stray from the fight
Deimos Ignatius
the Resurrected Sword
Warden of Halo / Guildmaster

Age: 33 | Height: 6'4" | Race: Hybrid | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Halo
Level: 14 - Strg: 72 - Dext: 72 - Endr: 73 - Luck: 80 - Int: 3
BELIAL - Mythical - Peryton (Blend) ZURIEL - Mythical - Unicorn (Healing)
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Posts: 6,553 | Total: 10,646
MP: 9824
#15
We're lost in the space between
who we are and all that we're trying to be

The widening eyes were a reflection, surprise, but notice, distinction of those he’d spent marauding and destroying. Reaper came out – and he waited for it, the anvil to plummet, the ax to fall, the grinding motions of yesteryear’s triumphs and conquests defeated, diminished, because blood had been spilled upon this one’s land. Perhaps he’d cut apart a family member, a monster of the multitude, of the many who’d dared to embark where they weren’t wanted, who’d tried to defy his home’s ministrations, or who’d strived to go against the Basin’s war-mongering grain. But there was naught insulting or paralyzing, condemning or condescending, a slide of abhorrence sticking between syllables and lines – titles that had no benefit to this land except something he carried on his shoulders throughout worlds. No fear registered, not a semblance of treachery or danger, not a sensation of wrath or indication of vengeance. Bewilderment struck him further as his hand was taken, introductions pulsed and simplistic, not a bite, not a drawing of blades, not a blade suddenly stuck between his ribs. It was acceptance again, and he still had difficulty understanding it. "Well met," he offered, when he could think of nothing else.

Why?

The stranger’s name remained that way no longer. The calling, distinct, sublime, heralded from the Dragon’s Throat, because it had been the lair and threshold of the Golden Prince, and the Reaper could finally come face to face with someone good and kind and revered; granted his honorifics because of his esteemed prowess. Where Deimos had sunken into his embellished scythe with a keen oath to upheaval and demolition, scattering souls and prospering only the mountains’ existence, Cera had been rumored to be nothing of the sort: compassionate, beneficent, one of the few who could hold himself proudly to that paragon height. The Sword might have been awed as well, expression befuddled and perplexed, until the next sentence.

Son of Midas.

Because he’d known Midas, the great pompous jerk, with his Roman nose and holier than thou prosperities, as if he’d never done anything so faithless and irreverent in all his life, as if he was far better, far greater than the rime inhabitants could ever be. The beast had once spewed out his vehemence against them from threshold to sands, and while it might’ve been justified, Deimos had never bothered molding into the same corridors. He’d had better things to do, to commit to, to orchestrate, to command, than ever roaming in Midas’s equal detestation and cutting, caustic, loathing properties – they wove their means and measures into action in the leagues of their wild, vicious, savage contempt. Then the great Lord had been captured and taken to their icy cellars and prisons. He’d been stuffed into their walls. He’d been taken from his home the moment they’d decided to seethe and sink their way into the Falls. Then he’d died, trying to escape from the mountain’s clutches.

He waited for that throng too – the calling of murderer when they’d been away, when Midas had been in Ulrik’s care, while they had been busy massacring another land. Thereafter was naught except confusion, his brows furrowing, then raised back into some neutral stance, breathing concocted back into normal vibrations and rhythm; because not a single modicum of vilification, disapproval, or denunciation sprung from the Prince’s tones, and he was at a loss.

Instead, softness and proclamations resounded and coiled against his senses, forced to look up and glance at the man as they shook hands, disbelief cording him again. Glad you got a second chance here, Lord pierced through his mind, and he shook his head, uncertainty and the unknown blistering at his flesh and bone, at his marrow and soul. “I am too.” But I’m not a King here he wanted to say – he was nothing, nothing nothing nothing at all, no change from the wintery void except there was no throne to preside from – “No need for the Lord,” and he formed the slightest of smiles as hands dropped away, as he swallowed down the choking, cloaking mechanisms threatening to unravel him piece by piece, as he grabbed up the cart’s rope again and resumed their walking pace.

What had he done to earn all this forgiveness? All this tolerance?

The inquiry sparked and sizzled on his tongue while they loomed closer to the exit, the grace of light and apertures searing on his sights, his home closer; his eyes only lingering behind him again as Cera announced he didn’t have any other shifts yet. “In time, then.” He nodded, certain; had seen them, experienced the way those who remained gained their strength – somehow, someway. The Golden Prince would have his too.

