Spartoi

who: @echionx where: Lupercal

"In another life, maybe." Echion lay with languid ease with his back stretched across some of the bleachers as he quickly recognized the demigod from their excursion into the fucking end of the world. "What's your thing, anyways?" At the time, they'd all been overpowered, and things got a bit muddled because of it, but at the time, there were a lot of monsters around her. Whatever that meant. He remembered the body of bones, the dragon that had risen from the core of his being - it was a controversial feeling to see how terrible he could be and how inadequate he truly was all at once.

With Raguel it had been easier to know what would happen next, Echion and him would fall asleep and then move out at dawn. Or they'd pull their clothes back on and carry on about their day, always together and scarcely apart. They'd been in one another's immediate orbit from the start, what was the formula in this modern age? What did Astaroth expect to happen? Echion was in no rush to throw his clothes back on and take off, sprout wings and fly away home. Astaroth looked comfortable, but it wasn't like they could lay exposed on the Roman rooftop through the dawn, eventually people would begin to gawk.

Bebe was good for this, Echion wasn't good at making friends but she'd taken him under her wing and was one of the few people who seemed capable of putting up with his surly attitude. She pulled away and Echion took the pencil to try and mimic the movements that she had done over his one eye. "I look stupid." Echion looked at himself in the mirror, the clothes, the eyeliner, he didn't recognize the person that he saw. That felt good, but he didn't like what he saw either - that might have had less to do with the makeover though and Echion's overall dissatisfaction with whatever man was trying to fit into this world. "I should've just stuck to bones, maybe scales."

"I went, saw that the high elves had brought some of the special punch, then saw first account evidence that the Inferno was destroyed and decided that I wanted to process that information alone." There is a near manic quality to her deadpan that she doesn't quite bother to hide. Echion is as fucked up as her, if not worse by his time being a meat puppet, so he can excuse her near hysteria at the realization that the careful chessboard she had been working to create for millennia had been destroyed and she had no idea why or how. At the end, she knows her choice. She had followed Lucifer and fallen with them. There is no scenario in which she doesn't return to his side now that he is free but– She worries that they will attempt to retake what remains of Eden, for she doesn't know if she can help them destroy the world she is just beginning to realize she loved. "So I didn't exactly stay for long."

"Yeah, I heard." Everyone had and maybe that was a point of concern for the people who'd fought to keep it shut, but Echion wasn't among them; there was a time when the spartoi would have been giddy at the thought of hunting down and killing hordes of demons, fiends, demogorgons, hellhounds, and whatever else was crawling out of the pit. Now wasn't one of those times though. Now not even the thought of fighting to a bitter death didn't even give him that special little tingle that it used to. What had he become? Echion was pathetic, he felt pathetic, like Pelorus and Hyperenor combined. "I thought you'd go running into their arms." Echion thought about Astaroth, the fallen certainly had reason to.

Loss and time seemed to be the curses that hung over them, the blight of twin swords that carved neatly at the space the pair inhabited between them. They were always losing people, each other most of all, and they were always losing time, though fifteen years did not hold a candle to the four thousand that had defined their relationship previously. Trust laid bare beneath him as the fallen's gaze reflected the cold stars above, the chill over the rooftop was slight when compared to the warmth between them before Echion felt his lips curve into a smile. One he bent towards Astaroth's mouth before he began to move.

Bebe nods promptly, she looks to the sales associate who seems awkwardly wanting to be anywhere else and then she points to a few things around the store. She gets it, the poor associate and the pining blonde that clearly needs more of her help. "Okay, new plan, which means you are to cancel all of yours for the rest of the day." She doesn't really leave any room for discussion or protest, this was happening because she needed yet another pet project on top of being a senator. There's maybe this deep need to....While she will accept being referred to as 'mother' by various twinks, she thinks her caretaker vibe is very much more 'fun big sister'. The absence of August is a hole that just sits there empty in her chest, aching at all times. * "Don't move." There was no point in going to Sephora, for one, they wouldn't let her in there, she was pretty sure her picture was somewhere on the wall after the last bee incident. Secondly, there were several makeup cases full of what she routinely took from the place in her boudoir. That's where she's perched Echion, on her vanity chair as she holds up a kohl pencil. Urban Decay Perversion, smudgy and sexy, she could teach him to do it himself. "And look up."

