DEIMOS
the resurrected sword
Quiet and hushed while his memories worked over their haphazard wake; the Attuned sensations contorting against him, sharpening the horizon. He had tried, they all had, save for Sunjata – binding the cannibal up, threats, spears, aiming to either heal or implore words other than growls and half-chewed ears spit in his direction – nothing really mattering, in the end. They’d gotten what they’d come for – a dragon’s heart – just not the one they believed they’d snag and ensnare. His hands were still, the pencil motionless, a sigh coiled in his chest, yearning to be extinguished. He’d relived the saga over and over and over again, paying the price for not being able to do something else until it was too late, their mistakes warped, their errors massive, their instincts and ignorance tending to the flames.
He thought Jigano might have asked other inquiries, dug deeper, but there was naught but notions of continuing, and he fought away a sneer, disdain for himself, for endeavors they should’ve taken. Hindsight was a brutal, barbaric thing, sometimes more twisted, more condemning, than the moments he’d rekindled now. “Peter was hit too.” Then it’d been a series of unfortunate events, impulsive notions, action, action, action, struggling to remain alive in the bristling motions of so many thoughtless hours. The Shield's prayers coming to naught, the little star whale hurt, Zuriel's gut-wrenching agony, the begging of alms, of opportunities that never came. “Adam grabbed him, and he might have been fine. But he turned around to shoot the dragon with his gun -,” a shake of his head once more, the breath welling up inside him, layered out of his mouth piece by piece, as if dragged and condemned. “The dragon blasted them both, and they were gone.” Frozen – nothing else to be done. No time to be stuck in shock. No time to grieve. No time to do anything but move. “I tried to make a net and rope, to toss it over Coffee, so we could have a dragon for the quest. So we did not have to do any of that again.” So no one else would’ve been left to sink back into those terrible, treacherous moments, looking for the heart of a rare creature, dying and tying others to more and more tragedy. “Missed.” All his training, all his precision, hadn’t materialized either – the netting almost there, and still not enough. He swallowed down the trail of bile threatening to surround and cloak his throat, staring out across the sea as if it were an endless void; things he strived not to drown within, fighting for the surface.
“The rest of us got to the entrance, but there was not much else to do. I used a shield of ice to protect us, and melted the water to finally get Coffee,” and here he didn’t mention the utter sense of loss and hopelessness, the way Amalia had remained still, how time had slowed to define every ache, every pain, how everything was numbing and binding still. “But I could not get to them.” And there they remained, their souls with Mort, but their forms tucked away in a dragon’s threshold. What if he’d tried to get them all at the same time? Would it have been enough? How would they have gotten them all back? “Then we fled.” The silence compelled him, and the sudden sense of finality all over again rendered him back into quiet.
He thought Jigano might have asked other inquiries, dug deeper, but there was naught but notions of continuing, and he fought away a sneer, disdain for himself, for endeavors they should’ve taken. Hindsight was a brutal, barbaric thing, sometimes more twisted, more condemning, than the moments he’d rekindled now. “Peter was hit too.” Then it’d been a series of unfortunate events, impulsive notions, action, action, action, struggling to remain alive in the bristling motions of so many thoughtless hours. The Shield's prayers coming to naught, the little star whale hurt, Zuriel's gut-wrenching agony, the begging of alms, of opportunities that never came. “Adam grabbed him, and he might have been fine. But he turned around to shoot the dragon with his gun -,” a shake of his head once more, the breath welling up inside him, layered out of his mouth piece by piece, as if dragged and condemned. “The dragon blasted them both, and they were gone.” Frozen – nothing else to be done. No time to be stuck in shock. No time to grieve. No time to do anything but move. “I tried to make a net and rope, to toss it over Coffee, so we could have a dragon for the quest. So we did not have to do any of that again.” So no one else would’ve been left to sink back into those terrible, treacherous moments, looking for the heart of a rare creature, dying and tying others to more and more tragedy. “Missed.” All his training, all his precision, hadn’t materialized either – the netting almost there, and still not enough. He swallowed down the trail of bile threatening to surround and cloak his throat, staring out across the sea as if it were an endless void; things he strived not to drown within, fighting for the surface.
“The rest of us got to the entrance, but there was not much else to do. I used a shield of ice to protect us, and melted the water to finally get Coffee,” and here he didn’t mention the utter sense of loss and hopelessness, the way Amalia had remained still, how time had slowed to define every ache, every pain, how everything was numbing and binding still. “But I could not get to them.” And there they remained, their souls with Mort, but their forms tucked away in a dragon’s threshold. What if he’d tried to get them all at the same time? Would it have been enough? How would they have gotten them all back? “Then we fled.” The silence compelled him, and the sudden sense of finality all over again rendered him back into quiet.
under the bludgeonings of chance
my head is bloody, but unbowed
my head is bloody, but unbowed
