[ This place is revolting. The vines that had coiled around him and forced him deeper ( downward, deeper still ) had been shredded inch by inch, with tooth and nail as he'd fought feverishly against what he perceived was it. The great descent, into Osiris's clutches once and for all, into failure, into -- who knew what. He'd lashed and clawed and scraped his way free from the vines, found his way up into the high point above where they refused to go and there. There, he waited. The face of the dryad nearby placid, her judgment withheld though she asked for such sacrifices. To her?

Don't make him laugh! No god would sacrifice to a lesser entity, let along some nature spirit with an ego. There would be no humbling of anyone, not here. Not him, and not this horse-woman with her eyes drawn into feral pinpricks, blood streaming over her mouth and breasts as though she'd just taken a bite out of something. Someone, maybe. It's a look that incites him, forcing him up to his feet, leveraging his lean form over her as she threatens his life. ]

Try it.

[ There is something feverishly earnest in those words, a calling between them both for hostility, for slaughter, for battle until one of them would lay heaving and dying upon the ground. At his apex, it would be her. Effortless, swift. He'd cleave her in two and stand over her to watch her die. Does she count as human? Would retribution fall upon him, if he was to sink his hands between her ribs and go for her heart? ]

I was waiting, [ he says it again, and under his calm is that thread of impatient; how dare this woman keep him waiting, how dare she arrive sleek with blood and as tinged with madness as him! ] I would like to leave this place. She would not accept the blood of a god, this unappreciative creature.

[ To Hayame, he holds up his hands; his arms, bitten and scored by his own teeth, his own nails. He's been bleeding himself against the roots, against the floor of the root cage. ]

She said I needed another. I believe that means, that I needed you.