OOC: Ok, so this is private for Ezekiel and Helotes until Columbine is dead, and then AW for the rest of IF to check out what happened. WC: 475
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He was humming in his strange and high pitched way, and there was a film of madness clouding his red eyes. A twisted smile curled across dark lips as the dusky man prowled nearly silently outside the decrepit mansion, his hands twisting around an oddly sharp rock he must have found in the ground. Columbine Lykoi was a shadow of the boy he used to be. How had someone who had been so fiercely loyal and protective of his family evolved into a creature so twisted and hellbent on power and revenge? If the two had stumbled upon each other in some strange alternate universe, he doubted they would recognize each other as themselves. The struggle for identity - it'd always been one of his greatest problems. Was he Kerberos' son, or punching bag? Was he the protector or the victim? The strange juxtaposition of his roles was the beginning of his descent.
Helotes had never appreciated him. Jacinto had never been worthy. Ilusion never loved him enough. He was never his mother's favorite son, and dios, he'd never been good enough for Kerberos. ¿Me habrías amado si yo fuera diferente, Kerberos? the Hastati murmured, his husky voice riddled with lack of use and ill-disguised sorrow. Columbine was loath to admit it, but he was defeated: the dark man was ruined by his own inadequacies, his own self hatred, and so he would be forced to do something drastic.
Ezekiel was a poor leader as it was. Columbine could not have been the only clansmember who thought that: it was a poorly obvious fact, demonstrated by the appointment of Vesper to a position of power. Vesper! The dyke woman could not be trusted to be anything more than a scout, someone to call for aid if it became too dangerous. The scars that riddled her body told that story, though the little annoying voice that dwelled in the back of his mind reminded him that he looked the same. He didn't even have a chaos star, so ruined as he was by the actions of Kerberos! He could never stop hating that man - that man, that man, that man... He was the reason for all of this, wasn't he?
A loud, yipping, demanding cry flung itself from his mouth before Columbine could realize what he'd done. The call insisted Ezekiel come to him from wherever he lay and face a duel: it was a challenging cry and one that claimed the Infernian leadership as his own. He was a Lykoi, after all, was he not? Ezekiel did not carry the name - de le Poer, he called himself, and regardless of what blood he might carry he was not pure like Columbine, like the true Lykois. And plus, Columbine was infinitely smarter, infinitely stronger, infinitely better suited for the job he would demand as his own.