light the fuse

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame They were answered, calls for information echoing down the chambers, until softened steps meandered their way into the aperture. He recognized the pale creature before them, albeit briefly, and without a name to the face, gathered in the same outrages and meetings they’d all found themselves thrust within. Rexanna was received well, and clearly he’d shared the same former fate he’d bestowed upon the colorless figure, unknown, like a particle of dust or sand. He was accustomed to it now though, biding his time, waiting, action and devastation boiling down into his veins, waiting for the opportunity, the moment, to strike. “Deimos,” he acknowledged her inquiry with an answer, a firm nod, obliging because there was knowledge and sagacity to be had, grasped, held, and he wasn’t about to ruin the opening they’d been handed. The beast looked back at Rexanna, proffering an arch of his brow but saying nothing else, before following the white woman down the hall. There were no threats, no ill omens, no ominous, foreboding hisses treading down the length of the walls. Perhaps that was more unsettling to him: hospitality and tranquility, serenity in the array of scholarly wonders. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do when she showed them further into the sitting area, with its chairs near a fireplace, trays of cups and promised tea…taking one simply a seat simply out of courtesy, but refusing to sink into its depths, spine straight and taut. What he’d learned had been minimal though. His ignorance was an outstanding thing, and it genuinely appeared to enjoy slapping him in the face on a day-to-day basis. Ask him anything about his own homelands, about the ways the world had twisted back upon itself time after time, war after war, campaign after campaign, and he’d be a wealth of knowledge. Here though, where he’d been thrust into the great unknown, the more he wandered, he found the less he knew. He’d been scraping by on Naturals’ beneficence and his own experiences, some less considerate than others. But to the barrier’s regard, he had very little but the bellows of the crowd when the spire monster was being defeated, the rage, the glory, the triumph, the devastation, all merged and combined together into a brawling mob. His tones were plain, largely ineffectual with their comprehension and expertise, but that’s why they’d arrived here. “Some want it down. Others want it to remain. It keeps us here.” His gaze flickered over to Rexanna, who likely held a lot more schooling and erudition on the subject matter, before another appeared. Deimos hadn’t expected Amalia to glide into the area, but their need for cognition and perception must’ve summoned her too. He tilted his head and regarded her with a nod, the slightest indent of a smile, but she seemed distracted, shy, and he couldn’t really ascertain why. Was this not her threshold? Or was it their presence, the abandoned, the Outlanders, in the corridors, out of place, ill-fitting, not belonging? Then the subject shifted to the rags (Ludo’s) draped on Maea’s shoulders, set apart from the rest of her blank canvas, for it was the exact opposite of her chosen hues. He’d seen the god drape itself across her during the mayhem, the menace, but wouldn’t have known what to make of it until now. Favored by the Gods. He paid it little mind, since he would never be amongst or amidst the chosen, the anointed, the consecrated few, yet – it was a curious thing, to unravel why or how she’d come to be selected and appointed, where others had not. Perhaps they were about to learn far more than what they’d come for. master of nothing place; of recoil and grace