Wolf RPG - clarice...your case file

The last echoes of a dream throbbed in the shaman's skull, setting his teeth in a flat click. He had slid from his rambling den at nightfall, unable to slumber in the recesses that mocked him with the promise and denial of sleep, and now he found himself on the razor's-edge of madness, desperation filling his lungs as air.

He had dreamt of Shearwater Bay, had seen the visages of Nanuq and Nutaaq and Koios! Kois, Bonechewer and the brother of his heart. And he had seen Clarice; he had pursed her through the slow transparent syrup that only materializes in a dreamscape, unable to catch at long last but a fleeting glimpse of her maddened eyes — she had walked with spirits, his daughter, his only child, and now he did not know if she moved at all in the world he still found himself chained in.

And yes, yes, Valkari had come to him, her gaze filled with the cold glitter of insanity, surmounted by the scar that Sos had given to mark her as His own. The pale madman had not felt himself respond to her, but his heart had broken with a metallic ache in his chest; he had not known it was broken until the vision of her pivoted on delicate paws, grinding the fragile shards of his heart into so much ash.

Lecter knew he could not bear it when the dream, lately turned nightmare, had breathed into ethereal existence the form of Starling, and he scarcely glanced into the haunting brilliance of her emerald eyes before he shook himself free of the invisible clinging tendrils and awoke, shuddering. He did not remember the journey to where he found himself now, but the cold tongue of the waters had soaked the new wound high on his shoulder, and the resulting pain sliced through his presently dim awareness of self.

A forgotten man, a forlorn man stood upon the shore of the wetlands, with only the distant yip of foxes privy to his pain — forsaken of his God, devoid of his pack, a stranger in a strange land. Lecter so hated weakness, had sought to excise every vestige of it from mind, heart, and soul, but the waters at his feet dripped red from the slow trickle of blood down his cheeks, crimson and salt mingling as the haggard madman gazed unseeing into the distance, longing for a death that did not come.

Jinx had scarcely thought about home in the entire week she had spent away from Neverwinter, exploring and cataloguing, and hatching plans that had no place in spoken word yet; for the first time in all that week, memories of the Bay besieged her, reminded her that she was still very much out of place here. She was surprised, and devastated, to think of her late grandmother, Nauja, and her brother Arktos, and her other brother Vex, and realized she barely remembered what they looked like. She was devastated to know that Silatuyok's very name had begun to fade from her memory, and the distinct colours of Nukilik's eyes were muddied and uncertain in her mind. Time away would erase even the closest of companions, but knowing that was no consolation to her.

She had reached the edge of what appeared to be a wetland when the memories began to overtake her, and for a long time she stood there and thought; and the more she thought, the more crushing her sorrow became. Before long, she had to force herself to move to keep her paws, steeped in chill water, from becoming numb. Thankfully, the movement seemed to dissolve her memories, and walking and the unusual scenery served as a fitting distraction to keep her from sinking within herself. She told herself that Sos would snatch her soul for His own if she did not continue, and fearing that, she did.

She had made her way a quarter around the wetlands' perimeter when she saw him; it was like a dream, in a way, and she didn't want to believe it even as her steps quickened. Lecter had always been a strange topic for the girl, whose feelings were conflicted; on one hand, she had resented him as all others resented him, for being a recluse and grouchy and strange and smelling like rotting blood and flesh; on the other, she had felt… Well, something probably inappropriate, and deeply hidden. The opposition of it had swirled in her mind any time he was around so that eventually, she had suppressed all feeling at all; but it had always been there, somewhere in her character, and hinted in her behaviour.

Now, she felt fury, and fear, and anxiety. He was wounded; although the young Kesuk desperately wanted to draw close and sweep her tongue over his injury and sooth it, she knew better than to approach the madman so directly. Instead, she paused a short distance away, unsure whether he had even noticed her, or even cared or recognized her at all, and said simply, for lack of knowing whether compassion might console him or incite him, “how did you come to be here?”

