From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
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Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
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He thought she was dead- and she doesn't have the heart to tell him that she'd wished she was, that when darkness comes the thought replays over and over and over in her head. Looking into the empty house, she wonders if she isn't a little dead, as hollow and lifeless as this place despite the vibrant veneer. She is grateful, yes, to be alive, to be whole, but maybe it would have been better for them all if she'd been trapped and crushed beneath the rubble.
He would have been able to move on, then, instead of being trapped in her tumultuous mess, the snares of her fractured heart.
She's surprised by the next retort, blinking and glancing down at his crown. This, at least, she feels no regret for, her piety and faith the only confidence she has left. "I would give my life to Safrin if she asked it," Amalia says softly, her brow furrowed, her mouth dry. "To any of the old gods. I... I belong to them. You have to know that." She has never been shy about her devotion to her deities, their position in the hierarchy of her esteem.
Her hands draw away and he grabs them back, preventing her retreat, holding her to him. "Yes I do," she counters quietly, letting her fingers trace over his. "I need your misery with your happiness. I need all of you, the good and bad. You... you keep trying to help me, but I don't want help. I just want you."
There was no moving on for him. There was no one else. There never would be. His commitments were tried and true, his promises were devotions no matter the outcome, his vows, his assurances, some of the only portions he’d ever been able to keep whole or tangible. He’d done this too many times – been too late, been too little, been not enough – begging and pleading for lives to be saved and receiving nothing in return. Slashing his way to comrades only for them to fall at his feet. Rampaging, invading, tearing down walls and ramparts, only for the rest to rise and rise and rise, higher, greater, grander than he could ever be.
Belonging to gods; he’d known, he’d always known. It didn’t mean that it still didn’t hurt or scald, that he wouldn’t eventually undermine, growl, or reduce himself to a mere rebellious force when they tried to take her. When she’d go willingly. When he’d be left behind (again and again and again), to fend back the tumultuous, rapacious forces thundering down his backbone, piecing and piercing together whatever remained of his soul. He nodded against his arms, understanding, accepting, and dreading, a war of apprehension collected in the slide of his skin.
Then the Sword wanted to shake his head, yearned to defy because it was all he had left – why would anyone want his misery? Why would anyone want to peek in and see those shadowy fixtures, those bludgeoned halls, those makeshift thresholds, cold and glacial, chilling and barbaric? The rest of the sovereignty had enough; they all did. There were deaths, there were graves, there were tombstones marking over precipices and fields, scattered and scorched; once intrepid, the same as them, but no longer capable of emerging from those hollowed shells and vessels. Opening up that maelstrom, that despair – it gnawed, it grated, it bristled in the back of his mind, along the columns of his spine.
He turned his head so that one of his eyes, red-rimmed, peeked back at her along the crook of his elbow, still hidden, but attempting. “You have me.” Fingers clutching hers, lifelines and anchors, tethers and bulwarks, stars and suns, no matter how badly he wanted to collapse in on himself. “I will try to be better.”
I will try to be better. "That's not what I said." Still holding his hands, Amalia sinks into a chair beside him, suddenly very, very tired. Try to be better, as if he isn't enough - as if she doesn't love him for his darkness, rather than in spite of it. As though she were some sort of paragon, deserving only perfection and strength while she gives only weakness in return.
Sighing, the girl releases one of his hands, tracing it thoughtfully down his back. "I don't need you to be better, Deimos. You're already too good to me. You... you take care of me. You healed me." I'm the one who is not enough. Biting her lip, the girl glances away, her fingers still idly trailing over covered shoulders. How to explain the things she's been feeling, to find words for the wealth of emotions she holds?
"Sometimes it... it feels like there's something you think you're supposed to be. For me. Like you hide away all the parts of you that you don't think I'll love- but I do love them, Deimos. I want to know them. To know you." Withdrawing her arm, Amalia tucks her feet onto the edge of the chair, legs against her chest. "It makes me feel like I'm far away from you. And... and like I have to hide my bad parts away, too. Because otherwise you'll try to carry them yourself, and that isn't fair. Not to either of us."
