At the sound of someone else being in the Temple with him, Apollo was startled out of his thoughts. Turning around to see the Goddess of Wisdom looming over him, Apollo couldn’t be bothered to hide the audible groan that resounded through his chest. Great, now that he was here, he’d actually have to work instead of doing fuck-all like he had scheduled in for the day. Athena was just the sort of being that didn’t tolerate those who didn’t find the concept of grinding themselves to the bone overly alluring like she did. And besides who was she to judge what he was doing? Maybe he was testing what hours the sun should rise and fall? Maybe he was looking for some inspiration for another project? Or maybe he was just merely taking a break from the piles and piles of prayers that were bundled onto him. She didn’t know! Granted, the answer was that he was doing none of those things and there was no way he was going to admit as such -- but he really didn’t like how Athena had come into his temple and saw it fit to order him about like he was some poor soldier underneath his command. His hands were made to create and to heal, not be marred by mountains of work.

“Oh, you shouldn’t look so angry dear sister. It causes wrinkles, you know.” He said dryly, knowing that his borderline absent-minded comment would likely send her into a bit of a tizzy. She may have been a woman, but she was no Aphrodite. The twin god knew that Athena prided herself on being practically the polar opposite as his frequent lover, so surely something like that would get under her skin. However, he wouldn’t go much deeper than sly comments as he wasn’t in a mood for another fight. After all, he had only just finished redecorating his temple after the mess that Ares had made. He was not keen to go through that whole mess again.

He groaned when Athena mentioned her reasoning for coming here. Of course, it was about Athenia. That kingdom was practically her baby and for as long as it has existed, the goddess had always been proud of the state of it. In truth, it was a little bit irritating for the god as he tended to favor Taengea as it was a kingdom of artists and musicians, so constantly hearing how wonderful Athenia was had become a bit grating over the years. Maybe that was why he had chosen to bless that Stravos boy all those years ago as everyone knew then that he would inherit the throne. Granted, it hadn’t been the main factor in his decision, but it had been oh so gratifying to know that his champion would be the one sitting on her precious throne. It truly warmed his heart. But then, of course, those pesky mortals went and mucked it all up. Now there was a civil war brewing between his boy and Aphrodite’s girl that would likely end in a big mess that he’d have to clean up. Not to mention Elias had suddenly decided that on the cusp of gaining everything, he wanted to choose Hades as his main god. Not the one who blessed him, but Hades! Ugh if Apollo could just ignore what was unfolding in that country, he would.

However, he knew that Athena would hardly pleased if he told her to buzz off because of how frustrating that whole Kingdom had become and the Goddess would likely be very persistent on using him as a sounding board. So, that’s why Apollo inaudibly grumbled as he set the mirror down and summoned another couch for Athenia to sit on as he leaned back in his own seat before addressing her, “A ‘please’ might be nice -- but sure. What is it that you wish to discuss?”He paused for a moment to pull a grape off of a nearby bunch and pop it into his mouth as he looked at the Goddess, hoping Athena would do that thing where she just talked and talked before coming to the answer she needed before zooming out in a hurry. That would be the most peaceful ending that Apollo could hope for and with any luck, if that happened, he could avoid needing to talk about that Stravos boy who was starting to make his blood boil...

Rolling his eyes at his sister’s insistence that wrinkles were not something that she needed to worry about, Apollo couldn’t help but internally groan about how terrible of an afternoon this was shaping up to be. This was slowly from how entitled Athena seemed to be, just sauntering into his temple and disrupting his day while acting as if it was just the grandest thing that she was doing this.

One thing was for certain, Apollo would never be honored by Athena’s presence. Not when she had this high and haughty attitude clinging to her that made the Sun God want to dry heave. Really? What on earth could make the other deity think that she could wander his temple and expect some sort of gratitude for interrupting him? Apollo honestly thought that she would know better, given that she was the goddess of wisdom and all, but apparently Athena hadn’t gotten the memo. Especially as the woman barreled forward with the reasoning for commandeering his afternoon without so much of an apology for intruding or a hint of gratitude that he was continuing to entertain her. It didn’t exactly sit right with Apollo, who was a notoriously selfish creature who did not like to be shown up. period. Let alone in his own temple. If Athena physically wanted something with him, she would have to change her tune a bit as things were already off to a rather rocky start.

