Inigo is in when Olwen all but drags Echo back to their woodland cabin, but (predictably) he proves unhelpful in deciphering the motives behind Seren's outlandish and unprecedented appearance. He sympathizes with Echo, of course, because he's like that, but Echo can't bring himself to feel comforted; he isn't sure he deserves it, not from Inigo. 

Olwen, strangely subdued since voicing his offer in the bar, doesn't so much as wish Echo sweet dreams that night, disappearing into his room after dinner, the door shutting with quiet intent behind him. Inigo makes no comment on his behavior, which Echo takes to mean it's nothing out of the ordinary, even if he himself hasn't witnessed this side of Olwen before. It's not surprising, given their lack of a relationship -- Echo's only known the man a handful of days.
The silence rests heavily on his shoulders nonetheless as he sinks down into the firm expanse of his cot, settling in for a brittle, dreamless sleep. 

The next morning, Echo wishes with a rather wild desperation that he'd thought to press Olwen for more concrete information about Ari, because the man is standing at the foot of his bed when he opens his eyes, and it's all Echo can do to grit his teeth against the scream threatening to tear from his throat.

"The fuck," is all he can manage, his voice strangled and distant even to his own ears, unconsciously soft so as not to disturb the sleeping Norths only a thin wall away.

Ari grins, delighted Echo's playing along, and plops down onto the bed as though he owns it. He twists himself until he's sitting facing Echo, hands resting lightly on his sharp-boned ankles -- which Echo can see plainly because the man isn't wearing shoes. If Echo had any lingering reservations about labeling the man as mad, they'd vanish this instant.

"You're the star-eyed wonder," Ari says, with such affected reverence that Echo can't help but snort a laugh. Wonder. No one in their right mind (not that Ari's holding claim to one of those, Echo knows that now) would think of Echo -- blank slate that he is -- as anything but troublesome. His imminent death also does a fair job of sharpening his inherent faults into something ragged and eye-catching.

"I'm waiting for you to explain what the fuck you're doing here," Echo all but growls, fisting his hands around the wrinkled fabric of his threadbare blanket in a vain attempt to steady himself. Ari's disarming grin makes unease curl low in his gut.

Ari tsks in mock-reproach, waggling a finger at Echo as he shifts forward on the bed, leaning into Echo's space. Echo does not recoil, however much he might want to; instead he feels the stiffening of his spine, and consciously draws his shoulders down from where they're threatening to hunch around his ears. Whether or not Ari notices his muted reaction, or cares for it, remains unclear, as the man does nothing more than continue to smile enigmatically at Echo and rub slow circles into the tendons of his ankles with his thumbs. 

"My, my, aren't you snappish? Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?"

"For fuck's sake, I am going to rip your throat out with my teeth--"

"How're you planning to do that, exactly?" Ari asks, raising both brows to emphasize the question's validity. Echo pauses, clamping his mouth shut, which Ari takes as evidence of his defeat. "Human teeth aren't ideal for such a task."

That's twice now that this bastard has implied Echo is something other than human. He's not even remotely subtle in his jibes, and Echo wishes fervently in that moment to wring the man by his skinny neck while loudly demanding answers from him. But not only is that not a practical course of action, it'd likely wake up Olwen and his father. Though why Echo is concerned for their sleep schedules when he's left to deal with a possibly-possessed lunatic, he doesn't know. It feels uncharacteristic of him all the same.

"Explain."

Ari tilts his head curiously. "You're not following along?"

"No. So tell me, plainly, what the fuck you're going on about."

"Isn't it obvious?" Ari grins, shrugging. "You are inhuman."

Something seizes inside of Echo, every one of his muscles straining taut with abrupt terror. He doesn't know how he knows, but Ari isn't lying. Perhaps he's delusional, perhaps this is all some piss-poor nightmare brought on by the copious amounts of stress Echo's been laboring under--but it isn't.This feels all too real, from the cooling sweat trickling down from his brow to the electric buzz spreading under his skin, the shadows curling in the unswept corners of his mind. His breathing quickens, nearly imperceptibly, but the accompanying rapid-fire thud-thud-thud of his heartbeat is not so easily ignored. Blood roars in his ears, and it's just as well that Ari has fallen suspiciously silent, because Echo isn't sure he'd hear a word of what he has to say otherwise at this moment.

It's minutes or hours later when Echo finally shakes the tension loose from his coiled muscles and glares frigidly at Ari, who beams his unwavering delight right back at him. 

"Get out."

Ari blinks, apparently not expecting that particular response. "Aren't you curious how I know?"

"No."

"Not going to demand that I tell you what you are?"

"You wouldn't even if I held a knife to your throat, so why the fuck should I bother?"

A muffled laugh escapes Ari, then, and he throws back his head to accommodate it, hands tightening around his ankles. Echo waits him out, eyes narrowing to judgemental slits the longer Ari goes on just guffawing at him. When he's finished, the man wipes an imaginary tear from his eye and flings it away with a sharp jerk of his wrist.

"You're more interesting than I thought you'd be," he says, sincerity ringing clear as a goddamn bell in his voice.

It makes Echo's skin crawl.

"I'll make good on that threat--" Echo starts, his patience stretched to the point of snapping, only Ari waves him off and leans forward conspiratorially, his eyes dancing with something altogether other in the early morning light.

