@arakhor

octavianrising​:

❂🐦❂

She made herself known, a foolish choice considering how much hatred he harbored for her. In part, he wanted to unleash the phoenix’s rage on sight, but he had questions that needed answers. So he pulls his wings in, and after bursting into a pillar of flame Octavian changes back into his human form, walking forward with purpose and authority. “Keep my father’s name off your snake tongue, vile creature,” he warns, eyes still blazing. “I only want to know one thing: why now? Why free my sister now? Why chip from my family even more than you already have?” Though those questions were a thinly veiled mask to what he truly was after. Octavian couldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing how the voices in his mind screamed to be united with their progenitor. “The things you’ve done with that book … I should burn you for that alone.”

It’s quite a performance, the phoenix honing in against all the otherworld posed against him now, though she feels no sense of surprise. Pythia knows Octavian to be a force to contend with and one that fluctuates between loyalty and all that she knows if in his mind. As if out of humor alone, a serpentine hiss fills the air as she smirks, perfect teeth elongating only momentarily to mimic those of the creature he spoke of. “You should be more grateful to see her, did you not wish to be reunited with her?” The truth of his sisters demise one that filled Pythia with utter flee, “I did you a favor.” Framed within the concave of irrevocable choice - an olive branch that was only lacquered in the same poison that tainted his thoughts. “You could, of course, but I would merely find a new vessel and we would continue on as we always have..” The tip of her tongue runs the edge of her teeth, before she inhales swiftly and sets about on a slight skip in her step as she rounds him, “or, you could confess your thoughts - the ones that have told you all that I, and the book, can truly offer you. All that it whispers to you.”

The familiar voice caught her a little off guard, though Pythia doesn't know exactly why. The tray of champagne flutes she carries, filled with a soft pink bubbly liquid trembles slightly, though she recovers quickly as she rounds to lay hues on her brother. Hues, that now hold an air or warmth that had otherwise disappeared eons ago. "Michael," A fleeting moment holds ire before its reasoning dissipates just as surely, "It's beautiful, isn't it?" Truly, Pythia doesn't remember the last time that she'd felt so, light - so, unburdened by the tribulations that had so quickly torn her apart and left her rampant for retribution. "Oh," it's something of a surprise, but again, she doesn't truly know why, "let me just..--" Perhaps there's some importance in the tray she carries, unwilling to simply set it down, Pythia isn't comfortable until another server accepts it from her. He wasn't wrong. How long had passed, since the hands of time set them on opposite sides, since they'd seen each other as brother and sister, instead of nothing more than an enemy. "For old times' sake."

@fxllenpythia location: the FUNCTION notes: a rare sentimental moment between these two

Wasted time. That's what all these years amounted to. Michael couldn't remember why he and Leviathan had fallen out, there was a time that they had been close: inseparable, even. They'd fought together for so long, served their father dutifully and faithfully but... For some reason Michael had let time and who knew what else come between him and so many of his other siblings. "Of all the things you and I shared, it's hard to believe that there are still firsts." This masquerade, the gala and all its eccentricities were so distinctly fey. The eladrins would throw their parties in Eden, but they were not for the seraphim to attend. "Dance with me? I feel like we have a lot of time to make up for."

"Get me Augustus' body." It's said without much thought, but neither do her plans grow too bold just yet. With her numbers dwindled - even with the souls of those beyond Rome, Pythia wouldn't strike again without having everything in check - not for the likes of being blinded once more. "Dead or alive." Undoubtedly, the archfiend held some sentimentality towards the former necromancer, but waste not want not. The ties he held were worth splintering in the same ways the Asphodel had been, "And find out where Lucrecia is hiding, I'm not nearly done with her." By choice, or otherwise; Leviathan was the very embodiment of violence; and her wrath would befall all of those who no longer served her purpose. "Kill whoever you have to."

Bastien's birth had only been for the power that his parents could garner, to create a coven where one had not been. He had been taught nothing aside from what he could do for his parents. That is, until Pythia had begun to whisper in his ear. Of the power that he could harness for himself, of the magic that lay dormant within him. It was the greater demon that had guided him to the forest, to the animals within and the visions that he could pull from the hands of the Graeae. And it was since then that his loyalty had been cemented, given over freely and without fault. Even when he had been imprisoned, when he'd been left with nothing but his visions. Even when others had fallen, had felt fear and fled from the ranks of the Asphodel. And even now, as his mind fractured, as a part of it weighed so heavily upon a certain elf, Bastien had remained with Pythia. "Ask of me anything that you wish, it will be yours freely," he affirmed, cementing his loyalty that much further to their cause. To the power that would be Pythia's, and subsequently, his own once a new book had been crafted. Once they had finalized what they had long since been working towards.

