[seasonal event] wasted faith

Deimos the Reaper master of nothing place, of recoil and grace Zuriel had seen her chance and taken it, devious and amused, leaning into the pats until her muzzle could get just close enough to the top of his head, before her teeth went to sink into onyx hair, tugging, a collective bemusement settling into her accord. Deimos withheld a sigh, but didn’t tell her to cease and desist, eyes flickering back to Adam’s forming basket, the woven threads taut and quick, a snort rumbling through his chest. The Sword unfurled his own determination once more, finishing the handles, ensuring they were a frigid archetype, mountain glory, ridged and lined with glacial expanse and icy endeavors, etched and sketched with summit lines and cavern walls – pieces and portions of worlds long since gone. Even Halo didn’t contain their echoes, their nuances, their voids – similar, but incomplete, the range of nostalgia and rancor driving apart collective awe. The question spiraled back at him gave him the slightest pause; because no one had ever asked it before. One look at his form, his frame, his figure, always hinted at the ruminations of his occupation: destruction, warrior, soldier, barricade intentions. So there were rarely inquiries as to how or why, and he brewed in silence for a moment, shuffling through memories of dual lives, swallowing down weeks in Helovia before the world had come for them, where he’d slashed, ripped, and tore, and it hadn’t mattered. When he was young and ridiculous in Isilme, ready to train, ready to harpoon anything in his way, because it was might and a push to the unrelenting, a stoking in his blood. Two separated entities and timelines, and he’d still pinpointed straight to combat, to upheaval, to disarray, like it was the only thing he’d ever truly understood or known. “Kingdoms promised us honor and glory.” A shrug, as if it made sense for the idiotic, brash, impudent, audacious fools to go rampaging towards it. “So we signed up and trained when we were old enough.” And in Helovia? There hadn’t been a choice – Mirage’s army at their boundaries, at their doorsteps – and their refugee march thereafter. As for what he would’ve done otherwise, he truly didn’t know. His mother engrained scholarly pursuits into him, a realm of curiosity, but it wouldn’t have held him together like the Loreseekers. He made no mention of a time of his own crown – because that wouldn’t have been a chosen profession either. So the beast parceled and minced away from it, turning the inquiry back. “What did you do in your world?”

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