DEIMOS
If violence had always been the answer, Deimos would have felt at home anywhere, anytime, anyplace; and though lashing out, striking at something, crushing bits and pieces into fragments might have granted them solace in their restless piques, it wouldn’t solve the current dilemma (which was a shame – because the Sword could always conjure some targets and weapons in Amalia’s garden). “Other than drink,” he offered a brief smirk before following on the movement again, guzzling and swallowing in a rapacious, ravenous motion; though it wouldn’t hit him terribly hard; he’d earned his endurance and fortitude in alcoholic ventures long ago. But thereafter the earnest consuming and the burning down throats, there was still nothing. They had tried far more things than Deimos had (again – vehemence had been his favored friend, down in the doldrums of the Spire, yearning for that to be their saving grace – death, destruction, ravaging, pillaging, condemning). There’d been studies conducted by Phoebe, straying down the same paths, Ronin’s progression, seasons and cycles in which they had left. The last though caused him to fall silent for a moment, breathing rapid, heart pounding, jaw clenching; hands holding onto his bottle a little tighter, rigid in his composition, taut again despite the assuaging contortions of booze in his veins. “Kiada has the blight too,” but he hadn’t realized the short span, how winter’s bones and marrow might be the last of it all. Remi’s urgency made sense now; desperate to find a way, a notion, an enchantment, anything and everything, to right the wrongs, to cease and desist the spread of the pestilence’s might and bite. “Along with many others, I am sure.” His breath came along a harsh, rumbling sigh, and if he were more inebriated, he might’ve taken his skull to bang across the table – frustration gnarling and crawling its way back into his entity, his existence.
“Do we still believe the Spire has something to do with it?” Or was it a lost cause altogether? He tried to recall more than just the poison when he’d first lingered in the basement throng. “There was water when we went down before, and a black sludge.” But then they’d been distracted by magical creatures not meant to live. Perhaps it had been a contortion to the initial release and circulation; he hadn’t seen it when they returned. He was behind on their information gathering – but willing to listen, add another mind with machinations and calculations to the mix – resisting again, rebellious and seditious to the core, intrepid, refusing to give in to the probability, the possibility, that they had no chance.
He was something solid
to lean against
violent and fierce and unmoving
