He smiled widely under his mask, replying in the same tongue. "Ja, indeed - or, at least, I always thought so. Nothing quite like one, really."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
"Hey, you've got more interesting family than me, friend," Raiden said, before thrusting his hands into the pockets of the pink gown he was wearing. He looked around at the other guests. His eyes locked on to the back of a certain gentleman. A smile formed. "Hey Taber, wanna meet one of my friends?" he asked, turning to the big wolf. He knew Taber would most likely join him, so he carried on walking backwards. He turned around as he neared the man and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Has a wild Boris appeared?" Raiden asked, giving his best grin.
I'm cool as a cucumber Even if I'm in a pickle
Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
"Would I?" said Taber, immediately following Raiden to a masked stranger. As far as Taber was concerned, meeting friends of friends was always a good idea. When Raiden poked the stranger and said that stranger's name, Taber waved and said, "Hi, Boris!"
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
At first I was irritated by the interruption. But then I turned to see who had accosted me, to find that it was the ostentatiously be-gowned and scribbled-upon young man from below the table. He knew me, despite us having never spoken before. At his voice I felt strangely compelled to brace myself for atrociously broken Shakespeare.
I was having trouble recalling something that had most definitely occurred, so naturally I attributed the blame to intoxication, as I always did with these sorts of dilemmas. Yet still this dream, as I optimistically called it, kept going on for an unprecedentedly lengthy amount of time, with no signs of it weakening. The excuse I relied upon was feeling frailer and thinner by the minute.
''Hello. My apologies, but when did I meet you? You feel exceedingly familiar but I'm afraid I'm having trouble placing it.'' I said to the young man in the bright, fluffy gown.
Last edited by SirenCymbaline on Fri Aug 10, 2018 6:14 am, edited 3 times in total.
Bad souls have born better sons, better souls born worse ones -St Vincent
James pushed through the crowds, much to their annoyance, to get underneath the staircase to find an exit. But unfortunately, his hunch was correct in that - he hadn’t in fact woken up on the ground floor - when he was met with another wall of windows looming down at the now slightly closer softly-lit courtyard outside. He let out a small huff of frustration before turning around and hurrying around the sides of the room looking for another staircase that led downstairs. He didn’t look back to see if Aaron was keeping up.
Asteri made sure to keep up. It wasn't initially easy with how fast James was going, but he could handle that. He practiced his magic and fighting abilities with gods, and they had even more absurd bursts of stamina. James had nothing compared to them. "By Elysium, you're fast," Asteri said, joining him at his side and using one of his friend's favorite phrases. It was hilarious seeing how many times he had accidentally used it in conversation after hanging out too much with him.
xXx
Meanwhile, in the center of the room, not much had been happening. Maahes and Vala had been engaged in discussing theories on how they had ended up there in the first place - and who would be behind something like this - while Second and his friend Lorcan were being absolutely adorable as they pointed out different things in the room. (Vala's whispered words, not Maahes'. But he had nodded in agreement right afterwards, because they was no other way to describe it.) It was hard to tell if they were just in awe of the ballroom or were actually trying to figure out what was going on.
Asteri froze for a quick second, suddenly recalling that Kentaro had once said that no one really used that phrase besides his friend. Which made things more than a little awkward, seeing that he was pretending to be a relatively normal person.
"By Elysium," he repeated. He quickly bridged the small distance that had grown between the two of them. "You know, the paradise for the dead in Greek mythology? My friend Ryan's a big fan of all that myth stuff, and he's come up with the oddest phrases. I hang out with him a lot, so I've picked up one or two of them."
He smiled smugly behind his mask. That had to be one of his better lies, if he did say so himself.
"Oh crap -- is it like that time with Bo again?" he thought to himself, remembering back when Bo and him had met up but at completely non congruent times in their lives (if that sentence itself made any sense). "Oh, err, I uh...I met a Boris Dietrich in a city called Atlantis. Are you that same Boris?" he asked, making sure he didn't actually start up a conversation with a random person instead of the Boris he knew and loved.
I'm cool as a cucumber Even if I'm in a pickle
Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
James finally stopped, in the middle of the crowd and looked back at Aaron with a blank expression. Though Aaron could hardly tell, because of his mask.
Everything Aaron had just said meant nothing to him. But that was clearly because they were from radically different worlds.
