Erebos had always been the calm, rational, composed one. When Aithniel scorched and scorned, he’d bowed his head and waited for her tempest to settle. When Rikyn bounded into more and more hostility, yelling and snarling, the scion listened, then uttered a regal response. Now, though, the contempt was eager, intense, biting, snatching, grating on his senses, infuriated with how his friend had simply squandered opportunities, lost endless causes. He missed Orsino’s triumph and rumble of absolute glee as the politeness faded away to nothing and he was left as the angry, writhing, contorted and distorted prince, son of the Reaper, moved to incredible feats of fury and ferocity. He wanted to breathe fire in Rikyn’s face, he wanted to maneuver mountains and scale walls, pick apart dungeons, thrust his sword into another’s chest, just so he could see that things were possible, probable, if they tried. Why was it so difficult to understand? What did Rikyn ever intend to do with himself? Waste away? Wander around? Wait for lightning to strike him down? As he listened, as his ears flicked and stole every word pouring from his mouth, the beast inside the boy rattled, menacing and meticulous, irritated and exasperated by the excuses and their meaningless tactics. His voice came out infernal, disappointed, dismayed, rancorous, floored and disgruntled by the means of Rikyn’s proclamations – not enough to persuade him into the other’s mindset. “So you’d rather do nothing.”
 
His eyes bore into the bay’s, cold, hardened blue narrowed, piercing, lacerating, forgoing their gentle, jubilant ease for a direct source of audacity and vexed complexities. “Do you know how many times I’ve failed?” The query was unleashed on a growl, and he could recall all the hours, all the instances, all the moments where he’d tripped and stumbled, fumbled and fell, lost in a fight, in a brawl, in a search for a companion. A hiss followed, like it could’ve been from his demonic fox, instead of the boy who’d grown beneath sunshine and ice, mountains and peaks. “You have no idea. Not a clue.” His face drifted closer and closer, until he was nose to nose with his childhood friend, nothing more than a sinuous, unwinding thread of rage and discontent, pervading the caves with his ire and disarray; there was the infidel resting inside him, brewing and boiling, foaming and fuming, tracing over the stupidity of the world and how Rikyn had managed to bow to its temptations. “And still, I forged on, because I wanted to become something stronger, something better.”
 
Perhaps the coin had truly flipped on either of them – showing stubbornness behind blue or gold frames. They were still the same in some aspects, and so altered in other notions.
 
He didn’t care about being superior to the weakened ones of the world. He didn’t want to hear about how everything would eventually fall apart anyway. He didn’t want to stop believing in determination, perseverance, endurance, and fortitude. He’d been born from it, and he’d likely die from it. “You’re going to falter in life, it’s a given. There will always be someone more powerful. Its what you do about it that matters.” Then his voice finally quieted, less on a growl, on a snarl, dulled into a low whisper, as if the fiend from within had grown tired from the disenchantment spiraling around him, with the other youth who was smug, who was arrogant, who thought himself worthier when he hadn’t done a thing to earn the recognition. “So if you don’t want to work for it, then why bother. No one is going to hand anything to you.”