Sorry if you've already answered a similar question before, but I was wondering how you go about making your ancient Greek (and now Mesopotamian) designs? I want to draw Iliad/Odyssey fanart but I know next to nothing about ancient Greece (clothes, hair, features, even what year/era the epics are meant to take place in). Do you have any advice about researching that/what type of sources you use? I've found the process very overwhelming lol
For the Gilgamesh one it's super based on these kinds of carvings!
For the Iliad and odyssey ones it's a bit trickier since they don't have physical descriptors (but that makes it so you can get a little more creative there haha). Clothing and armor wise I base it on antiquity paintings and some recreations people have done of the clothes and armor (though. Tbh I barely draw them in armor because I just. I don't like drawing armor)
Iirc they're around the bronze age! And maybe look up Minoan/Mycenaean clothing? A friend also recommended looking up hittite and drenda armor
yknow i think we as a fandom underutilize the fact that Nico is the only mortal character in the Riordanverse who can tangibly interact with ghosts. Like it's not even a Hades kid thing. It seems to only be a Ghost King thing, cause he couldn't interact with ghosts before he became Ghost King (Bianca's hand turned to mist when it got close to him) and Hazel notes that the lares just pass through her while Nico can drag them around by the ear.
He knew Crowley better than he knew anybody. There should have been no doubt in his broken mind that the demon—er, the other demon, would fall apart at the news of Aziraphale’s, well, Falling.
Though Aziraphale wasn’t really expecting anything—thinking of anything—as he made his way up the escalator and back to Earth. He didn’t feel like it would do any good.
He didn’t feel anything.
He suspected all the feeling was burned out of him the moment he collided with the molten sulfur. The Fall itself had been a blur of screams and burning feathers. Its impact is what did him in. Her Love, his holiness, and his grace had been ripped from his very being the moment Heaven’s floor gave out under him. Anything left of him must have been burned away during his struggle to escape the boiling pool of sulfur. It felt like years from the time he landed to the time he was able to crawl onto the rotten ground of Hell. In reality, it must’ve only been a few minutes, but that hardly mattered when the Aziraphale that came out of the sulfur was not the Aziraphale he had been before.
There, on the grimy basalt ground of hell, Aziraphale looked at himself to inspect the thing he had become. As far as he could see on the outside, very little had changed. His clothes somehow survived the Fall, but the bottom half of his body was surrounded in a great plume of ash. It settled until he gathered the strength to pull himself into a standing position. The moment his feet met the floor, the ash kicked up again, reforming the great plume that would follow him in the same manner flies followed Beelzebub.
When he looked inside himself, however… that was a different story.
There… wasn’t anything there.
No Love, no grace, not a single particle of holiness remained. Inside him was a vast and empty blackness. A void. A vacuum of nothingness. His multitude of eyes, his flaming wheels, his true self… were all gone.
He may have had the body and the name of Aziraphale, but there was nothing left of the angel he once was.
The emptiness inside him explained his lack of feeling. Aziraphale had nothing but a body, his memories, and a forever ruined set of clothes. He did not have the capacity for emotions or feelings anymore. He supposed he should be grateful for that, but that would involve the use of emotion.
So then. There wasn’t really much to do now. He’d failed his task of fixing heaven. Although he knew deep down that such a thing wasn’t possible, he had to save face in order to try and find a way to protect Crowley and himself from both Heaven and Hell—
Crowley.
That was the whole point of this mess in the first place, to protect Crowley.
And now he was Fallen. He was no longer the angel Crowley fell in love with, but the sad husk of what was once desirable to the demon.
There are many things Aziraphale should have felt about that, but he couldn’t muster the energy.
Instead, Aziraphale turned and made his way out of the sulfur pits.
If nothing else, he could at least inform the demon of his Fall. Then the poor thing would no longer need to wait for an angel that would never return.
Which, of course, led him here to his bookshop where Crowley was now on his knees, desperately grasping onto Aziraphale’s filthy coat and sobbing.
He could smell the charcoal of his own wings behind him, but he didn’t bother to turn and look at them. He knew they were black. He didn’t bother to look down at the weeping demon, either. Instead, he stared at the far wall of the shop and considered his current options. There weren’t many, but that made choosing his next task much simpler.
He finally moved his head down to look at the fellow demon. He was still kneeling there, sobbing and calling Aziraphale an idiot. It provided further reason for Aziraphale to go through with his next task.
“Crowley.” The word was flat and toneless, but it got Crowley to look up at him, nonetheless. “I have a question.”
Crowley, of course, was a wreck, still mourning the loss of his angel. It was probably insensitive to interrupt him, but the former angel wanted an answer.
“Do you hate me, Crowley?”
The other demon’s eyes widened, and he stood up abruptly to be eye to eye with Aziraphale.
“W-what?”
Aziraphale was fairly sure Crowley heard him the first time, but he repeated himself anyway.
“Do you hate me?”
Crowley then made a series of sounds that were very much not words. Mostly sputtering, really.
“What kind of question is that?!” he demanded, looking very hurt. That wasn’t Aziraphale’s intention, but he could do nothing about it.
“I just need confirmation that this form is no longer necessary.”
The expression Crowley wore went from hurt to confused very quickly. Not wanting to wait for Crowley to ask him to explain, Aziraphale continued.
“I wanted to keep us safe so that one day we may truly be free, but I failed. I’ve Fallen. I am no longer the angel you cared about. I want to be sure that I’m no longer needed.”
