The Heartwood kneel

@Jaganatha

he returned to the first place he could remember.

he had lost his first true piece of his spirit somewhere here. he wondered if his hunter still haunted these woods, if he had been a ghost all along. nay, an angel or spirit sent to guide him.

or a pale devil in disguise?

a harbinger of all the bad to come wearing the pale coat of God Himself?

he bit his tongue, near hard enough to draw blood in his own mouth. his lean form might have hungered for it had he tasted it.

instead, he picked his way through the woods. a ghost on the road to nowhere.

a ghost looking to return to the road of heaven.

Jaganatha had taken some time to clear his head. His breast had been a knot of fury and betrayal since learning what his supposed children had been doing in his absence. All along, of the three of them, he had put his faith in the wrong pair... He was not often wrong - and he admitted it even more scarcely than he admitted when he was. But in this case, oh, had he been so very wrong...

It mattered little to him what his chose to do in the end - so long as they had not forgotten that their actions bore consequences. In this case... those consequences would cost them their life's blood if he had his way. He had wandered far from Vex, from the lands that she would claim for their brood, and truthfully he knew not even what he searched for here. He knew only that somehow, some way... he would find his lost sheep, and give them a slaughter befitting a pair so vile. As he woven between the trees and brush, a scent blew over him and he stopped in his tracks, letting his gaze seek out the unusually... domestic creature before him.

"You. What are you?" Jaganatha hissed, disgust and curiosity weighing down his baritone in equal measure. 

@Bartholomew

his head turned to peer over a bony shoulder. his long, narrow face was looked down by two gold eyes who settled on the near behemoth of a man.

and this came from a man who had given prayer to a bear.

a bear who had asked the same thing and he had responded with words of God. was that the right thing to do now? did he deserve to swath his existence with such holy claims?

a man. same as you. he admitted in deep tones despite the glaring truth before them. bartholomew was in no way the same as this man.

may i help you?

The stranger spoke in a strangely lackadaisical, almost matter-of-fact way which caught Jaganatha off guard given... in his eyes, well, the lack of fact in his statement. His wicked yellow gaze flicked over the man's form, and his waved fur, and his unbecoming lay-down ears and his lip curled back in a half hearted sneer. He would not waste his energy displaying the depths of his distaste - at least not while it remained to be seen if the man could at least be of help to him. 

"Perhaps you can... My name is Jaganatha. I am seeking my children - long have they been lost to me. There are wrongs that desperately needs remedying, yet I have come across none who know more than I thus far... Tell me, does the name Cruor means anything to you? Vorilye and Violante are likely still using it with pride they have not earned..."

jaganatha.

the behemoth carried a great name with him and his words seemed...heavy. everything about the man was seemingly larger than life — and bartholomew hardly knew what to do with that.

i know very few names, he told the man with honesty, but there was a thoughtful pause as if he still considered the names. he had not heard them here, not to his knowledge.

but...i have seen many faces on my own mission. tell me how your wayward children look, he beckoned softly for further information.

it was nice to...slip out of his own affairs. meddle in something different.

Annoyance colored his jagged, scarred features as the man seemed at first to dance around his question. He remained silent as he at least seemed to be mulling over and digesting the information given him... At the return query, Jaganatha allowed a small smirk to tug at the ruined side of his lips. At least the request was am easy one, relatively speaking where his daughter was concerned. He knew that she was the key to finding Vorilye - for despite his glaring uselessness in the face of conquest, it was undeniable that he could be a difficult man to find when it suited him...

"A simple enough question, to be sure, where my... daughter is concerned. She is black, through and through, to her very soul... There is no light to her form, visible or internalized - save where her rather explosive temper is concerned. Vorilye... is a harder visage to pick apart. He is far paler than me, more sand and cream, and his eyes are a particularly frigid shade of blue. Each of them is missing the top portion of their right ear, as am I," he flicked his ear as if to point it out further, settling himself into a seated position as he spoke.

bartholomew was a man of metaphors himself, but the description seemed clear enough to pierce the skies.

i do not know of the man but i...i have seen a woman. black in furs and eyes, a notch upon her ear. surely this aligned with what this man had described. sa...sacra- something she called her home. the woman had not been welcoming or kind to him and his work.

he cared little for selling her out with ease, even if he knew her sides had been round when he had last seen her. she had doomed herself and her children in many ways it seemed.

to the coast from here, in the woods just before the river and saltwater. he jutted his chin.

then stared, half expectantly at the man.

what now?

Jag felt his heart sink into his gut as the man began to speak, only for it to lurch upwards joyously quickly after. A wicked grin cut his features in half and his fur bristled with the anticipation of the vengeance that had just inched its way so very much closer to his grasp. He made a mental note of the description of the territory Violante had reportedly laid claim to, and he licked his chops with the sort of proud animosity that only befit the gods, and himself.

"You have done me a great service, providing me with this knowledge... Perhaps I did you the opposite in making assumptions based on your initial..." he paused, his gaze once again flicking over Bartholomew's form, "Impressions... But I shan't soon forget that. I make a habit of repaying my debts, no matter how great or small. Do you have a moniker I may know you by?"

post 100 for you! :D

the man spoke a great deal and bartholomew was tempted to usher him off.

he did not need any sort of...payment. truthfully, he wished to wash his hands of all of this when they parted ways, but he knew better than to challenge a man such as this.

jaganatha's scarred face spoke of the ways he might handle things.

bartholomew, he offered with a weak smile. i'm afraid that is all i can offer...i do not have a set place you may find me, with however you wish to repay your debt.

The man seemed... offputng, uneasy in his presence. This was not unusual or unexpected to the grand behemoth - he had cultivated a culture of fear and worship as long as he had been in power... and he would not stop now. He offered a hardly placating smirk and a nod as the man retorted, and hummed thoughtfully. "Well, Bartholomew... I thank you for you service, as... humbly as I might muster. I will seek you out in time, if fate does not bring us 'round each other again," he purred, flexing his muscles in a rippling motion as he rose to his full height once more. It seemed he had much to tell Vex after all...

last from me unless jag has more to say <3

i wish you well with your wayward children.

the truth, soft and simple.

he himself was a father — in many meanings of the word! — but he imagined they took different approaches to fatherhood.

regardless, he would offer one last warm look and smile before excusing himself to keep moving. he would rather distance himself from these family affairs, if he could not wash his hands clean of it entirely.