The stop had taken him by surprise, and he almost walked right into James. Luckily, he managed to notice before that could happen, and he came to a stop as well. It made him feel...nervous. He couldn't quite put his finger on why. It just didn't make sense for James to suddenly stop when he had been hurrying around the place so far. Had his lie been too weak? Was that it? Or was something else at play?
''Atlantis. Is that the shining city above the sea? Just last month, there was a week or so where I was comatose, for no reason I can muster, with naught for memory of what occurred but the vaguest of dreams. I thought-''
'I thought I overdosed on multiple intoxicating and hallucinatory substances', is how that sentence would have went if I was remotely drunk enough to admit that I did such things.
''Does the description of that city feel familiar to you? And, I'ven't a clue why I ask you this, but, are you bad at Shakespeare?''
Bad souls have born better sons, better souls born worse ones -St Vincent
Auryon, who had bored waiting for a chance to see if she couldn't get a drink with the golden-masked, bearded man, wandered off into the crowd. Her dark-cloaked form faded easily into the throng and her movements were kept inconspicuous. She strode with intent but also with grace - it was, however, a deadly kind of grace, like that of a lioness on the hunt.
The German vampire noticed her first, blue eyes widening beneath his silver mask as he recognized she was stalking. It took him mere moments to find her target: a man who had his back turned to her, wearing a royal blue, renaissance-style suit with a silver-trimmed mask and his brown hair tied back between his shoulders.
Unfortunately, he wasn't fast enough. Before he could yell a warning or stop his partner, she had her twin curved blades out in her hands. They were beautiful weapons - one was black, the other white, both made of some strange material that was somewhat like ebony or ivory but far stronger and much, much sharper. She was known as the Viper for one, simple reason: she was an ambush predator. By the time one saw her striking, it was too late. Her daggers went for the unsuspecting man's back.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
In case anyone is curious, here's the two parts to the outfit that our mysterious host is wearing. The outfit is the suit the man is wearing on the right in the first picture, and the mask is the one shown in the second picture.
Even those who weren't in the near vicinity of Viper when she stabbed the man quickly took note. It was hard not to. The lights grew noticeably dimmer, and a hush fell across the crowd. Everyone turned to get a good look at the attacker and victim. Asteri stopped walking. Vala pointed at the man, desperately trying to get Maahes to take note. Lorcan and Second both let out gasps of horror, because even growing up in a war they couldn't easily win still made death hard to cope with.
The man staggered forward, frantically reaching for the daggers. No one took a step forward. No one knew what to do, seeing that the wounds looked quite fatal and none of them were apparently healers.
But then, once he was a few feet away, the man came to an eerie stop. He straightened. Reached back for the daggers with a calmness that simply shouldn't have been present in someone who had just been stabbed.
Asteri realized the truth by the time that the daggers hit the floor.
The victim was a god.
And a female one, something that quickly became apparent when she turned around to face the group of people there - and Viper in particular. She casually leaned down, grabbed the daggers and plopped them back into her attacker's hands.
"She's a god," he said, eyes wide behind his mask as he watched her wound begin to close up on its own.
She turned to look at him with golden eyes. He stiffened. He knew how gods worked, and he knew that they stood no chance of fighting her because her regeneration would kick in before they could even land two consecutive blows on her.
"Nice one, Prince Asteri! I was hoping that someone would figure it out. It saves a lot of time in the long run, although I'm not the type of god you're used to." An aghast look passed on her face, one that seemed surprisingly genuine. "Oh, shoot! You were using an alias, weren't you? Aaron, was it? I really should have remembered it. It was in that file Kartiel gave me on you, and it was one of the first things he listed. It said your name - Prince Asteri of the kingdom of Lacerum - and then it had the name that you use online, or when your brother Kentaro is talking about you to his classmates. Aaron Hinamori, right?"
If James were in Asteri's position, he might've felt something more like panic, or at least a little discomfort at being exposed in front of the entire ballroom-filled-party, but as soon as the person spoke up and, in a word, announced themselves as the one responsible for bringing them here, or at the very least as the host, James began to push his way through the crowd, walking straight up to her.
"If you're a god, what kind of magical or technological means did you use to bring all of us here from different stretches of universe and time and for what purpose?" He asked firmly, planting himself no more than a yard in front of her once he'd finally reached her.
