not a stranger here

DEIMOS

the resurrected sword

The General watched as the wave he sent went careening over the lizard, rendering the Sage’s previous efforts obsolete. Despite the words loosened throughout the bond, Deimos presumed Jigano would be just fine – loosened a wild chord of laughter as he lumbered and thrashed his way along the surface. It rumbled within his chest and proceeded out into the billowing waves, either lost or reverberating, before floating back along the current again, allowing it to take him along little routes and paths, a push, a pull. The notion of surrender was music to his ears; the sensation of triumph, no matter how minute or trifling, contorted and wrapped its way around his skull for a few moments. It was enough to savor in the instance – mostly because of how little they ever had. Little successes, little victories, little assemblages of something other than bleeding, beating moroseness.

Biting back the fleeting feeling, mind churning over a thousand other inquiries, the Sword likely ruined the connotations as his machinations roamed further into the future. Erupting the balance of amusement and diversions, for one of not too far off in the distance; marring and tarring, eyes on the skyline, on the horizon, while the water maintained his presence. “Do you intend to go out during LongNight again?” A series of calculations, pondering possibilities, how to keep doors closed as Safrin requested, when there were bound to be others locked in another herald’s request.

under the bludgeonings of chance
my head is bloody, but unbowed