He openly stared at her for a few moments, still as a stone. Calculations rumbled along, confused, perplexed, why on earth she’d want to see, to know, everything he’d ever been. It hadn’t been good. It hadn’t been kind. It hadn’t been anything that she’d encompassed or carried – the Reaper: a pariah to emotion in either lifetime, fixated on malignant, vicious essences, rampant hostility, an avaricious gleam in his cruel, desolate distortions. There’d been moments where he’d been completely void of any sentiments at all, eager to be carved amongst his abhorrence, maelstroms of fiendish incantations, circumventing the globe with his deadly precision, with his savage predilections, with his kingdom, his soldiers, his thieves, his malice at beck and call. They’d unfurled and uncoiled, they’d layered ire, condemnation, and devastation into iron flesh and sinew. They’d proceeded through diabolical insurrection and smoking hazes: unholy sedition, promises of punctures, of primordial treachery to anyone not amongst their own. They’d killed, they’d deceived, they’d lied, they’d manipulated: for glory, for triumph, for ensuring revolution and decadence. Venomous rapture, dominating glory, a reticent rapier summoning his masses across devoured discord: is that what she wanted to see? Is that what she wanted to hear? Before the Sword, that’s all he’d been. The boy from the ocean gone, warped into a warrior, a refugee of the mountains, into a soul who’d forgotten what it was like to care; wild, fierce, and feral.
“You would not stay, if you knew all of it. You would not stay with me.” Not for someone who opted for life at every turn – once she’d experienced the slaughter, the arched detachment, the cold, callous wake. One glance into the Stygian and barbaric, twisted and gnarled reaches, and she’d leave. The Shield went to lift irreverent, broken, scattered vessels towards the sun, and he’d once pushed them off the side of cliffs. It was why he hid behind those leveled walls, behind those ramparts, behind those threads of oblivion, wrapped himself in chains and tethers, bore burden upon burden along his back. It was what he deserved. To bear the weight, to take every strain, every duty, every responsibility, and place it upon his shoulders until he broke. Just desserts, just rewards, for every horrific, formidable, chilling terror he’d unleashed.
Even now, he could be so easily undone, straight into the clarity of an overwhelming, eldritch titan: commit to sedition, to treachery, to disdain, to vengeance, in the blink of an eye.
But he didn’t want to lose her, didn’t want to spiral back into those confines: control, composure, stoicism, a grinding, unattainable, unreachable calamity. He’d never asked her to hide, to veil, to shroud. Perhaps it’d been something they’d taken upon themselves, both shielding from their storms, from their tempests, from their worst, heathen designs. Habit and routine, to embark on things meant to be good, meant to be strong, meant to be determined, and still not washing the varnish, the lacquer away, when they were together. Were they pretenses or guards? Were they masquerading or protecting? And would it matter when it all came down? The beast shook his head, thought, sought, to dig in further into the circle of his own arms, in the bastions of darkness, in the cover of nothingness. Except that wasn’t what she wanted – and he reached again on a harsh intake of breath, lifting his cranium, staring, exhaustion and fatigue and every other emotion written across his face. “What bad parts?” Opening walls, striving to peek over their corridors, their fixtures, and understand.
He tucks away further, withdrawing for her, the opposite of what she wants. Truth be told, Amalia is afraid: afraid of the darkness that lurks within him, afraid of the secrets, afraid of the scars. But it matters less to her what he was than what he is - and she feels as though she doesn't know that, not in all of its truth. Her long arms wrap around her legs, chin resting uncomfortably on bony knees.
"You don't get to decide if I stay or go." Her eyes remain unfocused from him, staring at the window, the haze of sun beyond. "But I don't want to leave you." Not now, not ever: but he doubts it still, questions her commitment, and that stings. It makes her feel far away from him, wonder what does lie in the unsaid moments, the secrets he clings to in the recesses of his mind.
