sit over there and keep quiet. Mommy needs to fantasize about all the horrible things she's going to do to those nasty hyenas if they ever betray her by going back on their word." She settled into a crouch and bored into the boy with burning crimson eyes, while he just sat there and trembled, whimpering quietly.

"…okay," said Scar. "Right. Good." He settled into his own meditative pose and focused, trying vainly not to think about the upcoming confrontation and all the horror that would come to pass if he failed. He tried to reach out to the spirits through his connection, but they were as silent as the stars whose faint light trickled down through the opening above.

Brother… I know you despise me and want nothing more than to see me fail, but if you could just hold back your ire long enough for me to undo my mistakes and save your kingdom, I would be much obliged.

A/N: That's it for chapter seven, only a few more to go! So no, the last chapter was not the final one. Apologies to anyone who was confused about that.

By the way, there's now also a TVtropes page available for this story, to be found here: tvtropes DOT org/pmwiki/pmwiki DOT php/FanFic/ScarsSamsara. Please feel free to head over there and give it an edit or link to it on other pages, as it'll help give this story a bit more exposure. : )