DEIMOS
Deimos didn’t fear fire. He probably should’ve, like most manifested beings. But he’d known the element nearly his entire life: his father’s enchantments, brandished and contorted, created and indulgent, were always there, and later on, the beast had developed his own. The surge and rise of an inferno, the decadence in the art of its disastrous wake, fed into his ichor, into his soul, into the potential ruin and demolition. Sometimes it gave more than just conflagration; warmth, guidance, a shelter, a refuge, when everything else seemed too bleak, too cold, too lost. And now, it was being heralded into a game.
He watched, silent and scrupulous, as Henry opted for a version of trial by flames. The beast could feel the others’ trepidation – an understanding notion – but didn’t feed into it. Instead, he launched those emboldened, audacious properties back, to further spur the fellow eagle on. He may not have needed the rallying point though; a spiral, a shot, through the unwavering flickers, and he was on the other side.
At the goading, the beast rumbled in return; there would’ve been a smirk layered in there, if animals could orchestrate such features. I will try.
And so he did – launching, extending his wings, to follow on the path, to tred further into the gallows, to unfurl his ominous proportions into an echo of things he’d always known. A maddening conviction, when one stopped to think about it – but Deimos had eternally run straight into the fires, rather than permit others to do the same.
Undaunted by the smoke or fumes, he persisted, entangling and unleashing into the venue of heat, pressure, and flares; the gilded and sienna edges of his plumage touching, glorifying, in the haze. There was smoke and there was abyss, but there was the other side too – and he swiftly contorted within all of it, before breathing out of the winding fumes. A moment or two passed, ensuring he too hadn’t been set completely ablaze, spiraling upwards into the sky; and then descending again, a rapid, quick match, awaiting judgment.
"who's gonna let you?"
they asked. i said
"who's gonna stop me?"
