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The bull roared as one bronze ear was shorn clean off and turned inexpertly to try and catch Laocoon in its horns as it had the soccer players; however, lacking the momentum to do so, it merely locked Laocoon's sword between its horns and struggled for a moment or two to push him back. It had enough force to drag him back several steps, but not to knock him over so it could trample him -- this clearly angered it and it let out another furious bellow, its coal-red eyes staring at Laocoon as it snorted smoky puffs of breath and snapped at him with its blunt teeth, a few inches away from the hem of his doublet.

"The eyes," said Alexandros. The bull looked over, but he was still enough that it decided Laocoon was still the infinitely more urgent matter to which to attend.

"Your thumbs, its eyes," said Alexandros again, at a normal, conversational sort of pitch, and then trained Kore on the bull again.

The creature howled in pain and rage as the pommel of Laocoon's rapier drove into its eye, and stamped all of its feet like it was on the verge of another rampage but didn't know where to go: its front legs kicked out with sharp hoofs and it started driving forward again, threatening the uneasy balance Laocoon was maintaining. This body wasn't a bodybuilder, and it certainly wasn't as strong as a full-grown bull -- much less a statue bull, or whatever on earth this thing was. Nevertheless, the thing was mortal. Its ear had come off and lay in the dirt nearby. Rust was starting to appear around the broken stub. Far afield from them the soccer players were in a disoriented pile, some trying to resuscitate their fallen comrades, some nursing wounds, others just gawking at the two Cavaliers.

A black arrow thudded into the bull's side with a thwok. Kore had found its mark.

Accordingly, the bull left off attempting to gore Laocoon, and in fact left off everything entirely, standing in place like a puzzled milk cow in a field entirely devoid of threats. It stared at Laocoon in a docile manner and then, without compunction, leaned down to munch on the grass. Alexandros was walking back over now, Kore tucked under his arm and his hand on his forehead.

"That's more like it," he said. "I know it looks peaceful now, but it's got starseeds in there. You mind doing the honors?" Hell was the correct descriptor: he looked wan, drawn, like too little butter spread over too much toast. The Prince had always been handsome and he was handsome now, but he was paler and thinner than he'd been -- and younger. They were both younger.

Some of the exhaustion was familiar. The Prince had been a man of reason and encompassing vision, but he'd also been one of moods and ennui: long hours shut up in his study stymied by some intellectual block, longer hours yet bored and uninspired and whiled away with a bottle of wine and some faceless girl or other, distractions, thoughtless escapism from the dull routine of existence. When he'd taken interest in the Queen of the Moon Kingdom some of that had ceased, but the wine hadn't. Alexandros drank in company and he drank alone, no matter what Hector or anyone else had to say about it, and when he was forced off the drink for extended periods of time he started to get hollow around the edges. Very much, though not entirely, as he looked now.

Alexandros came up to the docile bull and rested his hand on its neck, scratching its head behind its intact ear. He made a difficult-to-read face and waited for Laocoon to strike the coup de grace.

The bull staggered, twitched, and then crumbled to dust. Two starseeds fell into the grass and Alexandros knelt to collect them in his hands. "Let's see if we can rehome these," he said and then broke into a jog over to the group of girls. They looked up, wary at his approach, but didn't run: apparently it hadn't escaped their attention that Laocoon and Alexandros had been the ones to take the youma down. Aside from that, though, they looked generally dumbstruck. About as dumbstruck as Johnny King had been a few minutes ago, in fact.

Alexandros handed one of the starseeds to Laocoon and dropped to his knees immediately next to one of the fallen girls. Two looked comatose; one was bleeding obviously from a head wound. The Prince left the head-wounded one alone and tried to press the starseed into the chest of one of the unwounded girls. It didn't work -- without a word, he moved to the other one and pushed it against her soccer-uniformed chest. The girl jerked awake. His shoulders sagged in obvious relief and he shut his eyes, momentarily like a puppet let off its strings.

"Somebody call an ambulance," he said. One of the girls, still boggling, took out a cell phone. "Any luck, Laocoon?"