And her bad parts? Suddenly Amalia feels guarded, defensive, the anxieties rearing up. What does she even have left to share with him, and what will he do but rebuff her? "I'm insecure," she replies softly, her alto almost monotone. "I'm afraid all the time. I get angry, and I make stupid decisions, and sometimes I hurt and there's nothing you'll be able to do to fix it." And sometimes she doesn't want him to fix it, to try and make her whole, because she knows she will never be whole enough - never be the perfect woman he always seems to see.
It was not upon her; but more or less the way the earth had treated him, how kingdoms had orchestrated, how loyalties had sunk because of his faults, his flaws, his defects, because he could only go so far, because his reach was tinged and stained with corruption. “Others have.” Experience in the world withdrawing around him too: exhausted in the silence, in the violence, in everything else that pervaded and surrounded his essence, how he refused to break, how he didn’t bow or bend, how he clutched at his grudges and petty footfalls. How many times had he watched a friend, a comrade, an ally, a loved one, walk away? Wouldn’t it be inevitable for her to tire of him too? Wouldn’t he eventually slip, make a mistake, descend straight into Reaper tendencies, and she would see exactly what he was? His eyes fell on the table when she didn’t look at him again, when he either wanted to growl or roar, when more of the overwhelming, suffocating intervals clutched at his spine, at his throat. I don’t want to leave you hung in his ears, spiraled against his mind, because he believed that no matter what he said now, would only lead to it. His mouth set, jaw clenched, eyes staring down at the woodwork on the surface, striving for an inch of control in his shaking fingers and gnarled, scarred structure.
And perhaps that was where he should just listen for a moment – to her own version of bludgeoning, things she thought of as deficiencies, that he knew and still loved her for. He’d never believed her perfect – there was no such thing – because they were all foolish and stupid and tempted, enticed, by a variety of oaths and assurances. She offered those boundaries, those fringes, and he accepted them wholeheartedly. Always had. Always would.
But his were grating and consuming, and he couldn’t look at her when he started to peel them away, one by one. “I attempted to kill anything threatening my lands or people.” Sometimes he was successful; and there, within the attuned bond, he flashed an image straight from his memory, cold, chilling walls, mountain tops and summits, unraveling his deadly enchantments into their soul, watching them drop, watching them perish (and the satisfaction within his heart, within his blackened, withered existence in those moments, in those instances, where he’d unraveled and bludgeoned and destroyed). “I sought to imprison or abduct adversaries. I tortured individuals for information. I planned and plotted invasions just for revenge.” Vengeance, justice, eyes blinking slowly, staring at the expanse of color when everything else felt frozen and gone, like he was writing out his own death warrant. “And I would do them all again, given the right circumstances.”
Remember that Amalia has grown in a bubble. Life is hard here, to be certain, with its own opponents and trials to face. There are countless deaths and fewer killings, but the Shield has never known war.
So when she says she can love a soldier, that soldier is an idea. A combatant, yes, but ideological, fighting for something intangible and moral, not for blood and sweat and land. The reality of a soldiers life is something she has no concept of, no way to reconcile.
She knows he has killed, has slaughtered in the name of others. She has always known, but the knowledge stayed tucked beneath the good that he has done: for her, for this place, for their friends. It isn't the words, then, that surprise her, but the things he doesn't say. The satisfaction, the pleasure, the lack of remorse or guilt. It sends a shiver down her spine, distracting her wholly from the horror of Adam and focusing her on the horror of him.
There is a mounting tension in Amalia's body as Deimos shares his sins. Her eyes, so recently unfocused, lock back upon his form. They slip to scars she once admired, now tinted red with truth. She wonders: which dying soldier left that upon him? Whose life did he trade for, to gain this other?
Did he enjoy it, watching them die?
She tells herself it doesn't matter, that it was then and now is now. That the man he was and the man he is are not one of the same. She might have believed it, too, might have overcome the horror of enlightenment, had it not been for his final statement: I would do them all again. Amalia's mouth dries at this, her throat clenching in disbelief.
