remember that you can't save everyone
remember that you have to try
There were always going to be those agonizing moments of not enough. Too many times he’d been the same – setback after setback, loss after loss, no matter how much he’d strived, tried, and attempted to engage every amount of precision into his movements. It’d happened in Isilme, in Helovia, and then in Caido, a foreboding cloud over any reign of supremacy. Except, if he stopped now, he’d just sink again. He was familiar with those mires, with those warrens, with those seemingly endless, eclipsing boundaries, meant to suffocate, meant to drag, meant to drown them all in its forbidding prowess.So they would just have to continue to rise. Find those steps. Find those hands. Find someone’s grasp strong enough to hold theirs.
He stood and waited for her in the rushes of agony, could feel it varnishing, lacquering, layering over the fortifications of his might. The beast could bow his head and let it wash over him for eternity, withstand the forces of her sorrow, or return his with equal measure. There were no words he could relate that would have mattered, no amount of comfort or balm in the ensuing self-torment. He sighed and breathed, pulsing strength back in the weight of her agony and anguish, pervading fortitude, endurance, perseverance. I am here it said without sound, without voice, without anything at all but his monolithic structure, his poise, his existence.
Still she came, with all intents to prove herself (and here he was half-inclined to tell her she wouldn’t have to, not to him). Her sword arced and cut along the wind, but he could see it coming, and his blade maneuvered to catch, the wood knocking together. “Good. You can be faster, so an opponent cannot predict your movements so easily. You can also feint,” a nod, because he knew she was capable of swiftness, had seen it firsthand, and demonstrated the motion, sliding his armaments underneath hers, to make it look like he was going to the left, but on a quick, minuscule motion, glinted it over to the right. A breath away, the edges intentionally not touching her. “When you defend, it will be much like your staff, except it is shorter, and you will not have as much room for error.”
Then he paused, considered, a narrowing of his eyes, a goading of a challenge. Maybe this wasn’t the right time to provoke, but he meant to pull her out of the imposed misery, and justify their measures – another game, another tactic. The proposal came on a snicker, a smirk, light laughter rumbling from his chest. “Whoever has the most hits after three rounds can decide where we honeymoon.” Thereafter, he came at her, a cutting swing towards her left hip, intending to land a blow at a difficult angle.
out for vengeance
DEIMOS