DEIMOS
Stop trying to show how to save our souls
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
Cera Novik
Metalsmith / Medic

Age: 29 | Height: 5'5 | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 1 - Strg: 16 - Dext: 12 - Endr: 12 - Luck: 6 - Int:
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Posts: 79 | Total: 6,168
MP: 0
#16
Their hands connect, clasp, callous to callous. There is a firmness there, unyielding, unbowed. Cera respects it deeply. Can't help the brilliantly sunny smile that radiates upon his face at the two simple words the Reaper deigns to deliver unto him. It is a kind of praise he is not used to, but one that seems to warm him from head to toe instantaneously. It reminds him of days at Gaucho's side, beneath his wing and his loving gaze, the words of faith and support he would grumble into his ears. Pain swells in his breast at the memories, but they do not dim the joy he feels at connection. They are one and the same here. Displaced, forgotten, starting anew in this foreign land.

Still he can't help but grin impishly at the twitch of emotion on Deimos' face at the mention of Midas. "You're as unenthusiastic as I am, if I recall his ridiculous antics towards the Basin correctly." Antics was the kindest word he could offer. Cera's smile turns easily into a grimace, the good memories so heavily overshadowed by the bad. "Gaucho was more father to me than him, but I'd not want to steal that honor from his children. I was unsure if you would have known me by name otherwise," It's all that needs to be said, and probably more than the man had wanted to know in the first place, so the Prince skates by it without giving it any further time to turn stagnant between them, focusing instead on the last words that lift from his tongue. He's not so prideful as to assume his title ever meant anything to those beyond the sands.

"Well now you're just encouraging me to use it," Cera chirps innocently at the sight of Deimos' minute smile, but the grin on his face is all but pure. Not that he will actually go through with the teasing threat he wields at the Reaper. Reminding the man of his former glory and status may not do him any favors emotionally, and Cera is loathe to cause pain to any other living being. Deer notwithstanding of course, he muses with a glance down at the dead animal as they resume their previous plodding pace.

The idea of further forms is daunting to say the least, but the man's faith in him is solid. A comforting weight that again reminds him of the Wildfire. Perhaps next time he will be granted the ability to fly once more. It is all he can hope to hold out for, if only he gets to touch the sky once more. "What about you? What attribute found its way to you when you came here?" Calling it a race still felt odd to Cera, who was used to plain physical differences. Here, they all just seemed...human. A togetherness he'd never anticipated. But of course the decay of mortal souls would always taint what it touched, and so the prejudice remained.
Cera
The worst in me could bring out the best in you
Deimos Ignatius
the Resurrected Sword
Warden of Halo / Guildmaster

Age: 33 | Height: 6'4" | Race: Hybrid | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Halo
Level: 14 - Strg: 72 - Dext: 72 - Endr: 73 - Luck: 80 - Int: 3
BELIAL - Mythical - Peryton (Blend) ZURIEL - Mythical - Unicorn (Healing)
Played by: Heather Offline
Change author:
Posts: 6,553 | Total: 10,646
MP: 9824
#17
We're lost in the space between
who we are and all that we're trying to be

Memories displaced in the ether were beckoning, unwinding things; usually coming to him in the form of dreams, the swell of nightmares in the middle of evenings, sometimes toxic, sometimes indulgent. The mountains called most often, like haunting, siren songs, rising in peaks, descending in valleys, puncturing and piercing the shards reality couldn’t quite contain or define. Perhaps the Dragon’s Throat was the same for Cera – all Deimos’ recollections coiled into smoke, embers, fumes, and sand, an endless desert as far as the eye could see, magical bridges under lock and key, keeping the rest of the world at bay. The Basin had its own unique traces of borders and surroundings, with its red-eyed monoliths guarding the only open area, with its savage, bestial King roaming the boundaries, begging for an opportunity to unleash, unravel, a condemned, barbaric interlude, with its illustrious thieves, with its cloak and dagger ramparts. The fact that there were no hard feelings or bitter entanglements, the art of rancor, shuffled between the pair was alarming and surprising at best; Cera would have been there then, when the swords came to clash, when they growled and hissed, when they rampaged and descended.

When they lost.

