i hate dreaming of being alone
Amalia Chandrakant
the Archangel
Baker

Age: 29 | Height: 5'6 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Stormbreak
Level: 5 - Strg: 49 - Dext: 45 - Endr: 52 - Luck: 49 - Int:
JYOTI - Mythical - Starwhale (Humpback)
Played by: shark Offline
Change author:
Posts: 3,098 | Total: 4,577
MP: 2580
#1
AmaLIa
shield of safrin
His house feels so empty, without him there.

Walking through the front door, she remembers the first time so keenly. The motley crew assembled to manage a golem in the basement: Lucas (dead), Wessex (further away than ever), Peter (dead), and of course... him.

Walking into the front room, she can almost smell the scones and cakes they made together for Peter. Had it really only been a season? It feels like minutes and it feels like months - how carefree they had been, then. How easily she had teased him about his intentions, his plans.

Slender fingers trace along the empty countertop. There is no teasing now, no voices. Only silent ghosts.

Into his bedroom, a bizarre, eclectic combination of colors and fabrics and sparkly things. It feels sacrilegious to be in this private place, and she is careful as she drifts around it, not touching anything for fear of disrupting the spirits that sleep within. As though he would care - as though she is trying to hide her presence from him, to leave it the way she found it for when he comes home.

He isn't coming home.

There is a shirt on the floor (is it a shirt? Can something with so little fabric really be called a shirt?). Almost absently she picks it up, intending to fold it and put it away. To tidy up for him- except why the fuck does it even matter, because he's never coming home. He's never going to notice the things she touched, and he's never going to appreciate her cleaning up. He's never going to gossip with her, to hinder help her bake, to go on adventures with her. He's never going to wear this ridiculous shirt again, and soon the smell of him will leave it.

Soon scavengers will take his possessions, and someone else will live in this house, and the golem will decay and his name will be forgotten and he'll be nothing, just another ghost rattling around in her memory, just another name attached to failure, another thing she loved and lost.

For a moment, Amalia had a best friend. For a moment, she wasn't alone.

Clutching the shirt to her chest, the Shield sinks into a chair and tucks her legs against her. The fabric is unpleasant on her face, but she doesn't care: she presses the leather against her skin, inhales deeply the smell of him, and finally, for the first time since the dragon, Amalia begins to sob.
you can't choose what stays
and what fades away
Deimos Ignatius
the Resurrected Sword
Warden of Halo / Guildmaster

Age: 33 | Height: 6'4" | Race: Hybrid | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Halo
Level: 14 - Strg: 72 - Dext: 72 - Endr: 73 - Luck: 80 - Int: 3
BELIAL - Mythical - Peryton (Blend) ZURIEL - Mythical - Unicorn (Healing)
Played by: Heather Offline
Change author:
Posts: 6,554 | Total: 10,647
MP: 9824
#2
DEIMOS
None of them could go back. It was a harsh, unwinding cruelty life had taught him at a young age. Friends, precious and vital, could be there one moment and gone the next, suddenly remembered only as wraiths, only as fragments, only as sullied, marred gloom. Everything was fleeting, soulful regard vanished, plucked from the edges of rapture, of reverie, and destroyed. Perhaps this was why he was avaricious, why he was greedy, why he was grasping, because he’d learned long ago that he could only have something for so long – before it left, before it sunk, before it died. Before it carved out a niche in withered hearts and empty, hollowed worlds. Before one became a void, indifferent, detached, and immoral.

Deimos followed, all he did now – placing one foot in front of the other, fearing if he stopped, if he ceased, if he desisted, something would break apart. Something would shatter. Something would splinter and fracture, and he’d have to admit he was losing the fight. He kept his head above the surface of all the guilt, of all the events, barely, just barely, so he could breathe and see, so he could listen and strive to understand the consequences, the circumstances, burrowing and burying them alive. But it was still drowning, still savaging, still choking, strangling down the length of his throat, sticking into his ribs, clawing along his lungs. The weight was dangerous and deadly, lethal and overpowering, and eventually he’d erode, he’d collapse, he’d crumble under its cumbersome bearings, under the distinction that survival came with its own wounds. That they’d made it out of the last trial, the last tribulation, but they had not.

