DEIMOS
He preferred lacerations from the battlefield, confounding abyss as blades crashed and clashed, painful wounds from seething, contemptuous adversaries, compared to this: the inward anguish and agony, the lacquer of heartache pressed into his soul. It wouldn’t cease, kept turning, kept stabbing, kept biting, kept clawing, and he had no way to fight back. No way to cease the terror, the horror, of those he loved taking last breaths and beats.
Once, he was arrogant and confident enough to think he could. If he was always there, if he was always a figment of destruction, of malice, of terror, of abhorrence, the world wouldn’t touch them. It wouldn’t dare, it wouldn’t dream, it wouldn’t reach for their forms and entities. Because he’d be there, to strike anything and everything down. Feared and loathed, carrying on with the weight of them pressing down on his shoulders, a mantle, a throne, a reign of mountainous depravity –
And now here he was, the once King, shaking like a leaf. Love lifted and annihilated, all in one intake of breath.
He’d learned early on that it didn’t matter how much he guarded, how much he strived, how much he shielded and sheltered and protected. They still died. But it a lesson that he never seemed to fully understand, because he still ventured again and again and again down those same damned pathways, like he could change anything at all.
Their ghosts pressed behind his eyes and it was all he could see: figments and fractions, blinding glimpses, echoes of their fringes and lives – and he didn’t want Kiada’s form to join the assembled wakes, the eldritch catacombs, realms he couldn’t yet reach. This wasn’t what the Harpy and Sword committed to – death and sorrow – they were supreme and ridiculous in their mischief and melees. They saved one another.
He couldn’t any longer. No extending for feathers to pull them out of the abyss. No snagging at cinders to stoke their flames.
Amalia’s voice felt like a distant haze, something chiming and echoing above the surface, and it took too long for him to digest it, hidden in his hands, in his grief, in the all-consuming fringes of nothingness. A whisper maneuvered from his lips, broken up by choking nuances, raw grasps of torment grabbing at his throat. “I know. You always try.” Determined and stalwart, fervently eager to attempt; he loved her for it, for those steady pulses of endeavors and ventures – even when it seemed hopeless.
He just wondered when they stopped altogether. When they ceased to bother. When they laid down beside their brethren and let the avaricious world take their ashes and bones.
Perhaps it was worse because the Sword had no one to blame. No one to cast vengeance upon. No one to brutalize and condemn for their crimes. No one to rip apart piece by piece while they cried out for a mercy that wouldn’t come. With Rexanna, he’d cursed himself. Here, it’d been an accident – the eager girl stretching her wings, trying to help, as they all so often did.
The monolith could feel himself sinking lower and lower, the world blackening out around him, massive gasps clutching and exuding from his chest, from his lungs, from the place where his heart coiled in on itself.
He rose from his chair and swayed, hands grasping hold of the table, suddenly, infinitely lost.
Once, he was arrogant and confident enough to think he could. If he was always there, if he was always a figment of destruction, of malice, of terror, of abhorrence, the world wouldn’t touch them. It wouldn’t dare, it wouldn’t dream, it wouldn’t reach for their forms and entities. Because he’d be there, to strike anything and everything down. Feared and loathed, carrying on with the weight of them pressing down on his shoulders, a mantle, a throne, a reign of mountainous depravity –
And now here he was, the once King, shaking like a leaf. Love lifted and annihilated, all in one intake of breath.
He’d learned early on that it didn’t matter how much he guarded, how much he strived, how much he shielded and sheltered and protected. They still died. But it a lesson that he never seemed to fully understand, because he still ventured again and again and again down those same damned pathways, like he could change anything at all.
Their ghosts pressed behind his eyes and it was all he could see: figments and fractions, blinding glimpses, echoes of their fringes and lives – and he didn’t want Kiada’s form to join the assembled wakes, the eldritch catacombs, realms he couldn’t yet reach. This wasn’t what the Harpy and Sword committed to – death and sorrow – they were supreme and ridiculous in their mischief and melees. They saved one another.
He couldn’t any longer. No extending for feathers to pull them out of the abyss. No snagging at cinders to stoke their flames.
Amalia’s voice felt like a distant haze, something chiming and echoing above the surface, and it took too long for him to digest it, hidden in his hands, in his grief, in the all-consuming fringes of nothingness. A whisper maneuvered from his lips, broken up by choking nuances, raw grasps of torment grabbing at his throat. “I know. You always try.” Determined and stalwart, fervently eager to attempt; he loved her for it, for those steady pulses of endeavors and ventures – even when it seemed hopeless.
He just wondered when they stopped altogether. When they ceased to bother. When they laid down beside their brethren and let the avaricious world take their ashes and bones.
Perhaps it was worse because the Sword had no one to blame. No one to cast vengeance upon. No one to brutalize and condemn for their crimes. No one to rip apart piece by piece while they cried out for a mercy that wouldn’t come. With Rexanna, he’d cursed himself. Here, it’d been an accident – the eager girl stretching her wings, trying to help, as they all so often did.
The monolith could feel himself sinking lower and lower, the world blackening out around him, massive gasps clutching and exuding from his chest, from his lungs, from the place where his heart coiled in on itself.
He rose from his chair and swayed, hands grasping hold of the table, suddenly, infinitely lost.
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
