the rest will fall in line

DEIMOS Delivered from the blasts Purpose pumped his blood and filled his veins now, steady and resolute, mighty and stalwart, treacherous and scathing. Ordinarily, the sensation of renewal would be a welcome addition to his brooding, avaricious form, but the reasons and motives behind it flanked the emboldened precipice with trepidation, unease, and urgency. It pulsed in his heart and carried the pervading sources throughout his bones and flesh, sizzled and smoldering, painting an oeuvre to savage, Machiavellian ministrations and deliberation. A conquering mechanism, flooding his brain with every nuance and motivation, scalding the frigid fortifications, the tempestuous ramparts; he was a brutal force again, maneuvering menace, iniquitous fervency. The Reaper didn’t allow the ferocity to show – not when baiting his lines and attempting to snare his traps. To play his hand early would be foolish, and likely a waste of his time and those taken, and so every movement had to be deliberate, had to be conniving, restrained, an act of composure beneath the coiled, bunched muscles and the undulating fury. His pretense lingered along the Outskirts, before the fields and woodlands, the distance of Rory’s farmstead, where some banners from Fiat Lux still shifted in the grass and dirt, as if it were all a distant haze and memory. He’d begun to lay out a pile of dried, nearly withered and decayed wood, intending to make it appear as though he were gathering kindling, idle little remains of fallen timber, leaning down, snagging a few, then hastening them to grounding mound. The beast had carted his sled over too; and though it lacked the snow’s lavish means, he wouldn’t mind it dragging it across rubble. It could be repaired. His friends might not have the same option. During all this time, he hunted, bestial eyes shifting over those passing by, desperate for an inclination towards the Fae species, for answers, for signs and upheavals. He’d rivet on a form before returning to his work, and continue the process, moving further and further out until his circle had been cleaned, and then roaming farther again. Maybe, just maybe, he’d gain a semblance of hope from all these dusty, worn-out beacons. the last of a line of lasts