the rest will fall in line

DEIMOS Delivered from the blasts She laughed at him. Were this an ordinary day, he might have just left at the ridicule, balked, or simply seethed. He’s heard it a million times before, as he roamed through shadows, as the world mocked him for what he was, for what he didn’t know. It was the ignorance clambering back to him now, made him want to clench his fingers around her throat and stifle her breathing, made the urgency all the more paramount, made the agony, the torment, the suffering scorch over his bones. The potential for ruin and annihilation was right there, in the space of a second, an instant, and her mockery would be over. Yet, so would any and all opportunity for information. The manipulative guise would be incomplete. The ruse would be over, shattered, and the results might still be the same. But it wasn’t about his wounded pride or obvious incomprehension – it was about Amalia, about Kiada, about anyone else lingering in the traps and snares. The beast didn’t know what this Tulmhainar was; couldn’t perceive its weaknesses, couldn’t channel its ministrations or devices, couldn’t claim anything except a name, a title, an honorific. Can’t tell you anymore she laughed and lilted, as she kindled about corpses, and he swallowed, suppressed the urge to stick a knife in her chest again. He was going to lose them. The impact spit in his face and ridiculed, scorned him again. There is nothing you can do! the gods jeered, the world laughed, the earth chuckled. It was the rain once more, drowning him in waves, in currents, as he roared and defied and it didn’t even matter. Deimos struggled to maintain any façade; his face went back to its nonchalance, its steely, iron rigor, when everything else brewed, brooded, and contorted mayhem, malice, seething, burning contempt for lives he was going to lose. The pattern continued. It scarred. It brutalized. It sunk into his skin and ensured that for all his trials and tribulations, there was only more to come. “Thank you for the information,” he bit out, loosened from between his teeth and tongue, deep and foreboding, completely willing to let the world come crashing down around him. “Come collect your favor when you are ready.” He didn’t tell her where to find him. She could do a bit of searching – he had tides to turn. the last of a line of lasts