Crowley’s eyes widened again, this time in fear. He grabbed Aziraphale by the shoulders and pulled him closer. “Angel, what are you talking about? You’re not making any sense. What do you mean ‘no longer needed?’”
Despite his inability to feel, he nearly swore he was about to become irritated by Crowley dodging the very obvious subject.
“I can no longer serve God, and I doubt I’ll be of any use in Hell. You meant more than anything to me.” Aziraphale wondered if saying that out loud to the Metatron in his enraged state caused his Fall. “I want to be sure that what you say is true, that you are better off on your own. If you hate me, then I will know that there is no reason for my existence to continue. It is getting late in the day, and I believe most of the churches with fonts of holy water will be closing their doors soon.”
Crowley gaped at him for a solid five seconds before he began shouting in Aziraphale’s face again.
“You absolute fucking hypocrite!”
“It was a yes or no question.”
“NO!” Crowley nearly screamed. At that moment everything went very, very still. The sounds of traffic outside ceased along with the usual bustling noises of the city. Later they would discover that Crowley accidentally froze time for a few minutes, but for the moment, their only focus was each other.
“No…” Crowley said in a softer, almost defeated voice. “No, Aziraphale. I don’t hate you. I never will.” Carefully, Crowley gathered Aziraphale’s hands in his and simply held them.
Aziraphale’s abdominal area felt strange.
“But I hurt you. I abandoned you, and I failed you. Surely you hold nothing but contempt for me? I’m also Fallen now. I am no longer your angel.”
“You will always be my angel,” Crowley promised with honest and sincere eyes.
“…Even when I am like this?” Aziraphale gestured to himself and the ash that had almost entirely settled on the bookshop floor.
“We all started out that way when we Fell,” Crowley admitted with a pained crack in his voice. “You can become like your old stuffy, fussy, book-loving self again. I’ll help you. And maybe there’s even a possibility that we can make you an angel again. I can’t promise you anything on that front, but the Metatron did mention that demons can rise again, yeah? Maybe if Heaven discovers that they lost the only truly good angel there was, we can get you risen. You never know.” Crowley shrugged.
He was always Aziraphale’s beacon of hope, especially when it seemed all was lost.
Aziraphale’s throat felt strange now, too.
“You still want me? Even as a demon?” It didn’t make sense to him at all.
“Aziraphale, you could be a worm and I’d still love you.”
Love.
They both knew it, but still, hearing it for the first time was something entirely different.
There was a strange prickling sensation in his eyes now. Perhaps his corporation had been more damaged from the Fall than he realized.
“So, what you said before…”
“I’m a demon,” Crowley shrugged. “I lied.” Without waiting for a rebuttal, Crowley leaned forward and wrapped his arms around the being that would always be his angel. “I love you, Aziraphale. We’ll make things right again, I promise you. Even if it’s just us as a pair of demons trying to save the world, we’ll make it through to the other side. Together.”
“…On our own side…?”
“Yeah, angel. Our side.” Crowley squeezed him harder, holding and promising him that they'd fix this.
After several moments of Crowley holding him, Aziraphale finally reached around to wrap his arms around Crowley. It only seemed appropriate.
They embraced.
He couldn't remember a time they’d ever done that before.
And then he felt something.
Suddenly a spark caught somewhere deep within Aziraphale, deep in where his angelic soul used to reside, deep where Her Love used to culminate within him and disperse throughout the rest of his being, making him the angel he was-- or, the angel he used to be.
But now there was something new there, something bright. No, that wasn't right. It didn't exactly feel new. It felt... familiar. As if it had actually been there the whole time, hiding, lying in wait.
It came out now, this spark, this one little star in the dark, vast oblivion that was his being.
It felt so, so right.
It was a connection. It was them. The both of them. Together as they were always meant to be. It really had been there all along, but with Her blinding, ever-oppressing Love taking up most of his True Self, it never truly had the chance to shine on its own.
Aziraphale inhaled a sharp gasp and squeezed Crowley back. He pulled the other demon closer to him as that spark suddenly exploded into a super nova. In one huge rush, every feeling he’d ever had for the demon and the Earth in the past 6,000 years exploded within him. It was glorious and painful at the same time. Feeling was amazing. Feeling was excruciating. But it was real.
The pinpricks he’d felt in his eyes overwhelmed him, and soon he was sobbing just as hard as Crowley was earlier. Crowley’s eyes weren’t dry either, but the intense release of it all had Aziraphale nearly collapsing on his best friend. Crowley kept him steady, keeping him on his feet when he couldn’t himself. Just like he’d always done. Just like they’d always done for each other.
Crowley slowly guided them to the floor, never letting go of him for even a second. He let Aziraphale slowly return to himself as much as he could in his fragile state, and Aziraphale was grateful. He wept in grief for the loss of his grace, but he also wept in relief that Crowley, despite everything, was still there for him. The other demon had managed to ignite something within the former angel, something that had always been there, but was now finally free.
It was something more magnificent than anything She could have given him, for it wasn't made of Her Love; it was made out of their love. The pure, ugly, messy, wonderful human love they’ve found here on Earth.
I just think it's funny how Rick Riordan must have done SO MUCH research about different cultures and communities, doing his best to be respectful in his representations.
Yet couldn't be bothered to pull up Google Maps to see how far away the St. Louis Arch is from the water
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