There is no attempt to hide the shock and unhappiness from her face, the utter inability to reconcile this information with the man she has come to love. The man she has promised to marry-
"What circumstances?" she whispers, croaks, desperate to find something that makes sense, a lifeline to cling to in the drowning sea of truth.
They all had their fantastical figments once – when they signed their names on parchments, when they joined militia, when they cut their hair, and received their helmets, their swords, their shields. Glory was nothing but a dream, and the first real days of battle taught young soldiers that very lesson that no amount of training had ever signified. As friends were slaughtered at one’s side. As homes were taken, destroyed, snagged, obliterated. As the pounding of drums and trumpets through the fog amounted to nothing over suffering screams and outcries, bodies of allies and comrades cheering, laughing, smiling days before left in the dust and dirt. There were no picturesque scenes. No one welcomed them home – not when there was naught left.
Anyone who’d survived four wars had blood in far more places than just their hands. Maybe it was in his heart, maybe it was in his lungs, maybe it was in his twisted, agonized form. Maybe it was so blended into his soul that he scarcely noticed it anymore – pulsing and pervading, just as much as the deadly incantations, just as much as every other lethality he’d had to summon when his body had been a shield, a sword, a living, breathing weapon. That no amount of good, no amount of compassion, no amount of tenderness, warmth, comfort, or beneficence he’d ever extended seemed to wash those wounds, those scars clean. Constant reminders of what he’d done to persist, or ensure others did the same.
A stone, a statue, cast marble rigid and taut, he remained quiet, his eyes still on the table, incapable of looking at her, of being torn apart by her judgment. Perhaps it was easy to contain morals and virtues, when invasions didn’t slink down one’s back, when children weren’t threatened at every turn, when enemies didn’t snag or imprison just the same, when the cycle of vengeance wasn’t so paramount, accepted, or regarded. It wasn’t how things were done here. He’d learned that. He’d assimilated into it. He’d done his best to find his footing, his control, his composure.
He waited for the ax to fall. Waited for the noose to strangle, waited for the knot he’d done for himself to break his neck. Waited for her to say she was done, because no one could love something so menacing, so terrifying, so callous, so wicked, so feral. But the words she attached to, not the series of oaths and iniquities, was the finality of his position – that he’d do it again if necessary. Only then did his gaze swing back to hers, to stare at the overwhelming weight of surprise, bewilderment, and unhappiness (wondered if hate would set itself in her gaze too; if things he’d come to associate with the cosmos, with stars, with serenity, would simply stab him in the gut). “If there were no other solutions.” Thus far, there had been: they’d rebelled, they’d dug holes in basements leading to prisons, they’d strived for things not relished or savored in violence – and still, death had come.
She tries to keep her eyes on his, to meet the blue with onyx and find warmth beyond the red rimmed sclera. To see the man she loves, the man she knows him to be beneath the weight of scars and the stains of blood, the impulses for violence and wanton decimation. But the images, the memories he sent through the bond flash like lighting in her mind, blinding her to the familiarity she so desperately craves. So she looks away, eyes sliding off of his like oil off of water, falling back to the grain of the table as she waits for his response.
And when it comes it feels... well. It gives her none of the reassurance she wanted; it feels like a cop-out, like justification, like ash. "There's always another solution," she replies, sharper than she means to be, but she's reaching a point dangerously close to shattering apart. "You- those things- how many did you do because it was the only option? Can you honestly tell me you didn't enjoy h-hurting people?"
Then her eyes turn back to him, hot and fierce as embers. "That you wouldn't still enjoy it, if the circumstances were right?" There's a plea beneath the anger, the betrayal, the sense of confusion and the weight of the truth and the desperation to return to a time when she lived in happy ignorance. He is built to cut and she is built to shield; he is violence and aggression, and she is anxiety and empathy. They could beautifully come together, or they could spectacularly fall apart.
