(Video; UN: sing of the rage)

[glorioussong]

(Three days have passed since his arrival. Three days spent in confinement while he recovers from...something. He recalls white powder on his fingertips - Patroclus would know the name of it - but that's all. Now he is in his benefactor's wing. Vannozza Spina.

As ever, he is blunt.)

I do not care for this welcome. (It feels like a ploy to pull the wool over his eyes. Achilles has never fallen for ploys and he won't start now.) This is where I introduce myself. I am Achilles Peleides and if you are at war, show me where the men are fighting.

(He will drink wine and party after.)

Comments

[glorioussong]

I'm not sure I follow. You haven't met Troy yet or you and I haven't met?

(He can only amend one of those. Maybe. He can be a stubborn, stubborn man.)

Good and evil are for philosophers to distinguish. I am a warrior - a lion - and I am only loyal to my men.

[funnylittleclown]

Why that you and I haven't met yet.

[ Or rather that the Doctor had met Achilles but Achilles hadn't met him yet. Not that either would have been recognized. The Doctor had been much older looking when he had arrived in Troy during the war and Achilles was doubtless a different man than the hot headed soldier who had mistaken him for a God. His fault really for appearing from thin air and finding himself unable to explain the TARDIS. ]

Your men aren't here are they? You might have to become something of a philosopher to figure a way out of this place.

[glorioussong]

Why would we meet?

(He won't live forever. Fate has laid a golden path at his feet, but he is taking little steps, avoiding the inevitable end, squeezing out the last years.

And, yes, Doctor, you shouldn't appear out of thin air.)

I can solve a riddle or two.

[funnylittleclown]

As we have all been thrust together on this quest we are bound to meet eventually. Better to do so on friendly terms I think.

[ The other, survivors or travelers, he didn't know what to call their little band, really only had each other to rely on. Allies by circumstance if not by choice. ]

I love a good riddle myself. What has to be broken before you can use it?

[glorioussong]

You gave me the impression you were from a different time. Surely by the time you are born, I am long dead. So, why would you and I meet?

(Unless this person is delving into matters of the Underworld?)

A horse.

[funnylittleclown]

I did, did I? I suppose there is no harm in saying that I travel a great deal so I end up meeting all sorts of interesting people.

[ From different time periods. Yes, this is normal. ]

That's quite good really! I was thinking of an egg but its true, you wouldn't ride a horse unless it had been trained first.

[glorioussong]

Traveling is one matter; journeying to the past or speaking with the dead is different.

(Don't evade the truth, Doctor.)

An egg is a good answer too. Funny, that riddle has multiple answers.

[funnylittleclown]

I did rather step in that one, didn't I?

[ Usually he was a good deal more cagey when it came to admitting things like time travel. This was not the best time to be getting complacent... ]

Yes, alright. Consider it another riddle. Who can speak with the dead before they have died? Only please don't feel there is a need to answer it. It won't do us any good here.

[glorioussong]

You fell in it.

(And he won't be forgetting. Achilles sinks his teeth into the truth and never lets it go.)

Who can speak to the dead before they have died? If they haven't died, the answer would be the living, would it not?

[funnylittleclown]

[ Fell in it... He will just be over here breathing a deep sigh to himself. ]

Indeed it would. And how could I possibly have met you in my past, which for you would be your future, if both of us were very much alive at the time? Now there's a riddle for you!