Merrick raised me, but he said my father was loyal to him. That he left, or that he died. I forget now.
Glaukos was eating while he told
@Ancelin this story, as that was the deal.
He had shared some of what he recalled from boyhood: being promised to Avicus as her protector, being raised as such; the incursion they later made in to Moonglow where they stole the witch's focus.
The family worshipped gods they called the daedra, but the one which spoke to Merrick was the Great Bear. Maybe some of the altars remain; I will hunt them down if you want to see.
He cracked the neck bones of the rabbit and began to pick it apart.
He would make sure to add the altars to his list of things to seek, then.
The boy asked about the spirits and the Bear God, and for a time Glaukos was silent because he had to think back, and it was difficult.
Much of what he'd experienced within Ursus had by now been buried under layers and layers of more recent memory; he dredged through
the training of Germanicus and found at its root the memory of
the Saints, and deeper still was
the Boar Witch and the choice between that or
the bear.
As a boy I did. I worked hard with the expectation that the Bear would spare me from harm, but that was all. Some believed that they might be visited. The one who listened—Merrick—
he saw the lantern-light of that one eye flare in memory;
believed enough for all of us.
Had he been spared?
Glaukos was a man now; to that degree, yes, he had survived, but he did not consider it the Bear God that had saved him. That had been his own strength and capability. In thinking back on all of these things he was given a brief clarity that he'd lost within Rivenwood.
Glaukos did not know how to answer the question. It seemed so simple, but the deeper lessons which had shaped him as a boy could not be put to words so easily. How could he explain something that had become intrinsic to the core of his being? That without Merrick, Avicus, or Aventus in his life Glaukos would have certainly withered away? He watches the grandson while the boy's attention is elsewhere; he does not see that same feral quality here, despite how otherwise familiar he appears.
He clears his throat. I learned more from Avicus and Aventus. My role was to serve them, but in the beginning I did not know how. They saw my weaknesses and used them against me until I changed, and when I had shed them, I could be what they needed.
A friend was never an option — but a guardian, a henchman, that was the start of it.
You said you are one of Aventus'? What did he teach you?