A single step into the domicile suffocated him again: symbols of Adam in every capacity, from the walls, to the floors, to cluttered ramparts and counters. He half-expected the man to drift or slither out from the confines, a crude joke layered, a, irritating, ridiculous laugh echoing across halls and walls. But nothing came. Just ghosts, dust, and figments of a life he’d barely known. Wouldn’t have at all, if it weren’t for Amalia.

Long before, his hands had closed over his parents’ house and he’d stood stock still on the doorstep, stood over a warped, burnt precipice and shelter, a sanctuary, torn and mutilated, crumbled from the inside out. His father slain. His mother gone. Phantoms in the corner of his eyes. Decay, decay, decay, not enough a refrain in his head, a jumble of anthems and banners he could’ve recited in his sleep.

Before the Sword splintered right there, in the center of the room, he maneuvered, hands itching, form restless, listening to the sounds of the Shield walk amongst the house. His eyes passed over objects, over a life interrupted: of a man who’d likely believed he’d be coming home that day, a dragon captured, a mission accomplished. He swallowed down the trail of bile threatening, smothering him whole. You should have done more his mind pledged, and he hung his head, uncertain of what to do next – if he was just here to be further haunted.

The sound of her sobs merely opened up wounds that never had a chance to heal. Instincts born of a thousand other sleepless evenings and struggling, striving wakes led him to her, into a bedroom he scarcely noticed. Deimos went to her instead, a pattern, a ritual, collected and curled on the chair, face pressed into one of Adam’s things. The image alone was heartbreaking too, nothing more to be done, nothing more to be uttered, nothing more to be accomplished because they couldn’t return to those worlds before, to those instances where they weren’t covered and contorted between icy walls and engulfing terror. These were the times he wished he couldn’t feel a thing.

But his arms, his hands, went for her, meant to wrap, meant to pluck, meant to lift her into his chest, to settle either on the floor or the chair, to extend all the compassion, all the strength he had left. “I am sorry,” a whisper in her ear, a rattling breath, his head bowed into her shoulder.
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
Amalia Chandrakant
the Archangel
Baker

Age: 29 | Height: 5'6 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Stormbreak
Level: 5 - Strg: 49 - Dext: 45 - Endr: 52 - Luck: 49 - Int:
JYOTI - Mythical - Starwhale (Humpback)
Played by: shark Offline
Change author:
Posts: 3,098 | Total: 4,577
MP: 2580
#3
AmaLIa
shield of safrin
He follows her like a shadow, an echo, another hollow creature walking through this mausoleum, this cenotaph, this shrine. Tomb- except there isn't even a body to bury, no flesh or blood to leave within the skeleton of stick and stone. Just taunting, howling memories that flood her mind and senses; just smells and sounds and hallucinations; just laughing, mocking ghosts.

She does not look up when Deimos draws near; her eyes are full of tears. She does not open up to his embrace, doesn't unfold into his touch. Instead Amalia draws in tighter, her knees pressing up against her chest, the shirt clung to with all the ferocity of the teddy beloved by a child. I'm sorry feels like a taunt against her skin, a key to unlock the floodgates of remorse. It's the words she's repeated in her mind for hours and days and years. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry-

She wants to be left with her grief and her pain and her guilt and her ghosts and she wants to never be alone again. She wants to turn time back and change every choice, fix every countless, agonizing mistakes. The sobs come faster now, louder, unstoppable, tears on her knees, her hands, the shirt. She wishes she could give him anything, could take his grief and carry it, but Amalia has nothing left. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry...

