Blackfeather Woods AHHH! It's demons! Run Jim! Ruuuuun! Ruuuuun!

Vaati arrives eventually, barging ungracefully into the circle that has developed around his mother and his eyes settle upon the stirring forms of his newborn siblings, and he feels nothing but love for them. It is a love that mimics the intensity he holds for @Cassiopeia, who lingers obediently outside the den. And perhaps that is not even loving, but the willful need to keep them safe, to keep them alive and breathing. Ignoring his mother's audible protests and begs to have them killed, he nudges each child, making sure there is still breath in their lungs and quickly removing the ones that do not. Their deformities cause him to cringe, but he is otherwise unfazed by their defections. They are of his blood, and he will accept them as they are; he finds himself more than slightly angry that his mother refuses to accept her own children at her side. Vaati's eyes return to Potema's evidently disgusted expression and his gaze hardens. "Feed them, now," The Silencer demands of her, enraged that she would ever consider taking their lives. She may not accept them or call them hers, but they are his siblings. They are more than just mistakes, but the next generation of Melonii's, and Vaati sees it as selfish that Potema should reject what was the future, regardless of their imperfections.

It only takes him a second to become irritated by his uncle's rantings of gods and sins, for while he does hold the belief that their deities cause many of the events to take place in their lives, his siblings have no part in that. They are innocent to gods and monsters, unable to help the circumstance of their birth. The more the former Dark Master goes on, the more Vaati realizes that his uncle is truly unstable, twisted into a corrupted, insane version of what darkness already existed within his mother's brother. Vaati had, clearly, severely underestimated exactly how damaged the once victorious ruler truly was, and he automatically understands why Astrid had come to him with the proposition of fathering her children. There was no chance Vaati, nor anyone else no matter how crazy the rest of Blackfeather was, would ever allow this madness incarnated to continue into another bloodline, a sickness that was much more terrifying and unpredictable than Cicero's.

Vaati moves to stand in front of his mother, glancing painfully at the shredded mess that was once a child. "Leave, uncle. You've done enough." The command comes with a warning that Vaati takes more seriously than the threat against his life. There is no room for error in the presence of newborns, one misstep would be all it took to crush the already deformed beings. Damien's dicey movements and cautionary utterings flash a big red warning sign in his mind, and he calls for @Astrid to remove her madman from where sleeping children lie. Perhaps his uncle truly does care for the children, but Vaati knows well enough that it isn't for the right reasons; Damien would likely sacrifice his own life if he believed their gods wanted it enough, and it is that kind of radicalism that Vaati had since dropped when their precious gods had sent the wraiths to cull his soul. He doesn't trust him, nor his mother to feed, nurture, and protect the deformed beings that mew softly in their sleep, and with that, he turns around once more with a snarl on his tongue, that no matter how much he loves his mother, he is not above hurting her to ensure his siblings live.