gunmetal bones and wolf's teeth

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame The scream haunted, scathed, scrawled its claws down the back of his spine; a poignant, irreverent chord sharpening its strain upon his skull, droning and wailing in his ears. He knew it was a trap, but it still held him there, diminished and snared, because the screams sounded like hundreds of others he’d heard before, outcries from the battlefield (save me, help me, will anyone-) and the way their voices had carried over fog and stone, over ichor and death, how they’d shorn away bits and pieces of his soul, of his heart, incapable of getting to them all. The screams sounded like Amalia. They sounded like Kiada. They sounded like Rexanna. They sounded like a merger of friends desperate for their lives, like the ring of hollowed hell in the Drop’s landslide, in the infernal reaches of daggers and cloaks, in the irreverent spikes of thorns and nettles. Before he knew it, he’d advanced, staring straight into the light, ignited by its siren essence, desperate to recoil but his pulse already segmented on its infernal glow: not real, not real, not real his mind rang for clarity in the midnight oils, on the shifting of earth beneath his feet, on the certainty of disaster pressing into the void. But what if it was? answered his cold, nefarious heart, too immersed in broken catalysts and behemoth chambers, eternally desperate to save those who meant something to him; a flaw, a virtue, the luminescence preyed upon. Deimos, it rang, it pervaded, it insisted. Help! He inhaled, sharp and curt and keen, the savage intervals bracing against his figure; undaunted, unperturbed, straight into his element of danger, disaster, and ruin. The monolith maneuvered, slowly, carefully, his eyes only on the sheen, the sheer, the twist and turn of beguiling light, the friends in its wake, in its clutches – He hadn’t expected another form to drift into its interval and orb too. It took a snapping of wolf jaws, the click of ivories and canines, the gathering globes and spheres glistening, bright and cheery, surrounding, enclosing, before he realized what was going on. His head shook and his gaze narrowed, watching, listening, as savage growls lit into the scenery; a yelp, a din within the throng. “Hey!” He yelled, trying to snag its attention, gods whatever for before something else happened – odd, it occurred to him, that an animal could be damned by these things too, led directly into the slaughter, flora and fauna alike. He kept those calculations and notions to himself, advancing upon more and more orbs, incensed, stoked, the animosity suddenly burning in his hands, yearning to sink and crawl and slither in their gallows, in their nooses, in their trenches. “Step back!” A warning to a wolf – predator amongst predators – but he didn’t care at the moment, infuriated with himself and with the situation. Would it even understand? The lure of death surged from his entity: cool, chilling, glacial, sent straight for the wisps, for the puffs of air, for the mischief and damnation persisting from their devilish heights; intending to drag them to hell, to drain them of their fire, of their existence. master of nothing place; of recoil and grace