[PQ] Long may you run

DEIMOS Delivered from the blasts They tried, striving onward and onward, following pathlines to imminent death, betrayal, or anything in between; because that was all they had, all they could grasp, when the world didn’t open up and let them in. They were the intruders, but only for their own, only because they’d been taken and snagged first, and he strived, desperately strived, to not flicker apart in the dredged madness and consume, devour them all. Were they to be guests of the forest until the Fae decided otherwise? Were they to be scattered amidst the leaves and timber too – as bones, as flesh discarded, as offerings to this fabled thing amidst their village? The lightest sizzle of hope coiled in his chest at the sign of structures, more than just the endless, foreboding forest, but it was short-lived on Arduinna’s last words, the ambush crawling along the woodland, shifting and unfolding, revealing for only the briefest of seconds. Earthen elements shivered and undulated, recoiled back into their unsaid throngs, and he reclaimed reticence, forged it through and through when all he craved, when all he yearned to do was hurl a weapon and show violence, vehemence. Stay the course, his Machiavellian mind concocted, over the roar, over the flames, over the bellowing irreverence casting its kindling across his blood. If he showed the slightest bit of savagery, a part of him wondered if they’d lose their chances altogether, however slim they might’ve been – ruined, bludgeoned, because his anguish, his temper, was extraordinary and contemptuous. Another Fae appeared, smaller but no less threatening, the sort of alarm and ominous intentions that might’ve screamed alarm in any other beings; but they were stalwart and resolute, and his reticence blended back over his brows, along his mouth, until he seemed a blank, iron slate, listening, listening, listening, struggling to grasp and hold what they were supposed to do next. His eyes cast back to the shadow of buildings, wondering if the pit was nearby, if they could simply continue onward, or if this standoff was going to ensure they didn’t get any farther. The reverberation of the stranger’s words though, rasped and clawed against his insides, and he was terrified of the question, of the answer, suddenly pulsing along his lips. “Who?” He inquired, he dared, as if she knew their names, their faces, who had been sacrificed?, and maybe it didn’t matter, really, because he’d be broken again if it was either Amalia or Kiada, gone and swept away just as everyone else in his life had been. He could hear his heart pounding in his head, a throng, a din, a discordant reflection of what his face dared not display. the last of a line of lasts