hands off

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame Another nod, acceptance that others were willing to assist (but the Sword wasn’t sure in what – what more could they do? What else was to be done, taken, save for time and patience?). The confusion thereafter though, at the mention of prosthetics, was fair – Deimos had presumed other worlds, other drifting individuals, had seen the same things. “An artificial limb.” A hand in place for the one he intended to lose: several of those who’d survived invasions, wars, battles, had required amputation, and as a soldier he’d dragged them to the white tents, witnessed them months later with different assortments and accoutrements. Replacements – never quite the same as one’s own flesh, tissue, marrow, and bone, but more than the disappeared, vacant loss. Perhaps it didn’t matter to Amun though, the way he continued to hold out the mangled portions. All he could think of were Amalia’s battered legs. There wasn’t an audible click of his teeth coming back together, jaw locked, brows furrowed, hanging the lantern on a hook outside the back door, one hand merely drawing Amun’s destroyed one into the light. Zuriel approached, lingering in the shadows, waiting, while he grabbed hold of a sword nearly always clasped to his back, heavier than most, recently sharpened and honed. “Ready?” master of nothing place; of recoil and grace