Ankyra Sound bite the lightning and tell me how it tastes

posting under the assumption he's been accepted & in tha ranks w/ approval from lauren :)

 

Stretching his scar-etched limbs, he yawns and idly ponders how long it would take for the dust to settle before he challenged for a rank that more satisfied his desires. The concept of placing himself below those who were no better than him - even for a short while - was a notion that no Melonii would willingly accept. He knew the thought might appear horribly arrogant coming from someone who was only recently accepted, however, Vaati was not a particularly boastful individual. Neither was he a liar. Pretending to place a value on himself at a place lower than those who were likely, ultimately inferior in comparison was not something he was interested in. Much to his satisfaction, the dynamic of Caiaphas's pack allowed him to take what he wanted and when he wanted it. It fed into the primal natures of his species without having to apologize for doing so, asserting superiority where true prowess remained vacant. 

In the various instances he had acted on the basis of natural instinct, he had been expected to pay for it in blood. Granted, many of his actions had caused grievous bodily harm or death, it had been foolish to assume it would not catch up to him..... even his own enemies could not deny that the world they lived in was strictly: kill or be killed. He would no longer seek forgiveness for having the tact to survive where others could not, nor doing what needed to be done to remain at the top of the food chain so to speak. The strong outlived the weak and such was an eternal fact of life. Hence why he found it simply wrong to infer that based on a caste system of strongest to weakest he - despite all that he had survived - was justifiably among the bottom. Vaati would prove himself rightfully worthy, or he would simply take a place he deserved by force. Whichever came first. 

Hunkered down among scattered bones and preening the remains of recent prey from between his nails, he welcomes any intrigued company though he is not a sociable individual. Many seemed automatically disinterested in approaching him on account of his steely dexterity, and so he had settled comfortably into a lifestyle of minimal conversation. On the contrary, he had no interest in fostering inessential bad blood between himself and his new peers.. he wasn't that stupid. 

Raleska had kept her distance, but not her eye, off of the stranger since his induction into Rusalka. After a while, she decided she had given him enough space -- and rather impatiently, drifted towards the leviathan as he was prone on the ground. The remains of a meal was cast around his feet, and Raleska gave it a brief glance before settling her rakish gaze on the imposing male.

He was a far cry from the last few males to come to Rusalka; they were all heavily scarred, same as him -- but he did not carry himself the way Firefly did, and possessed twice the physical capacity as Alarian. It seemed Rusalka was collecting into a band of rather hardened, or rather beaten, wolves. She wondered if someday, she would be as scarred as him -- and if that was simply the price of being a survivor.

Surmising he was done with his meal and that he would of course, want to entertain a rather surly girl, Raleska spoke: "How'd you get all the scars?" There was not a bit of bashfulness in her gaze as she waited for his answer; if asking such a personal question was rude, it certainly had not occurred to the Eyjolfur.

thanks for joining <3

His ears flicker slightly at the indication of footsteps padding forth, but does not turn his attention to meet the cause of the sound. No later does he feel a set of eyes settle on him and a particularly interesting question breaks the cold silence. Vaati had never been asked it before by an unwavering voice, one that did not hold the slightest bit of a nervous quiver. It intrigued him. Perhaps it should have, but he did not find it to be a personal matter. The markings broke his skin from head to toe without apology, bearing each as a trophy rather than a sign of weakness. 

His response came in a deep baritone; guttural as if he had spent more time snarling than talking. “War, mostly.” It was the short answer, for much of his life had been spent in some sort of battle or another. “The consequence of making enemies.” Vaati turns to her then with a slight gleam in his eye, wondering what she might make of that. She is quite young, and so he makes the assumption that she has yet not been exposed to such bloodshed their species was prone to. Ithrik, Iliksis, Redhawk, Rannoch, the Cerberus, his own blood; he thinks of their names and the circumstances they had come into his life. They had all brought him harm but left him stronger in the aftermath, and for that, he felt gratitude. The anger still boiled beneath his skin without a doubt -- though it would fuel his next kill, and the one after that and so forth.

OFC! <3

Vaati seemed neither perturbed by Raleska's approach, nor affronted by her blunt question. A good thing for Raleska, considering she would have been no match for the man had he been offended by the callous nature of her query. She was too young, or perhaps, raised in such a manner where obeisance was unnecessary, to be sympathetic to a wolf pained by her question. She just wanted to know, after all.