"I didn't get to say goodbye."
you can't choose what stays
and what fades away
Deimos Ignatius
the Resurrected Sword
Warden of Halo / Guildmaster

Age: 33 | Height: 6'4" | Race: Hybrid | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Halo
Level: 14 - Strg: 72 - Dext: 72 - Endr: 73 - Luck: 80 - Int: 3
BELIAL - Mythical - Peryton (Blend) ZURIEL - Mythical - Unicorn (Healing)
Played by: Heather Offline
Change author:
Posts: 6,554 | Total: 10,647
MP: 9824
#4
DEIMOS
Maybe he was a shadow; barely alive, figments and blackened, enigmatic, breathing maelstroms of nothingness. He could’ve maneuvered from room to room, naught in the wake of his mind, numbed and empty, concaved and vacant, a breath barely passing from lungs to throat to mouth; wakes of eternities in the chisel of bones and enamel. How many times he’d lost. How many times he’d failed. How many times he’d scraped against the ground, face-down, trying to ensure he wasn’t among the dead again. Should they have perished then too, amongst the sweeping gallows of icy halls and foundations? Would that have made everything better?

Because he didn’t know how to fix this. He’d never healed from all the back-breaking maelstroms, all the chaotic imbalances, over the feral, splintered, snapped tides. He just smothered them down, down, down until one day he’d be completely, utterly consumed, suffocating in his perils, in his abyss, in the devastations and disasters that should’ve been triumphs. All he’d ever done was move forward and pretend to be fine, bear the weight, the bruises, the seams, the stones, quietly drowning, never a plea uttered.

Even as she curled in tighter, he coiled, surrounded, pervaded, provided, sought to do something other than be engulfed in his own miseries and melancholies. The Sword tried to give and grant all the love, all the compassion, all the strength he had in his arms, in his hold, in his presence, tarnished soul brandished for her, even as she so clearly didn’t want it. “I should have grabbed them too,” a rumble, a whisper, something quiet and stark and hushed. He put the blame on himself – let it clatter and claw, let it rampage and fester, decay and root itself into the warped thresholds of his damaged, depleted figure. Mind on the mission, primordial instincts snapping over the perils – the way he plunged during battle, nothing left to liberate when they’d perished, when they’d all been doomed to repeat the nuance, the quest, the sojourn again had he not snagged at Coffee.
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
Amalia Chandrakant
the Archangel
Baker

Age: 29 | Height: 5'6 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Stormbreak
Level: 5 - Strg: 49 - Dext: 45 - Endr: 52 - Luck: 49 - Int:
JYOTI - Mythical - Starwhale (Humpback)
Played by: shark Offline
Change author:
Posts: 3,098 | Total: 4,577
MP: 2580
#5
AmaLIa
shield of safrin
Should he have grabbed them? Should she? So many things could have been different, and yet what difference would it make? Amalia shudders, her sobs quieter now but still present. She is slender, still weak from weeks of sickness; she is bones and sinew in his arms, trembling against the mountain of her discontent.

Slowly, though, the crying slows, the sobs still there but growing fainter. Too tired to continue on forever, she can feel exhaustion creeping in, hungry fingers in the corners of her mine enticing her to spiral down to darkness. I'm so tired, she whispers silently, her mental voice seeping out like water from a breaking dam.

I don't know... I don't want to keep trying anymore. I don't know what to do. She still doesn't look up, doesn't uncoil, but the tension of her shoulders is bleeding away, exhaustion and misery in its place. Grief rises off of her in clouds of shadow; it would be so much easier to just collapse. She doesn't want to hold herself together anymore.
you can't choose what stays
and what fades away
Deimos Ignatius
the Resurrected Sword
Warden of Halo / Guildmaster

Age: 33 | Height: 6'4" | Race: Hybrid | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Halo
Level: 14 - Strg: 72 - Dext: 72 - Endr: 73 - Luck: 80 - Int: 3
BELIAL - Mythical - Peryton (Blend) ZURIEL - Mythical - Unicorn (Healing)
Played by: Heather Offline
Change author:
Posts: 6,554 | Total: 10,647
MP: 9824
#6
DEIMOS
What would it be like: to simply give in? To just let every bone in his wake descend into the floor and crumble into dust? To drift back down into his hellish spiral, revisit the oblivion he’d been within before and before and before? Because this was just another form, a rush of phantoms, a weight of ghosts, survivor’s guilt waging its war on the victims in its hold. Too god damned stubborn, too tenacious, too barbaric, he held himself together with fraying strands and decaying sinew, fighting off the onslaught, the temptation, the enticement of surrender. He kept trying because it was all he knew how to do now – didn’t know what it meant when they ceased altogether. I know he uttered into those voids of silence, where they were just ruins and seams, because he was exhausted too, but couldn’t, refused, to bend down into submission, concession, defeat. So am I. Like it mattered. Like anything they did counteracted the plagues upon this world. Like their fortifications hadn’t fallen and split apart, like the realm didn’t laugh when they sputtered and fumed, when they cried and extinguished, when they begged for mercy and it went unheard.