Not that it truly mattered to Apollo. He just wanted the goddess to say her piece and get out of his home. After all, this wasn’t the first time that she had used the younger twin God as a soundboard for her ideas. Even though they were often overshadowed by his moody moments that seemed to be more reminiscent of a grumpy teenager than a deity, he was capable of having creative breakthroughs. These brief flashes of inspiration could encourage the goddess to look at her problem through a new lens and provide a solution that her logical, straightforward mind wouldn’t initially consider. Even when he didn’t have any of the muses bless him during his conversations with his half-sister, Apollo had long ago learned that he could get away with just letting Athena talk and talk as she would eventually come up with the answer that she was looking for. Hopefully. Perhaps Apollo was just misremembering his own contributions to these discussions, but that was certainly the impression that the younger god walked away with when these conversations were all said and done.

Even though he had his hopes up that he would escape from this conversation as quickly and painlessly as possible, Apollo could tell instantly that this was not the case when Athena began to speak about Elias of Stravos. Her demeanor might have been calm when she brought up the young lord, Apollo’s certainly was not cool and collected. Instead, he practically bristled up at the mention of the little lordling that carried his blessing but had no idea how to show his gratitude for such a gift. The Stravos was practically a banned topic in this temple after how poorly he had reacted when word reached him of the elaborate sacrifice that had been made to Hades while there was a suspicious lack of prayers to him. It was infuriating to the umpteenth degree and that was easy to see in his tone when he harshly snapped back at his half-sister. “I don’t want to talk about that cur.” His words might have been spat out in an attempt to get Athena to drop the subject, but his harsh tone confirmed all the Goddess would need to know about how Apollo viewed the most elevated mortal to carry his blessing. He was pissed that he wasn’t getting the respect that he deserved. After all, if it wasn’t for the gift that he had bestowed upon Eli, there was no way that the Stravos would be able to tempt Evi of Antonis into his bed and succeed in wrapping the poor little Princess Emilia around his finger. It was practically a waste on the boy.

He was fully intent on ending the conversation there, mostly by telling Athena to get lost if she had decided to push the subject. However, there was a reason that the goddess had the domain of wisdom all to herself as there was a switch in her tactic that prevented him from taking such an action. She started to stroke the younger god’s ego and speak directly to the slight that had been paid to Apollo through this insult of his. Being a self-centered god, this worked. Slowly, Apollo’s clenched fists began to unfurl and the red dissipated from his cheeks as he considered the Goddess’s words. Elias more than deserved a curse or two for this slight that had been cast against the sun god… if Athena was willing to help in this endeavor, it would certainly have quite an impact that couldn’t be ignored as Apollo had been thus far. Not suspecting that Athena actually intended for the Sun God to be the one to be causing the chaos to save her the trouble, the younger god was able to gather his wits about him long enough to quietly mutter, “Then what did you have in mind, sister.” It wasn’t an agreement, but Apollo was willing to listen to what Athena had to say.

For now at least…

Although Apollo would have been more than happy to let Elias burn for his lack of respect, the prospect of letting another rule was less than thrilling to him. After all, that would completely undermine why the god had blessed the little upstart in the first place. Elias only had his good looks because the Sun God had wished to get under his sister’s skin, that he wanted to show her that her precious little kingdom wasn’t untouchable and that even someone as foolish as Apollo could have a say in what happened there. He didn’t think that Elias was naturally handsome or some other bullcrap like that. Apollo just wanted to annoy Athena. Had anyone else been in the same position as Elias, seemingly destined for the crown at the time that the blessing had been bestowed, they would have gotten it instead. Elias wasn’t inherently that special to Apollo. There had been nothing about him that had made him intriguing to the god in the first place.

As much as Apollo would have liked to believe that this was still the case, this just wasn’t true anymore. Why else would he have immediately turned to anger at the mere mention of the Stravos’s name in the aftermath of the fool pledging his allegiance to Hades? Apollo would like to think that he was utterly indifferent in the matter, he was foolish enough to get attached. He just couldn’t help it, Elias was intriguing and put on enough of a show to keep the God of Light entertained. Seeing the boy turn his back on Apollo truly felt like a knife to his gut and given that he had very poor emotional control, he felt it more than he should have. If Apollo had the capability to put his two functioning brain cells together, he would have realized that Athena was trying to use this against him. She was attempting to take his hurt and guide him into doing her dirty work in order to get rid of Elias.

Had Apollo caught onto the little game that his dear sister was playing, he would have put a stop to it and chased her out of his temple. However, being blind to it all meant that Apollo instead merely mused over her words about making Elias pay for the disrespect he had shown to the god who had inadvertently made the Stravos his champion in this whole conflict. Showing the little upstart who was really in charge would be nice, Apollo was not going to lie in that regard. Though he wasn’t thinking along the same wavelength that Athena was at this moment. The thought of using one of his rare curses on the little showboater hadn’t even crossed his mind as he tried to think of the possibilities of what he could do to show his displeasure with Elias. Instead, he was thinking of momentary methods of reminding him of who he should be praying to.

