we're all killers
The few companions and allies he managed to make were ones he’d defend to the bitter, rancorous end. It was how he’d always committed himself to others, in time, in biding moments and fluid instances, ensuring they weren’t caustic and damaging, demanding or treacherous to his own hide – never trusting until they’d proven themselves (because otherwise, he could be snared, he could be trapped, he could be blindsided). Those who even bothered to etch and sketch their way into his periphery, into his thoughts, into his munitions, into his heart and soul, would find a ready and willing soldier at their back, at their side, protective blackguard, capable and effectual, dastardly dagger, carving cutlass. Whether or not it was worth having him as a comrade likely depended on anyone’s definition of a friend, but Rexanna was amongst those he confided within, aligned with to a fault, after all the nuances, after all the plots and stratagems they’d encountered and conquered together, after picking up pieces and placing them together in winter caverns and dilapidated ruins. Glass clinked and his snicker remained there, a listening ear tilted in her direction while his eyes seared with the flames nearby; gods willing, except sometimes deities had nothing to do with it and it was all their actions, their runes, their diabolical masterminds.
“I am not surprised,” he shrugged, the glimpse of a smirk behind the tumbler as he took another drink; the standards set of sovereignties, rulers, and monarchs, the hostile, acrimonious lingering at fringes. “I did the same with any intruder.” His gaze was a piercing, molten thing; sets of dangerous emblems that spoke of how much he’d enjoyed intimidating strangers on their borders, beneath the monoliths, a Colossus amongst statues, marble amidst marble, death between his veins, a promise in his warnings – the smirk resting in the darkness. The rest of her tale was intriguing; that there were others from Tembovu’s land, suggesting names and titles for their king’s brethren, heirs to a cliff throne that no longer existed.
“We wished you had stayed too,” wasn’t sharp, wasn’t harsh, wasn’t guttural, but just an expression of all the things that had begun to flicker apart at the end. Before he died. Before he was lured out into the rain and fell at the embankment, when his heart gave out and his lungs coughed their last haggard breath and the world spun in glaciers behind his trapped eyelids.
He maneuvered away from it, head shifting away from embers and infernos, blue meeting blue, carnivore clash. “Did I tell you about the time I lived in the Edge?”
“I am not surprised,” he shrugged, the glimpse of a smirk behind the tumbler as he took another drink; the standards set of sovereignties, rulers, and monarchs, the hostile, acrimonious lingering at fringes. “I did the same with any intruder.” His gaze was a piercing, molten thing; sets of dangerous emblems that spoke of how much he’d enjoyed intimidating strangers on their borders, beneath the monoliths, a Colossus amongst statues, marble amidst marble, death between his veins, a promise in his warnings – the smirk resting in the darkness. The rest of her tale was intriguing; that there were others from Tembovu’s land, suggesting names and titles for their king’s brethren, heirs to a cliff throne that no longer existed.
“We wished you had stayed too,” wasn’t sharp, wasn’t harsh, wasn’t guttural, but just an expression of all the things that had begun to flicker apart at the end. Before he died. Before he was lured out into the rain and fell at the embankment, when his heart gave out and his lungs coughed their last haggard breath and the world spun in glaciers behind his trapped eyelids.
He maneuvered away from it, head shifting away from embers and infernos, blue meeting blue, carnivore clash. “Did I tell you about the time I lived in the Edge?”
DEIMOS