It would also allow an opportunity for him to prove he was not, in fact, Lecter at all; perhaps he would turn his head and address her as “lady” and not “wench”, would not bare his teeth with wild hatred of all else that lived, and he would be a creature of different make, and therefore not Lecter, but somebody who looked and smelled much like him. While Jinx was secretly hopeful that Lecter was here, because it meant that Sos had brought to her the greatest gift He possibly could, she desperately hoped he was not; for if he was, what of Shearwater Bay? What if her vision, her one true terror, had come to pass anyway, and her leaving had been for naught?

What if they were all dead?

ashalpshslsls;

It would be simplistic, perhaps terribly so, for him to step forward, forward and onward, until the water lapped his chest, then the pale fur of his throat, lastly closing above his head and lying the shaman to rest in a no-wolf's-land upon the border between sanctity and hell. His chest tightened with a breath of wanting, and then he exhaled. Lecter's icewater eyes dimmed, relief flooding into his veins with the pulsing blood — he lifted one forepaw, intending to take a step —

and then the thinnest tendril of scent drifted into his senses, drawn by the thrust and throb of the lungs that would refused to bow to the whim of his desperate mind. The bloodied madman did not yet turn, for it was foremost in his thoughts that this was yet another vision, one that would leave within the moment. And yet it did not, and his chest expanded with another breath, and here it was, stronger, the fragrance of earth and myrrh that had always clung to her, even in youth.

Lecter heard first her voice, soft, yet with the command that heralded her existence as a powerful walker of the spirit world; then his mind plucked out the words, and he at last turned to look upon her.

She was as the pale man recalled, and yet she was so much more, the girl newly become woman. Ferocity burned with eternal fire in the flame-wild set of her eyes; she was slim and blessed with a corded height that belied the sure strength of her being, porcelain but for the jet kiss upon her toes. And yet he saw in her that which he remembered from their time together as mentor and pupil: an undying devotion to the Loa and the souls that walked the earth with abandon.

Unable to find the words with which to answer, Lecter found himself moving with dreamlike slowness into the circle of her presence, gait unevened by the wound that rode in the flesh of his shoulder, though it was all but forgotten in this moment. The breath that fueled his body was rife with her perfume, and it was only through sheer force of will that the madman halted before her.

Jinx, he murmured, tasting the simple weighted syllable and all its memories of home for a moment, before his jaw tightened and he was forced to look away from her. Sos has forsaken me. It was not an answer, but it was all he had to give, to offer her by way of a response. At length, the cold water of his gaze lapped back to find her own, but it would be a feat for the glimmering fire of her eyes to cut through the saddened glaciers.

She watched, touched with sorrow and regret that she could not help, as Lecter turned in in a circle so ponderous it was like watching him swim in haze, revealing to her several things: firstly, that he had lost his cunning glint of eye and wore instead the expression of desolate hopelessness; second, that his injury was likely still fresh, as she could tell it pained him to move. Neither “lady” nor “wench” pulled his lips apart, and the realisation of this silence, to her, was almost more startling than her finding him here at all. Even from her time as a babe, Lecter had been there to teach her, albeit scornfully and with a great lack of pleasure, or scold her, or say the rude things he often said; he had never been one for the children, but all the same, she had come to respect him as he ought to be respected, and he had stood by her, in his own way. To see him now so dejected was to feel her own heart sinking into the floor beneath them both.

Yet the power of it compelled her to remain silent even as he moved toward her, with that slow and halting gait that made her yearn to hold him up and remind him who he was. He paused before her, and his eyes were the icy polar regions that could be touched by nobody's sun; not even Atka, although Lecter had always vehemently hated the Light Goddess, much more than Jinx did now. She had never moved him, not like Sos. A heavy sigh lifted Jinx's chest as she murmured a quiet, “what has happened to you, dear afatkuq?” The word was said reverently, another term for Shaman that Jinx had always considered much more formal than its simpler counterpart. The rank he had held in her youth had since escaped her memory, so that she could recall only his permanent title of Shaman.

