Greatwater Lake and so the drum beats on

Tagging @Kjalarr just in case he'd able to come this way, but AW if not! :)

[table width=70%][tr][td]

The boy follows his uncle, Miraak, as he watches the elder slither past the border of blood from where the heads lie. With keen eyes does he mimick the strides of the elder, treading silently as he follows closely behind. But in an instant does the figure of his mentor disapeer, and the boy blinks as his head searched for the traces of the man. @Miraak is not to be found, and the boy doubts he was even alerted of his presence in the first place. But Vaati is a smart child, calculative, resourceful; he does not get lost easy. On the contrary, he knows that by simpy tracing the line of the river will take him back to the dark woods; but there is a hesitation within his step that gathers him uncertian he wishes to return. The dark woods is his home, where his mother rests, where his siblings banter, but he is not attached to it. It is simply a place he will grow to conquer, to take within the mantle of his family name, but for now, he knows little affection for the shadows in which he was born. Not yet. For now, he seeks to know what he does not, and so, he follows the river as the peak of a Spire looms in the distance. 

[/td][/tr][/table]

[table width=85%][tr][td]

Kjalarr does not stray too far from Sawtooth. It looms at his back, statuesque and jagged like the tooth of some ancient behemoth long dead. For the first time in weeks since he settled upon Sawtooth as his desired hearth he follows the waterways down to where they run freely into the river. He follows the serpentine trail until it bleeds out into a larger lake. Forlorn glance is cast towards Neverwinter Forest and he is tempted. Tempted to stride to the borders and demand his son from Ondine and the strangers that have consumed Neverwinter; not yet. He is not ready to rescue his son. He has no stability to offer him. He knows that he is selfish, that he should have went to the first pack upon the horizon and groveled. He is too arrogant, too selfish, too power hungry to humble himself. Footfalls catch his attentions and his gaze slides from the general direction of Neverwinter Forest, scarred muzzle bearing a fearsome scowl as his gaze finds the boy. “Arrille!” Kjalarr calls out on instinct but as he seeks to close the distance between his believed son and the boy the closing distance paints that this boy bears much more tan than Arrille and the viking hesitates. “Ah.” Kjalarr offers when he sees his mistake though it is no real apology. There is an undeniable resemblance to his son with Ondine that the guard hairs on Kjalarr’s nape bristle with uneasy. It is uncanny. Ondine was not the first woman in heat he’s slept with able to produce children but he pushes those thoughts away quickly. The pallid stranger had many before him and likely many after him and he doubted the odds of his seed having taken (despite the blatant evidence before him). “You look like my son.” Kjalarr points out simply to explain why he called this stranger by another name.

[/td][/tr][/table]

[table width=70%][tr][td]

A name is called on the breeze, and the boy lifts his head, alert to the finest point. He is but a child, but he is present in mind more than usual for the age he holds, and thus, the domineering instinct of survival inherited by both his sire and the family of his dame leaves him cautious of everything around him. While he knows the land, its tricks and its secrets, he does not know those within. Despite being born to a pack with more blood on their hands than those still alive, he has not taken to the savagery of his homeland just yet; he is defenseless. But the voice that calls lessens in roughness and into something of simple confusion, and the boy zero's in on that from which the call rings. The call is not for him.; his name is not Arrille.

The man before him is intimidating, but seemingly unsure of Vaati himself, and it confuses the boy; Vaati is a simple creature. He stares at the man with peircing blue eyes, questioning the other's explanation out of simple curiosity, if not, out of his own amusement,"Are you my father?'' He retorts nonchalantly, if not blatantly. But he does not suspect so. A father would know his son's name, but no man had come to claim the boy;  fatherless suited the child anyhow. He could not miss what he did not have in the first place. The boy tilts his head slightly, examining the other with a gaze as sharp as it was uncanny; optics narrowing on the sand-like socks that mimicks Vaati's own. But he does not act on the similarity, coincidences were evident within his life more than he knows. "My mother calls me Vaati, I am not your son," The child informs the man with a quirk of hs brow, gaze unwavering from the man's own crystalized eyes. But he does not have a mind to be delayed by a man looking for a son that is not him, and he casts the man a look as if to say, 'Can I go now?'