The answer was not exactly illuminating. War. Raleska shifted, her gaze flickering to the cliffside. Her mother had cautioned any Drageda wolf caught in Ankyra was to be killed on sight, and while she had never witnessed the full scale of horror a war was capable of unleashing, she knew that to be a serious order indeed. She wondered what war it was that Vaati had served, and if his enemies had been anything like Drageda.

"Cool." She answered, giving his scars another once-over. "So did you kill a lot of enemies?"

Her answer causes a twinge of an upturn in his lips, humoured by the youthful trait of curiosity which slightly reminded him of a younger self. “I suppose,” He shrugs. He has never kept count. At some point they had all converged into one singular being stored into his memory, a faceless victim that held no distinguishable quality of significance. “I’ve killed those who weren’t enemies.” He says in a thoughtful tone, recalling vividly the experiences of sinking his teeth into those who were relatively innocent, but had simply been there -- wrong place, wrong time. “And yourself? Have you killed?” Intensely cold optics seek to bore into her own, though he knew the answer was likely no. He shifts to stand, stretching his limbs once more to shake off what snow had befallen his pelt since laying down. In doing does the cold wind rush across the large, hairless spot across his neck and he shivers silently, a quiet reminder of his mortality.

The girl's eyes widened as Vaati answered; so he was a killer. He was so aloof and indifferent about it, too. Raleska's mind was awhirl with fascinated examination of this piece of information. It made her think of Eurycrates -- and a pang of something similar to grief struck her and darkened her features, like a dark stormcloud passing over a previously sunny patch of landscape.

She missed him. He did not deserve the ending he had been given, and the girl had not deserved to witness it. Perhaps it was because she was her mother's child through and through, or perhaps her early hardship had already hardened her -- but Raleska had promptly buried Eurycrates' bloody death deep within her, and rarely summoned the memory upwards for inspection.

She frowned, for other than to eat, she had killed nothing. "No. But I've seen someone get killed."

Vaati notes her frown, “You seem disappointed.” He regards her with intrigue. “Is it because it was not you who did it or because it did not please you?” The inquiry is brought with a furrowed brow, curious at what this girl had to tell him. If she had not killed but wished to, he wonders what may be stopping her. Nothing had prohibited him from at least attempting it, but he had also grown in an environment that did not consider death at the hands of another taboo in any fashion. It was an unspoken yet essential part of their upbringing - causing some sort of calamity just to fit in with the rest of the insanity that had surrounded them. Perhaps Caiaphas fostered a different kind of upbringing for her children, one that did not leave them in mental ruin before their first birthday.

Vaati easily saw through Raleska's troubled expression, and it caused the girl to look up to him in surprise. Was she that transparent, or was he simply that altruistic? The girl did not realize that her emotions were easily read by wolves more experienced than her, and she vowed she would do better to prevent herself from being so easily deciphered.

She settled into the ground with a sigh, unwilling to elaborate but equally unwillingly to displease the towering figure before her. "I.." She took in a sharp breath. "Eury- I watched my friend die." She had done a good job of preventing her emotions from curdling her expression, but her voice was tinged with the barest thread of grief. "The wolves on the cliff killed him. He was trying to rescue Rosalyn and I... I couldn't do anything! I could have --"

All command she had over her emotions suddenly burst through, as if a dam reaching its tipping point, it spilled out rough and as as full of the raw, destructive power of freshly loosed waters. "I could have stopped it! I could have if I didn't freeze, if I knew what I was doing," She was ashamed by the outburst in her voice, but it was too late -- the girl had crumbled, and the memory she had fought so hard to repress could be oppressed no longer.

Eurycrates' throat being ripped out from his fur blazed in her mind, the arc of blood glittering in the night air as clear as a brand in her mind's eye.

Overwhelmed then by emotions, none of which she wished Vaati to witness, Raleska darted abruptly away.

How tragic. She recounts the slaughter with more emotion than he anticipated, leaving him thoroughly shocked that one could be so affected by another's demise. Of course, it seemed a natural concept, but one that he had not experienced first-hand on the scale that she had. Perhaps he begins to feel for her; unable to come to closure or move forth from the experience. Maybe this was why the Cerberus had been so adamant on slitting his throat -- for the weight of his actions against their close friend had been too horrendous to simply overcome. Raleska storms away then, and he does not follow. It is likely he would not have known the right words to say to console her, and may have likely prompted her to go down a path of self-destructive vengeance. If the topic ever came up again, perhaps he would still do so.