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I think...well, no, I know I am too old to be anyone's apprentice at this point, Marius. Same certainty that tells me I likely wouldn't have lived to forty had events happened differently.

My brothers would never likely have had me killed. [ He shrugs. ] Such was the way of claims to the throne.

Perhaps you wouldn't have. Would you call it good fortune? You knew gods and goddesses personally. And you obviously never returned to fight for your throne. Was that because you didn't want to, or for some other reason?

No, I didn't. By the time I was returned to my home, my city was gone.

War had not been kind to my people. Ten years of seige will do that.

I apologize. I do know what that is like. When Rome fell, I think it took a piece of my heart with it.

Troy...had everyone I might ever have known in my entire life in it. Every face I'd ever seen. I watched it burn and could do nothing.

I was with the gods for almost a thousand years. There was no point in fighting for a crown to a place no one knew anymore.

If any of my family survived the fall of Rome, it would have been in Constantinople. I don't know their final fate, but so much of Rome burned. I curse myself sometimes because I destroyed my records of my descendents, so I don't actually know. But it seemed so logical at the time. How would I explain that, two hundred years after I went missing, I returned, looking much the same as when I left? No. I could only listen from the garden to make sure they were well. And then the barbarians came.

You'd had children before you became immortal, then? Or since?

Oh, no, I've never had children. I had plenty of nieces and nephews when I was mortal, plenty of extended family, but after I was made immortal, I was...you might say married to my work. It's only relatively recently that my responsibilities have been removed.

...Married to your work, or just uninterested in women?

I'm hardly one to judge, I've been happily queer my entire existence. [ Blunt he's learned to be as well. ] I know Ilus had gotten his wife pregnant by the time I was taken. But...I don't remember their names. Or what became of them. Unfortunately the rest of my family died with Troy.

I've raised more than enough children to make up for it, hopefully.

I've had very close companions and lovers of both sexes. No, it's nothing like that.

My charge, since I went down into Egypt at the god of the grove's command, had been to protect my...goddess and her consort. They were not entirely conscious, and others were taking advantage of them, trying to kill them. I spirited them away from Egypt and became their guardian for a very long time.

Both are dead now, their power passed on into others. She woke, maddened, and killed her consort. She threatened to kill so many. [Marius sighs sadly. He still has a hard time reconciling the Akasha who cruelly slaughtered so many blood drinkers with the goddess who protected him for so long.]

Gods usually do. They are cruel and capricious creatures by nature. All of them.

[ Biased? Ganymede? Whoever would think that. He has no love lost for gods--any of them that he's met--of any type, really. A thousand years a slave will do that. ]

[Marius smiles sadly.] Having grown up with the gods of Rome, you'd think I'd have remembered that. But I loved her, my silent but beautiful and protective goddess. When she woke and mocked me, then buried me in the ice so I couldn't stop her, it was a shock.

The ones I grew up with were no better.

I worshiped them until I knew better--and I knew better after I was snatched off the side of a mountain by a man who could turn into an eagle.

You had that worse than I did. I at least was snatched by the druids of the grove.

It took me two thousand years to see the truth. I've lost so much time.

Zeus was... [ Ganymede sighs. He's spent his entire life treaing on eggshells to avoid coming out and saying bluntly and plainly how awful his abuser was. And he's kind of over it. ] I'd call him a cunt, but he lacks the warmth and the depth. And the usefulness, to be honest.

[Trojan, a boy no older than Amadeo granted immortality by the gods. A lover or conquest of Zeus. Marius nods slowly at his words. He thinks he knows his original name. And it probably was as awful as he said.]

And for a thousand years you served him? I am sorry. It sounds horrible.

Edited 2024-04-21 11:21 (UTC)

And now you know why I worship no gods. And never again will.

I think it goes without saying that I am a fair bit older than you by now.

I figured you were. I was born just before the decline of the old religion. You know gods and goddesses personally.

That I do. The ones I still speak to with any regularity, or comfort, are...honestly fairly normal, as they go. Persephone and her husband were at my wedding.

I was born...almost seven thousand years ago.

You are a bit older than my goddess was. She was a little over six thousand years old when she was killed.

I kind of wish I could speak to Persephone and Hades. From the stories, they seem like some of the few of the pantheon who wouldn't have minded the conversation.

Come by the bar, chances are you'll see them. They're lovely--genuinely.

They're some of the only ones I'll willingly meet or speak with.

I'll have to come by some night. It's over in Chelsea, you said?

It is, yeah. You'd like it, it's comfortable. And I'm there most evenings some time, though lately I've been convince to take more nights off than I have in a long, long time.

I'll visit, then, though I haven't had much in the way of alcohol for a long, long time. Good companionship and conversation is enough of a lure.

You don't drink? Or you can't, for whatever reason?

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