The presented gift

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame In another time, in another world, in another life, some might have hastened to meet his approval – but that was when he held a crown, when he held a mantle, when he fought tooth and nail for the rest of the world to sink beneath his kingdom. That was when there were nefarious, sinister expectations, a haunting edge of rogue, seditious efforts, bringing down palisade walls, unfurling secrets, irreverence the state of rapture, the spread of revolution a favored disaster. In anger, in outrage, in wrath, in abhorrence, in apprehension he’d ghosted and rumbled and scraped those words down another’s figure (you disappoint me), and watched them turn, watched them unleash, and stood there, indifferent and uncaring, a figure in the chilling wind. As if naught affected him. As if each laceration held no pain. As if to feel anything else was beneath him. And now he was nothing and no one, and perfectly content with it all. “Do not worry about disappointing me,” he shook his head, mildly certain Sascha wouldn’t anyway. Too much spunk, too much grit, too much mettle, too much effervescence, seemingly undaunted by the swift changes and upheavals carved into the earth. While Deimos wouldn’t benefit from it, because he’d learned on more than one occasion that the life drain in his soul ensured no healing from another abandoned would have any effect, it didn’t mean others couldn’t benefit from Sascha’s knowledge and refinement. “Have you been to the Medical College yet?” Surely they’d have answers to any inquiries, or grant him a multitude of experiences to draw from. master of nothing place; of recoil and grace