"You had the stars in your eyes long before Seren plucked the memories from your head," he says softly, his voice laced with mirth, lips hardly moving. Echo goes preternaturally still, but Ari carries on, undaunted, "You must feel so confined, no? Stuck as you are in that hairless bag of bones you call a body? Aren't you just itching to break out, Echo?"

It's... not that Echo hasn't noticed before this moment. The feeling of being somehow stifled, muffled -- the tightness of his skin, the strain of his muscles. He's noticed, of course he has, he's not completely stupid, but... but he systematically ignored it all, chalking it up to prolonged fatigue, or the aftereffects of whatever landed him alone and half-stripped in the woods; and then he'd had Seren to pin the blame on, a god already so preoccupied with making his life miserable that it was simple to think he'd somehow instilled the unnatural feelings in Echo. He's noticed, but he didn't pay any real mind to these feelings, but now that Ari's brought them to light in this context, it's all he can think about, each sensation magnified to unbearable levels in his exploration of them.

He doesn't realize he's clawing at the frayed skin of his chest until Ari's cold hand clamps around his wrist, yanking it viciously away from Echo's body. Echo stares numbly at the blood dripping out from under his nails, a startling disconnect between the sight of them and the muted twinge of fire now raking across his chest. His breathing's doubled, lungs expanding shallowly with hardly a second to exhale in between. He thinks that terrible keening sound might be coming from his own mouth, but he's not aware of himself enough to properly check.

There's another, gentler tug on his arm, and Echo's eyes snap up to find that Ari's still watching him, enthusiastic as ever. His grip on Echo's wrist tightens, though Echo's made no move to pull back.

Ari tsks mockingly, quirking a brow in apparent disappointment. "Now, now, you're no good to Seren if you keel over this early, little Echo. Talk to Olwen, use those latent charms of yours to have him explain himself to you. You'll feel better then, I'm sure."

He releases Echo abruptly, rocking back on his heels. Silence digs sharply into Echo's skin, pulling it taut across his shoulders and pressing his mouth into a white, bloodless line as he holds Ari's unwavering, slightly manic gaze. Echo doesn't know what else he's expecting from this nightmare, but he can say with a reasonable amount of certainty that it isn't for Ari to grin and slither to the floor, soundless as any night-born creature, then - within one incredulous blink and the next - vanish.

Heart thundering in his chest, Echo flings himself from the bed and cases the room, searching just shy of desperately for any trace of the enigmatic bastard. He, predictably, finds nothing, save for the fading sensation of Rosario's unmarked fingers wrapped around his wrist; and even that could be reasonably explained away - stemming from an overactive imagination and brought about by a vivid dreamscape. Though why Echo's overwrought mind would conjure up Ari of all people in the blurry hours before dawn he doesn't know. Doesn't want to know, truthfully. Worse still, he isn't sure what he'd prefer: that Ari's visit was nothing more than a dream born of his mounting anxiety, or that it was real.

Sleep eludes him the rest of the night. Echo instead wastes away the stifling minutes huddled under his thin blanket, eyes closed but flickering almost violently beneath the lids as he recounts every second of his encounter with Ari - both of them, in fact, though he lingers over the dream-not-a-dream, chasing that phantom thrumming he'd felt fluttering in his chest, demanding to be felt, to be answered.

That's how Olwen finds him sometime later, and he hasn't had the chance to offer even the briefest of condescension before Echo says, his voice skimming the edge of a rough-hewn growl, "I know where we're going."

Olwen blinks. He's fresh-faced despite the ungodly hour, his eyes bright and clear, if perhaps a tad easier to decipher. The hands he'd curled around the doorframe are tucked under his arms, tight across his chest, as he levels an inquisitive smirk at Echo.

"Do you now?"

"Yes," Echo bites out, clipped and furious, and he can see the faint surprise cross Olwen's features, lifting his brows and tightening his jaw.

"And are you going to enlighten me as to where the Games are being held."

"I will," Echo says slowly, dragging the blanket from his shoulders as he raises himself from the bed, taking the few quick steps to stand toe-to-toe with Olwen, who does little more than tilt his head and jut out his chin in apparent challenge. "But only after you fucking tell me what you are."

There's silence for a moment. And then Olwen lets out a breath, the tension in his jaw dissipating. He stares at Echo, expression unreadable, before he makes a now somewhat familiar gesture: knuckles to forehead, to heart, then palm flat and facing Echo. It feels so incongruent with the intense atmosphere crackling between them that Echo can hardly do more than watch, unsure what it's meant to signify in this context.

Clearly reading the bafflement in Echo's stance, Olwen says, "I'm solidifying the promise I'm about to make you. My father would have my hide if I went back on my word now." When Echo says nothing in response, he sighs and goes on, "I'll tell you what you want to know. Although..."

Echo angles himself away from Olwen as he presses closer, tucking a hand underneath Echo's chin to nudge his head back; Echo stands his ground, refusing to move out of the molten well of spite that sits boiling in his stomach, though he twists his head as much as his current position will allow, tilting it out of Olwen's reach.

Olwen's smirk ticks upwards another fraction, closer to a grin now than it was before.

"I'd wager what you truly want to know is the answer to the question of what you are, no?"