lost for good

DEIMOS

The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head
The thunder of the drums dictates

Anticipating some impact of hers, the quick succession and rounding of eldritch entanglements gave him the slightest pause – for while a majority of his were tangible elements, strung together in pronounced manifestations (the scorching of a flame, the howl of the wind, the cascades of water, the maneuvering soil, the gilded bindings of creation), the ones he knew best had never made their appearance known. Just in the idle whisper and slink of their movement from his form and bombarding upon walls, just in the ripple of undulating lethality. So the Sword found himself watching, with the slightest arch to his brow, as the shadows reverberated from her scars, piercing and deadly, tightening over an avian neck, before sending it scattering downward.

Maybe with the ghost of a smile, the amused snort of another musing.

He did well not to laugh when the bird didn’t completely meet its demise; no judgement lingering in his gaze, before moving onward, intending to pat Belial for a job well executed, when the final gore crow made its move. Clever and dastardly, even though its kin had already perished, it clearly had a mauling intended, and he could only flicker after its quick and righteous fury when it landed, sunk, into Chaele’s arm.

A sigh unwound from his chest as he sent another wave of the same incantations, in rapt precision, towards the beast – a quick and sudden death, then nothing more, presuming Chaele could pluck the damned cretin out of her flesh. Deimos jutted his jaw forward towards her, a rumble following. “All right?” Belial made some vague chirp, but it was muffled by the creature in his mouth, and the excitement bounding through his hooves, fangs digging in further. For a moment the General was vexed he’d let Zuriel stay behind, for whatever wound that crept and crawled would’ve been easily rendered and mended.

Instead, he began to open his bag to search for bandages, the inquiry motioning across his mouth in vague curiosity. “Life drain?”

The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead
The rising of the horns, ahead

in tenebris est veritas.

A candid cry escapes her as the keen keratin cuts deep, blood and pain pouring forth alongside the sting of shock. Again there is barely enough time to retaliate; the reaching grip of her opposite hand finds purchase on a limp spine as the greater mage rescues her from a worse fate. With a sharp wince, she extracts the sagging body from her arm and drops it bitterly to the ground. Then her palm immediately rises to the wound to apply much needed pressure.

Tears of instinctive pain fracture her vision as Deimos approaches, blinked rapidly away behind the scant privacy of her mask. She only nods in response to his first question, a vain attempt to hide her weakness as she clutches its source behind red-stained fingers. By the time he utters the second, her voice is more or less steadied.

“Yes. The shifting of energies, first gathered and then scattered.” She speaks the words like a mantra, threads of arcane intention woven into what was clearly some lesson from some long gone mentor. “You as well. But yours is… potent.” Hers is the intonation of a statement, but there is a question hidden between the syllables-- a curiosity that she dare not speak aloud, not yet. She steps carefully toward him, avoiding the warm corpses at her feet and peering into the bag as he rifles through it.

Chaele trembles faintly, her lost blood dripping a sticky trail down the grooves of her scarred arms and onto the smooth stone at her feet. Her attention is drawn to the slain gore crows there, perhaps more than even the three of them could hope to carry. “Your people will eat well, I imagine. I will take this one.” She gestures to her singular kill, its open eyes frozen in unforgotten suffering.

DEIMOS

The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head
The thunder of the drums dictates

“I apologize for not bringing my unicorn,” he murmured; brow furrowing as he located the bandages, passing them over to her to staunch and press against the wound. Zuriel, content and unaware of any doom as she likely laid nestled next to her favored hearth, would likely be irritated and annoyed with him when he returned just for this very reason. “She would have healed this with little trouble.” For now, the gauze and compression would have to do, and he paused for a moment, waiting to see if it was enough. The beast could always create more.

Restless with the considerations, and annoyed at some decisions, he tilted his head, listening all the while as he moved towards the still, prone birds. “I had not seen it like that before,” regarding life drain visibly conducting itself, pulsing and pervading, tied like a vicious, vile noose. His sunk, took, stole, and manifested in a nefarious, intricate maneuver – hers had it written in plain sight.

As for his, the Sword shrugged, creating a rope between his hands, and then beginning to circle it over the corvid’s feet, figuring it’d be easy to string them along and pack them over his shoulder. “I have had it for a long time. Strength of one’s magic seems to grow here.” Not stagnant, but flowing, flickering, with practice, with ease, with confidence, with renewal – he had no other way to explain the phenomenon.

Belial, content with his own meal, audibly crunched down on a bone, and Deimos glanced at him in a brief snort, before his eyes went back to the blood on the floor, and the start of a frown. “Do you need more?” Uncertain if she had the capability of storing or freezing – or if the one would suffice.

