Serenity

DEIMOS Delivered from the blasts His hands stretched out for the water once more, the cool, chilling presence of it keeping him in check, holding him to a threshold less barbaric, more stoic, a glacier, a mountain, a piece of stony, monolithic contortions. Some slipped into his palms, and he brought it up to his face, biding his time, fluid and conspiring, quiet and hushed, silent as the grave, as he scrubbed over his features. If she wished to be unyielding, he would be the same – an inflexible, unbending machine, a slab of marble barely carved or sculpted, right down into the rigid nature of his bones, of all the days he’d spent machinating the twist and turn of shadows, the seditious, irreverent spread of man and beast. He didn’t even roll his eyes at her next statement: she wasn’t there when they saved others from a landslide, she wasn’t there when a flinthopper set the world on fire – and perhaps none of that mattered. Maybe she was busy doing other things. Maybe she had scattered moments, just like the rest of them, battering against the earth and screaming outcries when it didn’t listen to their pleas. Maybe she simply watched. Maybe she knew better than those who kept striving, kept trying. He didn’t even show the slightest bit of surprise when her name, and various titles, spread across the surroundings, echoes of chains, of notice boards, of an army he was meant to be a part of. The Reaper’s mind however, whirled in its divisive moments, a tread lightly and be careful funneling its way into his mind; never at ease, not in the splash of twilight, not in the promise of darkness. His gaze flickered back to her, unreadable, maintaining the same reticent, withdrawn, detached predilection. “How would you like to be addressed?” A haze of memories gnarled against him (Deimos, Lord of the Aurora Basin), titles and sweeping intonations never his strong suit: he was what he was, with no other claim to fame. His throne was gone. His tomb was vacant. The devils were all gathered here. So he pressed, the depths of curiosity woven and tinged. “I hear we are meant to join your army. What do you intend to fight against?” the last of a line of lasts