What was the alternative? Sit and settle into the void? Be so utterly consumed and devoured, swallowed and engulfed, submerged by wave upon wave of anguish? Deimos didn’t have any answers for her – just as lost, just as picked and clawed and scarred. The beast had ceased trying more than once; shaped into the Reaper, into annals, tombs, and catacombs of his bone-crushing invocations and his malicious bludgeoning. It hadn’t earned him anything better, anything greater, anything grander. He’d still been marred and cut, slashed and lacerated, driven into onslaught after onslaught, terror after terror. And still he clutched tighter, uncertain of where to go or what to do, lost, lost, and lost, holding her together while his mountainous wake disintegrated. A shake of his head, a choking breath, a grating rasp, a denial, a dissent, a seditious exploit, from the crawling spirals of their defeat – maybe he’d simply continue holding their heads above the water, until he couldn’t any longer. Despite the notion that she sounded done, he wasn't, not yet. "Do you want to do something to honor them?"
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
Amalia Chandrakant
the Archangel
Baker

Age: 29 | Height: 5'6 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Stormbreak
Level: 5 - Strg: 49 - Dext: 45 - Endr: 52 - Luck: 49 - Int:
JYOTI - Mythical - Starwhale (Humpback)
Played by: shark Offline
Change author:
Posts: 3,098 | Total: 4,577
MP: 2580
#7
AmaLIa
shield of safrin
She's tired. He's tired. So what's the point of it all? Turning her head, she wipes her nose upon her legs, leaving trails of snot upon her pants and utterly unapologetic. She's facing away from Deimos now, her eyes unfocused as she stares at Adam's room, his things, the mess just waiting for him to come home. Then why do we keep trying? Head on her knees, Amalia sighs heavily. What's the point?

Her body shudders with her heavy inhale, lungs shivering, breathing noisily through her mouth. Maybe he is familiar with loss and picking himself back up again, but for Amalia each blow feels like it has dragged her in deeper, pressed her more firmly into the mire. Her grandmother, her mother, and so many more-

But oh, if this isn't the worst one of all.

Does she want to do something to honor them? "What..." she begins, her voice a croak, teeth coming back together in a sudden wash of frustration. "...do you think we should do? To honor them? We don't even have their bodies, Deimos. We don't even know if their souls will make it to Mort."
you can't choose what stays
and what fades away
Deimos Ignatius
the Resurrected Sword
Warden of Halo / Guildmaster

Age: 33 | Height: 6'4" | Race: Hybrid | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Halo
Level: 14 - Strg: 72 - Dext: 72 - Endr: 73 - Luck: 80 - Int: 3
BELIAL - Mythical - Peryton (Blend) ZURIEL - Mythical - Unicorn (Healing)
Played by: Heather Offline
Change author:
Posts: 6,554 | Total: 10,647
MP: 9824
#8
DEIMOS
Two lifetimes taught him loss. War and invasions. Friends gone and buried. It didn’t make the notions any easier; it just made the heartache deeper, the wounds festering, decaying, rotting him from the inside out. Detachment encouraged him not to even bother any longer; comfort in weaponry, in machinations, in conspiring to topple kingdoms rather than concern himself with regards to anyone. He’d loved and cherished still, when they all managed to sink and immerse themselves in his cold, decrepit, withered heart, and it didn’t make it any better when they left him too – when perishing bonds and things were the one thing he could understand, when worlds turned colder and bolder. So he didn’t have an answer for her, not really – he’d dragged himself through crypts, through catacombs, through makeshift graveyards, hung his sorrows right across his shoulders and didn’t address them. Let them mar, let them ruin, let them claw, let them suffocate, like they did now. That is all I have ever done. And she looked away from him, and so he hung his head, tucked it against his chest, paid no attention to the ornaments, to the adornments, to the room filled with color and mirth. What do I do instead?

