remember that you can't save everyone
remember that you have to try
Helovia had been full of power struggles – the temptation of supremacy and authority a reach, a pull, an enticement for many – and then rapid turnovers when individuals found them lacking. Military might, or failure, had been a distinct cataclysm, or some notched and built their towers on the fabrications of peace and repose. Some utilized the distinction of their crowns to enable their dominance, to crush, to wield, to extort. Some merely cherished the land, the home, they’d been within for so long – and perhaps that was what had ultimately happened here. Without Neron in a seat of jurisdiction, and maybe lacking in Zariah’s influence as well, Halo had been permitted to grow – a Naturals’ take, from Weaver to Morgan, striving to endure and carve their way through mountains, through crags, through tundras. To hear her reasoning though caused the slowest of smiles to drift on his features. Pride and fortitude for the land she reigned upon, instead of using it as a means of control, influence, or superiority. He’d done the same once – but with too much savagery built into the monolithic backdrop; yearning for them to seem unattainable, unreachable; desecration at the very core of his soul, and only worsening with each impending threat. In the end, there probably hadn’t been much left but his brutality, his contempt, and his abhorrence. The beast’s eyes lowered for a moment, considering, before speaking in his formidable rumble. “Sounds like you have been doing well. Do you enjoy it?” An arch to his brow, the slightest inklings of mischief, and then it all disappeared as he drank, thoughts drifting momentarily to Weaver; another friend lost in the midst. “I heard it was a dragon.” Dangerous creatures in their patterns – in the cycles of destruction and demolition.
The blight intonations pierced away semblances of the treacherous fauna instilled within caverns, and he tilted his head a fraction again, feline in nature. “And Vi helped.” But not the Voice – nothing from the cause, the source, of the spread, of the incendiary reason so many had been inflicted.
As for the turtle, he could only shrug, the rogue semblances of a grin again. “Same.” But he might be able to recall, reflect, and illustrate it from Amalia’s descriptions, and so he produced paper and charcoal once more, sketching neat outlines of the massive reptile striving to be brought to life – shelled but with the earth and loam and moss upon its back.
out for vengeance
DEIMOS
