Noctisardor Bypass into dust first

a quick glimpse is spared to kaertok, vex desiring the praise of his parent, notes the small smile and looks back down to the invisible border quickly; chest puffing with unfettered pride as kaertok tells him he’s right. his ears perk and his gaze lifts, attentive, as kaertok goes on to say that his mother said the strangers weren’t pleasant. untrustworthy. his upper lip curls back revealing small teeth that would one day be more of a threat than what he, as a growing but gangly cub, could currently put off.

not of the wild. vex repeats as if it is a curse; a blight. he shouldn’t be here. and he didn’t mean legion specifically, though that certainly stood given the little bit of information his father’d given him. it was vague but it was more than good enough for vex whom had begun to paint his own biased opinions on imagination alone.

before he can ask anything else about them — questions he doesn’t realize might be better suited for arbiter — kaertok distracts him with the question of how to rid the earth of their smell. pee on it? he guesses. that was one of the several ways they marked borders, after all and it only makes sense to vex to connect those particular dots.