Midas was not a subject the Reaper would’ve dwelled on for long; the lightest of snickers resting on his mouth, and then nothing more, wicked and gone in a flash. He wasn’t sorry for the golden beast’s death. He wasn’t sorry about a lot of things. “Ridiculous is a good term for it.” It had been idle, rampant hatred, prejudice, bias, and abhorrence exposed and lanced upon innocent children – only amusing when Gods had reprimanded the glory hound for it. He didn’t bow or bend away though, watching the Prince’s gaze flicker into a grimace, then cast away by the mention of Gaucho. Deimos hadn’t known the Wildfire well; big, broad, tough, a fortitude to match his name, nearly destroyed by the Moon Goddess’s antics, coming only once or twice to the Basin to discuss politics and diplomatic factions. Neither of them had been well-suited to the task, but understood one another; the way warriors often did, when soaked in the blood of their enemies, when striving to do what was best for their kingdoms. He shrugged at the notion of names and titles; that Gaucho would have to be accorded for the Prince to have been known. “The Basin always had information.” And there was a glimmer of a snicker, a smirk again, proud of his people, of the inhabitants gone, lost, or somehow come back to him again. “You were known.”

At the encouragement of former ranks, the Sword repressed an eyeroll. There was no need to associate him as a former King here; he had no use for those measures of diplomacy again, no political ventures waiting for him in the wings. He’d received the crown by pure coincidence anyway, and then hadn’t fettered it away when he likely should’ve; standing as a tower, as a beacon, on top of palisades and precipices, warning the rest of the world to stay away. The grin on the Prince’s features, however, appeared in accordance with good humor, so he snorted, then continued moving, dragging the makeshift cart over stones littering their less-than-stellar path.

The discussion of attributes was at least intriguing, and didn’t reach too deeply into folds of the past. “I always had life drain,” which Cera likely knew anyway; it was how the beast had always lived and breathed, born with the insurrection in his heart, in his lungs, in his soul, well before he’d even sought its indulgences and whims in the fiber of his blood. “But never creation. That is new.” He lifted his head, traced over their route, and swung a little wider, catching the sunlight presses of an aperture up ahead, closer to the Outskirts, to worn trails and familiarity. “It seems the longer one is here, the stronger they become.”

DEIMOS
Stop trying to show how to save our souls
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
Cera Novik
Metalsmith / Medic

Age: 29 | Height: 5'5 | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 1 - Strg: 16 - Dext: 12 - Endr: 12 - Luck: 6 - Int:
Played by: Brit Offline
Change author:
Posts: 79 | Total: 6,168
MP: 0
#18
Though the words are unspoken, Cera is in agreement. The sands of the Throat haunt his dreams, the call of gulls still turns his head hopefully towards the horizon only to be disappointed time and again. Especially in the clutch of winter, with snow he never saw unless he traveled beyond their home borders, he misses the heat of the desert. The nightly chill was brutal, but Cera longs for the scorch of sun across his shoulders, the way everything is awash in golden light. The nostalgia is a sharp blade that threatens the happiness he has a chance of grasping here. And while Deimos may be shocked that Cera - for all he had suffered at the hands of the Basin, the memories of blood and war that stain the name of the Reaper's land - does not hold a grudge, it had never really crossed his mind.

Their shared amusement only brightens Cera's face, though the shadows of bitterness still darken his verdant eyes. "Vast understatement," he laughs, recalling all the ways Midas had wounded and betrayed him over the years. While a small, childlike portion of him would always love the Gallant, it was a portion easily drowned out by the chorus of matured wisdom that denounced the man for all his constant flaws.

A flush draws across Cera's cheeks and down his neck, ducking his head in embarrassment as Deimos slyly confirms that he had been known. Perhaps a threat, or a boast of their talent, but to Cera it is a higher compliment than he ever expected from the Sword. "I'm more honored to have been worthy of such renown than intimidated by the knowledge you had," he laughs, a titter of flustered noise. "Everyone knows you had some of the best spies and thieves in the land." They had been Midas' downfall, after all. A plague upon the land that luckily had never targeted Cera, but one that still garnered his respect.

It's just as pleasing to cause a smile to brighten Deimos' stony features, and he practically skips along as they continue over their uneven path, helping keep the deer in position and push the cart over stubborn stones as needed. Even so he keeps an ear tuned to the man's deep vocals, humming softly in attentive response. All had known of the Reaper's magical talents, it's no surprise his strongest magic had made its way to this land. For a moment Cera misses his fire, the golden flames that had coated him in mimicry of Gaucho. Why had he not been given the choice? Why had this world decided that instead, he should be a shape shifter? He, the one who had been stalwart and consistent in his heart and soul? Cera didn't understand what they had seen in him to believe he would ever be so transient. It is an ache he can't linger on for long.

