DEIMOS
It’s the way the world worked; death and life, life and death, but it didn’t mean it was easier. How these people managed to survive LongNight after LongNight was a reeling thing to him, because he’d plunged along wars and sovereignty with loss and forbearance, but not to demons, not to monsters, just the layers of their own brutality, their own measures, their own means. Perhaps it didn’t matter, wasn’t any different, demise was demise, final breaths were final breaths, and extinguished heartbeats held the same discordance. His eyes flicked back to Kiada, a mentioning of Caiside, more connections, more obliterations, more lines seethed, scorned, and then slashed; as if they were meaningless and empty, when the opposite was true. His heavy sigh was the only thing beckoning and twisting along his chest, striving for numbness again, when everything else bound its way for his throat, smothering, choking. He backed away from his crouch, shifted more of the wood, the supports, the beams, a swiftness increasing, edged, calculated, eyes scorching and searching for bleached bones while he rummaged along fringes and boundaries, while they flickered apart, while something ached and craved and scalded; jaw clenched, barely maneuvering, deep and gruff and just done. “When we find more, we can hold a ceremony for them.” The layers and lacquer Amalia had once described to him, how to honor those fallen in the fiendish interlude of heathens.
He was something solid
to lean against
violent and fierce and unmoving
