who we are and all that we're trying to be
The Sword didn’t expect to be haunted here, not now, as a simple statement of once-residence pressed into the scene: his mask fissured, the perfectly controlled veneer splintering in minute waves. First his eyes widened, then his breath caught, a rough inhale and exhale, his sides heaving with an enormous effort of ensuring his lungs filled when they flickered in shock. His head hung for a series of seconds, a rough swallow conforming to his throat, pushing down a segment of ruminations and sentiments that thought to bind and blind him - another, one more from the ghosts and wraiths, from the leagues of phantoms and shadows, from its blackened sepulchers, surviving where Helovia had not. And while the stranger seemed to have moved on from that particular fact, discussing portals and things that went in one of Deimos’ ears and right out the other, the beast’s hands tangled in the rope along the cart. This wasn’t someone he knew directly, not like Rexanna and Kiada, but a being from an alternate kingdom (or maybe once an Outcast – he didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know, the ignorance crawling up to meet him, when he’d spent so much time isolating himself in those icy mountains and rime paths). Finally, when the wind notched and curled against him, when he’d uncoiled from his rapacious onslaughts, his skull meandered back towards Cera’s, glancing over his shoulder, hovering and waiting to be harpooned on the bestial plains of an old world and an old life. “I am from Helovia too,” came from his mouth, loosened by the bouts of composure, as if struggling to make it past his teeth, one hand reaching out, an extension of a greeting, an introduction, that should’ve occurred series and cycles ago. “Deimos.” the Reaper went unsaid, like everything else, twisting accords of legends, tragedies, and disasters corresponding, bounding him to the ash, the salt, the cinders, once lord and king of the mountains, tied and tethered by frozen lines and oaths.
Then they continued, and he wondered if there’d be something twisted and malignant, if this man had been born into a venue not aligned with his – one amongst the many he’d sought to destroy, where he plotted condemnation, when he’d allotted invasions and permitted vitriol and violence to unfurl from their machinations. There’d always been a reason, a motive, not brandishing chaos for the simple matter of watching the realm burn around them; but sometimes it didn’t matter. In some measures, they’d always been the villains. They’d always been the wrong. They’d always been the immoral. And he couldn’t question it – their faults, flaws, and defects apparent and vast.
He pulled the cart again, marching on, listening to the light laughter and pondering how anyone could extend it so readily, in the course and curse of darker days. “Yes,” he noted, in a way, incapable of melding or molding anymore thought into the matter; well and wholly distracted by more sprouting from sovereignties he still craved, still savored, still longed for in the pinnacle of slumber: couldn’t have, couldn’t have, couldn’t have. “Can you shift into anything else?” How strong were this man’s abilities? Some Attuned had mastered more than one form (Amalia: with her owl feathers, with her leopard fur, with her otter paws, Remi, with his raccoon predilections, lion heart, and manticore endeavors). And would he bludgeon the Reaper with those claws, with those talons, with those sharpened fangs?
The monster would deserve it.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