Her ire, her frustrations pummeled. Why he bothered to make any noise, any sense, any sensation at all was beyond him – striving to alleviate the pain and torment when it just continued on its circular motions. “We made memorials sometimes. In Helovia. In Isilme.” For those who’d died and been placed in mass graves, for those unidentifiable, for those gone and gone. “But we have parts of them.” He raised his head, gestured to the walls, to the room, thought back to the gift Adam had extended him – half a joke, now at the bottom of his bag.
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
Amalia Chandrakant
the Archangel
Baker

Age: 29 | Height: 5'6 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Stormbreak
Level: 5 - Strg: 49 - Dext: 45 - Endr: 52 - Luck: 49 - Int:
JYOTI - Mythical - Starwhale (Humpback)
Played by: shark Offline
Change author:
Posts: 3,098 | Total: 4,577
MP: 2580
#9
AmaLIa
shield of safrin
Don't you get tired of it? Tucking her lip between her teeth, Amalia begins to worry it while her fingers sharpen to claws. Like a cat she kneads her legs for comfort, fingers tightening and loosing around the slender calves, the bony shins. Tired of trying and being strong- but oh, he is always strong, the bulwark against the storm, the mountain beneath a winter's gale. He is all smooth edges and and constancy and iron and ice and stone, never breaking, never bowing.

Not even to her.

She tries to bite back her frustration at another measured, logical response. She doesn't want to be reasonable right now, can't understand how he can so easily make plans to memorialize them while the smell of Adam still fills this house. She ought to tuck her anger away, to hide it from him as she always does - shelter the broken parts of herself beneath his steadfast and stalwart presence.

The claws clench tighter on her legs, leaving red marks, threatening to tear the fabric. She knows she ought to be good enough for him, but she doesn't have it in her today.

"Fine." Flat and apathetic and a little acerbic behind it all. He's trying to hard to be there for her, but she can't just pretend it's all okay. That it will ever be okay. "Whatever you want. Let's just... just take some of their things and make a nice little statue and pretend it makes up for the fact that they're dead. That sounds fine to me."
you can't choose what stays
and what fades away
Deimos Ignatius
the Resurrected Sword
Warden of Halo / Guildmaster

Age: 33 | Height: 6'4" | Race: Hybrid | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Halo
Level: 14 - Strg: 72 - Dext: 72 - Endr: 73 - Luck: 80 - Int: 3
BELIAL - Mythical - Peryton (Blend) ZURIEL - Mythical - Unicorn (Healing)
Played by: Heather Offline
Change author:
Posts: 6,554 | Total: 10,647
MP: 9824
#10
DEIMOS
A muffled breath, a harsh sigh, the fight leaving him, stringing him along out of habit and routine. Because it was instinctual, for him to clench his jaw, grind his teeth, and carry on – because if he stayed back, if he lingered, if he strayed too far off of those paths, the haunted poignancies bit and chewed, gnarled and gnashed. What else do I have? What other choice was there? What would he do if he were to just shatter there, in this damned room? What would it solve? What would it matter? Because his feelings, his emotions, didn’t seem to bear any weight along these thresholds, where the dead still seemed very much alive, where they continued to survive while friends were frozen solid, decrepit, tucked within a dragon’s treasure room. Because sometimes all he ever had were scraps of knotted munitions, and the ice was too thick, the chilling void too strong, for him to do anything more than stare out at oblivion. He crumbled, he waned, he decayed, and just the façade, the outer walls remained.

