we're all killers
Trials shaped, bent, and swayed; tribulations sculpted, carved, and harpooned, and before his capture, the confidence, the arrogance, inside the Reaper had been a vicious thing. He’d been unattainable, unreachable, a monolith amongst the peaks, intimidating and blistering, barbaric and twisted, conforming to the savage shadows, where the light couldn’t reach and no one else wanted to, no one else would dare. Until they had. Until claws had snagged, until powers had been depleted, until he’d fought and fought and fought and the snares had still been there, choking and binding, until he’d been nothing more than a pawn. It’d been insulting, degrading, and a grinding notion in the back of his skull: unworthy, not enough, continuing on until his dying days, where he strived, where he lingered, where he poised and positioned them to some matter of repose after war and melees – but in the end, as he crashed and burned below rainfalls, rivers, and rime, he’d only been an echo. A passing of ash and bone. He glanced up as she spoke, hands off the figurines, back to his glass, sipping down the alcohol so memories didn’t become quite so suffocating, so there were no longer ropes along his throat, but daggers of his own machinations. It’s not your fault echoed and bounded, and while it was generous of her to try and lend some comfort, to his already condemned sphere, he simply shook his head, mouth masking a smirk. “I should have been more cautious, more aware.” Taken completely by surprise, like some juvenile soldier, like some rank, ridiculous infant, not a battle-hardened beast; but he’d learned from that lesson, had become all the more nefarious and barbaric. You will not have me blistered from his veins, and no one touched him again. “That is true. There was always the Basin.” Home, home, home, meaning so many things between oceans and peaks, never certain which one was more true.
He considered her, a tilt of his head again, much like a cat in study, in repose, because she’d been a prisoner, locked away in doldrums and dungeons by more heathens (and there were always plenty; a surrounding force of avaricious aspirants). The Reaper’s gaze lingered on her motions again as she altered the Edge – no longer cliffs surrounded by water, but a castle, a fortress, crimson and onyx, blood, blood, blood, ichor on fringes. “How did you escape?” He pondered – because Rexanna had always been clever, always been astute, capable of managing things with ruses and schemes far better than he. His sword managed most of the time; his calculations cold-blooded, etched and sketched with how to best someone in a brutal, barbaric, twisted foundation, how to scald, how to ruin, how to ensure their next breath was the last.
It is not easy; an understatement. Nothing had been in Helovia – though there were moments, scattered amidst ice and snow, that hadn’t been burdened by greed or ineptitude. Few.
“Psyche still allowed me to continue as General,” which, maybe she shouldn’t have, in the grand scheme of things, if he’d been idiotic and ignorant enough to get himself captured. “We grew in number, spread ourselves out, built up our world. Wreaked more havoc.” An indulgent chuckle escaped, but then it was gone in a flash. “Then we were repaid in our efforts, when the other kingdoms started trying to steal the children.” The Basin was not innocent in any regard, that much he would always admit, but the kids had never been at fault. He could recall racing through darkness and slashing at night, attempting to keep strangers and thieves and fiends away, exhausted, enraged, a manifested adversary to anyone and everyone who tried.
He considered her, a tilt of his head again, much like a cat in study, in repose, because she’d been a prisoner, locked away in doldrums and dungeons by more heathens (and there were always plenty; a surrounding force of avaricious aspirants). The Reaper’s gaze lingered on her motions again as she altered the Edge – no longer cliffs surrounded by water, but a castle, a fortress, crimson and onyx, blood, blood, blood, ichor on fringes. “How did you escape?” He pondered – because Rexanna had always been clever, always been astute, capable of managing things with ruses and schemes far better than he. His sword managed most of the time; his calculations cold-blooded, etched and sketched with how to best someone in a brutal, barbaric, twisted foundation, how to scald, how to ruin, how to ensure their next breath was the last.
It is not easy; an understatement. Nothing had been in Helovia – though there were moments, scattered amidst ice and snow, that hadn’t been burdened by greed or ineptitude. Few.
“Psyche still allowed me to continue as General,” which, maybe she shouldn’t have, in the grand scheme of things, if he’d been idiotic and ignorant enough to get himself captured. “We grew in number, spread ourselves out, built up our world. Wreaked more havoc.” An indulgent chuckle escaped, but then it was gone in a flash. “Then we were repaid in our efforts, when the other kingdoms started trying to steal the children.” The Basin was not innocent in any regard, that much he would always admit, but the kids had never been at fault. He could recall racing through darkness and slashing at night, attempting to keep strangers and thieves and fiends away, exhausted, enraged, a manifested adversary to anyone and everyone who tried.
DEIMOS