[/td][/tr][/table]

[table width=85%][tr][td]

The boy’s nonchalant retort causes Kjalarr to bite lightly down on his tongue though it does not keep the soft snort of indignation to push past the scarred northman’s black, leathery nostrils. I very well could be, the words burn his tongue, wanting to spill forth. He does not know for sure, of course but he suspects there are not a lot of wolves with his coloring or pattern of his pelage walking around the Teekon Wilds. Floki, obviously, but his brother does not strike him as the kind of man to have one night stands with women in heat. No doubt, his brother is much more stronger …and a better man than he. Kjalarr is a viking to his core and a man ruled by primal instinct to boot. He cannot help what he is and does not aspire to change. He is not Floki and though he will always admire his twin they will always be two very different wolves. The name the boy gives him is a strange one to the viking’s ears. Vaati. His maybe bastard son. Or perhaps it is simply conceit that derives that nagging. Perhaps his coloration and patterning is more common than he thinks (though admittedly he has yet to come across it in others that were not directly related to him). “No doubt,” The viking muses coyly with a ghost of a smirk flickering across his lips; by the gods though he is of the right age. Not too much older than Arrille. The months align in his head and he wonders…

“I am Kjalarr,” the scarred northman offers to the boy in exchange. “What are you doing so far from home, Vaati?” Kjalarr inquires ignoring the look the boy shoots him.

[/td][/tr][/table]

[table width=75%][tr][td]

The man, Kjalarr, offers a name but the boy is not as taken to that single peice of information as he is to the meger two words the scarred man spoke just seconds before; "No doubt." Kjalarr is clearly one who does not lets emotions slip very easy and Vaati, despite his best intellectual abilities has no way of telling wether the man means what he says, or if the idea of Vaati being his long-lost son simply entertains him. It causes his brow to crease, squinting up towards the man with questions in his eyes that he he does not say, keeping to him the inquiries that he is more than sure he will not get a soild answer to. There is much about this man, Kjalarr that pereplxes the child, but also draws him nearer, hanging off of each word spoken with anticipation to hear more.

But he is no sooner snapped from his daze, attention snagged on his whereabouts than the topic of his lineage. "I am not," He attempts correct the man, almost too matter-of-factly; the boy has not travelled far at all and the threat of becoming misplaced is one that he does not entertain the idea of. The ever-flowing stream of water will lead him home one way or the other, and his faith in its entirety is place in that. "The dark woods is that way," The boy nods over his shoulder in the direction from which he came, and does not think otherwise of revealing his home to a man he has just met. For even this truly is his father, Vaati sees little reason to fear the secret of where he sleeps. Even if Kjalarr is not the father he speculated he could be, Vaati has never seen a stranger sucessfully infiltrate the blood wall that surrounds the dark woods; he has little to fear from revealing where his family lives when the potential threat will have no chance to act on it. "The river will take me back."

Vaati has little interest in returning at that moment, if any interest at all. His eyes train on the tip of the Spire, fixated on it alone. "But I want to go there," He indicates to the Spire, a point of which he is more than sure he will stand far above those who so aggitate him on the ground. He is unaware that this is the site Kjalarr wishes to mark his claim, and a simple coincidence that it is. The boy will not rest easy until he has set foot on it's steeple, and will return each day until he does. It is that very mindset that pushes to go beyond what he knows; because he simply needs to know. It is an instinct that borders on obsession, but the boy pays no mind to that now. It will only be once he is old enough, that the true weight of his desires will begin to sink in.

[/td][/tr][/table]

[table width=85%][tr][td]

Vaati corrects him when as Kjalarr asks what he is doing so far from his home. The Dark Woods, as the boy calls them with a nod of his shoulder and Kjalarr’s gaze follows the direction with a spark of unbidden curiosity in the polar depths of his irises as he studies the general direction contemplative. He knows of Blackfeather Woods — to have been born in these Wilds and spent all two years of one’s life in them and not know of the older packs that inhabit it is nothing short of ignorance in the viking’s opinion. The newer packs that crop up and then disappear months after their creation (sometimes weeks) are much harder to keep up with. The ranger-to-be thinks that he should really strike out more, to at least meet with each pack and gleam whatever information they were willing to offer him because knowledge is power. It is the ultimate power. Odin hung himself from Yggdrasil for nine days and pierced himself with Gungnir and sacrificed his eye all for the plight of knowledge. Knowledge required sacrifice but if the Allfather was willing to succumb so very close to death before Ragnarok for it then surely, surely it is worth it. “Good.” Kjalarr’s lilting accent makes the word gruffer than he intends as it comes from his lips on a breath that is nearly a grunt. It could almost be mistaken for affection though of course he feels none for the boy who is a stranger before him. It is simply because he does not wish to have to deal with a lost boy…or so that is what he tells himself before dropping it like it is a poisonous snake that is about to strike and inject him with deadly venom.

The norseman’s brows rise as the boy states his desire to go there, gesturing with his muzzle to what stands behind Kjalarr and the viking peers over his broad shoulder, scarred muzzle raised to point towards Sawtooth Spire where it looms like the threatening spearhead of Gungnir in the distance, casting it’s shadow far and wide. A shiver ripples it’s way down Kjalarr’s spine as he admires it’s magnificence. “It is called Sawtooth Spire,” Kjalarr offers Vaati in case the boy does not know the territory’s name. “Why?” The viking prods the boy for his reason for wanting to visit the Spire. If this boy is his son does that mean that the call of the northman blood is stronger than the blood of his enchantress mother — if his mother is the goddess and nameless (to him) woman he slept with so many moons ago. There is a brief desire to offer to take the boy to Sawtooth if he agrees to take Kjalarr to his mother to solve and sate the viking's burning curiosity about this boy.

