Phoenix Maplewood so, what are you gonna do?

on the topic of blindly obeying an order given to him vex cannot relate. it brings to the forefront of his mind, a once fleeting thought he'd had of being mindless ...a tool to be wielded but never to think for itself. immediately, he rejects any notion of such. perhaps, would kaertok have not of pushed them to be more grown up than they were vex might've been similar to kigipigak: obeying arbiter without so much as a peep of question.

just because your superior is telling you to do something doesn't always make it right. it sounds like a wise statement but really it was just vex thinking about how they were always told not to venture beyond legion's borders and largely based off his own bias on the matter which always sided with his own beliefs and feelings. all he wanted to do was find his father. he understood it was dangerous — haunt's injuries because of it were evidence enough — and yet it still doesn't sit right with him. or maybe, vex considered, he was just born broken; unable to take orders from someone older and infinitely wiser than him, stuck in an endless and unbroken cycle of rebellion because he thought he was old enough.

kigipigak went on to explain it was how he earned the tartok name and that he was the youngest in his clan's history to do so and in the crowing of the achievement vex can finally draw a line of familiarity to the older male. vex tells himself as kigipigak basks in the glory of his own retelling that one day he, too, would bear the name tartok; and on the topic of his mother fulfilling the kill herself instead of issuing an order vex is silent. he offers a small shrug of his shoulders. he cannot rightly say what arbiter would or wouldn't do, not when they failed to see eye to eye on almost everything.

i never really thought about it, vex replies honestly, now. i'm good at tracking. but that tailored more to hunting, though he supposed it could be useful for warrior, too. hey, what do you know about uh, gods? it likely sounds totally out of the blue but to vex's minds eye he catches a glimpse of the hellursine sos lingering in the edges of his peripheral, a corporeal looking shadow lumbering among the trees; and it follows in line with vex's secret consideration to pursue a trade more spiritual in nature. like ...bear gods? vex had tried asking warlock, to no avail and now wonders whether sos is just a figment of his imagination or if there was something more concrete to him than that.

given that vex did not fancy himself much of an imagineer, he isn't liable to believe he created sos out of thin air.