fair warning

D e i m o s

Send a heartbeat to the void that cries through you
Relive the pictures that have come to pass

There were days, hours, moments, where he recalled memories of indifference and nonchalance – not giving a care, so detached and isolated from anyone and everyone, his kingdom’s own pariah, nettled and thorned on the edge of their precipices. It’d been easier then, not drowning in the wake of another’s misery, free from the burden of anguish and melancholy; drifting in and out of his own suffering without the ashes and embers from someone else’s inferno reaching across his shoulders. It’d been himself and no one else – lonely and despondent, but not chained and rattled and tethered to all these lines, all these motions, all these seething enterprises. His seething, devastation, and ire had been his own. His mistakes hadn’t cost the world anything but a movement of dust, a spiral of chaos, the slash of a scythe; eternally the Reaper, cast in his own shadow and darkness. Reality was truly too far gone for that now – and he wouldn’t alter it, wouldn’t change it, wouldn’t malign it for anything. The fact that he’d been accepted and tolerated by so many individuals (why was truly beyond him) clenched at his cold, nefarious heart, lined it with glacial points that had begun to melt, that had begun to peek out into the light. He could exist here, in the alms and arms of others; and they didn’t sneer, didn’t jibe, didn’t hiss, didn’t growl, didn’t stare, didn’t rebel at his presence. But lords, sometimes it tried him, to be wrapped up and enamored, to be afraid for others. The latest was only another point of a ticking bomb, and he could feel the fuse rising in his chest, eagerly awaiting the trigger, the moment, where he could set it ablaze. His ferocity was a blistering, scathing thing, corded and roped and coiled in the regions of his veins, where they hastened to bleed contempt and wrath, where they yearned to threaten the world with their potency and disaster. Amalia kept telling him not to do anything – like that would ever happen – and he fretted and pulled at the strands of his composure like a brooding, scathing monster, a fiend kindling and inciting some brush. Then he sent a missive to Jigano, because shouldn’t he know the ensuing damage? Shouldn’t he be aware of his guild disbanding, of Amalia clinging to its roots and foundations, of a threat bearing down on her? The growl tucked in the back of his throat stayed silent for now. Instead, he attempted to render himself busy – and Zuriel received the brunt end of it, staying perfectly still (and likely content – a very proud look on her features; maybe even haughty) as he worked bits of leather across her shoulders, intending for it to become some form of armor. But all the while, his mind churned and burned, plotting and musing, machinating and calculating, intending to set things ablaze. For now we stand alone, the world is lost and blown And we are flesh and blood disintegrate with no more to hate