Blackfeather Woods The darkness will rise from the deep

He listens, curiosity and slight alarm growing rapidly as her words go on. For a second he doesn't know if he understands her right, that, knowing his utter distaste towards her regardless she wishes him to father her children. He wonders if she made the same offer to his brother before him. Seconds go by, consisting of blank stares and utter silence as Vaati deconstructs everything she has said in the last 30 seconds, wondering where he gave her the idea that he would ever consent to doing that with her. But he puts it into perspective, that this is what it will take to advance higher in the ranks. He can't imagine she will ever agree to have him serve close beside her if he were to embarrassingly tell her exactly how disgusting the proposition of having sex with her truly is to him. Then again, he supposes he isn't exactly above anything at this point; she is only a female with needs that match his own and he cannot blame her for that. She wants children, and as does he, eventually. Selfishly, he thinks of Cassiopeia and what desires he faces with her. Perhaps his brother had been right, on some level he felt indebted to her in a way he did not feel towards any other female. Certainly not the woman before him to the point he would ever consider impregnating her; not by his own free will, that is. Perhaps, his ideals on the subject would change in the many months he would need to... gain the ability to actually procreate. Perhaps in that time Damien would be restored to full health, or that Mephala would strike her dead and save him from the fate of carrying out what he would bindingly promise in the next five seconds.

It is sealed not in blood but in morality, an oath that cannot be undone with a simple refusal to carry out the task laid upon him. "Deal." He agrees one-wordedly, stoic, unable to formulate a better response to agreeing to give her children in exchange for her boosting his rank up a couple notches. Children, children that in the event the deal did go through, would be his to parent and nurture. It is a concept estranged to him, when he too had barely blossomed out of childhood himself. Perhaps he has made a big mistake, perhaps, he has further sealed the bond between the most powerful families the dark woods has seen to date. But at the back of his mind, he knows he has very little drive to honor the promise, not yet when he has not totally and completely received the reward for doing so. He is being selfish again, perhaps his greatest downfall; the image of another flashes within his conscious, warning him that he treads a very thin line in regards to the legitimacy of his choices. For when he does contemplate a future that exists of him creating young of his own, he sees a different female beside him, one that bears the same speckled-galaxy spots but does not answer to the name Nyx.