Helen
"Do you really?" He inquired in a dark tone, tail shifting from one side to another. He turned to fully regard the scrawny woman, raising a brow. One tends to grow paranoid in an eventful, solitary life, and the jackal was not exempt from this. Yet, he sensed no hostile intent from the oni to warrant his ire as of now, and in his current mood, he was more than eager to entertain grating thoughts.

"I sometimes wonder if *Any* Of our deeds happen by our own accord. I've strived to believe in that freedom once... Now I'm not so sure," The beastkin's words grew somber with every passing moment, ears folding against his temples, though still remaining taut.

"When I was feverish as a pup, monsters used to haunt my every dream. I didn't understand them then. I didn't understand them... Until I was made into one myself. Then, they began haunting my conscious world as well," He sighed, head lowered until he raised it to focus his mismatched gaze on the woman, a single pupil in a sea of seething scarlet narrowing at her. "Monsters merely struggle to survive this twisted world, not unlike everyone else. And they struggle the only way they know how."
Iris
"As far as I am able," She says simply as she stands just a few feet beyond where the effigy threw a circle as it burned; just outside the soot and burned grass and dirt. She still remained unafraid, or maybe just too distant from the situation to care. Her eyes held a constant, distant cast as if her mind were a million miles away somewhere. They only seemed to focus, briefly, when he spoke.

"Whether they are, or are not may not matter. If I told you 'What you do doesn't matter because it's predetermined, right down to your struggle against predestination' would you be despondent and irritable with your fate? Or would you feel freedom because it doesn't matter anymore?" She said, head tilted again and pale eyes shifting to him, and then away to the sea. She briefly figured someone in a mood to light effigies and howl, then question random passerbys may very well pitch her into the ocean to suit their fancy, but... Well, if she lived, then she'd figure out where the ocean and tide go.

As he made his decision on why monsters and 'not-monsters' struggled, she paused. "Perhaps a fair assessment. Everyone is struggling. Everyone is struggling to survive in the ways they know how to with the tools they have. Some struggle more and some struggle less, and if you struggle very little you must be fortunate. Is that accurate?"

She shrugged, dark tangled hair sharply contrasting on her paled face. "It may not matter. What matters, to many, is that the way you struggle defines what you are to them. Perhaps you do so by going to your work day in, day out, putting goals of your life and family before you while ignoring pain it causes. Perhaps you do so by preying upon your fellows and continue to do so because to stop is to stagnate and die before your body follows." A slow exhale. "Everyone struggles against each other. Some ways are simply more palatable than others to the masses. It's *Cleaner* To them."
Helen
"Perhaps fate has already decreed all my struggles pointless in the end. Perhaps I will achieve nothing... Change nothing... *Be* Nothing when it all comes to pass..." He drawled morosely, raising his wrists and palms in a shrug. "Whatever fate might have in store for me though, I cannot sit idle. I cannot grow complacent or accept defeat before the fight even begins."

The jackal followed her gaze into the distant sea once more, unfocused and looking at nothing in particular. "I never expected a benevolent fate for me, nor did I ever ask for the hand I've been dealt. None of us did. But it is up to make everyone to make the most of it, even if we change nothing in the grand scheme of things. I cannot be a prisoner to my fate, nor will accepting it bring me any liberation... Never again..."

He bit back a snarl, lips retracting to flash his canines before continuing. "Someone *Has* To make the difficult decisions. To do what must be done. Someone *Has* To be the villain, the monster everyone loathes. And it seems that fate shaped me to be that one, regardless of the wishes I once had."
Iris
"Perhaps, but there is freedom in futility as well. Your mistakes will not matter, because they will be forgotten. Time will erode away your legacy like the sea on the cliff; Worrying away your footprint in this world until it's all dust," She said. Like talking to the void in a way she answered with entropy but seemed... Comfortable with it? "Though if fighting against it and scoring your claws into the earth makes you comfortable, then that's fine as well. I will watch and observe the ripples you make to see how far they spread."

As he went on about refusing fate, refusing liberation or chains, she comments, "Contrary. Rather, you will not let go of your individuality, nor your own importance to yourself. That friction of understanding you did not succeed in what you wished, accepting yet not what you are seems a sore place for you."

She closed pale eyes, "So now you wish to make the most of it? Being a 'villain' or a monster, or another archetype which easily shapes you into a base idea that is easy to store away and ignore." She opened them. "You could simply *Be*."
Helen
The jackal's gaze was distant and unfocused, but his ears stood perked attentively listening to the woman's reasoning. "I suppose that is a sensible way to view things," He nodded flatly. "But it isn't one I can be content with. We all stop walking this earth one day, but our deeds remain. And some deeds last through time. Some ripples are strong enough to bring the tallest walls crumbling *Down*."

The intensity in his voice was mirroring in his left eye, the scarlet iris seemingly burning like wildfire as his words resonated with the weight of an oath. His head turned west, towards the Silnarian capital of Ulnoor, towards a pile of rubble where a formidable fort stood not very long ago. The rumours had spread in the empire by now of the fiendish black beast involved in its downfall, but only a select few would ever know the truth. 

"The man I once was... Died back in that prison cell. Only the Beast remained. I have come to turns with what I've become- what I was always meant to be." The sharp sheen of his fangs glimmered underneath dim lights, and midnight black embers dancers at the claws of his fingertips. "They can put a man in chains. Beat him. Torture him. Break him." For the briefest of moments, a single tear trickled down his left cheek, the drop weaving a path between his coarse fur, though the jackal's voice remained unwavering. "But they can do nothing against an idea. If one becomes a single purpose to exist for, nothing can stop them." He paused for a moment, the midnight embers fluttering around his hands and spiraling around the wrists before fading out. "And I strive to become one; Vengeance."