The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead
The rising of the horns, ahead

in tenebris est veritas.

A secret smile pricks at the corners of her mouth, seen only by eyes that might have spied her in profile; such an apology is charmingly absurd to one who has only ever heard of unicorns in myth, much less in imagining one’s hooves gracing the likes of this dark and bloody place. The amusement is only a temporary distraction from the torment of her wound, which pulls a hissing protest out from behind her teeth as she touches testingly at the fresh bandage.

Her mind wanders to thoughts of infection, of healing herbs that can only be found in far away places and of stifled envy for Deimos’s powers of creation. She wonders how she had never heard of such power as his, and then of what other ignorances she contains. But then he speaks of his own ignorance and she pauses, the long antlers of her mask emphasizing the perplexed angle of her tilted head. “It was my mentor who tied her magic to darkness. With the manifestation of shadow, the gathering and scattering is summoned. It is just so with words said in ritual, or water supped in communion. The intention is harnessed by the symbol, which guides the affected reality.”

Chaele speaks over his work as he ties the remaining carcasses together, only then realizing that she had done little to help in the aftermath of her injury. Shaking her head in refutation of his final question, she bends to lift her prize by its talons with her good arm. “I did not know it could be done without,” she adds, hauling it over her shoulder with a grunt. She wavers in asking him more, infinitely curious but already aware of how weakly she had presented herself. “Did you have a mentor?”

DEIMOS

The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head
The thunder of the drums dictates

“Have you found ways to heal yourself?” Head bowed in his work, but the levels of an inquiry, notched over the obvious trails of scars and marks, purposefully leading her to other segues and subjects. He’d had a similar conversation in the Grounds, where Vai had strived to mend a burn across his shoulder, and the fellow mage’s abilities hadn’t been capable.

With the rope firmly established, checking over the ties he’d constructed, he packed the corvids directly over his shoulder, opposite the one carrying the bag. He listened all the while, instinctually turning them back the way they’d come, beckoning Belial in silent connections and bonds as he drifted, the peryton content to have the meal remaining in his mouth.

Speculations spiraled as the Sword listened to Chaele’s experiences though – of ties to darkness, of manifestations brought to the surface, ritualistic words scattered on wind or established into the air, symbolic gestures he’d never bothered to strive for. Wouldn’t have known, or likely understood. “Do you conduct that for all the magic you have?” Presuming, much like himself, that there were more veins and rivulets of incantations running through a mage’s pulse.

The question she asked thereafter made him snort. He’d had swords in his hands, pressed and woven into callouses from an early age because he knew what it meant to fight. He’d had daggers at his throat, spears plunged into his sides, cascades and ripples of treachery and lethality pressed into his skin and he’d bled, bled, bled for his friends, allies, and loved ones. He’d had magic in his grasp and unraveled it to save those he cherished the most – even as they became naught more than ghosts on the edges of his mind. War had been his advisor, confidant, and guide. “No. I had the battlefield.”

The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead
The rising of the horns, ahead

in tenebris est veritas.

The spaces between his words stand like mountains in a clear sky-- looming, distant, and alien. Chaele feels her head nod as if she understands what he means, but in truth she cannot. She has outwitted a predator, but never known the wrath of an intelligent enemy; her fingers have been sticky with blood, but never that of an ally. Her hands are for bone macerations and haruspicies, her tongue for ritual mantras, her etched skin for channeling that which was borne not of instinct but of intention. Despite their differences, it is not difficult to recognize the suffering that unites their evocations, these wellsprings of magic.

“My rites are more than magic,” she explains, her fingertips rising absently toward the arm that bears her quarry. They trip gently over the lace of runes around her elbow, lingering on one which seems to have some private meaning. She continues slowly, in fact speaking these words aloud for the first time. “They are communions with the land and its bounty. Promises to protect that which nourishes me, and shares its secrets. This power of mine is only one of its many gifts.”

Her attention rises to him then, as if she had almost forgotten he was there. Her hand drops to her side. “But perhaps I do not need to explain to you what it is to endure. To be grateful.”

Then the point of her mask turns toward the corridor behind him, back the way they came. Though she carries a fraction of the weight he does, she is eager not to carry it for long; she begins to step toward Deimos, in the direction that he had claimed was Halo. “I have not learned the power of healing,” she notes, apparently unaware of the divine choice she had already made. “So I learned to use Elm bark. Efas stem. Ramphire down. It depends on what is available. If I can find my way out of here, I expect I will find something growing in the volcanic soil.”

