not heroes any longer - we are tragedies of firelight and flesh
unholy sacraments of blood and broken bodies
So these were the anthems, the staccatos, the banners, the emblems they all lived within – wild and predacious, hungering for triumph, glory, and victory, flickering apart when it couldn’t be held time after time after time again. For all his efforts, he’d always tried to hide the lingering self-doubt, the incredulous expanse that despite his ongoing convictions, beliefs, faith in his own abilities, sometimes they were startling in their ineptitude, in their ineffectual ramparts, in the way sieges and munitions never quite scalded or reached. In how he couldn’t protect all of the ones he cherished. In how he couldn’t lead them all to conquests. In how their travels sometimes seemed so damned useless and ruthless, tearing down their own walls instead of the adversary’s. It was a complex pattern, and he’d fallen into its snares, into its traps, into its inveigling quandaries in seasons and cycles, no matter the life or the land; invasions spiraling into nothing despite the blood and scars riddled across his form, wars signifying naught but death and demise, prayers and pleas heard by no god, by no one, and venturing deeper into these intervals, desperate to succeed, to help, to assist –
We failed.
He had half a mind to tell her endurance, persistence, and survival wasn’t a failure, wasn’t anything but a notion that they could try again (never stop), but he clutched her harder instead, knew exactly what the words meant. They burned against him, seared at his bones as if he’d been the one to wander beside her, out into the void, out into the smoke, out into the fumes. Deimos’ eyes fell upon the floor, his breaths snagging on the wounds, on the scathing points, on the muffled phrases, then down to hers, aches and pains and heartbreak bordering on fringes and edges. He tilted his head to listen, to regard, to try and impart something through the warring fringes and haunting refrains.
The beast pinpointed on the successes: Ru’in found in the midst of all those souls, all those lost, wayfaring ghosts and phantoms, a wraith, luck prevailing in that accord. She could’ve joined him (he ignored the way his heart sank), out in the void, out in the abyss, out in the throes of hell or purgatory, she cut off his head (slaying, slaying, slaying, already hard enough to capture someone beloved, much less to end their misery and restart it anew).
Wasn’t enough.
Wasn’t enough.
How many times had Deimos repeated the same phrase in his head? Out loud, to only those closest to him?
And why she, of all people, had uttered the notion, when she was powerful, potent, and lethal? When she had every capability?
He swallowed the bile choking, drowning, burrowing, and burying through his throat. “Okay,” he breathed again, trying to reassure himself as much as her. “Why not?” Why hadn’t it worked? What did she need to do instead? Moving forward instead of behind, instead of wallowing, instead of meandering, because that’s all he’d done these past days – a farce, a pretense, until they could shatter elsewhere.
We failed.
He had half a mind to tell her endurance, persistence, and survival wasn’t a failure, wasn’t anything but a notion that they could try again (never stop), but he clutched her harder instead, knew exactly what the words meant. They burned against him, seared at his bones as if he’d been the one to wander beside her, out into the void, out into the smoke, out into the fumes. Deimos’ eyes fell upon the floor, his breaths snagging on the wounds, on the scathing points, on the muffled phrases, then down to hers, aches and pains and heartbreak bordering on fringes and edges. He tilted his head to listen, to regard, to try and impart something through the warring fringes and haunting refrains.
The beast pinpointed on the successes: Ru’in found in the midst of all those souls, all those lost, wayfaring ghosts and phantoms, a wraith, luck prevailing in that accord. She could’ve joined him (he ignored the way his heart sank), out in the void, out in the abyss, out in the throes of hell or purgatory, she cut off his head (slaying, slaying, slaying, already hard enough to capture someone beloved, much less to end their misery and restart it anew).
Wasn’t enough.
Wasn’t enough.
How many times had Deimos repeated the same phrase in his head? Out loud, to only those closest to him?
And why she, of all people, had uttered the notion, when she was powerful, potent, and lethal? When she had every capability?
He swallowed the bile choking, drowning, burrowing, and burying through his throat. “Okay,” he breathed again, trying to reassure himself as much as her. “Why not?” Why hadn’t it worked? What did she need to do instead? Moving forward instead of behind, instead of wallowing, instead of meandering, because that’s all he’d done these past days – a farce, a pretense, until they could shatter elsewhere.
what use have we for feeble hymns of wasted faith;
for sordid songs of glory?
DEIMOS
