[Training] find a way

D e i m o s

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

The incident seemed to scream innocent ventures, an interval after his called meeting, hoping to find some parallel ground with others: come to this, landslides and rubble, disasters and mayhem. He nodded, listening, not adding any exasperation, none to speak of when he could understand why they’d done it. His was much simpler. “We heard screams and saw there had been a landslide. There was an opening – “ and then they’d gone in – he shrugged, as if it were nothing, when his blood had run cold, when seasons, years, cycles, and lives before, he would have just left them all there, dead and gone beneath the impact of their choices. This world had changed, altered him, but so had its inhabitants. It bound and tethered, but he didn’t shake the lines away; not nooses, not knots, not gnarled things. Perhaps that was why he fought and rebelled now. Perhaps that was why he chiseled his way back into foundations, into strength, into practice, into rituals of acrimony and calamity. He knew the way insurrections and turmoil worked: he’d been within its depths first hand, time after time, moment after moment, fighting his way to the surface, trying to drag compatriots with him. There was a threat on the horizon, and he couldn’t let the earth swallow the things he craved, the things he loved, the things he cherished whole; would make a martyr of himself before they were absconded and broken. He’d lost. He’d always lost. Not any longer was a convincing oath, for however long it could last. Deimos was familiar with a rapier, but it was not his preferred weapon. He’d accumulated all sorts of munitions and arms, but his favored were the broadswords, for his bulk, for his might, for the weight and distribution of power. The warrior wasn’t surprised at Jigano’s knack for it, he was built for speed, for getting out of harm’s way before the worst came. “Sometimes subtlety and speed are not enough.” He smiled a little, a glimmer of a smirk, a memory of how many damned times he thought he was faster, thought he was better, than another waging adversary, and paid the price for it. Slowed down, Jigano had more of an ability to defend and parry. He lacked the practiced motion, but likely only due to the sling impacting his movement; but a quick, efficient learner (no surprise there either; leader of the Loreseekers, pride to knowledge and sagacity), blocking the blunt impact of Deimos’ assault. While Jigano mused, the Reaper witnessed, constantly studying, examining, watching as the blade came for his shoulder, and on trained, honed instinct, he lifted his blade upwards, so it would catch, so it would slide, so his power and dominion could cease its decline. Then, he could peruse the inquiries of mages and countering them. “If the Merciless is asking for us to be known as Destined, then she likely favors them.” He snorted, a raw, blunt edge of humor, as if a title change would ever court anything from people already anointed as Abandoned. The name stuck, and it honored them well: forsaken and deserted. “We could always create things: like nets. Traps.” He shrugged once more, a roll of his bestial shoulders, and then a nefarious notion began to take shape, brutal and barbaric, twisted and vehement, the keen note of his existence, his carved throne, his empty, hollowed threshold. “Would you be willing to try and withstand another kind of magic?” For now we stand alone, the world is lost and blown And we are flesh and blood disintegrate with no more to hate