DEIMOS
Any apology or expression of regret coming from his mouth had been rarities in Helovia. The Reaper, most of the time, had been neither sorry nor rueful about his actions – machinations leading either exactly where he intended for them to cross, or a backfiring shard leading to further consequences and ruminations. For a heathen drenched in apathy, indifference, and a multitude of chaotic, bedlam balances, they hadn’t seemed necessary; and rarely, if ever, had the Aurora Basin feel remorse for their vengeful violence. The few times he had concocted them had been a pathway to the unknown, and the words had choked him on the way up from his vocals, a drowning, nearly asphyxiating conundrum, basking back and forth along lungs and air, until audacity got the better of him.But now he had more people that accepted and tolerated. Now he had more people that actually gave a damn. So in turn, he did the same for them.
Remi’s confusion was apparent, and the Sword fissured his way into befuddlement too. What did the alchemist mean? Why wouldn’t he be upset for his home being completely, utterly destroyed? Deimos had known what it was like to be a refugee – to wander in bitterness, in the wake of loss, in the contemplation of where to go from there (desecration and upheaval, sedition and revolution). “For burning the guild to the ground.” Voice deep and rumbling, carved out of his chest, a sigh filtering through those mercurial moments; the flames stoked and contorted in his incantations – as if they’d been beatific enthrallments of his father’s boisterous efforts – and then everything thereafter, conflagrations spread from his hands and down into floorboards. “I had control over the fire.” But then nothing else, not over the screams, the shouts, the people running into the evening – he could’ve done something besides bringing it all down, down, down to cinders, embers, coal, and ash. His eyes sketched their way from the ground and back to Remi, furrowed brows and frowns evident, mind already reeling with how to negate and fix the mess he’d made.
He was something solid
to lean against
violent and fierce and unmoving
