who we are and all that we're trying to be
Deimos was never enticed by the desert: born into tides and pools, the press of midnight oceans, the roll of currents, the constant, insistent, perpetual strength of a dominion vastly superior to them. All his other homes had made a similar impact: the blistering fog sometimes scaling and reaching across the corners of his eyes, the knife’s edge of thunderous beckons against cliffs, the pale mountains rising towards the sun, the stars, the moon; and even battlefields were a separate sanctum, altered from the rest, when he was meant to be unleashed, sacrificed, and a destructive, malicious force. They didn’t have any such things here, not yet; traditions of old tied into enriched beliefs and faiths he couldn’t exactly fathom or understand, forests flanked in magic and isolation, potent people thriving well beyond the reaches of any of them. So the scorch of seething dunes didn’t make him yearn, crave, or long, but the mere hankering of other realms and kingdoms were steady notions within dreams, in nightmares, in portions they couldn’t get back.
The nostalgia failed to slow its slithering advances on his mind; the brightness of Cera’s face contrasting with the rancor a gilded King had left behind. “Mighty Midas,” Deimos hissed – ending the sibilance on a snicker, and only because the great beast couldn’t defend himself, not from beyond the grave, did the fiend relent on continuing any further on the veins of sarcasm. Midas had been hypocritical: a vast purveyor of wiping out hatred and vehemence, but committing to it with the veils, shrouds, cloaks, and daggers of his own putrid abhorrence for everyone else who didn’t think the same way. It might’ve been dastardly piety, some paragon of virtue for others to wrap themselves around – the Basin had always been amidst his many targets of prejudice and menace. Turnabout had been fair play. Even his title: the Gallant had been a misnomer. Was it gallant to prey upon children? Was it gallant to amass wrath and contempt upon the innocent? Or had it simply all been in the name of justice, and the painted man had been granted a free pass into the sunset?
His gaze flickered back over to Cera, not expecting the flush over the Throat Prince’s features – arching his brow again in a slight of curiosity – only answered a moment later, that he was honored to have been thought of, no matter how maliciously or in depth their information. It caused a chuckle, a shake of his head, a boyish smile, the compliment towards his spies and thieves not unworthy either. “We did.” And his grin was a real, true, genuine contortion of lips and mouth, proud of those beasts and their ability to flush out wisdom, sagacity, or items, snag and clench and drown their enemies in machinations, in calculations, instead of Deimos’ preferred brute force. Their tactics had reigned supreme, a challenge in the eyes of other sovereignties, a different composition towards bedlam – where instead of the world watching their borders for the next sign of an invading force, they curled and coiled away from the shadows, frightened of revelations spurned and coiled amidst the decadence. “They were invaluable,” he whispered, the smile sliding away as his attention returned to the pathway, to the outskirts ahead, to his house in the distance.
The Reaper was content with the silence for a few moments, navigating over roots and brush, contemplating, devising, pondering, a wonder in schemes and contortions, when Cera’s confession loomed in softness, a venture towards more things in loss. “You could have both.” He shrugged; having been witness to it himself. They had several hybrids amongst the area, thriving on incantations and alterations, capable of bearing all of it. “There are some that are hybrid. They wield magic and shift.” Something else to muddle and machinate over, as they made their way to the opening of paths, to the sunlight again, to the drifting, falling leaves, to the grassy plains, and to his refuge on the end of the street.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
