Change everything you are and everything you were
Your number has been called
They were heavy. Unmoving. Dead-weight in his grasp.
Deimos could feel every measure of his form shaking, not from the exertion, not from the muscles working, yearning and willing to decimate, to implode – but from the inevitable staring at him right in the face.
He dragged them both in – charred and broken and burnt, and everything in his lungs left as he closed the door behind them. As the slam of its existence rattled and droned against the backdrop, as it echoed and bounded the same way they’d screamed, sounds that would haunt him for eternity.
There was no fight in his bones as Bastien grabbed hold and took Rexanna’s limp form. Just a vast, waking emptiness, a hollowed contortion in his gut, as he struggled to breathe, as the weight pounded and beat against his heart. Because he’d done this.
The door – meant to protect and fortify, meant to keep the monsters at bay, meant for their sanctum to remain a sanctuary. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
Only to have killed instead – and one of his closest friends.
The glimmers of lives lived, allies together, between mountains and duplicity, didn’t come now. It was saved for later agony, for later onslaughts of self-torment.
He swallowed down the bile threatening to consume his throat, and maneuvered forward, silent, silent, silent, quiet and hollowed, and he couldn’t listen to Bastien, couldn’t look towards the Penumbra, couldn’t breathe again. Zuriel, for all her bestial, imperial sentiments, appeared from the shadows, and gave him a look, pressing her maw near Rexanna, near the boy.
The nothingness thereafter, the shake of her head, naught to be done, only solidified the dagger stabbing into his heart. So he drifted downward, to grab the youth, vaguely recognized, in his arms, and away from the damned door.
Deimos could feel every measure of his form shaking, not from the exertion, not from the muscles working, yearning and willing to decimate, to implode – but from the inevitable staring at him right in the face.
He dragged them both in – charred and broken and burnt, and everything in his lungs left as he closed the door behind them. As the slam of its existence rattled and droned against the backdrop, as it echoed and bounded the same way they’d screamed, sounds that would haunt him for eternity.
There was no fight in his bones as Bastien grabbed hold and took Rexanna’s limp form. Just a vast, waking emptiness, a hollowed contortion in his gut, as he struggled to breathe, as the weight pounded and beat against his heart. Because he’d done this.
The door – meant to protect and fortify, meant to keep the monsters at bay, meant for their sanctum to remain a sanctuary. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
Only to have killed instead – and one of his closest friends.
The glimmers of lives lived, allies together, between mountains and duplicity, didn’t come now. It was saved for later agony, for later onslaughts of self-torment.
He swallowed down the bile threatening to consume his throat, and maneuvered forward, silent, silent, silent, quiet and hollowed, and he couldn’t listen to Bastien, couldn’t look towards the Penumbra, couldn’t breathe again. Zuriel, for all her bestial, imperial sentiments, appeared from the shadows, and gave him a look, pressing her maw near Rexanna, near the boy.
The nothingness thereafter, the shake of her head, naught to be done, only solidified the dagger stabbing into his heart. So he drifted downward, to grab the youth, vaguely recognized, in his arms, and away from the damned door.
DEIMOS
