In the Snow, within the Frost, the Frozen Tundra they would cross. Exploring in the travel and journies of those to find redemption and enlightenment.

It was nothing to do with Home or memories. The grim expression on Inkeri's visage would prove so much. She did not want to be here. Still it was the path they needed to journey across.

For one to begin again they had to start at the beginning. The beginning of it all. The tribe had moved on which brought a silent relief to her.

Her partners on this 'adventure' as it were had kept silent. She was so thankful to them.

Alastor and Fai.

Her companions. Those that were bound to her in so many ways. Fai with his calm and insightfulness, Alastor with his dark indifference and subtle constant fury.

They balanced her in so many ways.

Eventually when there was no trace of the tribe to be found they moved on. Tracking homelands. To learn of each other. To reinforce and strengthen the bond between the trio.

Oh Inkeri knew that she was the center point of their bond, something that would lace them all together.

A wolf and a tiger and a snow leopard as a trio.

She cared for them both, more so then she would ever reveal and yet she knew that the feeling was mutual.

From the frozen tundra of her homelands to Alastor's homelands... this was only a beginning.

~Lithuania, Spring 1328, Trakai Island Castle~

They had been laying, face down, on the floor of the chapel for a full night and almost all of the day.

Twelve of them, lying with arms outspread on the floor, legs together.

Cruciform shapes, robed upon the chapel floor. Under guard by four men in armor, long-handled axes in their hands.

He hears the bootsteps of yet another knight entering the chapel, walking between their prone shapes, heading for the altar.

Moments later, the familiar words of ritual spoken, echoing in the vaulted room. "The grace and blessings of the gods be with you all. Glory to the gods, peace be upon our lands."

And he speaks the ritual words in response, along with his eleven other brothers. "Glory to the gods, peace be upon our lands."

The words in ritual continue from the lone knight, as they have countless times before over the last day and night. "Who among you would prove himself worthy of the Cross and the Sword and receive their power?"

He chants along with the others. "We do, the humble squires before you."

As one, the twelve of them stand, remove the robes they had been wearing, stripped down to the nude, and lay prostrate again.

The booted feet walk towards him, first in the line of his comrades, as he had been each time. "Squire! What is your wish?"

His answer comes without hesitation. "Sire, to receive the discipline, that I may prove myself worthy of the power!"

As it has nearly a hundred times before, the sudden slashing pain of the whip to his flesh comes with a sharp crack sound. As soon as he feels it, he cries out the ritual words, not in pain but with fierce determination. "Lord, grant me the power!" He hears, dimly over his own voice, the others chanting it with him.

The question, the answer, the crack of the whip is repeated eleven more times, and at each crack of he whip, the words are spoken again.

~The Frozen Tundra - Present Day~

Centuries have passed since that long night and day, and yet he remembers the crack of the whip, the ritual words. The scars on his back are there, a badge of pride, to this day, some hidden beneath the symbol of his knighthood forever inked into his flesh.

Before they had departed for this journey, he had unearthed the large, sturdy duffel that held within it the tokens of his past, things the others of the Pack had no idea of, for he had spoken to none of them of his past, his origins. Those things had been in another age, another life, and, perhaps, were best to be left there, remembered only by himself.

He is not even sure why he had come, really, save for a connection he shared with Inkeri and the Drifter. He doesn't quite understand it, but it is there, something the beast within himself acknowledges for him.

And yet he is, still, undoubtedly the outsider. The quiet, stoic one, a dark, silent presence. Bestial fury held within a cage that is held in check only by an indomitable will, waiting for the moment to be loosed.

Even when his two companions had shifted, he had stayed as a human. Cold, heat, pain, fatigue - they do not show their marks upon him, save perhaps in the haunted depths of vivid blue eyes. But even there it is a small thing, and he keeps up without difficulty as they follow the path that will take him to the place that - once - a man named Vytautus Juodavilkas had called his home.