The game continued, and Deimos would have gratefully batted back and forth, except the responding tunes became quieter, hushed, and the song faded away – his verses could have multiplied in ridiculous avenues, but then they dissipated in the calm wind. His brows furrowed, and he mulled over what to do, what to say next, mind spinning, churning, meticulous and devout in its ministrations; but her inquiry floated across the snow, and he swallowed down the enticement, the allure. Here, the soldier was caught at an impasse again; the snare set, the trap waiting for him to wander deeper, catch and snag, fervent, eager, to watch him lose, tumble further into ineptitude.
The warrior had to admit he was at a loss. He had nothing to offer her. He had nothing to offer anyone, truly. Killing was easy, a necessity during times of war, when the bugles sounded, the banners waved, and greed spiraled through their mercenary skulls. Slaughter and annihilation weren’t any particular, noteworthy skill, no matter how precise, quick, sudden, and swift he could devise and implement it. No one needed a hulking blackguard at their back, intimidating and glowering. No one required a brooding figure, too immersed, too deep, in their own faults and follies to be useful. No one yearned to talk to a creature dark, sullen, and still; they’d tried, and his failure at discourse sputtered away those finite moments. It was why he often wondered the gods had left him there, kneeling at graves and catacombs, enraged and wild, savage and contemptuous, longing to destroy anyone and anything in his path – they could have struck him down as he spewed blasphemous insults, as he spurned their existence. Perhaps this was his punishment: wandering around the earth in eternal purgatory; useless, ineffectual, and insubstantial. The world could view him as a hollowed shell, an empty, feral vessel, dragging his feet through the muck and mire, waiting for time to whittle its way at his bones, at his flesh. He clenched his jaw and recalled, remembered, the rain and the sea, hands grabbing hold of his face as he bowed his head and growled into the ether, the same bitter, rancorous edges clinging to his soul. The gentle sway it’d held over him, the strength of her cool fingers after coating the world in tranquility, in serenity : you’re worth so much more than you realize, she’d laughed in the sunlight, bright and ebullient, and he’d shaken his head. He hadn’t lived up to her statements, to her claims, either. He likely never would.
Why don’t you just try? her ghost would linger, out of sight, deep within the recesses of his memories, and he knew, understood the reason so very well: cowardice.
The man who stared down death, who embodied strength and brawn, who endured and persevered through sheer, blatant stubbornness, simply feared if he bestowed bits and pieces of his thoughts, of his musings, of his damned, immoral self, he’d lose everything all over again. It was tiring to hurt, to remain in anguish, to stay and stray in the constant, overbearing weight of guilt, of suffering, of misery, mocked by drawn scars along his spine, his shoulders, his ribs, his heart.
The silence had gone on too long, and Mr. Shade stared out in the abyss, piercing eyes straying to the pathways of snow, to the webbed designs left behind on pine needles and broken boughs. Deimos knew what she was doing, and had no way to stop it. The coaxing, the persuasion, was all laid out behind him, just slightly out of reach; he’d just have to break their cycle, be the first to glance, to step into the light, and admit defeat. He sighed, watched the puffs of warm air curl and coil before him, pondering when he’d be brave enough to let the rest of the void take him over the edge. “Never. We did not have them in Isilme,” he proffered, giving away a piece of himself, of history in the segments and lines, the strikes and shadows, the graves and bones left behind; but that was all, because few ever bothered to pick up the shards of the Reaper.
