[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

He tilted his head, another indication he was listening even as the Reaper’s eyes gazed down to the ground, then swept back up again, at his targets, at the endless waves of trials rearing their ugly heads. The notion about incompatible shields was irritating and exasperating, and he didn’t say much more about them – perhaps he could research other methods, elements, or modes to increase the probability (would rock? Would stone? And even then, how could they be lifted high enough to defend anyone, when weighed down so fiercely?). “Where could we look?” His eyes eventually turned back to the bard; perhaps the Loreseeker knew exactly where there were magical tomes and entanglements, rooted and solidified in days of old, where arcane, ancient scripture could be utilized again. And would it matter after everything anyway – too little, too late? The Merciless had already ascended to her throne, and the rest of her powers, incantations, and eldritch abominations alongside her. He clenched his jaw, but didn’t give in. Rebellious to the very last moments, to the final interludes of breath and damnation. But then his magic swarmed, an upheaval, a malicious, sinking, slinking demolition, thriving through the ground and arriving in Jigano’s form – he breathed and controlled, contorted and coiled, wrestled with the enmity, the hostility, the acrimony, bending it to his will, even as the lush, lavished, decadent array of incantations uttered for him to do his worst. More, they might’ve said, begging and tempting, enticing and inveigling, desperate for an opportunity to devise further, to wreak havoc, to exchange life with death. It’d been so long since the belligerent ends reared their ugly heads; he sharpened an inhale, an exhale, and a narrowing of his eyes, while he watched, while he waited, while he pulsed and persisted. The bard braced and the enchantments within wanted to laugh, wanted to scorn, wanted to mock and burn and chisel the entire world into the ground. The warrior did not. Jigano grunted, planting a foot forward, trying to stave off the insistent predilections, the wrapping and accord of death; fight it the beast begged, just to see if it would work, just to see if it would happen, just to see if one of them would be able to counter or ward away the demonic intervals threatening to consume them all. Then it was nothing – the bard urged enough and Deimos pulled the spells away, cast them back into his own sanction and sanctuary, eased his breath into the billowing contortions, frowned at the response. “Are you all right?” He considered and asked, moving forward to proffer his hands to the man, if he needed to be guided elsewhere, to a seat, to a chair, to a pile of wood simply so he could rest. “It is something,” he shrugged, but not entirely appeased. Looming, foreboding damnation and condemnation from their current monarch wasn’t anything he looked forward to. “Perhaps there are weapons that could absorb.” For now we stand alone, the world is lost and blown And we are flesh and blood disintegrate with no more to hate