Ouroboros Spine My atonement lasts the best part of eternity.

He did not know where Avicus had gone after their crossing of the moonwolves. Their plan had been as successful as one would expect, being half-baked and enacted by children.

Nuak had lost track of how much destruction he had perpetrated across the range of ulaqs. When he had come upon @Kukutux in commandment of her horde of followers, she had been scored across the face. @Avicus' work, no doubt. So there were small successes.

He could not escape after her; the boy was lost among the rabble of Moonglow and brought to heel, segregated to a high point within the territory that he could not easily escape from, then guarded around the clock by body after body.

Why did they not kill him? He wondered as he lurked there, upon the rise. Why did they not strike at him as the interloper that he was? Ursus would have held no apprehensions; but instead he was left to pace and to wait, paranoid that some judgement would arrive for him, and too manic to sleep.

"nuak."

the tupilak had left him behind, and moonglow had kept him in the days since, inside a shallow cave with a small threshold and a steep drop to the spiked pines below.

not forever could they devote the holdings of moonglow to this boy.

she set down her offering of hare-meat and looked severely at the pacing mass of stone and fury. "she has not come back. she has shed her tongue. if she returns, we will take her life." he must be made to separate from her.

the duck entertained no concepts of ending nuak.

She called to him; a name she had bestowed, which somehow held power.

The boy stopped pacing long enough to snap back, Don't call me that!

He stared at her without fear, because she was not frightening. He traced the cut on her face with a modicum of pride that he would not shelter from her; she was not as blood-hungry as the wolves he had grown up with and so Nuak felt powerful.

The witch was ugly because Avicus had made her so.

If she returns, we will take her life. Kukutux promised.

Not if I take yours first! Nuak volleyed back. It had been days since the fox had been driven from Moonglow, though. Days of waiting, watching, pacing; Nuak refused to eat and so he had begun to weaken, his denial only feeding his rage.

He stared down the witch and her offering — the threat hanging uselessly between them. Nuak could no sooner strike her down than leave this place.

his voice shattered the quiet, stale air of the place. kukutux refused to flinch. she saw the pride that filled his eyes at beholding her face. as if in answer, the healing scars ached. and they would indeed be scars, she knew. the demon had taken her blood and left a part of itself.

moonwoman's gaze cooled to greenstone. she pushed the prey closer with a derisive shove of her paw. "then you will need this meat. right now you are too weak." she taunted him, not with words but with a hard look. so. nuak had been tainted by the bad influence of the fox-girl. this was already known to her, and yet it hurt all the same to know.

she set her jaw.

"what name did your father give you?"

The rabbit tumbled. He glared at it, then beyond it, to the woman, and back. A part of him wanted to take that and devour it; he could be obstinate in this place, though. Nobody would force him to eat. Nobody would take bites out of him or make him do anything. His petulance was newfound and intoxicating.

What name did your father give you? The witch went on to ask; Nuak's attention flickered, almost a flinch.

He flashed his teeth.

He left me before that. Tension wrought through his thick body at the thought of his father; he did not loathe the man, whoever he was. He did not care for the thought of him either.

Merrick's voice came to him next, a memory resurfacing. A name granted — Tuur. But he knew better than to share such a private thing with a witch.

left.

"and your mother?"

kukutux had become an edge of chert, a shard of ivory lodged into the side of an ankle-bone. 

if nuak would not cast the tupilak from himself, then moonwoman must do so.

i once knew a man who wore your face.

spirit or not, she held the trader's story upon her tongue.

a woman. a valley.

First one, then the other.

Dead. He answered. That's all he knew; Merrick had not been detailed in his retelling, and Astara would not share anything at all, leaving him to guess. It was too bad then, that Nuak did not care to ponder over it. All he knew was that they had not fought for him. That neither of them had wanted him. He had been a gift to the bruin-witch.

Why does it matter? He dared to ask — sinking back, finally, in to the crevasse so that the shadows could swallow him up.

kukutux watched as nuak withdrew, becoming part of the high rock wall as he melted into it, shades of graphite and granite. 

"the place of your birth. was it a valley?"

breath wished to be held, bated; kukutux forced herself to inhale through the asking. this was the third of the three pieces that the grey brother had given her. had he ever returned to them, to the family he said he had left behind? she did not think so. he had come to the bear-wilderness and died there.

slowly wonder replaced the sharp ends to her gaze.

It wasn't a painful interrogation. Tedious, that was all.

Bearclaw, the boy named it next. Let her go searching for it, he thinks. Whether she sends one of her minions or she goes herself, Merrick and those loyal to Ursus would have enjoyed picking her apart.

He wants to claim Merrick for himself, suddenly. To call Avicus and Aventus his siblings; but he thinks of Astyanax, and grows solemn. Family does not matter — he should know better than to desire such connections. He was alone, as he had always been.

A thought strikes him. What will you do with me? What is to become of me?

She did not have the heart to hurt him, and he had done enough to earn a death; so what, then, except to be a slave? The thought makes him curl in to himself.

bearclaw. he did not say whether or not it was a valley. kukutux lifted her chin and tried to rediscover the name in memory.

