DEIMOS
No matter how many rough intakes of air he motioned through his lungs, to steel, to forge, it scarcely touched the consternation and grief lodged in his throat, in his soul. That it was about to be marked, chiseled, and coiled upon another didn’t make it any easier; no passing of torches, no way to make things better, brighter. His jawline feathered, taut clenching as he strived to summon the portions of his voice to speak the outline of those words, to prevail in the retelling of devastating circumstances, without breaking apart himself. A nod first then, drummed along his skull, clawing its way out, summoned by habit and routine, the only thing he could warrant in the disarray.Chulane didn’t sit, and Deimos didn’t want the world to drop out from beneath the younger man, and his eyes went briefly to Zuriel. She stood there, by the Attuned’s side, while the mustering of anguish burrowed deep in his soul, furrowed brows, and his stare went to the floor. The monolith only raised them back to Chulane when he’d managed to coil down the ether, the vestiges, the cinders, the burning, burning, burning tracks of torture from his limbs. Smothered, dissolved, for a few feral moments, while he ruined someone else’s life. “Kiada’s expedition went to a land full of lava. Apparently there was a god with glass embedded in him. While Loren tried to pull it out, Wessex, Hotaru, and Amalia shielded him. Kiada flew above to scout.” It sounded too much like a military report, like something laden with facts, but underneath were brewing tides of despair, of the finality, of how nothing seemed to go well anymore. How there was a gaping hole in his chest, and soon to be in Chulane’s.
“There was an eruption, and she was struck by magma. Amalia attempted to reach her, but could not. She fell.” Into lava, into all those things that had once resembled and ignited her; uncertain if it was fitting or more depressing. Gone, gone, gone, and the traces, filaments, left behind seethed, scathed, and fumed.
He was something solid
to lean against
violent and fierce and unmoving
