we're all killers
It was odd, bizarre, to liken a story across lifetimes, hardly ever told – either by those who’d been stifled and massed into it, or passed along like legends by those who hadn’t participated, but heard, generations breathing in awe of the multitude, of the triumphs, or the failures. Deimos had never been one to elaborate either, lost in silence, in his own melancholy, in his own brooding factions, to bother with the trivialties of yesteryear, or the ongoing suffering he’d never quite moved away from. Helovia was a distant world, but mistakes were repeated, history had an orchestra, a conductor, and even in the lightest of his smiles at the mention of Mauja, another king eclipsed in ice, made him ponder if he was entrenched again in something he couldn’t fight his way out of, if there was a beckoning echo of destruction eternally slanted along his brow, naught he could ever escape, if he wanted to be liberated from its graceful, sweeping arch of ruin and demolition.
At her inquiries and questions though, he remembered not everyone had been subject to the histories and hatred, vitriol and vehemence, between kingdoms. The genesis of such animosities had started along these intervals and points, the positioning of comrades and adversaries, the raising of hackles, the grinding of teeth, mettle and metal scraping against skin. “The Basin did not exist yet,” he intoned with a slight grin, a tease, a taunt, an arch to his brow again, while he stretched his arms across the table. Created, within their gilded hue, were markers, one each to represent particular sovereignties, little pieces on an imagined chessboard – sliding them along the enamel so she could see. The World’s Edge was a miniature plateau with rocky cliffs, an indentation of glass in its corner, the Windtossed Foothills with its valleys before it’d become the Hidden Falls, and the Dragon’s Throat, ramparts with red, red, red. He maneuvered them in clusters, showing the Edge surrounded – the final piece concocted was a onyx and gold dragon, and while not the most accurate representation of Mirage and her Qian, perhaps it was enough to justify the measures and means. “There was no help. Mirage’s group had allied themselves with the other kingdoms,” and here he tapped on the Throat, moving it before the Edge. “They had troops from the Dragon’s Throat and the Windtossed Foothills. The Hidden Falls were reformed from the Foothills, some time after.” And there, after he’d hastened the pieces around, it was clear the Edge had no chance, no opportunity at all, no matter how hard they’d fought, outnumbered, outfought. His eyes simply looked on them in less of a smirk, more of a drawn line, a frown, days where death and death and death brandished from his fingertips, and no one could touch him, no one at all.
And still he’d roared, howled, and lacerated, until dust settled and the outcome was clear.
“I am not certain where Mirage came from. Only that she wished to reign where the Moon Goddess resided.” He’d never asked. He’d never cared in particular; their hatred had fed ongoing plots and attempts for seasons thereafter – it didn’t matter in the end, where she’d wandered in from, and only what she’d committed upon her arrival.
At her inquiries and questions though, he remembered not everyone had been subject to the histories and hatred, vitriol and vehemence, between kingdoms. The genesis of such animosities had started along these intervals and points, the positioning of comrades and adversaries, the raising of hackles, the grinding of teeth, mettle and metal scraping against skin. “The Basin did not exist yet,” he intoned with a slight grin, a tease, a taunt, an arch to his brow again, while he stretched his arms across the table. Created, within their gilded hue, were markers, one each to represent particular sovereignties, little pieces on an imagined chessboard – sliding them along the enamel so she could see. The World’s Edge was a miniature plateau with rocky cliffs, an indentation of glass in its corner, the Windtossed Foothills with its valleys before it’d become the Hidden Falls, and the Dragon’s Throat, ramparts with red, red, red. He maneuvered them in clusters, showing the Edge surrounded – the final piece concocted was a onyx and gold dragon, and while not the most accurate representation of Mirage and her Qian, perhaps it was enough to justify the measures and means. “There was no help. Mirage’s group had allied themselves with the other kingdoms,” and here he tapped on the Throat, moving it before the Edge. “They had troops from the Dragon’s Throat and the Windtossed Foothills. The Hidden Falls were reformed from the Foothills, some time after.” And there, after he’d hastened the pieces around, it was clear the Edge had no chance, no opportunity at all, no matter how hard they’d fought, outnumbered, outfought. His eyes simply looked on them in less of a smirk, more of a drawn line, a frown, days where death and death and death brandished from his fingertips, and no one could touch him, no one at all.
And still he’d roared, howled, and lacerated, until dust settled and the outcome was clear.
“I am not certain where Mirage came from. Only that she wished to reign where the Moon Goddess resided.” He’d never asked. He’d never cared in particular; their hatred had fed ongoing plots and attempts for seasons thereafter – it didn’t matter in the end, where she’d wandered in from, and only what she’d committed upon her arrival.
DEIMOS
