The First Ruler
I remember little of the first years of my life. 
I was a kit among many others of the burrow, searching comfort and protection among the warmth of all the others born during my same season. Mothers tended for us, instructed us about dangers, for the day when we would challenge the surface. 
We were protected, or so we believed, by the never-ending threat of our bane. Every kit could believe to smell and listen a Night Chaser walking just over our heads but we also relied on the safety of the Fathers guarding the entries: once I saw a male peeping into the nursery chamber. 
It was uncommon, and it hit to me how different he was from a Mother: his body possessing a different kind of protective strength. He had a silver pelt, like all the others inhabiting my burrow: while I would never know, for days I wondered in awe if I was born out of the blood of such protective warrior.
My foolish certainties as a kit were shattered in a single night of screams and blood. Our burrow was the last of a long line of targets, and while our elders debated to leave that territory in the end, caution prevailed. That choice would cost everything to my tribe.
The monsters came while we slept, the few males guarding the entrances could barely give an alarm and raise their spears before being mauled to death. Our tormentors extracted screaming adults and cubs after entire sections of the tunnels collapsed under their savage assault. 
Fear saved me, my whole body almost frozen by terror and stuck in a crevice between ground and rock. I dared look outside only two days later; finding only bloodstained soil, silence and open sky.
Alone, I searched traces on the plains for another burrow that could welcome me, moving by day and hiding by night. The tribe that welcomed me was different for their cream-colored pelt and unusual manner of speech yet I felt myself protected once again. They told me the silver-pelted tribe I was born was the last known of our kind. 
I grew up among my new tribe and become an adult, but I never fully felt the same connection as I did with my lost tribe. The very same food was different, as well as the soil, females found my silver pelt weird and avoided my mating embrace. Even males were uneasy to stood guard with me, sensing my dark experience they did not wish to know or share. 
None followed me during the fateful day when I ventured away from the burrow’s entrances to investigate a whining sound. I was scared like the others yet… I recalled the sounds of terror, and I felt compelled to reach out whoever made that sound. I was alone when I found him, and when he lifted his eyes to look at me I discovered something new. The Night Chaser cub was stuck into a natural ravine, with a broken leg, and calling for help: his eyes shared a well-known expression of pain and fear.
My mind was in turmoil: the Night Chaser feared ME!
Despite being a cub, the being was taller than me, with an impressive set of fangs and claws and swollen muscles on his still undeveloped body. I felt the weight of the cries of my lost tribes, when I throw the spear against him. The wails of my lost kin was resounding in my ears when I lifted a rock and crushed his neck with it. 
I did something achieved by very few males: I killed a Night Chaser.
My body was aching in pain and blood, because in his death, the creature stuck me hard with his clawed legs, ripping fur and flesh from my flanks. Yet … I was going to survive. When I returned to the burrow, I was met with the amazed and scared eyes of my new tribe since I was dragging the severed head of the creature. 
Thanks this action, my position in the tribe suddenly changed from the pitiful survivor of a neighbor tribe, to the hero who killed the nightmare. When I placed the skull of the creature on my head for the first time, I perceived shivers of fear and admiration from all the others surrounding me. 
In a matter of days, elders begun to ask my voice to organize patrolling turns and females started searching me out during their mating cycles. When some of the newborn kits begun showing the silver pelt of my original tribe I felt bits of justice were coming back to my lost kin. 
Nevertheless, it wasn’t enough.
My chance came during a large tribal meeting: I hoped to find some other silver-pelt among the many leaders and chiefs yet I found none and this absence only strengthened my resolution. I spoke in the name of my new tribe, crying to rally males from every tribe and kill the Night Chasers as I did in the past. 
Many other leaders were scared and shocked after my words, seeing only the dangers of putting new lives at risk. My most vocal opponent was another rare male who happened to kill a Night Chaser by chance. I never learned exactly how he did, but for sure he wasn’t fast enough to avoid my spear when I thrusted it into his guts. 
The other leaders looked to me with fear. That was good, because fear it’s a strong feeling that I learned to appreciate and exploit. I didn’t ask anymore, I ordered each tribe to share males ready to fight and give up their lives to protect their females and kits. The leaders complied.   
Five days later we caught a small pack of Night Chasers while they were returning to their hills after raiding a burrow: the creatures mauled to death dozens of males who came too close, but spears and rocks brought down five of them. 
As soon as they saw their comrades falling one by one, the other Night Chasers fled.
They ESCAPED from us!
That was a night of triumph, for the first time in my life it was spent outside the cover of a burrow. For the first time, I admired the tiny sparkling white dots on the dark sky and wondered if someone would ever dare to reach and touch them: I felt my kind could do anything. Words spread among the burrows and more males eager to fight swelled my army: while many would die fighting our bane, each Night Chaser killed was a victory because their cubs were rare and their packs rarely worked together and often quarreled with each other.  
It was a surprised for sure when an elder lonely Night Chaser approached my burrow. We strengthened the entrances with rocks and logs and soil, turning it in a defensible fortress. I came forward and the creature talked to me in a guttural and broken voice. He said of being “named” Sorrallath the Wise, and that his people was named Urrgodh: claiming to be “Sons of the Moons” and that the land and the sky blessed his people with the skill of the hunt to feed upon smaller creatures like my people and keep their numbers low. He called us the “Virrishian”, stating it means “Blessed children from the earth” and that taking our lives was done with acts of honor and respect for the role we had in something he described as the “great balance”.  
He told me the killing of predator by prey was unnatural and I was breaking the balance, threatening the entire existence of “Virri”, our world. Among his kind I was known as the “Zannkharr”, the “grieving unfaithful”. 
I smiled while looking upon Sorrallath the Wise, and thanked him for his precious words. 
“The time of your people has come to an end; my kind would never crawl again in the darkness and fear as unnamed food for a predatory species. Since now on I will be known as Zann-Kha because we too deserve names, and my title would be forever the First Ruler.”
When I ordered to throw spears to the elder, the creature weirdly showed no fear in his expression. His eyes were… full of pity, a feeling I could not understand at the time and still make me wonder today.  
That night, I called my chieftains: all the burrows will provide to my fortress females in addition to males. As soon as the first of them arrived, I assigned many of them to the sleeping burrows of the males to replenish the ranks of the deceased. One of ten was marked with a paint; they would not mate with any other male except me: as the Urrgodh wiped out my silver-pelt tribe, I was intentioned to bring it back to the existence. 
Dozens of females were eager and honored to mate with me. Every time I visited a burrow to check the defense and the numbers of the Virshian warriors, I could find females in heat with my personal mark painted on their back. They would often interrupt my inspection presenting themselves to me, and without waste of time they would soon be mounted and impregnated with my seed. Males who dared to approach marked females received castration as punishment, and then relegated to tend the crops, but it was a rare occurrence because few dared to defy me.  
By the time of the extinction of the Urrgodh in the plains, I routinely mated with at least a dozen of females for day: hundreds of them swelled with my litters every month and thousands of newborn kits showed the silver pelt of my lost tribe. 
In their eyes and in their pelt, I regained what once I lost. I was no more alone. My tribe was back to me.  
I am Zann-Kha the First Ruler of the Plains, and I have no more fear.