“I mean Athenia could stand to be a bit chillier…” He quietly murmured under his breath as he considered this as a possible solution. Granted, he was purely talking about causing a momentary bout of illness in Elias. It wouldn’t be enough to kill him, but instead, just be enough to remind him who he should be praying too. Would that be too little though? Truthfully, Apollo was so incensed that he would be willing to go as far as sending Elias to Hades, but he knew that the gods were not supposed to overly interfere with the lives of the mortals. All of his ideas either went too far or not far enough.

Maybe Athena might have a better idea?

“And I’m guessing you might have a decent idea as to how I could do that?” He asked quietly, with a somewhat unwilling tone. Even though it hurt Apollo’s pride to ask his sister for help, even he had to admit that she had the bigger brain here. She would be able to come up with something that would be humiliating enough, but not cross the line and anger Zeus. Athena was his favorite anyway, so it would be better for Apollo to have her on his side even though he was completely unaware of the fact that this was the exact opposite of what the Goddess wanted. She wanted to keep her hands clean of it all and it would take all of her manipulation skills to ensure that her own hands did not get covered in the blood that may or may not be spilled in showing Elias who was boss.

Even though it wasn’t something that Apollo liked to address or even recognize within himself, there was a part of him that was a big ol’ softie for the mortals who worshipped him. It was just something that came with the territory of being the god of medicine. He had a vested interest in making sure that those pathetic humans were happy and healthy otherwise he would quite a lot of work on his hands to get them back to that state. This wasn’t a trait of his that he liked to put on display nor was it something that he even recognized within himself, but it was still there nevertheless and it had a nasty habit of showing up at the worst times. Such as when he had to strike that deal with Hades all those years ago to bring an end to the plague upon Taengea. His own stupid bleeding heart had him trading away the lives of a few in order to save the lives of many. Apollo would have liked to think that he was somehow above the base emotions of his divine counterparts who cared too much about those on the ground, he wasn’t. The God of Light was just as much of a goody-two-shoes as the rest of them.

So why wasn’t that trait showing up now?

With the current state of Athenia, Apollo should be in overdrive trying to save them all from starving to death. Normally, he would be attempting to strike deals with Demeter and Hermes to not only have some sort of crop growth, but clear roads to get the needed food to the people. Yet, he wasn’t. For some reason, Apollo just didn’t care. They could all die and the God of Light would just merely turn his head back to the kingdoms where most of his attention had been in recent months. He couldn’t be bothered to give a damn about Athenia which was oddly out of character for the god who had a tendency to care just a bit too much about the mortals.

Of course, this had to do with Elias. That Stravos boy was the whole reason that Apollo tried to ignore the kingdom he was now ruling. Since the boy carried the God of Light’s blessing, all of the other divinities had turned their eyes to him to solve the problem that his little golden boy was being. Apollo was not the kind of God who did well with having this sort of responsibility placed onto his shoulders. Granted, if the situation called for it and Apollo was in enough of an emotional state about it, he could (and would most certainly) step up to the plate in order to solve whatever problem was plaguing Greece. Though being asked to do so preemptively before the disaster was afoot? Apollo couldn’t do it. He had the emotional maturity of a fifteen-year-old boy who had been spoiled rotten his whole life… which, of course, explained why Apollo tried to avoid the problem at any cost. If he didn’t look at Athenia… if he didn’t know what Elias was doing… then it wasn’t his problem now, was it?

That had been the rationale up until this moment, at least. Now that Athena was suggesting a plan that forced Elias to take responsibility for his actions was something that Apollo was balking at from the moment that the words came out of his sister’s mouth. “No.” He immediately countered, though he made no other suggestion for what curse could be given in its place. Apollo did not want to do something that directly put the health of the people into the hands of Elias. Not when that would seemingly solidify the misconception on Olympus that Apollo was responsible for what the kid did. If Elias got sick, then all of the gods would look to him to fix it and Apollo was not interested in playing that game. Never in a million years if Apollo was already feeling this much pressure to do something to fix Elias.

Shaking his head, he tried to dissuade his sister from suggesting any more plans that would see Elias have to be so blatantly accountable for the health of the Athenians with his dismissive statement. “And what about when the drought ends and everything goes back to normal? Why would I have him wander about as strong as an ox because the food is growing again?” For a god who was mad at a mortal, this was a rather beneficial loophole that Apollo did not want to deal with in addition to all the other problems that the Sun God had with this plan. He just wanted to see Elias suffer a bit for putting him through this much strife just because the boy was lucky enough to be the future monarch of Athena’s domain.

