remember that you can't save everyone
remember that you have to try
Her words sunk against him and he stilled; the uncertainty a palpable, tangible weight along bridges and nettles of his spine. Wasn’t he though? In the end, hadn’t he been a burden to Amalia – who couldn’t support his problems (his grief) alongside her own? That she hadn’t known who she was, in the face of his overbearing anguish? Or was he forgetting, the cloud and haze of the sickness burying and burrowing in, and all those notions, all those nuances, had become billowing knives, waiting to strike down against him? You will see, he nearly said, but caught it across his tongue before it could ease out into the room. Instead, the Sword forced the same smirk along the indents of his mouth, but the mischief didn’t reach his eyes.The answer to his inquiry was sensical, even if it wasn’t what he really wanted to hear. No magic trick. No glorified mannerism. No way in which he could shift the viewpoint of the world. They were gone. It would hurt. He would instinctively reach and tug and pull and earn nothing in return. He’d remember the good times and long for more, more, more, for moments he couldn’t have any longer, not until he too had gone to Mort – and he’d carry their ashes, embers, and memories across realms with him. He’d simply always forgotten the moving forward part. “Time, then,” he mustered and mumbled, from behind the rim of his glass, taking another sip, swallowing, trying to stall for his opinions, and how to voice them correctly. He placed the resin back down and stared at it, gaze narrowing briefly. “I want to try and finish what they started.” Another pause, another breath. “Kiada had a quest during LongNight, but never got to complete it.” A hint, that he intended to do just that, given the right circumstances. “And there are two friends still frozen in a cave,” he jutted his chin towards where the mountains, the caverns, would be, outside these walls, “that should not remain there any longer.”
The Reaper hadn’t proclaimed many as companions, or family. He’d stayed amidst the roots and routes of his shadows, devastating and demolishing, defending a world he cherished because he had naught else but the summits and peaks, but the ferocity in his nefarious, blackened heart. The Sword had been given so much more, and always sought to return the favor. Even to those long since lost. Perhaps it was foolish. Perhaps it was stupid. Perhaps it wouldn’t matter except in ways of sentimentality, and connections severed. Maybe it was to clear his head, his guilt, and his heart. Maybe it just Deimos being him; incapable of expressing himself until it was too late.
Was that moving forward?
The conversation took a different turn in terms of council members; no death, no desecration, no ruin, no abominations, and his frame eased back into the chair, instead of remaining an unyielding, unattainable presence. “I met Noah,” he speculated; remembering a man in the infirmary, about as silent and quiet as he was. It hadn’t been frustrating, but familiar, comfortable. “I think he tried to get me drunk while I was sick.” A light laugh followed, a hint that he hadn’t minded the notion at all. But then he tilted his head, and stared over at her, towards her mention of a disappeared advisor. “What was her name?” Maybe he’d seen her recently in his travels – people had a bizarre habit of dissipating into the void, and returning at other times (Zariah came to mind, even if she’d been proclaimed dead).
out for vengeance
DEIMOS
