Deimos
He’d never given much thought or credence to how he’d gotten here – other than pure frustration, and vexation, things spiraled and converging without his control. The questions had come clipped and broken, as he sauntered back into memories, into footfalls of moments that felt ancient, carved into stone and rubble, damned and damned again; reincarnation, why he’d been brought back, what purpose he served, what had been the point – when all along the rest of the earth knew he wasn’t worth a second try. Believing it had something to do with the Voice’s orchestrations, methods, and powers irritated him all the more, and so he’d gone on with his head down and his eyes on the ground, deciphering bits and pieces of ether, calculating them together when there was time, in between other actions, other errors, other dangers; and he felt no closer. The meanings weren’t clear; muddied, murky, as mired as they’d always been. They were flesh and bone incarnate, tangible, corporeal beings, with their skills, their treacheries, their wounds, their scars, and what that meant in the long run left him somewhat daunted – a narrowing of his eyes in the speculation, in the here and now, in the present. Where they didn’t know what to do or who to be or where to even go, drifting, drifting, drifting, the purposes not cut and dry, not bare minerals, not sketched or written out across parchment and paper. Left to their own devices might not have been the best way to solve the enigma; and perhaps the answer wouldn’t be what they were looking for. They were dust and earth, ice and rime, tied and tethered to too many whittled, fragmented seconds.
Their tethers, their lines, their sharpened segments and friction that kept them alive, that kept them maimed, that kept them brutalized every step of the way – meant to fight, meant to defy, and then meant to shatter. He sighed and it felt like lifetimes echoing through his breath, crackling along his chest, entangled in web upon web; he’d once known exactly how she felt, dark and uncertain, cold and aloof, drowned in the chasms and transgressions of the unknown. The depth of his eyes lifted to flicker back to her dual-colored gaze, striving to maneuver away, away, away from the demons haunting them all. “What else do you want to do?” Had she spent enough time here to discover something she wished to achieve? Gods knew it’d taken him an eternity to begin right where he’d always started, sword in hand, safety, security, and stalwart platitudes chiseled into his physique.
He didn’t expect her hand to glide over his, and for an instant, there was the crag, there was the ruin, there was the beacon of apathy, discontent, and shadows crawling on his skin – immediately ready to skim back into the shadows, away from comfort, away from vulnerability. The monolith’s jaw clenched again, then squeezed her fingers back gently, staring along voids and abysses, so tired of going through the same routine – danger, death, rinse, repeat. “I intend to clean up the remains of the guild. I will see what I can find.” And after, maybe, if there were more things than scorch-marks and toppled stars, filaments, they could do something. He’d ask Amalia about the customs, about the traditions, because the Naturals had done this over and over and over again, and somehow that seemed even more draining than digging countless graves after a battle. The heathen managed a snort at her hand leaving his, at Cera’s predilection towards benediction that none of them deserved. “He did not seem to hold a single grudge.” For the things the Reaper had orchestrated against the Dragon’s Throat. For the eldritch sways of Basin predilections. Which perhaps, made it all the more unfair; that someone kind, benevolent, and virtuous, would fall in the sunken reaches of LongNight’s claws.
Their tethers, their lines, their sharpened segments and friction that kept them alive, that kept them maimed, that kept them brutalized every step of the way – meant to fight, meant to defy, and then meant to shatter. He sighed and it felt like lifetimes echoing through his breath, crackling along his chest, entangled in web upon web; he’d once known exactly how she felt, dark and uncertain, cold and aloof, drowned in the chasms and transgressions of the unknown. The depth of his eyes lifted to flicker back to her dual-colored gaze, striving to maneuver away, away, away from the demons haunting them all. “What else do you want to do?” Had she spent enough time here to discover something she wished to achieve? Gods knew it’d taken him an eternity to begin right where he’d always started, sword in hand, safety, security, and stalwart platitudes chiseled into his physique.
He didn’t expect her hand to glide over his, and for an instant, there was the crag, there was the ruin, there was the beacon of apathy, discontent, and shadows crawling on his skin – immediately ready to skim back into the shadows, away from comfort, away from vulnerability. The monolith’s jaw clenched again, then squeezed her fingers back gently, staring along voids and abysses, so tired of going through the same routine – danger, death, rinse, repeat. “I intend to clean up the remains of the guild. I will see what I can find.” And after, maybe, if there were more things than scorch-marks and toppled stars, filaments, they could do something. He’d ask Amalia about the customs, about the traditions, because the Naturals had done this over and over and over again, and somehow that seemed even more draining than digging countless graves after a battle. The heathen managed a snort at her hand leaving his, at Cera’s predilection towards benediction that none of them deserved. “He did not seem to hold a single grudge.” For the things the Reaper had orchestrated against the Dragon’s Throat. For the eldritch sways of Basin predilections. Which perhaps, made it all the more unfair; that someone kind, benevolent, and virtuous, would fall in the sunken reaches of LongNight’s claws.
i rule the stars, not the other way around