“I’m not going to reward him after this disrespect. If he’s going to grow sick then he will be sick and stay sick. None of this tied to the people nonsense.” He muttered under his breath as he glanced back to the mirror that was the god's view into the mortal realm. Shifting the image away from the trees of the forests where Apollo instead longed to be instead of here and instead focused on an image of the Stravos boy, lounging about the Palace that was his in all but name. The mere image was enough to stoke a new sense of anger in Apollo. Here he was, needing to deal with Athena because of this kid while he napped. It hardly seemed fair to him.

Even though Apollo was not the sort of god that would hand out illness willy nilly to the mortals, given his natural inclination to heal such ailments, perhaps giving Elias some sort of untreatable disease that would cause him discomfort and misery wasn’t out of the question for the incensed god…

As Apollo could be little more than a selfish twat at the best of times and he was pretty steadfast in his assessment that the goddess before him could be a little too haughty for her own good -- it was safe to say that the god of light didn’t often hear such glowing compliments leave Athena’s mouth. Especially when it was directed to him. (That was how he took her comments about Apollo convincing her that Elias was not worth their time. After all, anything that was remotely positive was something that went right to his ego.) In fact, it was so rare that the mere fact that it was happening at all was more than enough to encourage Apollo to cast a rather suspicious glance at his half-sister. He wasn’t entirely sure that he should trust that they now had the same viewpoint of the boy who wouldn’t cease in being a thorn in Apollo’s side. After all, had the goddess not just tried to convince him that he should curse him? Now suddenly with a little pushback from her half-brother, she was content with ignoring him? That seemed to be a rather quick jump for the woman who was not known to jump to rash conclusions.

Granted, ignoring him was a fantastic idea as far as Apollo was concerned. Leaving Elias be to dig his own grave was more than a suitable option for the god as declaring such would wash his hands clean of the boy. That was all he wanted in the end, after all. Elias of Stravos might have Apollo’s blessing, but the god of light was not responsible for the boy. The boy had made this more than clear himself when the ungrateful brat had decided to follow Hades instead of the god who blessed him. If Athena was truly offering Apollo a chance to wipe his hands clean of the Stravos kid --as if she elected to ignore him, over Olympians were likely to follow suit-- the God of Light would not hesitate in snatching up the chance to grasp it with both hands. The only thing that held him back from immediately grasping onto this was the sudden about-face from Athena. He just couldn’t ignore how unexpected it was from his sister.

For a split moment, his impulsive nature demanded that he call her out on this. Apollo could even feel his lips shaping the words, but no sound left him. He had been in enough verbal spats with Athena to know that it was not worth getting into it with her. Not when she was so good at using her words to weave circles around him and her mere reputation was strong enough to get every Olympian on this wretched mountain to take her side. Dealing with that would be far too exhausting. Especially when there was already a more desirable outcome right in front of him. So, for once, Apollo resisted the urge to open his trap in order to somehow make things worse. Instead, the immature god merely leaned back against the plush couches and murmured some incoherent noise of agreement.

As much as Apollo wanted to completely ignore Elias, did the god of light think that the boy should be left entirely alone? Heck no. Even though he was agreeing to it for now -- daydreams of making the Stravos brat pay for his disrespect danced through his mind. He wanted to make the boy sick. He wanted to undo every lie the kid ever told. He wanted to revoke the beauty that Apollo had graced upon him. Apollo needed to make Elias pay for his insolence. However, that could wait until after Athena had left his temple.

His desire to still curse the boy, but not claim responsibility for him in the conflicts to come was made more than clear to the goddess of wisdom in how Apollo refused to meet her gaze as he bit his lip. Apollo was the god of truth so lying had never been a strong suit of his. He could figure out when someone was spinning a falsehood before him with no issue, but the god could never do it himself. It was so obvious that Apollo was not being truthful in his intention to completely ignore Elias that Athena would not need to be a goddess of wisdom to figure him out. Not that he was ever going to admit to as much. At least not when he had no idea what Athena’s gameplan was at this moment. Apollo also knew that he was not nearly smart enough to figure it out either. So, it would be easier to just nod his head for now and send Athena on her way. Maybe later, if he cared enough, he might be able to figure out what in the name of Hades she was trying to do.

“You’re right. He’s not worth the energy…” He murmured with an almost wistful tone lurking at the edge of his voice. His words were a stark contrast to the plans of revenge still swirling about in his mind. It didn’t matter what Athena said, Apollo was still steadfast in the notion that Elias needed to pay for his disrespect. However, that wasn’t something that needed to be done right at that moment. He could wait for the right time to bring his wrath down upon the boy. He could wait until Elias was at his strongest to curse him to wither and die.

Little did Apollo know that by doing this though, he might be giving Athena exactly what she wanted by having the God of light step out of the way.