[se] came back alive

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame He laughed once more, surprised to hear Elide’s teasing and mocking accord. But thereafter, her words were only encouragement – a strange inflection coming from her – touching over the greater, poignant parts of him; broadening over tired shoulders and a beleaguered, hanging head. Life had humbled him into something unworthy and undeserving, a fumbling failure in so many aspects, until somehow he’d wound and meandered here. Standing in a pool of water, grinning because there would be a time, a place, where he could find more than crumbling foundations again. “Oh? And what do you suggest I do?” Another warm round of laughter, where it pulsed and ricocheted off the Citadel wall, where it could echo instead of fade. Take, Rexanna had once told him in his dreams. It’s time to take. Except they ran then, straight into the puddles, and he wasn’t relinquished one bit. His eyes widened as she launched – as if mystified, perplexed, by the Elide underneath all the stoicism. Maybe that’s what everyone else did when he enacted the same mischievous mannerisms. But the Sword didn’t even bother to hide it, smiling and grinning all the while as the splashes recoiled straight upon him, cold and unabashed, streaking deliberately into his hair, down the back of his neck, and notched deep into furs. Belial might have made a mild screech at the antics, it was difficult to sparse through the vicious assaults, but the peryton responded in kind a moment later, little, jagged hooves volleying back into the center. And Deimos? Instead of posturing straight into his magic, which could’ve put on a wild, untamed display, the monolith instead jumped, and launched downward an instant later, rallying the cascade of water in all directions. master of nothing place; of recoil and grace