who told you what was down here

// with our one foot in the grave //

He finds her, though it isn’t as though it’s difficult to when she pauses in the tunnel and is very clearly falling apart. Unfortunately for her, Astaroth isn’t the coddling type at the best of times, and so to her stubborn rebuttal, Astaroth laughs a low and deep chuckle, almost as if he’s growing exasperated by the circles she keeps running into.

So he stops, too, pressing his back against the wall opposite of hers, perfect posture causing his horns to scrape against the volcanic rock. A gesture he continues, idly, to sharpen them slightly. “Where did I say it would be forever? And last I saw, nobody had a boot to their necks once she left.” The panic was there, of course, but the fact as he knew it, was that choosing that time and that place meant there would be no attempt later if it had gone south.

“Once again, I recommend looking at it objectively. We are not strong enough yet. We do not know what works on them yet. Patience. It is not forever, but you cannot go around recklessly looking at it as the end all be all at the first opportunity presented.” Shrugging his shoulder, horns scraping a bit more on the wall in a crackling sort of sound, Astaroth pushes off to start walking back the way they came, curious if she’d follow or not.

Astaroth

// while the other one's kicking its way right down to hell //