DEIMOS
The reality of her words came very slowly; a mind-numbing crawl, struggling to parse through, as if he were swimming upstream. He kept trying to peer along the murky depths, brows furrowed, eyes settling steadily upon her, failing to comprehend the tears at first, the way she stared, the nuances flattening in the back of his skull. Maybe it was his soul striving to protect itself for those last frail, puncturing, piercing moments, before clarity struck, and rang true.
“No.” He shook his head, denying it, hands already beginning to shake, panic searing and pressing down over his chest like a weight. Drowning, he was drowning, a suffocating, asphyxiating response. He wanted to leave. He wanted to bolt. He wanted to hide in the back of the room where no one, not even the Shield, could see him break. Not again.
“No.” He said once more, uttered as if it he said it enough times, it would become reality. Kiada was brave. Kiada was strong. Kiada was defiant. Kiada conquered. Kiada seared. Kiada was fire – couldn’t ever be absorbed and culled by it.
She represented so much more to him, and in those seconds, the actuality that she was gone and she wouldn’t be coming back, and he couldn’t have her there with him anymore careened, decimated, ruined. Like he’d been stabbed, lacerated, torn into tiny fragments, wounded, marred, and scalded; would’ve preferred to have exchanged places with the Harpy, to have flown over and fallen into magma than to have her destroyed.
So the walls came down, down, down.
They’d always been carefully, meticulously, painstakingly arranged and crafted. Nothing could touch him. No one mattered. Deimos, in the shadow of the world, beckoning abyss and crawling through savagery like a battering ram. Unattainable. Unreachable. The Reaper. King and Lord and feared warrior of the Aurora Basin. The Sword.
And they’d somehow managed to finagle their way into the cracks, the marble, the scrupulous designs. Kiada had so damned easily – emboldened and audacious from the moment he first met her, intending to take worlds and kingdoms by storm. He’d loved her for it, every spitfire whirlwind, every promised cataclysm, every snicker, every smirk.
He wouldn’t have any of them again.
His head fell into his hands, because he couldn’t look anywhere, couldn’t see beyond flames and embers, cinders and ash, couldn’t do anything but choke, but gasp, but shatter. “I cannot do this,” he whispered.
“No.” He shook his head, denying it, hands already beginning to shake, panic searing and pressing down over his chest like a weight. Drowning, he was drowning, a suffocating, asphyxiating response. He wanted to leave. He wanted to bolt. He wanted to hide in the back of the room where no one, not even the Shield, could see him break. Not again.
“No.” He said once more, uttered as if it he said it enough times, it would become reality. Kiada was brave. Kiada was strong. Kiada was defiant. Kiada conquered. Kiada seared. Kiada was fire – couldn’t ever be absorbed and culled by it.
She represented so much more to him, and in those seconds, the actuality that she was gone and she wouldn’t be coming back, and he couldn’t have her there with him anymore careened, decimated, ruined. Like he’d been stabbed, lacerated, torn into tiny fragments, wounded, marred, and scalded; would’ve preferred to have exchanged places with the Harpy, to have flown over and fallen into magma than to have her destroyed.
So the walls came down, down, down.
They’d always been carefully, meticulously, painstakingly arranged and crafted. Nothing could touch him. No one mattered. Deimos, in the shadow of the world, beckoning abyss and crawling through savagery like a battering ram. Unattainable. Unreachable. The Reaper. King and Lord and feared warrior of the Aurora Basin. The Sword.
And they’d somehow managed to finagle their way into the cracks, the marble, the scrupulous designs. Kiada had so damned easily – emboldened and audacious from the moment he first met her, intending to take worlds and kingdoms by storm. He’d loved her for it, every spitfire whirlwind, every promised cataclysm, every snicker, every smirk.
He wouldn’t have any of them again.
His head fell into his hands, because he couldn’t look anywhere, couldn’t see beyond flames and embers, cinders and ash, couldn’t do anything but choke, but gasp, but shatter. “I cannot do this,” he whispered.
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