"I hate this." Even as Echion said this though he was looking up, was this really the kind of thing Astaroth would go for? There were enough posters on the walls of the record store with people wearing makeup so it wasn't that big of a stretch but the demigod felt stupid. Frivolous. Was this really where he fits in in this modern world? Maybe Hermes had had a point, he doubted that there was much for him here now. Astaroth didn't have many more tethers than Echion, just that shop. "That hurts." It didn't, but Echion relished in any opportunity to complain.

There was a mortal saying about getting back on a bicycle, but the spartoi hadn't seen the appeal in doing much of anything lately. Echion took a large breath in and sighed as he released all the air from his body and then some. "I don't know." He said finally after a long beat, "Sure, I guess." it didn't, not really, but Hermes was clearly under the impression that it would help, and he seemed excited. Clearly something had to be wrong with Echion because he actually cared about offending Hermes. "I haven't killed anything in a while, something with a lot of monsters could be alright."

"Oh my god the one with the....?" Bebe invokes blue steel for a moment before narrowing her eyes and looking forward before moving her bangs so they fall across her eyes. She'd seen the owner and frankly, Echion had good taste. "It's all making sense." She was connecting dots that he hadn't even presented her with and it's with a sigh and a flourish that she turns to the various racks around them and starts pulling things. "How do you feel about eyeliner?"

"That was.... Yeah, that was spot on." The look that Bebe had performed was pure Astaroth, the likeness was so striking that the spartoi had been momentarily taken aback by it. "I don't think I have any feelings about it." Echion had never had a strong thought about how he presented himself outside of his bones for ages. Would that he could just dress himself in his rib cage all the time, Echion didn't know what was so appealing about cloth and skin anyways. Maybe he should ask Astaroth.

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Pelorus had tried to mimic what he thought Cthonius would say; the eldest was the strongest among them, but he was dead and no longer had a voice. They'd scattered their brother's ashes; he was gone, and no amount of martyring themselves would bring him back. Hyperenor and Udaeus could keep their grudge, it wasn't Echion's anymore. "The world trembles at the thought Hyperenor." Echion dismissed with characteristic scathing sarcasm; the hot air in the other's balloon would pop soon enough. This grudge was a relic, even if it wasn't it hardly mattered anymore. Nothing really mattered; Echion could consign himself to fight, fight, and fight and fight until he eventually died, but all this blood only served to amuse the hosts that had inhabited them. Echion remembered that all too well. "If you have nothing else to add Hyperenor, leave me alone, and don't come back."

A simple nod was all that Echion really provided in affirmation, he disliked that he'd told her that much even, but if Hyperenor was going to go around attacking vampires then he was painting a target on the backs of every demigod in the city. He'd told his brother already that he didn't care what he did, but if that ended up putting Echion's neck on the line then that might not be true. He thought about Pelorus next, his damned brothers were such a pain in his ass. "Hyperenor is more dangerous than usual right now," he paused, "we all are: tread lightly with him." She was kind, for a vampire, and Isabella had never given him any reason to doubt her intentions... Maybe she could help Hyperenor, though somehow Echion thought that the four brothers were each beyond saving now.

"All circumstances considered, it does not surprise me," she admits quietly as a sigh full of dead hair escapes her and she considers the alternatives. As it is, Echion's brother is a threat to her kind, but his actions are understandable when painted in the context she has been given. It's not something she can abide or allow, but she is reluctant to bring the big guns or involving the senate just yet. She wants to give the demigods a chance to find their place in Rome, and if Hyperenor's actions are revealed tensions will raise once more and she would hate for that to happen so soon after the End. "I will attempt to keep this contained for as long as I can." It's the most she can do, as a thank you for his help and from her true desire to encourage true peace.

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"Who's joking?" Echion dismissed, "I won't go to another brother's funeral; you're not just shortsighted Hyperenor, you're blind. You always have been. It's another thing that makes you a weak, easy target." Maybe their paths would cross in another four thousand years; Hyperenor and Udaeus could frolic about whatever half-baked plan they might devise, but for that to happen, the former would have to get over himself. Maybe they'd even drag Pelorus out of his self-induced pit of lazy depravity. Hyperenor had this foolish notion that he could manage anything on his own, though, so the only place that either of Echion's other brothers would end up was at the Saphhire's funeral. Intentionally cutting, whatever was stunted about the Pearl kept any notion of sentiment at bay; at his core, he was grieving, and the thought of losing another brother was too unbearable. Cutting ties felt better than standing by as they approached an executioner's blade. "Try not to do anything stupid on this crusade of yours."