Then she bit, and slashed, and his head reared back, the hurt more chiseled, more defined, in the sanction of his piercing eyes, in the rubble and ruin he was destined to leave behind. Her anger was emboldened and audacious, ripping into him far deeper than he longed to acknowledge; the wear and tear of yesterdays and yesteryears just pushing the knives and daggers further in. His hands released her, and he stepped back, support caustic and imbalanced, heart weighing heavy in his chest. She didn’t have need of him. His voice raised to barely a whisper, barely a rumble. “I do not know what you want from me.” His fingers shook as he retreated, head bowed, leaden, iron and stone, into his chest, control barely there, no longer a necessity along these thresholds, clear and plain to see. “But I do not deserve your malice.” After everything he’d done for her –

He disappeared, back into the thresholds of the front room, where light poured in from windows, where it simmered and set along empty tables. There, sitting amongst the vast array of things gone, vanquished, and depleted, he pulled up a chair and sat, struggling to regain composure over his breathing, arms raised along the surface to catch his head, to hide the wealth of agony rampaging behind his eyes.
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
Amalia Chandrakant
the Archangel
Baker

Age: 29 | Height: 5'6 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Stormbreak
Level: 5 - Strg: 49 - Dext: 45 - Endr: 52 - Luck: 49 - Int:
JYOTI - Mythical - Starwhale (Humpback)
Played by: shark Offline
Change author:
Posts: 3,098 | Total: 4,577
MP: 2580
#11
AmaLIa
shield of safrin
It isn't that she's angry at him- it's that he's there, always there, utterly untouchable in his stoicism and calm, diamond beneath a tungsten shield and iron under that. In the years intervening, in the struggles and the conflicts, she has come to expect him to simply be there, absorbing the vibrations of a tumultuous world with some sage, cultured zenness she can never hope to achieve.

So when the thing that finally breaks him is her- well, it takes her aback as much as him, her head bolting up at last from her knees as he releases her with the swiftness one might drop a hot poker. Black eyes rimmed in tears blink with wild surprise, disbelief and confusion and guilt rampant on her face: "I-" she begins, half apology, half retort, but it's far too little too late. She's become so accustomed to his steadiness and strength; she never expected it would be her words that broke him, in the end.

But it makes sense, doesn't it? Cruel and vicious, selfish and immature- these are the things she is inside, beneath the veneer of the pious baker, the shiny title of Shield. She can feel her breath hitching, desperate and anguished as she watches him walk away. There is a part of her that wonders if she can't compel him back, reach out with that Attuned magic and draw him to her side. She'd resented it only a second ago, the quiet and reasonable embrace.

Now she feels naked without it, empty and alone.

It takes a minute for her to rise, her body uncoiling from its tightly wound knot. It takes longer for her to leave the doorway; she lingers there, steeling herself, her arms around her chest as thoughts crash through her mind, raging and roaring conflicting desires. If she doesn't go to him will he come to her? Probably, a wicked, selfish voice whispers in her ear. I could wait and he would come, and he would apologize, and I could languish in my pain. It would be so much easier, so much more comfortable: then she could apologize without losing the fight. She could be the victim, the martyr, the one whose hurt deserves the most comfort.

Because she is hurt, has been hurt by the world, again and again and again.

But his wounds? Those are not just from the world. She hurt him, and that is unforgivable.

Her feet pad softly on the dusty floor, soft and tremulous as the beating of her heart. She comes to a stop behind him and swallows: the last opportunity for her to retreat, to let him close that gap and thus shirk the blame. She could wait for him to turn around, but she cannot bear to see his face. If he is angry it will hurt her, but if he forgives her?

It will tear her apart.

Slowly, softly, Amalia leans forward, her cheek coming to rest atop his head. "I'm sorry," she whispers, eyes closed, voice throaty; if he lets her she will slide her hands over his shoulders, let them dangle down to drape carefully across his chest. "I'm sorry, Deimos. I wish... will you tell me what you're thinking? Please?"
you can't choose what stays
and what fades away
Deimos Ignatius
the Resurrected Sword
Warden of Halo / Guildmaster

