Leave bar.

Dan gets up and leaves, Martin tries to stop him, but in vain. He proceeds to the castle unmolested.


"Look, I know what you're thinking," the princess says rashly, "you think this is just some game for me, something I want to do for fun, because having your father disappear in the middle of the night, leaving the rest of your family freezing to death is perfectly reasonable!" Her eyes flashed wildly. Athenos had a brief indication that she was insane. "I know you won't believe me, but I don't care. I have been seeing things in my sleep, horrible things. The palace guard...they plan to turn on my family and-" she stops suddenly, staring at the door. She draws away from it slowly. "Not here," she murmurs, pointing at the door. Athenos pays attention now, there is indeed someone lurking on just the other side, evident by shifting shadows.

Find the princess and Rozen's new friends.

Use any information available to me, ask around/read minds to find out where they've gone to.

Or just go directly to them if I can.

Break the door down, immobilize anyone in the hallway.

Rozen dashes out into the marketplace for any indication of where Athenos, The Princess and Dan have gone. Seeing Dan stroll up, he finds out without stopping him that they were at a bar just outside of town. He continues his hasty pace, entering the bar just in time to see the princess and Athenos go up the stairs. Taken aback, not sure he should interrupt what he believes is about to happen, he sits down in the corner and waits, somewhat awkwardly, reading the minds of the people around him. He places them with specific people, who turn to follow barmaids lustily, or to stare down their opponent at cards. He discerns nothing of interest from any of them, other than he is the fifth strange person to have entered the bar that night. People barely pay him any mind as he waits.

Athenos tip toes towards the door, and with the sheer force of his side forces himself through the door, shattering it into many pieces. In the confusion, he grabs a small cloaked figure gruffly and forces them against the wall, back to Athenos, still obscured by their cloak. Rozen bounds up the stairs, seemingly the only person who heard - or cared - about the noise upstairs - and stands in the doorway.

The cloaked figure is immobilized for the moment, their wrists grasped firmly together by Athenos behind their back.

Motion for one of them to remove his hood to ascertain the person's identity.

The princess steps forward and rips back the hood. Before them is a pale, agile woman with jet black hair that reaches just below her waist. Your party has no immediate recognition of her. Athenos feels his grip start to falter slightly.

Athenos released his grip.

"I would hardly consider this fair greeting, Pryti," he smirked.

EVOLVE AND KILL EVERYONE IN THE ROOM

Say: "The goddess?" (or whatever she actually is - I forgot who she is LOL)

The princess doesn't look so sure. She steps away again. Rozen gets an impression from Princess Aleiya that the woman before them is not Pryti.

"You're a pleasant sight in this mess," Athenos stated, adding a tone of ease to his voice, "I apologize for the inconvenience, you can never be too careful. So tell me how your god is fairing, oracle."

Athenos, noticing the princess's caution, retains a relentless attention on his surroundings and any danger.

Go to the Princess and Athenos

Once Dan reaches the castle, he decides to redouble back to the pub. When he enters he gets more angry looks, and not being protected by numbers, several angry looking men glower at him. Martin is waving him over to the table he had been at, the guard was now there. Dan scans the pub for any sign of his companions, but doesn't have any idea where they have gone.

Athenos.

The words were powerful. They echoed through his mind like a hammer, and he experienced a pain that stretched beyond the mortal realm. He lost all sight of the current situation. His vision blurred, but he fought hard to stay focused and awake.

ATHENOS.

They were more powerful this time. Its intensity was too much for even him to bear. He stumbled to his knees, screaming in agony, but still fighting for control. It was as if the words pierced his very soul. His will was being broken, chipped away from the inside. The princess was the last thing he saw before finally collapsing.

As quickly as the world had left him, it seemed to come back. His head was groggy and his vision blurred, but as he focused and stood up, he found that he was not in the room in the pub, but rather someplace rather distant and eerie, but that felt like home. Tall pillars of gleaming white pillars stretched up towards the sky, cracked and fractured heavenly bodies sat motionless in the vast sea of nothingness above him. Some of the pillars were cracked or had fallen over precariously. He made his way around them carefully, a light headache still beaten against his head, his heart moving very fast. He tried to place his memories with this place, but nothing came to mind. It was impossible to tell if this was a result of too many of the gods' dwellings looking similar, or if this were a place he knew well, much earlier or later than his brief inhabitance of the place.

"Athenos," the booming voice called again making another pillar crack away. A tall three headed demon, with sun burnt skin and eyes that blazed white like hot fire, peered down at him. Athenos recoiled as he made eye contact with the thing, his head pounding ever harder. The demon laughed, two of his mighty hands clapping, two of his fists on his sides defiantly. "Ah, it is good to see that you have found some...humility...in your current form. The gods knew you needed it."

The demon is unarmed, but his tough skin and formidable skin tells you that even if he is truly unarmed, he would still be a formidable opponent.

He took a moment to gather his resolve. It was not the first demon he had faced, but one as powerful as this...

Shaking off the effects, he returned the creature's piercing stare with an iron will. Here, he could feel a trickle, if only a small drop or two of a familiar power, his eyes lit with a dull violet glow, if only for a moment. He poured what he could into fending off the demon's mental assault.

"Are you so weak that you must summon me as mortal to end me?"

The demon looked amused, stepping closer. "Be careful Athenos," he boomed, "you wouldn't want your father to come down here..." the demon takes a might swing at Athenos.

As Athenos evaded, he felt the bracelet's cold chill against his skin. Divine magic, he smirked.

His sword shimmered into his hand, the steel chillingly cold from the void from which it was summoned. It was not more than a moment's notice before another blow came bearing down on him. He sidestepped, using his momentum to power into the demon's flesh.

Instead of cutting, the sword stopped at the skin. The demon chuckled as he evaded another blow. His options were running thin. A demon of this caliber would have been a challenge for him as a god. As a mortal...

He dashed in front of a pillar before dodging another blow. It came crashing down on the demon, as planned.

"You're just as sharp as they say," the voice boomed. The falling pillar appeared to do nothing but amuse him.

He was running out of time; at this pace, he would die.

The demon feinted with three of his hands, and grabbed Athenos with his forth. "I know what it is you want, Athenos," the demon boomed as he crushed him slowly. Athenos braced himself against the increasing grip. "You want to control me, don't you? You know the soul of a demon is a key to regaining your rightful place in the pantheon..." Athenos felt a crack of his ribs, reminding him with wrenching pain that he was still human. "If you can't defeat me Athenos, you can never hope to call on me by name. And even you know..my power is not boundless. To reach your previous level of entitlement you would have to enslave me and my six bothers..." Athenos felt another rib crack, but he refused to scream. He wouldn't give the demon the pleasure he sought. "But I will not give you the opportunity." With a free hand, the demon ripped Athenos' arm out of his socket. This, coupled with the assault on his ribs, made him cry out in shock. His headache was back, now more concentrated on the pain of his body over barring out the creature.

Athenos heard a faint hum of a chorus of harps. The sound increased, echoing off the pillars, resonating inside of Athenos. For a moment, he thought he was dead, but he realized it was much more than this.

No! Not now... a voice called out. But whether it was his, the demon's, or the harp's owner's voice, he didn't know. He felt an icy lunge pull him forward, and then back again. His weak mortal senses started to react, his stomach tightening and heaving with the thrust. Suddenly, Athenos was on the floor somewhere safer. He opened his eyes for a split second, seeing two terrifyingly beautiful people peer down at him. He blinked, and was met with blackness.

He was back in the mortal world, but he couldn't feel it...he was already unconscious.

Ready my sword and carefully back out of the bar.