02-20-2020, 09:42 PM (This post was last modified: 02-22-2020, 12:31 PM by Deimos.)
DEIMOS
He didn’t know what she found beneath the agony and anguish in his eyes. That he was tired, exhausted, fatigued by it all? That no amount of explanation seemed to matter? That she’d asked, that she’d wanted to know and understand, and when it all warped away, when nothing was so clear, when the crumbling wakes were murky, that she detested it? A portion of him thought to crawl and flicker apart, that there was no way out of the corner she’d put him within, that no amount of explaining would be enough for her. But a curl, a coil, of anger settled in his mind too, to lay himself open to her, and to have it slammed back in his face, piece by piece, shard by shard. He maintained some clamor of calm, of composure, when his stomach seethed and his chest heaved, frustrated, agonized, falling deeper into this hole, into this spiral, into this brandished hell. “My job was to protect my land and people. If I had not, how many others would have been injured or killed? This was not your world. This was not Caido. Should I have laid down and let them destroy everything?” Where people were collected in some bubble, uncertain of what was going on around them, while other realms focused, cut, scraped, and slashed. “We made alliances. We made peace pacts. We made armistices. We tried.” And sometimes it hadn’t been enough – still targets, still legacies of torment, of abductions, of thieves corrupting through the night – the way he’d always been there, for them, taking hits and slashes, bearing those new scars so no one else had to. "But continue to lecture me with your wisdom on war and survival."
He looked at her then, truly looked at her as she peeled away, as she couldn’t even glance at him any longer. Ruined and marred, torn apart from her affection, love, and adoration. “The world is not so black and white. You must understand that, given everything that has happened here.” His tone flattened, his gaze maneuvered back upon the hues, back upon the colors, back upon the fragments that blinded him now. “Have you seen me out here, laying waste to everything around me? I have taken those options. I have learned from those moments.” That he’d changed, altered, assimilated into this kingdom just as he’d done in Helovia. He returned back to her embers, her sharp eyes like coals, stared straight into them and wondered what they’d built all along. Why she deigned to carve him apart, when he’d never done the same to her. What he’d strived to do over and over and over again. How he hadn’t judged her for a moment, and how she continued to pile more and more upon him, as if he hadn’t carried them from the instant his sword swung.
“This is why I say nothing. Because it is so easy for you to forget everything I have done for you and this place.” Quiet steel, iron resolve, uncertain how he could patch or fix this, if he was the only one willing to try. “No, I would not enjoy it.” He paused, swallowed, stared into the abyss, waiting for it to devour him whole. “I am not proud of them.” The Sword's gaze went to the Shield's thereafter, again and again, eyes burdened with a piercing, hovering hurt. Deeper wounds than his enemies had ever mustered. "Do you have so little faith in me?"
A place where ruin will come if people dared to aspire to peace, where the only option is to fight and kill and brutalize without remorse: she cannot picture it. War is foreign, threats and invasion and such levels of abject hate. Perhaps she is ignorant, naive and foolish. Or perhaps, she thinks, the Hollowed Grounds - and all of Caido - are simply better at prioritizing, somewhat more evolved. They need to survive against hostilities of the world rather than against each other; they do not go to war among themselves, had not sought to be ruled until the outlanders came.
She thinks about this in the face of his sarcasm, the anger that radiates off of him in waves. A quiet rage next to her incendiary force, but palpably there nonetheless. Amalia knows him well enough to know when he is angry, to see the emotion beneath the veneer, the coiling smoke of fury and hurt. Of course she hasn't seen his violence here; of course she knows the world is complicated- she is not a child, blind to reality, but her reality has been different than his. He knew that going into this, knew that when he chose her, yet now he acts as though she has affronted him personally by virtue of daring to be surprised. The blade of his words could easily ignite embers on the steel of her stubborn, obstinate resolve, set them both off and burn this all down into so much irreparable ash.
She swallows down the fire and it burns within her throat.