Age: 33 | Height: 6'4" | Race: Hybrid | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Halo
Level: 14 - Strg: 72 - Dext: 72 - Endr: 73 - Luck: 80 - Int: 3
BELIAL - Mythical - Peryton (Blend) ZURIEL - Mythical - Unicorn (Healing)
Played by: Heather Offline
Change author:
Posts: 6,554 | Total: 10,647
MP: 9824
#12
DEIMOS
It would’ve always been her that broke him; just as with anything he dared to keep close, loved, and cherished. So few had ever managed to find their way into his armor, that he hadn’t noticed when the chinks in the chainmail, in the fortifications, had become wider, gaping. But he’d nearly lost himself each time she returned with some new injury, with some new threat, with a temple descending down and upon her – choked and gnarled and knotted his way to some strangling noose so she could be healed. He orbited around her sun, her light, her radiance, her reverence like some blackened hole, and tried to ward off anything and everything – failed miserably, just as he’d done so many times before – sword in hand, steel walls threatening to destroy, to discard, to unfurl. Perhaps she hadn’t realized the weight of her words, how much they bent and broke when everything else was already ground down into nothingness, when there were lives at stake and ruins to raise and so many other wretched nuances pounding down his spine. Deimos always fought: bleeding and scarred, malicious and discarded, did so even now, at the pounding of his wrecked heart and clawing lungs, as his spine contorted, not so rigid, not to taut and strong, to let him lean across the precipice and hide from the world.

Maybe that was what he should’ve done all along: gone right back to the Reaper schematics, where calculations ran rampart and seething vitriol were the only things that held him together. He could seek out revenge. He could destroy everything in his path. He could burn from the inside out, and no one would care. No one would give a damn when they took their last breath. He could stay within the shadows all over again, not a single emotion cast out of his forged shell: living, breathing weapon once more, Colossus with his blade, daring anyone, and everyone, until he finally succumbed, perished, back into flames and hell.

What was the point of doing anything now? When they were all wrecked and scarred (hadn’t he always been? What had changed?) Love might have been a whisper, a whimper, a ghost in his ear. He’d had it and chased it and followed it – her, her, her – sought it for eternity and struggled with being enough for her embrace, for her essence, for her presence. Even now, the fiend couldn’t withstand the storm, let it billow and pummel until he’d been dragged underneath its currents, permitting it to wash over, to drown him in its potency. Lost without her – head hung, eyes closed, not understanding where they’d gone or why their ventures seemed to end in destruction.

He didn’t expect her to follow. The damage done, the festering begun, the stony fixtures forced down and split apart. They all carried too much – and it slid down his shoulders, along his backbone, on the ridges of sinew and flesh meant to bear the strain. He’d borne the granules, the rubble, for so long that it seemed unnatural, weak, vulnerable to do it now – he almost clenched his jaw, retreated further into the fold of his own arms, away from the sun.

But he heard her, soft and light, and the dread, the apprehension curled along his marrow, beating a pulse in his frenetic veins. He waited for the bellow, the snap, the claws, some other avaricious anger to collide, and he thought about not looking up, about descending into his deserved oblivion, with its darkness, with its veils, with its shrouds, until her touch was on him, a cheek on his head, and he froze. An apology drifted to his ears, and he thought to shake his cranium, to ward off the acknowledgment he didn’t deserve. But then he was enveloped, embraced, surrounded, and his breathing eased, his heart quelled, eyes drifting closed, brimmed tears collected at the corner of his lids. What was he thinking? His throat was raw and rasping, a grumble in his chest, afraid to lift his skull, afraid if he looked for her, she’d disappear. “I do not know what else to do for you. I want to help.” Always had, always would: beyond just looking for some leaves or brandishing water in the moonlight. “But you spurn my efforts.” Hissing at goddesses, telling them it didn’t matter, offering her life (her life) for the sake of a temple that only needed to be rebuilt, repaired, watching as everything he tried to do splintered, fractured, into nothingness. “What do you need?”
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
Amalia Chandrakant
the Archangel
Baker

Age: 29 | Height: 5'6 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Stormbreak
Level: 5 - Strg: 49 - Dext: 45 - Endr: 52 - Luck: 49 - Int:
JYOTI - Mythical - Starwhale (Humpback)
Played by: shark Offline
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Posts: 3,098 | Total: 4,577
MP: 2580
#13
AmaLIa
shield of safrin
His coarse hair anchors her there, the sensation of it against her skin the only thing holding her to this world. When he speaks she focuses on the rumble of his chest, the vibration of him against her palms. It's always been so comforting, so constant, just like him.

