who we are and all that we're trying to be
Her no was the last moment before the crashing waves, before riptide, before he was pulled beneath fathoms and strangled into depths, struggling to find the surface, lungs ferocious while his heart sunk.
He knew the voice, he knew the songs, he knew the words, the echoes, the fragments, the reveries, the moments not strangled, but tied together in bliss. Huyana, whole in memories but not in reality; twice, twice, twice, seized and taken and struck down, away from him once, and then riddled in death the second time, no matter what he tried. It had been love and devotion beneath mountains, beside oceans, under crag and stone and marble, billowing in on plumes of rain and sighs – and then gone, because he was weak. Because he was useless. Because the anthem and tattoos and stilettos were all the same, tapping the drumbeat to his destruction, to his flaws, to his defects; all brawn and tenacity and endurance couldn’t keep her with him, couldn’t keep her safe, couldn’t keep her from –
The spark of more gods, more ineffectualness, more ineptitude, anchored and tied to the Basin, to prominences where he sat upon his throne and decayed, where he was rubble and delusion, and the world could see what desolation and swords did to a man – family in the decadence of corruption and aspirations. A disheveled crew, made up of thieves in the night, corrupt doctors, weapons and soldiers, beasts and fiends and some valorous efforts tied up in nooses and knots – something in his chest ached, and he fought to breathe, fought to stand upright against the tides.
Where are they now?
Dead and gone, buried beneath shadow and wilting, wilting, wilting – his body left in its tomb, a part of the artifice and rocks, when he’d failed, when he’d tried, when he’d drowned in showers and thought to see her again.
Then Amalia, and something inside him threatened to burst. Do not he wanted to shout, howl, and yell, do not take her from me on his tongue. He’d lost enough. He couldn’t bear to lose her. He’d said it to her before, again and again and again, because his life was a series of defeats and follies, no matter how strong.
He shook his head, forcing the insinuations out of his skull, out of his mind, webs and fractures and fissures – breaking, shards and slivers. She talked, stars and galaxies in the midst, and he tried to focus, tried to see beyond the follies, but they kept careening, rankling, nettles on his skin.
Was he the same soul?
Deimos the Reaper had been cloaked in terror and treachery. Deimos the Sword had wandered and meandered, and found himself accepted, loved, and cherished. Deimos the Reaper had been absolute barbarity, a force of vitriol and vehemence, toxic and nonchalant, ripping things apart because he could. Deimos the Sword thought and fought and sought to save those he considered family. In some ways, they were similar, and in others, they were not – the Reaper had hid from his opportunities and chances, sunk into the sea, into the snow, into the ice, the Sword had found a shield and created other notions, purposes, and lives.
“In some ways,” he answered, throat aflame. “But I once hid. I cannot now.” He refused to, even when the inclination was there, even when the sinking mire spread its way across his chest and yearned to suffocate him.
“Another way to save them.” Opportunities he hadn’t had before; all death and destruction and torment, fire, rubble, ruin. A way to solve matters without violence – even if he’d always crave it.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