He did not explain in so many words as to give her any indication as to how he had drawn his conclusion, but in many ways the conclusion was enough. She had felt the very same thing. “His designs are beyond us now, He does not reveal anything,” she said. “He compelled me to come here but has given no hint as to why; I've abandoned all I held dear for Him and He repays with only silence.” And a dream, that may or may not have been telling of anything. Maybe knowing that Jinx too had felt abandoned by her God would make Lecter feel less hopeless, or maybe it would merely incite his anger; she never really knew, with him. “You are His own, as I am… He would never forsake you, who gave so much for Him. You are the greatest of His disciples.”

She wanted desperately to believe that what she said was true, and that Lecter was mistaken; but then, he would not have said he was forsaken without a sign of it. Boldly, with only faint faith that he would not rip her face off the second it drew near, she lowered her head and cleared the final distance to him, and gave a gentle nudge beneath his snout; if Sos had forsaken them both, and both were left without their Gods, then the sole truth for them was that she would never forsake him. He was Shearwater Bay, and Sos' own; they were, in this way, forever linked.

For the first time in her presence, Lecter found himself unable to explain, unable to teach. He had loved Clarice with all of his cold heart, but the child walked in a world of her own. Jinx had been rapt and worshipful, a pale jewel of prowess in the thorned mental crown he now wore with bleeding acceptance. And so he spoke not, for words he would force would only be lies, and the beloved girl before him was far beyond such things, was deserving of far more than he was able to offer her.

In many ways, the sight of her was the thin blue shore that a dying creature sees from afar, when he is able to lift his head from the drowning waters, the sight of which he clings to with all of his waning life and dying hope. She spoke softly, unsure of what the Dark God had planned for her golden life, but Lecter could see that she had not yet lost her faith, while he himself tottered like a newborn cub on the thin tripwire of rejection and redemption.

The nestle of her porcelain muzzle into the blood-stiff hairs beneath his own broke him from his reverie; he listened intently, as if in this moment, Jinx was the mentor, and he an eager pupil. And yet the seed of doubt had take firm hold in the thankless earth of his mind; how could He, who had forced Lecter away from hearth and home, taken Clarice, driven out Valkari? how could He not have already forsaken the man who had pledged his all? who would follow the Black Lord to the very ends of the earth if it was requested of him?

Perhaps the madman had done something to anger Sos, but Lecter did not voice this, for to put such a thought into words seemed to imply that Jinx also had committed such a crime against her God, which was simply improbable. She had always been filled with the zeal and passion befitting one given to the gods at a young age; Lecter would be damned if he took that from her now. A heavy sigh racked him, and he leant into her touch but for a moment, taking a desperate sort of solace in the mesh of their fur.

I left Shearwater Bay; He drew me away for Himself, and it was as if mere moments had passed. But when I tried to return, it was not as I remembered. It was nothingness. He had gone into the mountains to seek out communion with his God, and found, when the haze of poppies and herbs had cleared from his vision, and he was strong enough to move from his besotted dreams and the constant murmuring of Sos, that he did not know where he was. Shearwater Bay, Koios, Nanuq, Clarice — all of it was a distant reality, a mirage to which he could not return. And so he had pressed on, and found himself here. He took everything from me, and gave me emptiness and the absence of His face in return. The madman's voice was edged in a brief, confused anger, a vague inkling of rage that had yet to spawn within the recesses of his spirit, and he looked upon Jinx questioningly, but silence had closed his lips once more. What was she to make of all this, her teacher bereft of their beloved Dark One, her homeland gone? what must she be thinking in this moment.

