Serenity

DEIMOS Delivered from the blasts Deimos had been practiced in the art of subversion, adversity, and irreverence for so long that it’d become natural to resist. While some portions of the earth bowed their heads and accepted without question, without fault, with naught more than demure accord, he frequently did the opposite. He kept his head up. He aligned his eyes with scrutiny, with study, with careful, inquisitive airs; a coldblooded nonchalance that gave nothing away. He was burrowed and buried, a hollowed vessel when it was required – when the chill ran down his spine and left him a wolf, rather than a mere, abandoned, forsake, desolate creature. Restraint was a gift, a Siberian thrall to his muscles and movements, all coiled, all curled, all contorted, until it was required to strike. Yet she did not, and so the measured, Machiavellian composition remained, chiseled in the darker threads and features of his face. He didn’t bow. He didn’t call her your highness, my queen, or pledge allegiance. The beast listened. He understood preparation, training, could comprehend getting them all ready for the physical aspects of it. He’d done it multitudes of times, beckoned by the drum, the beat, the banners; placed his sword and shield in hand and went straight into battle. Back then, he questioned very little, because triumph and glory had been in the promised proclamations, and his heart had leapt at the chance to become something. In the end, he’d become a malicious, menacing predator, carnivore incantations bruising and unwinding, with an abundance for sedition and revolution. “That may be true,” he admitted upon her last line – pondering who she thought would become enemies of the Hollowed Grounds. Or if it was just the foreboding, ominous dirge of it all. He swept more water into his palm, then released it, playing, toying, calculating while the cold reaches settled into his skin. “They may not have ever known war.” And in a sense, he was glad for them – because while he was an unrelenting force, a driven, barbaric machine, a living, breathing weapon, the fact that some could maintain their innocence, never needing to shed blood, must’ve been a grand, beatific thing. The Reaper tilted his head back towards her, curious all the more. "Have you?" the last of a line of lasts