Shoot the Messenger

D e i m o s

Send a heartbeat to the void that cries through you
Relive the pictures that have come to pass

There it was: the forewarning sliding apart and revealing the depths of the multitude underneath. His mind sizzled, fumed, and sparked, a smoldering bout of inner workings beginning their fundamental calculations – because this was the Reaper at his very core, alive and fiendish, ruthless and commanding, devious and calculating, a coldblooded machine, a living, breathing weapon. It roared and kindled along his incensed form, a hundred, a thousand myriad things extending from the past (gone; no matter how much he’d done, tiny children torn from their mother’s arms, items collected and taken from the unsuspecting, invasions wrapping their chords around his neck as he rampaged and fought for them all), sliding their icy denizens into his throat and down his chest. They were chilling remnants and furious, ferocious things, a blend of glacial elements and the fire, the rage, the seething, malicious wrath scaling and scalding its way through his limbs, his flesh, his sinew. He memorized the roots and phrases, the journey into the woods, the ambush, Kiada sent off into the sky to ensnare assistance, Ianto abandoning them to the wiles and wills of the forest. But then he touched upon the things unsaid and unspoken; nothing of Caiside (whom he didn’t know), and nothing of Amalia’s whereabouts. This was it then – the loss. It’d just started earlier this time, wrapped its heathen hands along his throat and strangled. Try, just try the ghosts had guided, had hoped, and he almost wanted to laugh, because the patterns repeated and reviled. Except giving in was no longer an option. Once, the hollow, empty shell of his soul would’ve merely sunk further, given into despair and torture, torment and agony, waited for the rest of his figure to be taken over by sepulchers and catacombs, mind and presence already in the grave. It was too late for him now, already firmly entrenched and rooted in this damned place, reaching out for those who’d dared, who’d tolerated, who’d accepted his ridiculous, stupid, asinine presence. “What of Amalia? Do you know where they went? Did you see anything?” The inquiries clustered together, scheming and conniving, maintaining the knowledge of Ianto, the debt the fox owed him amidst the chain of timber and flames. I could use your strength, indeed. Jigano wouldn’t be going in there alone. Deimos would charge because that’s what he did – assaulted and sieged, coiled munitions and weapons and damnation into his palms. But he wasn’t an impulsive, impetuous force – this would require cunning, more than just meandering into the clearings and hoping for the best. The Loreseekers had already been mauled once. “What ambushed you?” A promise, a vow, slid from his mouth, the firm bite of resolve and merciless corruption – he was a man straight from hell again, varnished and lacquered back into the shadows of the battlefield. “We will find them. But not alone.” For now we stand alone, the world is lost and blown And we are flesh and blood disintegrate with no more to hate