footprints in the ashes

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 Curiosity had always been one of his more favorable vices. As a boy, he’d gleaned and chased, hunted and played, with inquiry in mind. He’d tried to discover the depths of creations, spent many an hour behind alchemist’s chairs, perusing, studying, mesmerized by the flicker of potions, by the rustle of enchantments, by the streak of invocations. He’d attempted to copy his father’s soldier motions, grabbing hold of wooden blades and gesturing, screeching, howling his vanguard approaches, delighted when they met their mark, stretching for the days when they drew blood instead of laughter. He’d alternated from book to book at his mother’s insistence, as she taught him to read and write, as she hoped her son would be more than a mercenary, more than a beacon of destruction. He’d watched as a healer wove her herbs into threaded pinnacles and settled them in the tidy nestling of her house, waiting for the day they’d come to good use. He’d studied packs of wolves and their constant, predacious movements, wondered if he could embody the same hostile, ravenous ministrations, if one day he’d become something grand, something great, something besides shadow and storm. Perhaps all the enduring interest hadn’t outlasted his intertwined fate: no sooner had his explorations grown to new depths did he discover the ways he could fade away life, how he could take and take and take and never look back, how he could bend and break without ichor, last breaths, last pulses, last flickers, gone into oblivion. Then all the intrigue turned to necromancy, turned to chilling, nonchalant pulses, turned to grief and anguish and pondering how he could get everyone and everything back. You can’t the gods had whispered, had laughed, had struck him down before he’d even raised his head from their altars – and then he’d simply seethed, tormented rage, formidable damnation, pledging and vowing sedition in the awakening wrath. So old habits brought him to the forefront of the ruined exterior; partly exploration (for all he’d known thus far was a tavern, and even if he yearned to spend the majority of his time there, it couldn’t account for his entire life), and partly the riches of an intrusive, meddling cranium. It had seen better days, like the rest of the lot, caved in on one side, as if it’d taken blow after blow, assault after assault, siege after siege, but remained strong, enduring, an obstinate mass of stone and marble. He could respect that – he was the same: a persevering titan, an emboldened figure waiting to return the next strike. He took a few steps into its wares, peeled his gaze away from the destroyed, crumbled portions, and back to the more opulent features: grand in scale, domed, made from some supreme architect who’d clearly wanted the world to appreciate their opus. Deimos might have even stared at the sky there for a while, gaze inching over the polished remnants, the mottled designs, the warped, sculpted, and carved panels, before the depths of his cold contortions finally landed upon the tomes. His movements weren’t quiet; they echoed along the still boundaries, a savage refrain, not as hushed, not as listless, as he would’ve liked to portray. He was driven to distraction by several works displayed in front of him, raising his fingers to brush away dust and soot from spines, tilting his head to catch the names, the titles, detailed on the side. They consumed his prying, questioning glances so much so that he barely noticed another meandering through the columns, the light of a lantern, and singsong, a hum, curling through the back of his mind.

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