This teased a tired smile out of the Prince. "I'm forced to recall why I keep you around," he said. "You'll be last against the wall when the revolution comes. Come on, let's go."

He made an effort to stand up under his own power, but this was only partially successful: he staggered, had to steady himself again on Laocoon's arm, and then finally was settled on his feet. He rubbed his eyes with the backs of his knuckles and set off at a somewhat unimpressive pace in the opposite direction, back towards the chess tables. He never was much for endurance, but he hadn't run much today; then again, he'd looked tired before he'd sat down and he'd looked exhausted after he'd summoned him through the mirror. Had that been what had taken such a bite out of him? That seemed to have been what he was saying.

As if keeping up with Laocoon's own thoughts, Alexandros spoke up. "That was the unforeseen thing about this place," he said. "It takes a lot out of me to bring anyone through. That's why I've only gotten you and Hector so far, and Helen only has Aphrodite, Gaia and Ares." 'Helen' was Queen Nehelenia, Prince Alexandros by far the only person to casually refer to the forbidding woman by so familiar a name -- though Alexandros was 'Alex' to his brother also sometimes, in jest or in affection. "Well, to be frank there were a lot of unforeseen things about this place. I just don't like owning up to not foreseeing things. It's dreadful undermining. But," he rubbed his forehead, "there's a war going on in this Earth Kingdom too, and the wizard's stolen another Great Crystal over here, and the home royals are missing. The Cavaliers are fractured. The Moon Court's missing along with their Moon Queen. A frog attacked me in an elevator."

They walked by their chess table, Dylan's black pieces still lined up against Johnny's white, frozen in check. Black did suit him.

When they both lingered to look at the table, a remnant of a time and a place fifteen minutes ago that seemed very, very far away now, the Prince's brows knitted together but he otherwise remained inexpressive. "I know it was sudden," he said. "I didn't want it to be sudden."

Alexandros blinked at him and his eyes traveled down to the chessboard. Seeing the white king toppled, he raised his eyebrows. "Liar," he said. "I know you could have gotten out of that check."

It might've been the first game of chess that Johnny King and Dylan Rasmussen had played together, but it definitely wasn't the first game Laocoon had played against Prince Alexandros. Hector bored of chess, said Alexandros, and it was dull to ask the same lords for the same things before they started demanding political favors. So the task had fallen to Laocoon sometimes of entertaining Alexandros's expansive and often idle-mind; whatever Hector thought of Laocoon, he was certainly a better pastime than the drink. So it was endless games of strategy. They always chose randomly who played black and who white, until Alexandros distrusted Laocoon's potential sleight of hand in choosing kings and they settled on alternating.

The archer lowered his own hand to the chess board. It traveled over to the white king and he picked it up between his index and middle fingers, stowing it in his opposite sleeve.

When Laocoon looked at him he smiled. "Spoils of war," he said. "Are you hungry? I'm hungry."

When they were far enough away from other people, given a bit of cover by the trees, and the bull and the screams had still left this area of the park vacant, Alexandros turned and powered down. It wasn't nearly as spectacular as his transformation, just a mere fading-out from Cavalier to civilian. He was back in his bomber jacket and red T-shirt. He was Dylan Rasmussen. His eyes flickered like he was on the verge of falling asleep on his feet again.

He palmed something out of his jacket sleeve and then shrugged it off, folding it over his right arm so he was left standing in his short-sleeved shirt. Before he did the details of his skin stood out briefly on his arm, which was fishbelly white: purple bruising on the inside of the elbow, scarring. Between this and Laocoon's knowledge of the Prince it clicked into place like a final puzzle piece what Dylan was doing in Hillworth: drugs. He was in there for drugs. And judging by the state of his fingernails, he probably hadn't had them in a while.

But the Prince had always been miserable in boredom and isolation. And he'd been on this Earth alone and bored for a very long time, hadn't he?

Whatever trouble he had gotten himself into, at least it wasn't only his trouble now. Dylan smiled and opened his hand: it was the white king. "Sure, I could go for some blood sugar," he said. "They have shakes at Denny's."