"I miss my magic," he confesses softly, if only to get the words out, to drain the poison from his thoughts. But he makes himself smile, as he always does. It is not a time for mourning. "I wish we had a say in our forms. I miss the sky. But to grow stronger over time is the way of life, regardless of the land's laws." It had been similar in Helovia after all, though that was usually due to people growing older and seeking out the Gods as their plans grew more specific.
Cera
The worst in me could bring out the best in you
Deimos Ignatius
the Resurrected Sword
Warden of Halo / Guildmaster

Age: 33 | Height: 6'4" | Race: Hybrid | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Halo
Level: 14 - Strg: 72 - Dext: 72 - Endr: 73 - Luck: 80 - Int: 3
BELIAL - Mythical - Peryton (Blend) ZURIEL - Mythical - Unicorn (Healing)
Played by: Heather Offline
Change author:
Posts: 6,553 | Total: 10,646
MP: 9824
#19
We're lost in the space between
who we are and all that we're trying to be

Deimos was never enticed by the desert: born into tides and pools, the press of midnight oceans, the roll of currents, the constant, insistent, perpetual strength of a dominion vastly superior to them. All his other homes had made a similar impact: the blistering fog sometimes scaling and reaching across the corners of his eyes, the knife’s edge of thunderous beckons against cliffs, the pale mountains rising towards the sun, the stars, the moon; and even battlefields were a separate sanctum, altered from the rest, when he was meant to be unleashed, sacrificed, and a destructive, malicious force. They didn’t have any such things here, not yet; traditions of old tied into enriched beliefs and faiths he couldn’t exactly fathom or understand, forests flanked in magic and isolation, potent people thriving well beyond the reaches of any of them. So the scorch of seething dunes didn’t make him yearn, crave, or long, but the mere hankering of other realms and kingdoms were steady notions within dreams, in nightmares, in portions they couldn’t get back.

The nostalgia failed to slow its slithering advances on his mind; the brightness of Cera’s face contrasting with the rancor a gilded King had left behind. “Mighty Midas,” Deimos hissed – ending the sibilance on a snicker, and only because the great beast couldn’t defend himself, not from beyond the grave, did the fiend relent on continuing any further on the veins of sarcasm. Midas had been hypocritical: a vast purveyor of wiping out hatred and vehemence, but committing to it with the veils, shrouds, cloaks, and daggers of his own putrid abhorrence for everyone else who didn’t think the same way. It might’ve been dastardly piety, some paragon of virtue for others to wrap themselves around – the Basin had always been amidst his many targets of prejudice and menace. Turnabout had been fair play. Even his title: the Gallant had been a misnomer. Was it gallant to prey upon children? Was it gallant to amass wrath and contempt upon the innocent? Or had it simply all been in the name of justice, and the painted man had been granted a free pass into the sunset?

His gaze flickered back over to Cera, not expecting the flush over the Throat Prince’s features – arching his brow again in a slight of curiosity – only answered a moment later, that he was honored to have been thought of, no matter how maliciously or in depth their information. It caused a chuckle, a shake of his head, a boyish smile, the compliment towards his spies and thieves not unworthy either. “We did.” And his grin was a real, true, genuine contortion of lips and mouth, proud of those beasts and their ability to flush out wisdom, sagacity, or items, snag and clench and drown their enemies in machinations, in calculations, instead of Deimos’ preferred brute force. Their tactics had reigned supreme, a challenge in the eyes of other sovereignties, a different composition towards bedlam – where instead of the world watching their borders for the next sign of an invading force, they curled and coiled away from the shadows, frightened of revelations spurned and coiled amidst the decadence. “They were invaluable,” he whispered, the smile sliding away as his attention returned to the pathway, to the outskirts ahead, to his house in the distance.

The Reaper was content with the silence for a few moments, navigating over roots and brush, contemplating, devising, pondering, a wonder in schemes and contortions, when Cera’s confession loomed in softness, a venture towards more things in loss. “You could have both.” He shrugged; having been witness to it himself. They had several hybrids amongst the area, thriving on incantations and alterations, capable of bearing all of it. “There are some that are hybrid. They wield magic and shift.” Something else to muddle and machinate over, as they made their way to the opening of paths, to the sunlight again, to the drifting, falling leaves, to the grassy plains, and to his refuge on the end of the street.

DEIMOS
Stop trying to show how to save our souls
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts


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