OOC: This is hard because you're really good at this and playing SWB traditions out and I am still clumsy with Jinx haaaaaah so if I'm slow posting it's cause I'm sitting here trying to decide how to reply so that it's worthy

IC: She listened intently to his recount of his experience, unsure what to make of it all, for if any a wolf could have answered her own questions, she would have suspected it was Lecter. She supposed even now, Nutaaq may be beside himself with worry for the Shaman and the Mambo, if what Lecter said was true. If Sos had forsaken Lecter, then surely he had also forsaken Jinx, and Atka had forsaken Kerberos. Maybe the Gods had forsaken them all, and Shearwater Bay even now was succumbing to its Godless drought... But she would not allow herself to think those things, for the mere thinking of them could bring them to fruition, if the Gods so willed it.

Deep in the recesses of her memory, there were other, more ancient forms of Shearwater's traditions, seated more in the knowledge of her father than in any true education Jinx had been given. They preceded a time when the wolves and the Great Bears had been in close connection, and worship had been directed... Elsewhere, at spirits instead, and elements. It was knowledge locked deeply away in Koios' memories, unaccessible to all... But in a dreamscape, perhaps Jinx had encountered this knowledge in one form or another, so that it was subconscious but unknown; and had it been a ready knowledge, she might have concluded that the Gods, or at least Sos, favoured a return to the Old Ways, and that was why he had "abandoned" them to find their way and reseek their roots. Unfortunately, that knowledge was nothing conscious, so she could take no comfort — and give no comfort — in that.

Recognising that her mind had fallen into an irrelevant rut of thinking, whose topic she couldn't even define, she shook herself back to reality. Thankfully, only a few seconds had passed since Lecter's conclusion and Jinx's movement. So as to make the touch appropriate for their statuses, she pulled away from him, though there was a hidden primal part of her that loathed herself for it. “You must have crossed many mountains in a Dream Walk,” she mused, “or Sos spirited you here, for we are very far from there now. It would take many moons to return.” But, of course, he had figured that out for himself, and she could only confirm it, having walked those miles herself. “He has purpose yet for you, Lecter... We cannot know what it is, but I know He would never forsake you. He is just silent now, waiting... For what, I'm afraid I cannot say.” Nor was she certain, but she held fast to her faith, even now.

The thought came briefly that maybe He had brought Lecter here for the same reason He had brought her, and Atka had brought Kerberos; there were the beginnings of a plan forming at the edges of her consciousness, niggling little distractions, but surely they could not all have arrived here for no purpose? It was not coincidence, she decided. Plucking at that thread of chance that had delivered all of them to what seemed to be a Godless Hell, Jinx brought up a topic that he might find unsavoury, as they had never been very close: “Atka brought Kerberos here, and forsook him as well.” The name of the White Bear Goddess was said with some contempt, as she firmly believed that Atka, for whom she had worked tirelessly as a child (at one time having followed in the footsteps of her mother and fearing Sos above all other, and hating Him) and who had chosen not to notice her, but nonetheless, she was curious what his reaction might be.

Of course, Kerberos' lineage was entirely unknown to Jinx but that he had come from the Nereides as a gift, to be cared for by Nanuq Kesuk of Shearwater Bay... The hatred between father and son was nothing but a mystery to her. Nonetheless, she hoped he might find the fact interesting, or take some faith in it; maybe they hadn't been forsaken after all, but could not be reached here. She searched in her mind and in his empty eyes for any sign that there was still hope for them, that their Gods had not merely discarded them as used toys.

um you are the most flattering creature in all the land it takes me forever to post to you bc i'm just like NNNN posting with a MASTER ok <333 and as for the timeline here I think it's right, please let me know if it's not!

He listened to her speak, to the fluttering emotions besieging her tone, and lowered his haunches to the ground before her. The exhaustion of his mind coupled with the physical exertion of his tired muscles had grown too much — though Lecter would never admit it, to himself or any living thing, that this was the feathery little voice of age singing in his bones. For it was beyond his fathoming how his time had come upon him so soon, that he should die without ever reconciling with his God, his beloved Dark Bear.

