DEIMOS
Somewhere along the way she seemed to have taken his words as a personal affront. Quiet and listening, still not touching his food, he tried to work out the lines of communication in his mind. He’d meant to empower the notions of Halo’s own, but apparently that had gone askew. A long, slow breath unfurled from his lungs once more, before his piercing gaze went right to hers. Direct to direct then. “Keeping a leader, who has done almost nothing to aid her citizens in the time she has taken power back, and was willing to assault her own people for that supremacy, would not be wise.” The tones were calm and composed, but came with legions of experience, and some modicum of dread. Was it a misconception from his days in Helovia – winding and weaving their way through political reaches, calling for their failed sovereigns to step down? Challenging those in the domineering factions to listen to their inhabitants? Had they not done the same to Wessex in the Grounds, once she and others had bludgeoned Greatwood residents? Where were the matters of complacency stoked and refined now?
The Sword eventually took a bite of the bird, only to keep his jaw from locking, from clenching, from subsiding right back into archaic motions. It gave him time to tilt his head, attend to her place and opinion in the world, and how the air of objectivity slunk back in. He could fathom why – impartiality felt safe. No bias. Equitable. But it was also detached from what was happening around them, and he wasn’t certain how much longer that could last. The walls were already tightening around Torchline. When would the mountains be called? He swallowed down the piece, looking at Shaye again, wanting and willing to understand. “Do you think the gods, any of them, will permit neutrality?”
Kiada’s name tightened the cords along his spine, plucking at age-old lacerations along his ribs, and he still didn’t know what he could do for her. His response was a low rumble, the aftermath of everything coiled in the forefront. “They have been forced to fight before. During LongNight. She took them out of Halo.” And there were all his other misgivings along the way – how they were plucked out of the summits so easily, so readily, how the Voice had raised the dead, how they hadn’t been given any alternative other than monsters in the hollowed hell. Deimos’ stare went out into the falling dusk, where the streak of colors met darkening thresholds, where pieces and patterns made sense. There were no easy answers.
He took another bite to lessen the sudden pit in his chest, feeling the weight of her stare on him. At least the next inquiry was an easy one, where plans he’d made had cycled back through his mind many times over. Placing the plate on his lap, he leaned forward, beginning to trace and draw the Citadel in the sand between them – perfected from memory, and the modicum of machinations he’d charted. “Lessen the sway and control the New Gods have. With the LongNight monster being able to come through the portal, some other means of transportation needs to be found.” Maybe a sky portal, if Noah came back into power. Some method that ensured they weren’t isolated, or sitting ducks, waiting to be picked off. His fingers etched an outline of a fortress thereafter with thicker walls and imposing gates, a dome above, a watchtower, a bolt hole underneath, leading to somewhere. “Make Halo a stronghold.”
The Sword eventually took a bite of the bird, only to keep his jaw from locking, from clenching, from subsiding right back into archaic motions. It gave him time to tilt his head, attend to her place and opinion in the world, and how the air of objectivity slunk back in. He could fathom why – impartiality felt safe. No bias. Equitable. But it was also detached from what was happening around them, and he wasn’t certain how much longer that could last. The walls were already tightening around Torchline. When would the mountains be called? He swallowed down the piece, looking at Shaye again, wanting and willing to understand. “Do you think the gods, any of them, will permit neutrality?”
Kiada’s name tightened the cords along his spine, plucking at age-old lacerations along his ribs, and he still didn’t know what he could do for her. His response was a low rumble, the aftermath of everything coiled in the forefront. “They have been forced to fight before. During LongNight. She took them out of Halo.” And there were all his other misgivings along the way – how they were plucked out of the summits so easily, so readily, how the Voice had raised the dead, how they hadn’t been given any alternative other than monsters in the hollowed hell. Deimos’ stare went out into the falling dusk, where the streak of colors met darkening thresholds, where pieces and patterns made sense. There were no easy answers.
He took another bite to lessen the sudden pit in his chest, feeling the weight of her stare on him. At least the next inquiry was an easy one, where plans he’d made had cycled back through his mind many times over. Placing the plate on his lap, he leaned forward, beginning to trace and draw the Citadel in the sand between them – perfected from memory, and the modicum of machinations he’d charted. “Lessen the sway and control the New Gods have. With the LongNight monster being able to come through the portal, some other means of transportation needs to be found.” Maybe a sky portal, if Noah came back into power. Some method that ensured they weren’t isolated, or sitting ducks, waiting to be picked off. His fingers etched an outline of a fortress thereafter with thicker walls and imposing gates, a dome above, a watchtower, a bolt hole underneath, leading to somewhere. “Make Halo a stronghold.”
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
