not heroes any longer - we are tragedies of firelight and flesh
unholy sacraments of blood and broken bodies
There were reverberations of drums inside his head; death knells and wraiths, phantoms and their persistent pursuits. War desecration had been different than this: enemies nameless, adversaries unknown, battles waged and forged. They hadn’t been known entities, just mere essences cutting through tangible lines, sent to slaughter one another. Sometimes for land. Sometimes for country. Sometimes for nothing at all but the abhorrence, the loathing, the taste and relish of contempt. He’d lacerated and bludgeoned those vessels, those intangible threads of flesh, blood, and bone, gave no credence or promise to their families when he was through, gave no vow, oath, or assurance. Cold and numb, blinded with the need to survive, with the draw of ensuring his own comrades remained.
He’d done neither now – inadvertently murdering one of his own.
The casualty mocked and screamed against the beats of his heart and the press of breath in his chest, hurt and scarred, traced inward blemishes around nefarious ribs. She’d been known, regarded, and cherished. She’d been the past, where pieces had fallen into place and plots had been concocted, and the present, the first one he’d set eyes upon in Caido, wondering just where he’d fallen. There’d be no future. No moments with her child, her husband, her family, her kingdom. Maybe she would’ve been better off with not seeing him at all; should’ve left him a ghost, a figment, a stature alone and empty.
He swallowed down the bile rising up his throat on instinct, and thought better of it after. He should’ve let himself drown, down, down, down in the wakes of all his mistakes and stupidity, of all the useless granules he’d somehow strived to muddle together. The beast could easily toil away in the darkness of his defects, faults, and flaws, driven into their fortifications, their thresholds, their portals of lacquered depravity. A return to Reaper tendencies, when he hadn’t even meant to, when he hadn’t even tried – impossible to escape the caustic predilections of his own making.
Another’s footsteps slid over stone, and the Sword yearned to hide, to smother, to suffocate in the shards of shadows. If he shrunk, collapsed, and consigned himself to oblivion, no one to see, no one to care, no one to know, then naught else would matter.
Then he knew who it was, by the presence, by the movement, by the motion, would recognize it anywhere. It serenaded and carried, slender and just and true, a relief in his soul, a breath released from the denizens of voids and hollowed sedition (she was safe, the monsters didn’t hold her) – stars and light, heavens and auras he didn’t deserve. The fiend thought to bury his entity further into the tainted lines, so she wouldn’t be scalded and burned, so she wouldn’t have to deal with his cataclysm, his downward drift into hell.
Then the Shield sunk down next to him, and the sanctity, the sanctum, of her touch and pull brought him briefly from his anchors, his tethers, his lines, blistering above the surface. Palms lifted his face upwards, to stare straight into her gaze, still swollen cheek catching the residual tears, blue eyes lined in crimson, in despair, in ruin. He shook his head in her hold, denying the acceptance, the tolerance, because it wasn’t okay, and he wasn’t sure if it ever would be. “I did this.” A whisper, a multitude of hushed punishments yet to come, a pervading addition to the tomb he now guarded. “I killed her.”
He’d done neither now – inadvertently murdering one of his own.
The casualty mocked and screamed against the beats of his heart and the press of breath in his chest, hurt and scarred, traced inward blemishes around nefarious ribs. She’d been known, regarded, and cherished. She’d been the past, where pieces had fallen into place and plots had been concocted, and the present, the first one he’d set eyes upon in Caido, wondering just where he’d fallen. There’d be no future. No moments with her child, her husband, her family, her kingdom. Maybe she would’ve been better off with not seeing him at all; should’ve left him a ghost, a figment, a stature alone and empty.
He swallowed down the bile rising up his throat on instinct, and thought better of it after. He should’ve let himself drown, down, down, down in the wakes of all his mistakes and stupidity, of all the useless granules he’d somehow strived to muddle together. The beast could easily toil away in the darkness of his defects, faults, and flaws, driven into their fortifications, their thresholds, their portals of lacquered depravity. A return to Reaper tendencies, when he hadn’t even meant to, when he hadn’t even tried – impossible to escape the caustic predilections of his own making.
Another’s footsteps slid over stone, and the Sword yearned to hide, to smother, to suffocate in the shards of shadows. If he shrunk, collapsed, and consigned himself to oblivion, no one to see, no one to care, no one to know, then naught else would matter.
Then he knew who it was, by the presence, by the movement, by the motion, would recognize it anywhere. It serenaded and carried, slender and just and true, a relief in his soul, a breath released from the denizens of voids and hollowed sedition (she was safe, the monsters didn’t hold her) – stars and light, heavens and auras he didn’t deserve. The fiend thought to bury his entity further into the tainted lines, so she wouldn’t be scalded and burned, so she wouldn’t have to deal with his cataclysm, his downward drift into hell.
Then the Shield sunk down next to him, and the sanctity, the sanctum, of her touch and pull brought him briefly from his anchors, his tethers, his lines, blistering above the surface. Palms lifted his face upwards, to stare straight into her gaze, still swollen cheek catching the residual tears, blue eyes lined in crimson, in despair, in ruin. He shook his head in her hold, denying the acceptance, the tolerance, because it wasn’t okay, and he wasn’t sure if it ever would be. “I did this.” A whisper, a multitude of hushed punishments yet to come, a pervading addition to the tomb he now guarded. “I killed her.”
what use have we for feeble hymns of wasted faith;
for sordid songs of glory?
DEIMOS
