centuries deep

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame The Sword eyed the door for a long time, settled there in his cart. It represented protection and death, a collision of good intentions forged with annihilation. The temptation, the enticement, to simply destroy it right then and there, set it ablaze, hack it apart with an ax, completely mutilate it, decimate it, into a thousand pieces, stirred hard in his chest. It would’ve been satisfying, to watch it all turn to ash and dust, splintered remnants, fractured lines. It would’ve given him some semblance of control where none seemed to exist any longer. Then ruminations curled and coiled further – of consequences, of impending retributions, or even of explanations. How he’d tried and attempted and thought he’d known exactly what he was doing - He didn’t know what was best any longer. Maybe he never really had, and the lesson stuck in between his ribs like a knife; self-inflicted wounds. So on the latter threads, Deimos pulled the cart and its contents along, through the fields, down into familiar worlds. Last time he’d amidst Safrin’s shrine had been for his wedding, something splendid, something happy, something wonderful, and now he arrived with no trace of its wake on his soul. A certain numbness amidst the strife and anguish clawed over him now, made him bow his head before the familiar lines and wonder just what on earth he was striving for. Safrin was a quiet call, and he thought about offerings, about manifestations of something from his hands after the LongNight, but as his eyes lingered over the known sanctum, they noted broken wares and missing things. He’d helped create this structure, and would know the segments anywhere – the starwhale’s lantern in shards and pieces along the ground, the intermingling of windchimes and their tunes missing in the void. He thought little of it, his mind already brimming with too many alternating angles, ruminations, and machinations, presumed it’d been monsters’ claws in the absence of gods and heralds during their favored reign. They could be replaced, regardless. So he worked while he waited, gilded palms extending outward so the lantern could be replicated, so that light could enter and remain all over again, so that something, besides grief and anguish, felt normal. master of nothing place; of recoil and grace