The Reaper was familiar with chaos and all its irreverent values – the bludgeoning, blistering sense of devastation, of ruin, of malice, of contortion, as it erupted in layers and seditious oeuvres. They’d deployed it within systems of barrages and assaults, when they yearned to exploit a weakness, when they canvassed the world in pillaging decadence and catastrophic bedlam; he’d been a victim of it too, deep in the recesses and hollows, where scars marked and etched their way across his flesh, his sinew, his bones. Perhaps this moment ate at his soul because it was borne from complete, utter stupidity, rather than a necessity, an art of war, a finesse of goals and ambitions.
He heard the nuances, the noises, the notions, before they sparked and sizzled to life. The soldier launched from his hiding space, which previously had seemed like a good omen, but now relegated him to simply being a witness to his resources being blown to smithereens. He thought about shouting, about roaring, about howling into the ether, demanding she stop, desist, curl all the embers and foils back into her being – but it’d been too late. Instead, the depth of his piercing eyes watched as the hay crackled and coiled back into itself, ignited the forest floor for those scarce, brief intervals, candles in the midnight doldrums, ash and soot moments later. It was as if he’d done nothing, nothing at all.
Maybe that was what the world was already telling him - you are nothing - and he just kept looking past it.
His silence was the more deafening shade – above all the sounds of his wasted efforts (because where was he going to get more hay, he’d have to barter and exchange again, perhaps for more meat that he needed to save for the oncoming evenings?), because it collided and stormed in his gut, in his lungs, in his feral outlook on life. The beast could see a thousand different things mottled in his quiet, unholy wrath (vermin, fiends, and infidels rampaging through glacial fields and unfrozen lakes, tearing apart his throne, his country, invasions blurring past lines in sands and cliffs, hypocrisy making a swift mark on his compatriots), mercurial, tempestuous, disastrous in the steady, blinding whir of his mind.
Deimos still made not a single sound as he came closer to the scene, boots carefully stomping out a few wayward coals, before his glare managed to pinpoint solely on Edrei. He’d admired her fire, her motions, her ability to contort power into bestial torment once – but for now, it was strained. He clenched his jaw and mulled over his next set of actions – for once Deimos would’ve launched into outrage and upheaval, consigning anyone and everyone nearby straight to the depths of hell in his contempt; indifferent, detached, from the scene, from the world, manifesting straight into the sword, the cutlass, the rapier, of his namesake. Nowadays he exercised more control, more precision, and didn’t even bother curling his fists, tilting his head, lowering his eyes, watching another apple burn along the sidelines. The growl was in his throat, the rage was in his chest, but the situation was so far gone from war, from battle, just…desolation at his feet. “It is not a crime to think,” his glare fixated on her, body turning so he could find a few flakes perhaps undamaged by the roughened siege, but he knew very well there’d be no sighting of Luxere tonight. The idea had been abolished no sooner than it’d sparked; blasted back into heathen reaches.