And for all that it was worth, the bloodied madman did not feel his age, merely the weariness of thoughts dragged through the jagged fears of his own head. That he had walked, and she had also, must mean something; surely Sos counted their twinned trails to this place of His choosing as a sacrifice of sorts. Jinx — he had not yet investigated her scent to know if she had been taken in by denziens of the new land — but Lecter knew in his innermost heart that she had come alone, driven by the lashing verve of her cultist's heart and her mother's strength. Perhaps he had always known it, that she would be the one to survive, to press on, out of all her Atka-worshipping siblings.

Nanuq had failed them in that regard; to teach a child to crave the Light and disregard the Darkness was to rear a young mind to be weak, and his own nightmares had seen fit that he be aware of what had happened to Shearwater Bay and those who had not been chosen by Sos. It twisted his tongue within his mouth, filled his lips with the dry taste of dust; he could not speak of it, not even to the flame-eyed girl who stood before him now. In the eye of his mind, he had seen blood and torment, and death, and had stood aside, unable to cease the carnage and rot from overtaking his homeland.

And then a name fell from her maw, one he had not heard in many a moon; it was the old hatred, the old instinct, that dredged up the filth of loathing and coloured his black expression as his eyes hardened and he looked upon Jinx with an inkling of his familiar self castigating her. His very presence is very well what may have wrought Sos' wrath on Shearwater! he hissed with a violent vehemence that brought him lashing to his paws, the aching wound forgotten. The pelt along the nape of his neck stood tall, breaking from beneath a black layer of matted blood; he glanced skyward but for a moment before glancing back to Jinx, to calm himself.

She did not know — Nanuq's sin was not the burden of her daughter. And yet she needed to hear these words, for she was too devoted and wholesome to live in a blaze of half-truths and somewhat founded conclusions. We were not meant to mix with the Nereides, the pale shaman began, icewater eyes distant as he gazed unseeing away from his lithe companion. Your mother — I served her in all things, you must understand, and when Aktaie washed up on our shores, I would have gladly slain her had Nanuq asked it of me.

The telling of it was monotone, carefully modulate as not to let the wrath of the last years lash Jinx again; she was not to bear the brunt of his wrath. By some Sos-damned slight of choice, Nanuq ordered that Aktaie, Siren Queen of the Nereides, be nursed to health in our homeland, and kept there until she decided what was to be done. An abrupt pause fell, and the kiss of a brief wind flickered around the both of them, feathering through the newly liberated spikes of pale fur along the length of Lecter's neck and shoulders. He was lost! lost in a reverie of remembered betrayal —

— and what she chose was ... the binding of the kingdoms, as it were. The union of Nereides and Shearwater, and I was to be her vessel. I, who had served her in pure loyalty and blind faith since before the conception of her dream; she threw me to the bidding of Atka and I died that eve upon the beach, forced to do that which was evil and wretched in the eyes of Sos.

He had sunk down again, eyes fixed upon some distant point as head lowered between shoulders stippled in black blood from his latest sacrifice, and the wind would have carried his continued words away had it been of greater strength: She returned to her Cove laden with my children. Daughters, I am sure; the Nereides only treasured girlchildren, and they sent ... Aktaie's son back to us, discarded as so much offal, and for many moons he was a thorn in my side, a constant reminder not only of what had happened, but what would come to pass.

Lecter knew not from where the verbosity sprang; it was as if some boil deep within his heart had been lanced in her presence, and spilled forth its bile unquenchingly. It was after this that Siku rose to power, and your father ... He had loved Koios, and in the raw gleam of icewater eyes it showed plainly as he turned to look upon Jinx once more. And then I was led away, and the Bay is no more. We bear the sins that were committed that day. We are to make penance for them, but with what I am not sure, and for how long we are damned, I do not know.

I honestly don't remember the timeline well either so we'll say it's perfect!
EDIT: Yeah idk why I keep writing "Aktaie" and meaning "Atka" SIGH.