"I haven't forgotten." It is a quiet admission, still hard as flint, but non-hostile at least. "I know how much you've done - for Caido. For the people here. For me. It's why I love you, even though I knew..." She trails off, dropping her eyes again, a hard line in her jaw. She knew, but not really, because she lacked the frame of reference to comprehend it all. Even now it overwhelms her, appalls her, makes her ill.
Swallowing again, Amalia lets her gaze drift into the nonspecific distance, wondering a moment what Adam would think to see them having this fight here. "You knew this would... that I wouldn't like hearing this. I don't... I don't understand it all. How you could do all that, be all that, and still..." be you.
Her throat feels terribly, painfully dry, the fire burning down into embers and ash. She drops her head against her hands, elbows on the table, staring at the wood. "I shouldn't have... have said that. I'm sorry. I do have faith in you, and I want you to tell me everything, it's just... a lot."
Abhorrence, contempt, and malice been born and bred into their bones from a tender age in Isilme, multitudes and machinations of hate built into their forms, their figures, from the moment one could understand its meaning, its vices, its vitriol. Vehemence came in force, in words, carved, sculpted, into their existence that to know peace, serenity, or tranquility, was nearly a foreign concept – brief lulls before the next tempestuous storm. Violence came just as easily as breathing, manipulations came just as easily as moving, and war-torn shambles were a segment of normalcy, decadent ruins, ash, soot, dust, and nothingness. Helovia was only slightly better because repose lasted for longer stretches; by the time he’d perished, they’d managed a stint of calm, relegating to ensuring their livelihoods were better overall, instead of rampaging to the next land, instead of laying waste to another kingdom. Perhaps it’d been newer generations. Maybe it’d been wiser minds. Or it’d been a collective assemblage of children who’d watched their elders tear and lacerate into the world, and didn’t want to see it any longer.
Her quiet concession, no longer flickering over his hushed, clawing indignation, picked apart the edges of his wrath until all that was left were the fringes of exhaustion. The tired layers coiled along his muscles, his jaw, his eyes, until his elbows were on the table, his chin settled in his palms, a heavy sigh pressed, then released from his chest. He hadn’t come here to fight. He hadn’t come here to do anything than offer his support for her hurt, for the bombardments they seemed to constantly face. Snarking and blistering at one another, caustic imbalances, overwhelming circumstances, had only seemed to make the situation worse. Still loved, still cherished, despite all his vile parts – why he’d always told her he wasn’t worthy of her. His heart hurt, his lungs ached, and the desire to simply disappear into the ether was stronger than ever; only remaining because of the Shield’s presence. His eyelids felt heavy, his shoulders yearning to cave from the weight, a whisper barely billowing from his mouth. “It was how we were raised and trained.” No shrug given, the grumbling tones exuding into Adam’s sanction and sanctuary. “You become numb to it. It feels normal.” To swing swords into enemies, to pace through the realms like a knife, like a dagger, like a pernicious existence.
And here? He could understand the Naturals’ sway and vehemence towards Outlander tendencies – the exposure, the culture he would’ve brought over held only bits and pieces of any good to it: mostly death, mostly insurrection, mostly primeval platitudes. Here was an opportunity, a chance, for redemption, even when he faltered and stumbled along the way. “Though it is nice to not be constantly fighting,” an admission for her, followed by a quiet snort. Instead they nettled and thorned their way through other situations, through harsh, rash judgments, through death plagued by foolishness or just misfortune. Even Zariah’s presence hadn’t unfurled any lasting loathing, save for the Merciless alone. In Helovia they would’ve challenged and deigned to rip her apart. “I trust you would stop me anyway.” A half-smile, etching its way along his mouth, too exhausted and too tired to care any longer, before it faded away. “I will not show you anymore then.” No more images of war, of belligerence, of the motions of war; she would’ve seen it anyway, in the undulations and ripples of muscles, of scars.
