hands off

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame Unaware, uncaring, or utterly indifferent towards the timeframe, the beast had worked long hours into the evening, this time in the bakery with his stacks of timber and his long slats of incline-aspirations. He’d started from within, contemplating anywhere steps remained, placing the ramp portions beside them, hammer and nail diligent in their assaults, silencing the sighs, the anguish, the despair rampaging down through his chest and in the canals, the chambers, of his heart. He neglected the basement for now, uncertain just how often Amalia would need to wander down into its midst – no need for rebellious meetings for ages, or for digging, burrowing into the ground, finding channels and tunnels for disastrous intentions. It seemed like lifetimes ago, warring against one another, against a common foe, before people had split off, before reigns were incomplete notions, before ruminations didn’t matter anymore. Deimos swallowed it all down in his stony silence, turning and twisting, eyeing the rest of the containments, pondering where to put specific bars to help her balance while lifting things out of ovens, while spreading dough across counters. Suddenly everything seemed overwhelming, and he wandered out into the midnight, twilight air, thinking to get to the front steps before maneuvering back home. Bent and kneeling on the ground, Zuriel nearby, he could hear approaching footsteps, raising his head briefly to ascertain Amun coming out of the dark. It was as if someone had orchestrated a constant string of visitors to ensure he wasn’t alone – ambiguous to what that meant or entailed. The man’s first inquiry sliced and bit and tore, so his features remained a nonchalant slate, rendered somewhere between reserve and despair, pretenses and walls at the ready. “Paralyzed from the waist down.” Time might mend it, time might shelter it, time might alter it, but for the present, it still scarred, wounded, and hurt. Then he moved on, as if it didn’t truly matter, and the General’s brows furrowed – more favors in the face of desecration and terror, and he was about to tell several people to go take a long walk off a – His eyes caught the crushed hand in the little light from his nearby lantern. Mangled. Distorted. Destroyed. Another victim of the Temple’s onslaught; but incapable of feeling the rendered pain. Reminders of LongNight echoed and chafed; Rexanna’s chest impaled. Reminders of sanctuaries crumbled, though obviously unnecessary, blistering in his mind: Amalia’s legs beneath rocks and rubble, numbed and pierced. “You could not go to the Voice?” He’d gone, despite not wishing for it at all, with the Penumbra and Loren to have her fully repaired. master of nothing place; of recoil and grace