weary of the sound of screams

random event A large bang, the sound of shattering glass and thuds come from outside. It’s strong enough to almost feel a vibration, and the sharp whistling of the wind barrages against the temple’s walls and doors. And then it’s silent, quiet and surprisingly steady, until there’s almost enough quiet outside to hear a pin drop. That is… until — ”DEIMOS. OPEN THE DOOR.” A shrill trill of demand comes from the other side. Could it be? He would know this voice anywhere. His wife, the Shield. Has she gone outside? She’s nowhere to be found indoors. Could it be? Come and get her Deimos.

We're lost in the space between
who we are and all that we're trying to be

Deimos was beyond capable of his own self-torture, winding and weaving its way through his soul, puncturing and piercing any determination, any machination, any calculation he’d had to spare over LongNight’s debacle. Already he’d been declared ignorant and ineffective, and in the years where he’d drawn from power, from precision, from fortitude, from the cold, barbaric void, he’d thought himself somewhat capable. Had it been arrogance? Or was the faith he put in himself misplaced?

After the Penumbra, even the Shield haunted him now. Perhaps she had gone in the interim, when he was collecting himself, when he was numb and stupid and blind while Rexanna screamed and shouted. The words echoed outside, and they were hers, hers, hers, and he had half a mind to simply go out there and rid himself of all the demons, to let the monsters reign, so he didn’t have to endure it anymore.

He sat with his back against the wall, hands yearning to close his palms over his ears, to drown out the cacophony, the panic, the strife. His broken heart said go, and his mind sputtered, spiraled, attempting to justify sentiments over the agony. Amalia? he conjured through Attuned bombardments, through the shaking fixtures of his hands, tied and tethered to everything all at once.

DEIMOS

Stop trying to show how to save our souls
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts

random event ”I can’t! I can’t hear you!” Amalia’s voice cries out again, fists pounding against the door, nothing but fear tangible in the air and the insistence of the sounds outside. ”It’s Ronin, something’s happened, I can’t!” Comes the other wailing sound. The wind picks up again, throwing rocks at windows. A few more moments pass of silence and then it sounds like claws are trying to dig into the stone of the walls, a piercing cry as she tries to dig her way through. ”Please Deimos! Please let me in —”

We're lost in the space between
who we are and all that we're trying to be

Couldn’t hear him? Couldn’t hear him? He shook with some inconceivable rage, a festering, blinding thing combined with the course of grief and the outline of irreverence. He listened, he stood against those outcrops and waited for some other ax to fall, the grinding sentiments of claws rasping down the panes. She would answer him readily via their bond, she always had. But gods, the temptation to open those doors again, simply because of misgivings, of doubts, of all his other failures rankled and spurred, galvanized and scraped. He ached and he hurt and he wanted to crawl into a hole and never return. “You are not my wife,” he echoed against the bellows. She’d get in on her own. She’d be strong. She’d be capable. She’d be holy and divine. Her dreamfish would save. Her staff would blur into crimson voids.

Another test, another measure, before the world sought to destroy him again, reaching out towards Attuned endeavors; because, perhaps, the monsters couldn't do the same. What did I make you last LongNight?

DEIMOS

Stop trying to show how to save our souls
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts

random event Another shivery and simmering cry is heard outside. The claws stop, and the rattling slows, but the rocks continue to be tossed wherever they can. ”Ronin’s blocking out the bond, Deimos, please!” Amalia’s voice cries out again, full of so much terror. And then he tells her that she’s not his wife, and the panicked scratching grows more. ”I am! I am. Deimos please let me in—” One last attempt before the swarm comes in and she can’t try anymore. Already the rocks are thrown with more insistence, hitting the doors like a thundering march. Closer. Closer —

We're lost in the space between
who we are and all that we're trying to be

The world rattled against him, listening to the cries that sounded like her, listening to the void that rushed in between. He’d already lost Rexanna, and he couldn’t lose her, and a portion of him just wanted all of the torture to stop. To be released from this damned hell, this cursed flames, this bombardment of artifice and terror. For all his strength and might, for all the fortitude and violence, he couldn’t withstand this – the mind games, the monster’s wails beyond the door, beyond the vessels, beyond the eclipse. He would’ve preferred a thousand knives immersed into his frame, he would’ve preferred hordes of armies bearing down on him, than the tangible agony gripping his heart.

He shuddered and shook with each scratch, afraid he was wrong, terrified that she was out there and needing to be let in, that the world was rampaging and he couldn’t save her –

Worthless. Undeserving. Nothing.

You are nothing.

An echo of all the truths binding him – and how easy would it be, to open those doors and let the void take him? To make everything stop?

Which was better, to live in this horror, or to give into it?

One last plea, one last breath, one last bellow. “Go away.”

DEIMOS

Stop trying to show how to save our souls
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts

random event The screams grow more intense as the march drums on. And in the end, there's so many garbled pleas, so many attempts to open the door that go unanswered. She tries and tries to get the door to open, and then when the marching drums of the rocks hitting the windows stops — Only then is there too long heartbeats of thundering silence. And then a cackling that is not Amalia, from the other side of the door. ”Ah, you win this one but for how long?” The voice croons from the other side, wicked and sharp and amused. ”Your precious Shield is outside…. and safe… until we get to her.” A snickering sound until there’s only silence and soft whines from the outdoors.

We're lost in the space between
who we are and all that we're trying to be

His heartbeat stuttered, quaked in his chest; right and justified in his stubbornness, in his petulance, for the moment. He didn’t feel like he’d won, because the echoes still crashed and wailed against his spine, the ultimatums drawn into flares, the clenching of his jaw as he sat inside, listening to the drones of the wind, to the inscriptions of monsters. They’d found his weaknesses twice in the span of mere hours, and the vulnerability, the aches, the pains, wouldn’t recede - outside and safe - until she simply wasn’t.

Until they got to her.

Until he lost again.

He traded one torment for another, inclining away from the wall, yearning to do something more than merely stare at it – to unravel the monster on the other side, to destroy everything in its path, to ensure none of this would happen again.

But that was how he’d gotten here in the first place – believing himself wholly capable.

The Sword walked, waited, and paced, back towards the outline of Rexanna’s door.

{FIN}

DEIMOS

Stop trying to show how to save our souls
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts