No one answered Aries. The four of them stood there looking at him with varying levels of confusion and disturbance, except for Vlad, who was looking sideways at Hawk and Numair with his hand over his mouth. Numair had actually taken a step back; Hawk was holding his transformed arm, and long grey feathers were now emerging between his fingers.

Aries surveyed this. "No," he decided. "You look too surprised to see me. But what are the odds--"

"Why do you look like that?" Hawk interrupted, almost squinting at Aries through the curious tendrils of pale smoke now increasingly drifting in front of his face.

Aries looked at him, and Hawk's eyes widened. There was a strange smudged quality to Aries now, and what was more--up close, the skin of his face went thin and translucent, and beneath it was some dark structure, like a smooth skull with rudimentary jaws, covered in tiny multicolored designs. The jaws with their blunt suppositions of teeth parted as he spoke; there was no tongue, just a hazy bit of black smoke that escaped.

"...Like what?" he asked quietly. "Hm? What do I look like, to you?"

But instead of waiting for an answer, he rounded fully on Hawk. "How about you tell me, then?" he said. "What are you, for one thing? And what's the Cynn got you doing for him, hm?" He paused. "Do you even know?"

That hit a nerve; Hawk's talons twitched. "Shut up," he snapped. "Stop fucking talking so fucking much--"