Zok was ready to meet his 'fiance' Sera. In the Zukira tribe, couples were chosen by their parent when both partners were around 14. However, they weren't allowed to get married till they turned 20.
According to their belief, children only attained maturity around that age.
Before the age of 20, the couple was nothing more than a bunch of kids playing house.
Zok was happy with this arrangement because he got engaged to the most beautiful girl in the tribe, all because he was the son of the Chieftain.
As much as Zok disliked his father, he never turned down any advantages or special treatment he got because of his father.
If it hadn't been for his father, Sera would not have even looked at him. Because even Zok knew she was much better looking than a guy like him deserved.
He was sure that Sera was forced to get engaged to him due to his family background. But frankly, he didn't care about that at all. He was happy with his engagement, as evidenced by how he used to behave around her.
Besides his mother, Sera was the only one who could make Zok do what she wanted. But she never showed any interest in him, and that's why he was excited when she expressed that she wanted to meet him.
"Ma! I'm hungry! What do we have for... breakfast..."
However, before he could leave his room, he saw someone he didn't want to. Not at the start of the morning, to say the least.
"Oh, look! The prince of wilderness is finally awake! Prepare for a festival!" Ahuli released an exaggerated gasp and immediately offered his seat to his younger brother.
It might seem like he was being kind to his brother, but in fact, Ahuli was simply mocking Zok. Just like he always did.
Zok shot a hostile glance at his brother as he hated Ahuli as much as he hated his father. Thankfully, the feelings were mutual between those two.
Standing 6' 4" tall, the brown-skinned Ahuli was confident about him. Unlike Zok, who was neither secure nor did he have their ethnic colours. Everyone in the tribe had either black or brown skin, while Zok had a weird orange tinge to his skin.
Ahuli had a lean face with a pointed chin and a small nose. His pointy ears stuck out of his long, brown unbraided hair. His smooth cheeks and puffy lips were inherited from his father.
While his brown eyes were an inheritance from their mother. He was always conscious of his facial appearance and thus regularly tapered his eyebrows. What suited him the most was his beaded goatee, which looked exactly like their father's.
Moreover, Ahuli's muscular body was a canvas filled with numerous battle scars and tribal tattoos. It was a sign of a prideful warrior, and each tattoo on his body had a significance of its own.
Like the one which resembled a spear that Ahuli had on his right arm, it signified his weapon of choice, and the red colour of the tattoo indicated that no one in the tribe was better than him when it came to using spears.
He had another tattoo that covered his entire back that looked like a pack of wolves. These, however, were no ordinary wolves. These were direwolves and indigenous species of monsters known for their ferociousness and intelligence.
That said, it was extremely difficult to hunt a single direwolf, yet Ahuli had successfully subdued a pack of four wolves by himself. Moreover, he was the first one to ever do so. Before him, the record belonged to their father, who had fought and killed three wolves all by himself.
"Buzz off, Ahuli-" Zok wanted to say, but he was interrupted by their father, who was sitting at the table, waiting for the breakfast to be served.
"That's no way to talk to a future Chieftain." Skah glowered without even looking at his younger son, "I don't care what you say or do in my absence. But when you're in front of me, you'll show respect to Ahuli. Is that understood?"
Ahuli put no effort into concealing his smirk as their father rebuked Zok.
Ahuli looked like a carbon copy of his father. From having the same hair to the same physique.
Everything that Skah had was visible in Ahuli, and Skah had way more scars and tattoos than Ahuli. Which was obvious as Skah had been slaying monsters way before his sons were even born.
The only thing Skah had that Ahuli didn't was an eyepatch. Skah had lost his left eye while fighting a monster far worse than the direwolves, the Great Aberrated Lizard.
Zok had never seen any of these monsters himself. Still, from what he knew from his mother's stories, the four-legged Aberrated Lizards were typically between five to seven feet long and had exceptional speed, making it difficult to hunt them down.
Moreover, their hide was so tough that ordinary weapons couldn't even pierce through. One could only kill them by attacking their eyes, which were apparently the only 'soft' part of their body.
One would have to put an effort to pierce their eyes all the way through their head using a javelin or spear. Even if someone managed to get close to them, they had to find a way to deal with the poison they spat in self-defence. The poison was the reason why Skah only had one eye.
"Yes, chieftain, it's crystal clear," Zok mumbled a reply before taking a seat at the far end of the table.
Zok rarely, if ever, addressed his Skah and Ahuli as father and brother. It wasn't because he didn't want to address them as father and brother, but because both Skah and Ahuli had instructed Zok not to 'defile their public image' by calling them that.
After all, he was the only one in the tribe who did not have a single tattoo or a scar. Even children younger than him at least had some sort of a tattoo. It was no secret that both his father and brother felt disgusted because of this and refrained from even calling Zok their 'relative'.
Because of their attitude, Zok never wanted to do anything with his life because he felt that no matter what he did or accomplished, he would never be as good as his father or brother.
So, he gave up trying to impress them long ago. For him, it was better to be a deadbeat than try being his father's ideal son, only to be reprimanded repeatedly.
'For once, I wanted to not meet with these two, but my rotten luck just had to betray me...' Zok thought to himself, 'Sera would definitely get upset now... dang it!'