Now, though, she wonders if that rumble isn't actually a warning of avalanche to come.

The temptation to bite back defensively is strong. Amalia's toes curl up unhappily, her hands flexing and twisting over the fabric of his shirt. For a long moment she is silent, swallowing and chewing on her cheek, trying to gather her curling thoughts into something coherent and true. At some point her face comes off his head, her dark eyes unfocused as they stare into Adam's empty space.

When she finally speaks her voice is taut, a wound spring full of unsaid things. "I'm sorry," Amalia repeats again. "I didn't mean- I didn't realize you felt that way." Because you never tell me hangs unsaid in the Attuned bond, there should he try to look for it, just below her active thoughts. Sighing, she moves to remove her hands, suddenly very doubtful that he actually wants her in his space.
you can't choose what stays
and what fades away
Deimos Ignatius
the Resurrected Sword
Warden of Halo / Guildmaster

Age: 33 | Height: 6'4" | Race: Hybrid | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Halo
Level: 14 - Strg: 72 - Dext: 72 - Endr: 73 - Luck: 80 - Int: 3
BELIAL - Mythical - Peryton (Blend) ZURIEL - Mythical - Unicorn (Healing)
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#14
DEIMOS
Glaciers slid, a gradual release, the pressure too great, too agonizing, too torturous. His sides heave with the effort, his lungs conspire to ruin, to suffocate, to smother before he can utter another word. Because that had always one of his monumental flaws: communication; no urgency to speak, not without thought, not without precision, not without the right inflection or tone. Then the world couldn’t use the discourse as weapons. Then he couldn’t be ignited, annihilated, based on serpent tongues or grasping woes. Then realms and kingdoms wouldn’t find the things he cherished the most, and obliterate them from his life.

But maybe it already had, with or without his hushed ramparts, his rooted defiance.

This was not what he wanted to do. This was not about him. These moments weren’t meant to be strangled by his pain and anguish, by the punishing claws pulling at his ribs. His heart, his chest, hurt, pulsed with feverish intensity, his mind telling him to stop, his jaw clenched, pried apart by her apologies, her leaving, her departure, from his side. Maybe this was how he would lose again too, mauled by the wake of his own brutality, by the calculated measures of his quiet, stoic barbs come back to bite and snap. Maybe she was tired of it. Most had been. Most had left. Most hadn’t bothered to try.

“I thought you were dead.” In the temple, beyond the rubble and the ruin, where a gathered amount of vigilant souls had tried to heal and couldn’t. He didn’t lift his head, left it there, on his arms, face hidden while his throat crackled, while his heart burst. His story had been written by a series of failures, brief, flickering triumphs, and then the heavy burden of loss. Fixtures, filaments, and figures decaying around him, and he’d always had to stand there, had to strive to patch and seam everything back together, even when it didn’t fit anymore. Otherwise he concaved, otherwise he fell apart, and the worlds would have no need of him any longer. What use was a rusted weapon? What good was an eroded machine? “And then you offer your life to Safrin, like it was nothing.” Do you think of me at all? laid in there, beneath fallen walls and fractured bones. And then he’d done the same, because he couldn’t picture his without her in it, the sun, the moon, and the stars. He was the darkness around them, gradually withering at the fringes, at the boundaries. Broken granules scarred inwardly, and he rasped, he swallowed, he held tight to whatever control, composure he had left.

Amidst the suffering, he found her other words, the fragments always come to torture, come to thorn, come to nettle. The Sword could agree with them; because he never said anything to anyone, preferring his suffering in kingdoms apart, where no one could reach him and maul further. “You did not need my misery too.” Then there was an absence, a weight off his shoulders, her, and his fingers reached, dared to grab at fabric, a pull for her when everything else was so off-kilter, so unbalanced, so askew.
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky


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