She could scarcely bring herself to look upon him, with his downcast vision and his slump of defeat; he was not the madman she had once known him to be, the witch doctor she had feared in her girlhood and revered in the earliest days of womanhood. He was not the packs' Angakok, who refused the command of all and forged his own path with the pleasure of Sos his only object, nor the wicked Shaman who had always tormented her with chastisement when she failed. Not the secluded monster that had found himself caught in the youngest buds of her fantasy, inexplicably and perhaps improperly. He was not the wolf who had awoken her subconscious desire to please the Dark Bear, the closest of her late father's confidants, and whose worship singularly had likely spared the Bay for as long as it had been spared. He was a broken man, like one she had never once met, and she could not bring herself to look.

But there was fire in him — he was forged of it, in his inner soul — and when he rose to his paws with a flash of his old self she met him with similar primality. Her own nape rose indignantly to match his own and her lips peeled back to loose a snarl in response to him, and that was all; calmness settled over the Shaman, albeit a tight sort of calmness that was reined in by sheer willpower, and she allowed herself to back down as well. His affront was a mystery to her, and her reaction was not quarrelsome, but nearer to kindred. The fury that had blazed briefly in him had found root in her own heart, yet directed elsewhere rather than at the witch doctor, and had forced itself physically upon her without warning.

He launched into an explanation of Kerberos' origins and, more importantly, the fatal mistake of Nanuq Kesuk, which was infinitely more important to her. Kerberos was his own being, no longer defined by his origin, though she never would have guess he was Lecter's, and admittedly there was a wave of jealousy that found its way through her belly, but she forced it down. Jealous that Kerberos was Lecter's child? Jealous that the gods had not seen fit to have her birth two years prior to its real date, that she could have superceded Nanuq, slain Aktaie, and fiercely protected the honour and dignity of her much-loved Shaman?

A frustrated growl rumbled in her throat as she looked away, focusing the floor underfoot with a piercing glare that could've chilled the heart of perhaps the proudest of her family. I felt it, she said with gritted teeth, that that pack's marriage with our own was tainted. I felt it when Kaskae returned from their Cove claiming to be Atka's vessel, while Atka's Oracle lived. It had been the biggest blow for Jinx, who had always been taught to serve Atka and who had, that day, been abandoned by the goddess; and it had been, she had always secretly thought, false, for the sole vessel of the gods was Nutaaq, her grandfather. I felt it in the favour Galateia showed my sister, and the disregard she showed me, and in how the Sea came for me in my youth and how Kerberos had to call me back from it, and in how they prospered while we met with resistance at every turn, that the union was corrupt.

She saw now that it always had been ruinous, and it had been Nanuq who had done it. But what had her mother ever cared for Shearwater Bay? She had left. There was no love lost between mother and daughter, and Jinx was certain if she ever met the woman again, in this life or the next, she would not mince words, especially knowing what she knew now.

For, it seemed, Nanuq's disastrous decision had been the downfall of Jinx's beloved pack, of her sister. It had been why Arktos had been possessed by madness and wandered away in the night, never to return; it had been the catalyst for Vex's decline into insanity, with claims of seeing their father around every corner; it was why Atka had thrown aside Her children, what had unbalanced the pack, and ultimately, why Sos had seen fit to turn His wrath upon it. Perhaps it had been why the gods had not smote their daughter, Siku, when she parted and birthed Tartok; perhaps they had spared her from the curse her sister brought upon them by allowing the sirens to touch them at all. It all made sense, and her anger over it was great.

What she did is unforgivable, she said grimly, her eyes flashing wrathfully as they sought Lecter's. She damned us all. Her chest heaved with the emotion of what he must've felt, when he was forced into the role of consort, and brought to the lowest level a man could inhabit. The Nereides' ways had changed, supposedly, but perhaps that, too, was corrupt. She was not fit for Warchief, Jinx finally concluded, glowering, and her Houngan paid for it with his life. My brothers with their sanity. My sister even now will pay for it with all she has. And us… She paused, then set her lips into a thin line. Why did He spare us, Lecter?

i do things like that too i SWEAR my fingers have a mind of their own when i am typing lulz

Lecter had known Jinx's worth, the breadth of her being, before she had begun to speak, but this knowledge was intensified a thousand-fold by her present utterances, a confirmation of having sensed the evil that pervaded the Bay with Nanuq's alliance to the unworthy Sirens. His heart bled into the very contours of her words; it rent at him that she must know of her mother's deceit, her failings in the eyes of Sos, and that she had been the one to destroy Shearwater with her carelessness.

