#pelorusstarter

There was a good reason why demons forgot their lives, it didn't serve a demon's nature to remember what it had been like to be human. To be someone's daughter, to want to feel loved, to feel appreciated, and to have the sort of hopes and dreams that were so completely mortals. Viola had once been a girl whose fingers were rubbed raw from the efforts of silk, who laughed under the lowlight of her father's priests, and danced as if at any moment her own mortality would come calling.

Remembering hadn't been the blessing that Viola had thought it would be, Arachne had died far below: Viola was loved, she was needed, and she was appreciated. The former was just a girl who had loved her father so much that she truly believed he'd have found her even in Hell. Pelorus was famed for his ability to locate just about anything and anyone, Thebes was revered under his protection for reasons that extended beyond his prowess with his blade. So many years she'd waited, it was foolish of course and Viola didn't begrudge him for not storming the nine levels of hell as Dante was said to have done for Beatrice. Still, Arachne had hoped, and then she had forgotten what hope felt like. Lucifer had seen to that.

"I didn't think it was true." Viola started, her father had died and that's what she had believed a century ago when she first walked this realm again. "I told them: my father wouldn't be cut down, not even a God could slay him." Because what else was a father in the eyes of a child if not divine?

Cthonius' body had burned but Echion felt like he was still there, still standing in the Otherworld waiting for the ashes to cool. Stood there as they divided the remains into four and went their separate ways to scatter them. Echion should have been thinking about Pluto and how to kill him, or the pact he'd made with the now former King of the elves. Titania was dead, the monarchy was gone, and for all he cared whatever debt Echion had imagined was as dead as Cthonius. What was left now?

A dagger made of bone in hand, he flung it towards a poster on the wall and watched as it was embedded with accuracy. Another one drawn from his wrist and laid across his palm, then flung again. "He always knew what to do." Echion admitted, "What to say, how to say it." Cthonius had been the glue that held them together, the thing that tethered them in times of strife. Echion didn't know where to go from here.

This modern age had brought with it a wealth of inspiration, guns? Ingenious. Though, Echion was sure that he could make one that was much better. His shoulder had popped out from its place, along with all the bones in his arm as it hardened and changed its form, elongating into an extensive rifle that he sat perched with on the side of a cliff. A shot was fired as he took a distant bird down with accuracy, watching it fall gracelessly from the sky, shot clean through the head by one of his knucklebones. "Don't be jealous Pelorus," Echion bragged as he looked up towards his advancing brother, "it's not your fault that your body is more mead than bone."

There had to be something in the wine because Hyacinth was much chattier than usual, not to mention he felt like he was buzzing in a way. Like his skin had started humming: the lights seemed more vivid, and Apollo had never felt so... good. "You know what Pelorus?" Hyacinth began, "I think you're pretty great." He nodded at this, it wasn't like the man ever went above and beyond, in fact as far as marshals went he probably had to be the most unmotivated of the bunch. Pelorus did it all with style though, even as he sat there in pyjamas.

Something important was about to happen... Echion was pretty sure him and his siblings were gonna do something... Something in the Otherworld. Echion couldn't remember what that was, but he looked fucking amazing. Every inch of his body was covered in bone armour he'd produced by pushing them out through his skin and regenerating his skeleton. With an external skeletal armour as hard as vibranium, Echion walked in his best decorated battle regalia while Pelorus was served grapes and wine by the drow queen, Ayi'ig. "Bitsh datedsh don'tsh yoush thinksh." Echion said as he tried very hard to speak through the extra jaw and sealed set of teeth, he couldn't believe that Pelorus was wearing a chiton of all things.