DEIMOS
Something gloomy, desolate, and forlorn spun along the attuned bond, and for once it wasn’t him plunging down the edges with his anguish and despair – and then it was gone, as if it were never there. A reminder, perhaps, as he glanced down at her, that even those with high spirits, with fire in their hearts, with vivacity in their bones, could be picked and chipped away by this earth. That embers could be diminished and dimmed, that flames may not spread as wide or as far, that there were things that clung to remnants and memories in them as well; even if they were no more than vestiges. It still hurt. It still claimed. It still lasted. So he gave naught to the void of its rapacity, other than the pervading currents of reassurance, of strength, of how they’d remained, even if they’d been battered, broken, beaten, and damned in the haze. The tease permitted an arch of his brow, but not much more.Eyes back upon the horizon, along steeples and towers, upon darkened plumes rising out of ivory eclipses; tilting his head to listen, to reverberate. “Mm. Supposedly they were taken care of, but I imagine some sequestered themselves away.” He took naught for granted – and had only been a witness to one of those particular inhabitants before the dragon; and it’d almost been nothing at all, considering not a single nuance of comprehension or knowledge passed through the party before Sunjata had cut the man apart. The Fangs would just be another grand opportunity for them to regain some proclivity. Or maybe he’d just run out of hope in the last few seasons.
They pressed onward, closing in on the aforementioned world. “Yes,” and there was a hint of a grin in his response, as they walked forward, forward, forward, as they eventually left the ice and rime behind, and instead tread upon a mixture of cobblestones and snow, in a city surrounded by walls. The palace jutted ahead, roads marked by lines of fires, markets dotting the landscape for those that required the necessities out in the cold, and the seemingly endless streets, avenues, and alleys he was still learning, memorizing. “What do you want to see first?”
He was something solid
to lean against
violent and fierce and unmoving