@domxbirchall​ location: some dive bar

“I’ve gotta say, being a free man suits you far more than I remembered.” Her presence is not one that she’s announced, rather shifting through the shadows of the dimly lit bar and seemingly manifesting in the booth seating across from him. Regardless of the new face she wears, Pythia knows that recognition would at least flicker beneath the surface of whichever thought plagues him now. “How did you manage?”

For all that might have otherwise gone wrong, the darkness of momentary defeat had drawn Leviathan into the shadows. A place that didn't encompass the same disappointment for her that it did for so many. It was, instead, the same constant that the greater demon personified in the eons since tumbling from grace. The same place that those devoted would always find her. In every abyss conjured within themselves seeking something just a little darker - a little more powerful than the last. "Sentimentality doesn't become you, Tepiltzin." The arch of fondness tepid in the corner of her mouth is difficult to miss, there are few among the ranks of the Asphodel - scattered or no, that exist as far more than fodder. The hit she'd taken in lieu of Lilith's plan remained, and likely would for some time. Inevitable. Tiamat's destruction, while somewhat a surprise, had not been unanticipated. How could it, when the darkest beings in existence were brought together? "Your tenacity doesn't go unnoticed, however. A trait I've clearly overlooked in some of the others."

a starter for @fxllenpythia, where: gurl wherever pythia can be idk

The Criminal had survived countless years in his own solitary selfishness, he'd never needed a coven nor a pack of vampires; the once vampire had abandoned his own progeny countless of times and the Asphodel falling apart was a meaningless factor to him. The destruction of the book, however, Python's departure; that was everything to the liche who held onto so little. Such things were the few personal things the liche revolved upon and he'd not let them fade away into this new world that seemed so hellbent on destroying their path of greatness. "I was beginning to become a touch worried," everything he'd ever conquered in life had been under the direction of the greater demon and there was mild relief to find she did not simply fade away into defeat. They'd been destroyed before, a coven reduced to a slim margin of members, but they'd rebuilt from that, and they'd so do again, eventually.

"Honestly," hues shift over the silver tray she carries, "i couldn't tell you, some kind of nectar, i think? I don't seem to be making it too far before it's all gone so it must be good." To which, the tray would then suddenly be refilled. "Would you like one? It's been a while since I've seen you." Something that had always stuck with the sovereign, even now, she lived as a phantom of her own coven.

who? @fxllenpythia where? near the food

"What are you carrying, Sovereign Pythia?" She asks as she approaches Asphodel's sovereign. It's odd really, for a long moment she had almost thought that she was from Alstroemeria, but if she was, why would she had ever left the coven? Clearly the drinks are beginning to get to her head.

open to: asphodel coven members @senatusstarters​ location: asphodel house

“We won’t be able to hide from them for much longer.” Nor, in her mind, did she believe they should. Given she’d announced their location, invited them to their front door, that still didn’t give rise to the identities of her accomplices. A fickle detail. Alas, the brevity of human life itself undoubtedly increased their need for self preservation, their devotion one of the many threads that kept her here. The moonlight that shone brightly upon the terrace warmed her like sunlight; the depth of night itself enough to bring a near maniacal laugh to her lips. “They’ll try to infiltrate, pick us apart one by one,” a tactful approach that would only parallel all previous attempts to destroy the Asphodel for good; if only they were so attune to the Methodist act of devotion and the level of depravity the coven itself represented.  Still giddy with the meager city wide retribution that had come to pass some months prior, Pythia balanced precarious upon the tiptoes of her latest vessel, turning the page of the Necronomicon as the blood sacrifice of their newest took hold. The blessed wouldn’t be far behind. “They’ve gone far too quite far too quickly, don’t you think?” Enough to whet her appetite just barely.

@yurcna location: yurena's necro crib

"You seek to conserve your strength when I can give you all the sustenance you could ever ask for." They drew from the book, an unyielding, constant conduit of power, yet Leviathan knows what she has felt. A drift, caught somewhere between the young witches devotion - a snaggle tooth that needed to be pulled. "There's no going back, Yurena." Hues as void as the abyss struck Yurena still, "Speak your grievances and be done with it." The underlying threat of Kaan's demise remaining unspokien.

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