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

“I have always found planning more effective than hope.” His brow arched, the acerbic humor all but suddenly drowned out by the weight of his words and the assemblage of Jigano’s. There were so many things lined in those lengthy diatribes, in the root and heart of the matter, that the Reaper simply absorbed them, took it all in, rekindled them back and forth through his mind. What he heard didn’t overly impress him - as best I can wasn’t a method, wasn’t a means, wasn’t a measure at all, but a bland statement, a fixture of nothingness, vague overtures and handwaves; a politician's standby. At some declarations, the whole thing seemed downright manipulative, and the beast hadn’t reigned on his summit for so many years without hearing the annals and tomes behind deceit, behind specious lines and designs, behind disingenuous tactics. Silence was a gesture he often employed – because it guarded, but it also gave him time to simmer and sink into their crafting, treacherous scheming, and while Jigano might have been genuine, the way he twisted foundations, the way he chose some words, gave the warrior all the more pause. He’d lived and breathed cloaks, daggers, and weapons – this individual had poised information like knives and cutlasses, a rapier faultline molded into his runes, disguises, and bard convictions. We. He kept saying we. What was he going to do while the rest of them tied their incantations and enchantments into the fray, while they labored and died and drowned in the murk of the poison? Everything was worth it, he said. It was worth others drifting off into demise, condemned, scorned, no one to pluck them from their ashes. It was worth others dying for his ambitions. I am willing to bet my life on it. Then there were the other underlying schemes, the way he turned a phrase so that if Deimos was willing to come with them (but oh no, poor distraught Deimos; reeling from the hell he’d experienced, clearly falling apart at the seams because he didn’t want friends to perish beneath stone walls for a lost cause), Jigano would be willing to have him in their crew. After Jigano was finished, the beast leaned back – his eyes squarely on the Loreseeker, who seemed so utterly driven to finding anything he could, that he would risk everyone else’s life – and gave his own keen speech. “Then why are you going?” It wasn’t malicious, it wasn’t seething, but truthful, blunt, short and to the point – for all he’d heard was simplistic arts and designs, no craft to them, no shape to them, no modicum of how he was going to ensure these people, who came at his beck and call, would survive under his tutelage and instruction. He nearly snorted. But his features remained nonchalant, for all his thoughts managed to bolster their way into the fields. “What are you contributing?”, If it was his ability to discuss with snakes, didn’t Remi possess the same nuances? If it was his ability to direct and presume command, any one of them could do that by casual observations. If it was his looming desire for glory and sagacity, then that wouldn’t be enough; for any one of them. “If they know when to run. If they know when to flee. If they know their own instincts.” His eyes narrowed, at war with himself; protective, warrior instincts leaping and clawing, baying and breaking, sliding over what should have been better sense. Because he could safeguard and shield them. He would. He’d done it before. He’d do it again. “I will go, if you do not.” For now we stand alone, the world is lost and blown And we are flesh and blood disintegrate with no more to hate