we're all killers
After the meeting that had achieved virtually nothing but banned access to the Greatwood (again - the efforts they’d concocted to have it opened gone within an instant of brandished insults and ridiculous power struggles), the Sword drew immediately into silence. He brewed and brooded behind the depths of his piercing gaze, mulling over the quandaries, the new upheavals, the dominion of possibilities of mountains fading along his fringes. The wild, untamed exuberance he’d felt within the portal book (peaks, summits, ice, rime, and snow, favorite places pressed and there, simply beyond their reach) had been cooled to a contorted lull, a machinating mind sweeping through all the other possibilities. The beast fought off the loathsome, abhorrent growl threatening to rumble through his chest, irritated that one route had been completely demolished – but then the other possibilities unfurling, strand by strand, in the nuances of conversation. “The first time, when we went to rescue the tulmhainar, the basement had the poisonous plants, rushing water, and a wall of stone.” His memory bounded back and forth, webbed and then flowing, not looking at her, but beyond, fractures and factions of images flashing, recalling, when he wasn’t dying and falling apart. “Jigano went to investigate where he saw the portal last,” but if he the void served him correctly, the bard had returned empty-handed with that portion of information, and then they’d be fighting for their lives or the turtle’s.
His brows furrowed as they walked along the Outskirts, picking his way along the familiar path, eyes shifting to feline slits when the darkness began closing in, better access to better sight in the fold of twilight and dusk. “The second time, when we went to destroy the plants, there was a gaping hole in the middle.” From Safrin’s fall, from everything else shattered around it. “The water was still there, but when we were done killing the vegetation, the Spire basement was very unstable.” He didn’t have much more to add; no portal ever found, behind earth and rock and columns and debris; a surefire way for others to crumble in the midst.
His brows furrowed as they walked along the Outskirts, picking his way along the familiar path, eyes shifting to feline slits when the darkness began closing in, better access to better sight in the fold of twilight and dusk. “The second time, when we went to destroy the plants, there was a gaping hole in the middle.” From Safrin’s fall, from everything else shattered around it. “The water was still there, but when we were done killing the vegetation, the Spire basement was very unstable.” He didn’t have much more to add; no portal ever found, behind earth and rock and columns and debris; a surefire way for others to crumble in the midst.
DEIMOS
