the replays run for you

Deimos the Reaper You can't take back the cards you've dealt on this long and lonely road to hell the throne must be such a sad and lonely place Her stare altered, and he understood the change in her stance; he was ominous, he was foreboding, he was a piece of slab and rock and ruin, ravenous and rapacious even sitting amidst the decadence of silence. He hadn’t always been this way – but shards of compassion, benevolence, and kindness had slid away in his childhood, roughened, distorted, coiled, tied, and tethered to some other realm he no longer inhabited. Between destruction and devastation, he’d been simple and hardly complex; young and mischievous, keen and eager to embark on sojourns and crusades, favored sword at his side, smile on his face, the world destined to fall at his feet. However, triumphs had costs, and the victories had begun to erode when the casualties were clearer, closer, when death was at his fingertips and in his sights, in his soul, burning a hole in his chest, a contorted, blasphemous enmity sparked from horror after horror, anguish after anguish. Bright spots and sparks flickered away at the pulse of a heartbeat, at the swift stitch of a knife, at the callous embrace of nothing: because in no time at all he was naught but a pinnacle of a wasteland, desolate, forlorn, fruitless, disregarded. Solitude and persecution were familiar waves, abhorrent and blunt, a void where he could sink and be left alone to scatter across the stars, hunting when he chose, marauding when he longed for melee and brutality, as wild as the rest of the kingdoms, lingering in idle savagery, in listless acrimony. In a way, he could start over again – he was still young, slightly less reckless and brash, but seditious and irreverent all the same, trials and tribulations cutting him down; not enough for him to descend straight into Stygian confines. Deimos simply didn’t know how; a classic case of confusion and chaos building through furrowed brows and reticent features, slashing along his mind while the alcohol nursed his inward miseries. Traversing through the unknown hadn’t settled any demons; merely made them ricochet back to the forefront, where he could properly wither, fade, and seethe – but his brooding had been intercepted and discarded, shackled for some other time when wolves didn’t address lingering mice. He shifted again to the bartender once more, a rough command rumbling through his chest, through his furs, through his coat. “Another,” he beckoned, grabbing hold of the glass as it traveled towards him. In another realm, he might’ve been a roaring, howling fiend, prowling and patrolling for the next feast, for the greatest kill, for the malicious end to a common enemy, but he was otherwise occupied now: carved and sculpted straight back into revolution and irritation. Not towards her, though his exasperation with the present might’ve pervaded his presence, but at the lack of information, at the oddities of the situation, of the patterns that were beginning to fall into place. Just lost is all could be an adequate response; he might’ve said the same, because the truth was bitter and rancorous, and so was the rest of the abyss, quietly murmuring its chuckles, its wiles, its machinations down the columns of his skull. His story was similar – a journey through mist and wood, to find monsters bigger than him, to slay fiends and ghouls so he’d be amongst the last of the last, and he’d fallen into some other hole, some other world, some other damned land. Gods below, didn’t he hate the scalding ignorance lacquered to his form. He relied on his awareness, on his senses, on his ability to read the darkness, the oblivion, the tactics, the tells of foes; and here he was, incapable of seeing what lay beyond here and there. The beast shrugged, turning back to her so his cold, icy, nonchalant gaze focused entirely on her – seeing less mouse now, more mercurial cat, more whimsical fairy, with sharper fringes, bite somewhere in the sunshine and bewilderment, and his eyes narrowed. “It should not,” the man cast, drawing his lips together back into a thin line, a forewarning to his meticulous thoughts, to his calculated airs, to how much he was willing to say, to how fast the alcohol worked and loosened his tongue. “But I had the same experience.”

_{Photo and Table by Time
Photo taken at Hero's Square in Budapest, Hungary}