remember that you can't save everyone
remember that you have to try
The General suppressed an eyeroll at the first statement; because it cemented in his mulish mind he’d do the exact opposite. He’d taken too much time, been futile, weak, inept, and ineffectual for far too long, and he detested the very nature of it. He loathed the way the affliction crawled through his bones, surged within his pulse, drowned out rigor, strength, and mettle; turned him into a shell, a vessel, of hollowed adornments and not much else. That he was only worth the weight of his labor, of his might, of his prowess, didn’t surprise him – but nettled still, a reminder of other times, other worlds, where the expectation had been the same. You do not matter clawed, a harsh, unrelenting regard, uttered in his skull so many times. He’d driven his savagery, his nefariousness, his will into the countryside, established his reign, his efforts, his menace, his malice, until everyone knew the ire of the Reaper, and the bearing of his blade. He’d defended the mountains until his last breath; anything else would’ve been pathetic. A residual clench to his jaw manifested and feathered, muscles bound and bunched, half-inclined to say nothing at all. It would’ve been far easier to bow his head and nod, to take the notion and then disregard it. Then he sighed, brows furrowing, staring intensely at his drink. “I do not want to be useless.”The shift of the conversation hadn’t been what he intended, and proffering truths just meant more seemed inclined to brim to the surface. Discomfort waged and warred its way heavily through his chest, and he didn’t glance up, avoiding the notions of those semblances possibly returning. “Those I lost.” An unfortunate litany of people; loved ones who’d been torn away, gone, or disappeared, because each lifetime had earned its ghosts and their choking, rattling chains, their tethers and lines, their anchors and harpoons. They were vivid, stark odes of his failures, of his inadequacies; Penumbras and Harpies, Flameswords and Stones, figments and fragments of moments that wouldn’t stay buried. He made no mention of the battle he’d waged in Chulane’s presence, the coldblooded way in which he’d tried to win an invasion long, long, long after; no hope of defying it even then. While he didn’t say it, the apprehension contorted over his spine into an unyielding, unbending display; fighting a hidden, silent onslaught in the back of his mind, fingers wrapping tightly around the glass.
And if the lilies didn’t work? A sardonic, dry inclination rumbled through him, and he wondered if he’d just fade away again, eventually becoming nothing, nothing, nothing, pieces of ash, dust, and bone once more. But the beast remained defiant, seditious, an inherent revolution blistering, coiling, staying. Crumbling to the Voice was out of the question. “Find another way,” a shrug, and finally a drink, a swallow, consuming the beverage, as if it were that easy.
out for vengeance
DEIMOS