[/td][/tr][/table]

[table width=75%][tr][td]

The name, Sawtooth Spire, lingers on his consious but also the fading feeling of approval coming from the man himself. He does not know what about his answer garnered the approval of the Viking, but he did so anyhow, and something at the back of his mind is sated by doing so. Kjalarr is not his father (as far he is able to prove) but for very little reason does he appreciate whatever recognision the man gives him. Perhaps it is the sudden presence of a potential father figure that play's on his mind, but Vaati, like his father, abruptly pushes away the thought and instead answers what more the man wishes to know.

"Because I want to be on top,"  He speaks plainly, metaphorically and in the literal sense, but also in a revelation of what he truly wants more than anything; superiority. The incident with Koume proved that more than anything, that his burning need to be above the rest, to see what others cannot see from down below is more prominent within his personaity than he believed. It is riddled within his DNA, both dominant from his viking heritage and his ruthlessly endarkened genes. Something tells him he does not need to elaborate on the urge, the man will simply know. But more so, he wants to climb and yet again does he attempt the "Can I go now?" look on the older man.

[/td][/tr][/table]

[table width=85%][tr][td]

Vaati’s reply is genuine, this Kjalarr can tell and the viking suppresses the urge to let out a low groan of dread; he understands. The scarred northman does not need elaboration on the boy’s response, he detects the double meaning to the words which could have been taken at face value but was not meant as such Kjalarr suspects. Kjalarr is helplessly his father’s son, sure, but he is also himself more than he is anyone else and being him and actively pursuing the desire to be superior has seen him in much strife over his two years of life. Even now, full into his adulthood it sees him strife. Power is dangerous. All it has done for him is cause problems and breed the greed and selfishness that is so intricately worked into his being that though Kjalarr recognizes it as problematic he is not sure he can ever untangle itself from it’s web. Perhaps, he thinks, when he is old and grey he will be able to change his ways but the fire of (supposedly) Odin’s blood runs too hot within his veins and he cannot yield or turn from the call of his fate.

Besides being a dangerous path the truth is the path of a conqueror is a very lonely one. He is estranged from wolves whom once called him family some blood and some not. Even in the face of possibly losing his son Arrille whom he understands he could be on his way to having back with him if he would have been able to humble himself, to submit to the ranks of a pre-established pack of the Wilds Kjalarr cannot. He cannot bow. He has tasted victory, he has supped on power and he is lost to it’s control. It’s temptations. “It is treacherous,” Kjalarr muses aloud for Vaati’s sake giving him a vague insight to his thoughts speaking of both power and Sawtooth Spire. “if I take you there,” because the Viking wanted something out of this, of course. “if I guide you up it’s treacherous paths so that you may see the Sawtooth in all of it’s true glory you will take me to meet your mother.” Because Kjalarr is undeniably curious and he feels that this is a fair trade.

[/td][/tr][/table]

[table width=75%][tr][td]

The man warns him of a treacherous path, but his intent does not waver. The depth of his desires far exceed the threat of endangerment, perhaps foolishly, but desire nonetheless. He will stand upon the highest peak, and he will look over the land below, and he will see the dark woods where his birth took place and where his siblings squabble. He will stand above, and that is all he yearns for, for one day he will not need the height to prove superior. However, he takes the security of his mother very seriously, more so than his own safety, and he does not know this man despite the idea they may share the same blood. Furthermore he does not know the extent of what this man is capable, and Vaati is instinctively less inclined to bring such a being back to his home. But he cannot shake the longing to trust that this man is safe enough to bring home to his mother, for he wants it to be true. Somewhat begrudgingly but wholly genuine does he nod, catching the man's eye as he does so. "Deal," Accepting the deal as it stands. But he wastes no further time and with a soft wag of his tail does he bound forward in the direction of the Spire, pausing at a reasonable distance to wait for Kjalarr to guide him in the right direction. The faint accent of a smile etches his maw, an odd sight to behold on the relatively stoic boy but entirely legitimate. Both the discovery of the man and mountain is the kind of adventure he fantasized about when leaving the dark woods where each mission was shrouded in a secrecy so stifling; his current situation was as if taking a deep breath after being held under water for so long. It was exactly the feeling that would drive him away from the woods and onto greater feats. Vaati guides him to his mother, confirming his heritage and together, conquering the Spire. He would fail to see the Viking again.

[/td][/tr][/table]