A moment of silence for the fight they have given up on: there is a glimmer of peace in the storm of their collective frustrations, though whether from true understanding or simple exhausted remains unclear. Numbness to violence feels surreal, a terrible thing to aspire to yet something she's coming to understand. "And now?" she wonders, not looking up. "Are you still numb?"
There is fur on her neck, a curve to her ears, lilac trails in her hair- signs of the animals rising and cloying, pulling their way to the surface of her soul. "You're still fighting," Amalia points out, face tilted toward him just enough to show a sliver of dark eyes beneath a curtain of gold. "You fight all the time against who you are. Bad... And good. You're always so hidden, even to me." The angry accusation is gone from her voice: this is simple acknowledgement, statement of fact.
Is that joke, a smile, a snort? A ray of light in the darkness of their differences? Amalia can't help it: she smirks her own reply, a brief and fleeting expression of brightness that softens her features significantly. "I would." Stop him, save him, whatever it took. She would if he would let her, and maybe if he wouldn't, too.
Though her expression sharpens again at the follow-up declaration, frustration causing her to once more look away, her hands clenched tight. Amalia snaps, "That's not what I said," making no effort to hide her aggravation. "I said I want to know you- all of you. Not just what you think I can handle. That isn't fair, Deimos." Jaw clenched, she straightens back up, staring resolutely at the window, the haze of the world beyond obscured by unshed tears. "Or do you have so little faith in me?"
Not a weight, but a pending laceration against his chest, along the folds of withered hearts and Stygian beliefs. Are you still numb? There’d been times where he wished he was, so still horrifically detached and apathetic to the world around him, coiling and unfurling through lands as he’d done in Reaper folds: indifferent, unfeeling. Because then nothing would hurt so much, nothing would claw and race down his spine, his skin, or punch him in the gut. Deaths wouldn’t matter. The realms would continue to march on and on, and he’d be the Colossus maneuvering through its space, barely eroding, barely fissuring, barely cracking.
Except then he wouldn’t have anything all over again, another empty shell, another void, another hollowed out carcass. He wouldn’t have Amalia, devotion, love, promises, or commitments. He wouldn’t have Kiada, Hotaru, Rexanna, or any of the others who’d found their way into his savage, seditious entity, imploring him to be human instead of the manipulative, derisive machine from Helovia – those instances perished and gone, along with his bones in the mountainside. “No,” he answered finally, just as tired, just as drawn-out, just as forbearing and timeless. An ache in his lungs, a fire in his essence, fatigue stretching over his skull.
The Sword stared straight ahead, and then down to the table, to its veneer and surface, glancing for cracks, for polish to be worn away. He didn’t glance at her, didn’t see the rise of beasts over her skin, and only heard the intonations, the reverberations, gathered against him. “I have always fought,” he said immediately, a truth. Whether or not it was a war upon himself, or anyone else; striving, struggling, aspiring for other notions, beliefs, from beyond shambles and bones. A guard for eternity, walls upon walls upon walls, ramparts, fortifications, bastions, motions ready to assault and siege so no one came any closer – and for so long it had worked. No one bothered him. No one wanted to know him. No one cared. He was safer that way – lonely, decaying, and utterly isolated, but safer. “Hiding meant no one would see my weaknesses. Hiding meant no one could use them against me or harm those I cared about.” Like friends. Like loved ones. Like the very few who’d come into his tight circle of protection and shelter.
And he’d done it for so long that it was as natural as breathing – and far more difficult to pry his mouth, his jaws apart, to relish or savor anything from his mind that wasn’t action or spurned by some other motives. Her snap was justified; he could feel it surge and seethe along his flesh, and he didn’t shirk it away, didn’t deny it. “I did not mean it that way,” he whispered, gone quiet and still, careful breaths, slow inhales and exhales, picking his way apart. “I have every faith in you,” (just not in myself) followed, his eyes finally drawn back to hers, the same solid conviction he’d always shared upon her. “I do not know what you want to see.” He’d tried the war aspect – and it hadn’t gone well. Everything was too broad, too overwhelming, too massive. Start small he muffled through their bond.