"i knew a man who wore your face. he was my brother." more than that, but it had not come to be. she felt the hitch of grief in her throat.

the question posed by nuak cut at her. "it is not my choice. it is for sivullik to decide." she could not kill this boy who perhaps was part of herself, an ostrega-child. but the icehunter had few qualms about protecting moonglow, and with children sure to come as the months deepened, their powerful captive was only a threat.

"what will you trade for your life?"

So, that was it.

She was reminded of someone and that stayed her hand. Nuak could work with that — he saw the flighty expression upon her face and wondered how best to approach the opening that this connection presented to him.

He wanted to be calculating, like Merrick, or the red daughter. He wanted to be powerful like the bear, to command others beneath the guise of threat. But he could not be a threat. He could not conceive of the many ways to use his new-found knowledge for his own betterment.

And there was sivullik, whatever that was. Nuak wondered if that was the name of a henchman. Maybe a spell, or a spirit. Did they wait here for her chosen god upon the mountain? Would a boar present itself to Nuak next and make its judgement, as the bears of the valley made theirs?

No. Only more riddles.
"What will you trade for your life?"

What?

The boy bristles with frustration as his understanding dwindles, smokes like abandoned coals within a hearth.

What is trade? Nuak did not know the word; his world was not so transactional, but more visceral. There was only ever taking, and he often bore the brunt of it.

"what will you give?"

kukutux wanted to say the words first in her own tongue, to teach nuak some part of his people. determination welling in her as if it were a river flowing up from beneath the earth. he would know the name of ostrega, even if she must push it harshly toward him. it was not a bite of food he wished to take.

the springjade eyes were resolute.

"the first time we made a meeting, i gave to you a story. a trade. you came to moonglow. you left with the tupilak."

"now you will make a trade of your own."

He had not made sense of the story and it had not been something of great value to him, only a curiosity, and he could not imagine giving up anything in exchange for it; but what she said was true, too. Nuak had followed her. He had eaten the woman's food and been cared for, in so far as he welcomed it, during his stay within the village. Nuak did not know they had exchanged anything of note.

The boy considered what he could exchange now for the vagaries she offered him — freedom potentially, or the right to die by her warrior's teeth, or something else more cruel that he could not imagine.

There was no way for him to know what might come of it. He judged her harshly, as the world had always judged himself.

I don't know anything, he claimed, unaware that the limited knowledge he did carry was of great importance to the witch. He thought lowly of himself, and cursed the name of his father vehemently in his own mind; it was the only piece of him that he knew, through Merrick's tellings.

I have to do what she wants. While he said this, there was a shrewd look on his face, many thoughts swirling in his head as he gathered shards of what he knew together.

Tupilak. He wanted to rip that word out of the woman's throat, but he knew he couldn't do that. Calling the girl by her true name would only brand her further, and Nuak could not put Avicus at such risk; he had one purpose on this earth and it was in defense of the princess.

My father gave me to Bearclaw. He gave them my mother, my brother, me — and then my mother died, and my brother — Nuak couldn't talk about Astyanax for long and clamped his mouth shut, folding in to himself again. He sat there at the back of the chasm while the immensity of his emotions briefly sidelined his thoughts.

Rather die than be a mother to you.

He didn't want to hurt when he thought of them and so he put that aside, choosing anger instead. It was easier than facing the empty feeling the story caused in him. Nuak rose to his feet and made to lunge in to the light again, a thrashing at the air, as he snapped and rose in challenge towards Kukutux; she was a safe distance away even so, and the boy fell back to pacing at the liminal edge.

I am nobody, and nothing, without her. She is my family.

kukutux held her silence as nuak spoke, ears flattening as it seemed he would rush her. but he did not. 

a brother, dead. a mother, dead. a father — moonwoman did not want to think of it. "this place could have been family for you. where is she?" kuktuux demanded. wounded, narrowly escaping the jaws of moonglow wolves. "she has left you here. she does not care for your life or your death."

"i was also traded, once. that does not mean i must always be something that was bartered," kukutux spat, though her jaw was beginning to tighten with frustration. there was no more to be said. nuak believed he was the property of the demon, and would not hear her.

nearby, @Zane. kukutux nodded to him. "i give you a new name now," she said, straightening, jadestone eyes bright with fervency and anger. "you will be kiliutak, for you have the want only to be a tool."

if he did not react, she would turn away, ready to speak of his fate to the others.

The name she bestowed had as much sense as nuak to him, and he flashed his teeth to ward away the magic of it. The witch could call him what she wished. He knew the truth of the matter: he was no-one without her spells and her little talks, whatever value attributed by the white woman of this village or the bruin-witch of the valley, it was in their own heads.

He paced, useless and abandoned there, as Kukutux turned away. As she began to leave him Nuak considered his chances of launching an attack or of escaping, but there was a man there with them; he had not noticed the man until now, so vehement his anger and focused on the woman. One look from him and Nuak gave up. He turned to the cavern's depths and cloistered himself there against the shadowed wall to wait.