Vex, Arktos, Kaskae — her anger and passions writ into reality that lot which had befallen each of them in turn, and again Lecter reeled within himself at the losses, gathering up as so much dried wood, to be burnt into ash by the bitter fire of Shearwater's collapse. Furthermore, the pale shaman had known the issue of Nanuq and Koios at their birth; he had doted upon them all as the future of the Bay, and not had the singlemost breath of betrayal besieged his mind. It was not until Koios had fallen to death, and Siku had turned her back upon Shearwater to spawn some distant, mountainous abomination, that the realization of the Bay's lost god-blessing had occurred to the shaman.

He had failed them, he had not pressed himself to be heard in Nanuq's deaf ears, nor had he ripped the entrails from the wicked Aktaie himself despite the twisted desires of the Warchief. In his very power as Angakok, as Shaman, he had let slip the demons of hell, had aided Nanuq in her very release of them upon Shearwater Bay with his silence and with his pride. Lecter was no more than offal in his own mind, and that of his God, surely, and this would be his lot. He deserved no less than the utter darkness of the Black God's back turned to him, perhaps for a time, perhaps for eternity; he deserved the sinking, sickening emptiness in his soul.

Jinx had inquired of their fate, and he blinked, clearing his eyes of the haziness that had seen fit to creep into the corners of his vision. She was resplendent in her cold anger, her pale form a beacon for all that was right within the Bay, all that had been breathed into her. Here was Jinx Kesuk's birthright — a broken packland, a smattering of followers, a legacy of betrayal and heart-rending sorrow. And yet Lecter knew that she would restore the balance desired by all elements of their world, that she would rectify the wrongs wrought by Nanuq.

In the fleeting glissade of a moment's time, Lecter recalled how he had come to Nanuq, how he had fought alongside her in the fierce insanity of his youth. Dare he not speak it — but that fire was Jinx's inheritance, also. He saw it in the righteous flash of her flame-gaze, in the lovely angles of her body, now rounding with a woman's flesh; the bud had blossomed, but he was no less loose of its tendrils than he had been before. Her verve would deliver unto her the answer, though it would take its time in the creation.

We are the only ones of the Bay who remained true to our paths, Lecter suggested with a halting glance into her fire-eyes. I have never forsaken Sos and you have never turned your back upon the Gods or the Loa. Even in fickle youth, you have remained true. Not knowing enough about Kerberos to gauge whether or not the sea-spawn's presence would be blessed or damning, Lecter eschewed commentary on that front.

Perhaps we are here to rebuild, to strive for balance instead of one-sided piety, the shaman murmured, drawing on the strength of the his spirit-blessed companion. But show me he who claims to know all, and I shall show you a fool. He was struck by an feral, cloying desire, a demand from the very marrow of his bones, to regain his former self, but from the same locale spawned the knowledge that he would never be the same again, that he was changed evermore, and could not return to whence he had come.

But perhaps this was for the greater good — the Bay had fallen, and those who had escaped its demise had been brought unto this place to create a more pious strength upon the righteousness of their actions and the bulwark of their combined existences as the Gods' Chosen.

For whatever purpose we have been placed here, I remain in service of the Kesuk line, Lecter murmured, the soft ice of his voice a respite from the otherwise haunted violence of his usual tone. The glacial eyes lifted to her own, some vague sense of renewal and determination shining in their depths, and he drew a long breath that was at once both invigorating and tangible with its own tension. I am yours, Jinx.