Hurt so Good

D e i m o s

Send a heartbeat to the void that cries through you
Relive the pictures that have come to pass

It plunged into further avarice, and though Jigano had never seen the beast at his worst, because that had been the Reaper through and through, there always existed a certain ravenous edge in his skin, in his mind, in his machinations. Just not outwardly expressed, like so many other things, tucked and hidden away, hardly ever required here. There weren’t kingdoms to dominate. There weren’t sovereignties to unravel. There weren’t individuals to snag and snatch and maim for information. There weren’t groups constantly unwinding and threatening. So the Sword adapted, altered, and changed, with vestiges and elements still intertwined, murky, enigmatic potentials clustered together, waiting for their brooding, brewing opportunity to strike. At the ruminations of renewal, however, he seemed to have struck a chord, between the onslaught and the tenacity, permitting a few more leagues of power to billow from his frame; a scratch on the surface, a ripple in the multitude of monstrous incantations embedded in his blood. “We can use your sapped strength to make ourselves stronger.” For fortitude, for might, for temporary plunges into more tempests and maelstroms, an unraveling of chaos, devouring and consuming until their enemy was a husk, was a shell, was no more. “But not healed. We cannot be healed by another’s magic.” It wasn’t the same; wounds wouldn’t be soothed or stitched back together. It explained why attack after attack, assault after assault, upon his form in their first Spire venture had been so detrimental; there’d been nothing he could’ve done, not in Vai’s enchantments or presence, not in anything amidst those poisonous sanctions – the plants had given him naught when the magic whirled toward them, and then exhaustion, fatigue, had taken over. He’d been weak. His eyes pierced back to Jigano, away from the ghosts trailing over their slate. “Unicorns can mend us though.” There might have been a quirk of a smile there, somewhere along the edges of his mouth, why Zuriel had been a necessity, why he’d gone after her, why she’d been rescued, why she mattered – besides her companionship, her connection, she occasionally kept him out of the grave. “And Amalia’s staff.” Which had saved him multiple times too, an anthem, a theme, on shields and swords. The description of healing contortions might as well have been lost on him as well, would never feel that lightness, that glow, that warmth, music or tunes. But at least some had it. Some could provide more than destruction, more than havoc, more than wreckage. For now we stand alone, the world is lost and blown And we are flesh and blood disintegrate with no more to hate