wound relentlessly

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame While Kiada thought and processed, so did he, a maelstrom of conclusions, memories, and wraiths wrapping themselves in his skull. He was suddenly mentally exhausted, fatigued by the rush of anything and everything, once chiseled into so many finite, inept pieces, now restored into infinite possibilities, turns, and fragments. What if he failed here too? What if this was his final chance, his concluding opportunity, to right the ship, to steer himself away from the wreckage? What if he simply wasn’t meant to, and the universe enjoyed their toy, laughed as the breathing weapon struggled to maintain any semblance of a life? What if he was? She was silent for a long time, and that was fine, an understandable notion as he curled and coiled around himself. He breathed and the world before him was unrelenting, pressing on his muscles, on his flesh, on his sinew, until the marrow growled back in his feral expanse. He had to do more. He had to find a purpose. He had to commit to something other than wandering around, pressed inward by ghosts and specters, clinging to past lifelines and tethers dragging his frame into oblivion. The heathen had rested there long enough, the realms, the kingdoms, the sovereigns seemed to say, had enjoyed his fiendish, nefarious bombardments, but would have to move, have to look beyond schisms and vehemence – a catalyst, a spark, a kindling settling between his ribs and heart. He’d spent too long simply falling apart. The hushed, quiet stewing frayed with her voice, and he was pulled away from the lull, from the listlessness, from the crowing, barking madness streamlined into his veins (try reverberated and reflected back at him; he bowed his head against it and promised). He nodded at her, an agreement, a pact, in revelations and discoveries – the Reaper could show her the Thief, and then Kiada could decide what to do from there. Perhaps she didn’t want to crack timelines and fracture passages of moments, maybe she didn’t want to scorch the unknown, and would prefer to avoid the chaos, the bedlam, the trials and tribulations of worlds colliding. Deimos hadn’t been given a choice. He took her proffered hand, unfurling, standing, from where he’d crouched and crawled, bones fatigued, as if a hundred years suddenly gnawed on them. The beast answered her smirk with one of his own, but it too lacked its mischief, its vile, villainous outlines. “When you are ready,” he nodded, arching a brow, pondering the next opportunity and how to court it, before they left – far more broken, far more whole, than when they’d begun. master of nothing place of recoil and grace

Kiada