who we are and all that we're trying to be
There was a dull ache residing in his bones beneath moonlight, for all his failures, past and imminent, presuming the end result would always be the same (you are nothing a reverberation resounding so strong that it might’ve endured far longer than anything else in his existence). What had he accomplished since his fall into Caido? The list was small and meager, hardly anything worth mentioning – a cycle of trials and errors, frowns and sacrifices, blood spilled with naught to show for its stains and agony. It didn’t mean his plans now would even come to fruition, or be worth the efforts – and for all his sinking, all his barely, floating above the surface (treading water when he once swam with such a mighty crescendo), he’d yet to entirely give in.
You will be better an anthem, a tattoo, a stiletto digging its way into his essence, at the gilded glow in his hands as he created an offering for a goddess he’d only seen once (blighted at the scene of her new-founded shrine, galaxies and constellations in her wake beneath the pestilence). His palms orchestrated and concocted, created and devised, until his grasp was filled with a mirror – reflective glass in the center, surrounded by enamel and lacquer embroidered and embossed in stars, sieges of aurora hues and blends he’d once seen at the top of mountains, beauty, grandeur, and opulence, unfiltered, raw and tangible.
Then he crossed over to the sanctum he’d helped create, to the pale stones, tilting his head at the sound of the wind chimes, eyes slinking over the starwhale light and its flickering dust, flowers in the frame of dusk and twilight, a weight on his shoulders, machinations striving to stir while the rest of him pondered the inevitable. For all his savage steps and motions, apprehension clung to his insides, and pummeled at his heart. Safrin wouldn’t come – following the patterns of any other time he’d meandered to a shrine, abandoned and forsaken, forgotten and ruined, a marred weapon that the gods had no need for.
But he promised that he’d try, bowing his head and placing the mirror across the top of the shrine, swallowing down the cloaking bile of unease, brushing aside the mantle of his desecration. He was hollowed, not hallowed. The Sword was well aware of foreboding intervals, of the ominous seclusion gathering over his brows – baring the words between his teeth before he could stop himself, before he could back away, before he could find the shadows again and escape, evade, the inescapable void. “Safrin,” he paused, swallowing, waiting for the silence to follow, for the pause to be prolonged, for the wind to send him on his way. You are not worthy. “I wish to become stronger.”
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Deimos is turning in his hybrid pass!
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