DEIMOS

The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head
The thunder of the drums dictates

His brow arched as they walked, head tilted to watch, to listen, as connections were orchestrated by means of land, of bounty, of convictions and furtive notions. Perhaps he couldn’t quite fathom it – no runes marked the landscape of his flesh, save for the scars whittled and carved and measured there by the grace of survival and the diligence of fortitude, of might. He gave a light smile by way of striving to understand the complexities; but all he’d ever known was the surge of the incantations brimming beneath the surface of his skin, rising with the pulse and beat of his blood, ever reliable, ever constant. “No. You do not,” for his worlds had been all about endurance, resolution, grit, and the steadfast determination to not fall apart.

Belial careened along, in step with his stride, brandishing his wares this way and that in justifiable enthusiasm, with feathers falling upon the stone, and the Sword was half-inclined to take the entire thing away from him, were he not distracted by the set of other words and motions. His eyes narrowed by brief fractions and factions, kindling the nuances of something she wouldn’t be able to have. “Life drain is not compatible with the healing of other mages.” Maybe they repelled one another – vicious and vehement, and the other mending and assuaging; taking and giving, too opposing to be held within one frame. “But a unicorn’s healing ability works.” And maybe the demigods, or the deities, if they felt the need. Or perhaps the other semblances she’d gathered – mending herbs and assuaging balms.

The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead
The rising of the horns, ahead

in tenebris est veritas.

A short hush falls over the shaman as she deliberates over the implications of his words-- first for the nerve that might have been struck in her presumption, and then in the knowledge of the magic that she would never learn. Somewhere in her peripheral intuition, perhaps she knew this to be the case. But hearing it said out loud sends her mind down a similar rabbit hole of solutions. “You said it was yours, the unicorn. Did you...” Recruit? Capture? Befriend? “How did you obtain it?” Her tone suggests that she would not treat such a useful creature as a beloved companion, and she seems to expect the same sentiment from Deimos.

The skull mask alters Chaele’s vision somewhat, painting a small blind spot directly in front of her as she sees through the orbital holes of a monocular animal. So as they trudge through the endless corridors of igneous stone and low magma glow, her head rocks gently from side to side. This offers her mindful glimpses of her new traveling companions: he, somber and brief, remains precisely as honest as her questions allow while it, noisy and pleased, seems to contain enough sincerity for the both of them. She indulges in a quiet smile at the proud little predator, her steps taking on a more decisive rhythm.

“It is no matter to be without healing magic,” she decides, speaking as much to herself as to the much more capable hunter at her side. “The wound is a worthy one. And the pain of mending is a test of its own. It is a reminder of a mistake that will not be repeated. Of a weakness that will one day be eliminated.”

DEIMOS

The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head
The thunder of the drums dictates

Silence bound, and then there were only footfalls for a moment, hooves, boots, and soles, echoing off the chamber walls. Incapable of reading her features due to the mask, he only glanced onward, winding along another bend, memory working in familiarity with the press of the caverns. Only thereafter was an inquiry about the other one bonded to his soul, the inklings of another smile reaching his mouth. The tones thereafter were delved in fondness, of a quiet reverence, for a being who had never left him (one of the few). “She is my other companion. Zuriel.” While the peryton meandered in front of them, ripping off another slew of feathers, the scale of the first held much broader implications.

When he’d been bloodied and broken and beaten down from failure, lungs exhaling poison, and glancing upward only to see a predator honing in on its prey. “She was being chased by a landshark.” And the Sword, because at the bare minimum he was a protector, a shield, a piece of moving, breathing weaponry, had ignored Kiada and his own wounds. “So I intervened. The landshark was killed, I nearly lost my arm, and she must have believed me worthy of her diligence.” He shrugged his shoulders, but the grin remained; trying to parse away the notions of value and notions deserved. “She has saved many.” To give credit where credit was due – and that the mare had reason to be haughty, proud, and spoiled.

Shifting the prey along his shoulders, his piercing gaze went elsewhere, remaining tied to the routes they traversed, turning left on a sweeping edge, ensuring they were back where they’d started, and then continuing onward, towards the hallowed reaches of Halo. “There are herds in King’s End.” Should the shaman find herself in need.

Unaware of being watched – but used to the disposition, considering how often he scrutinized another’s movements and motions (right down to predictability; always waiting to see if there was a siege coming in his direction), he forged onward, listening with that subtle tilt of his head. His grin wove into more of a teasing depth, though he understood her implications. All of his scars were reminders too; even if some of the same mistakes had been repeated. “To not be caught off-guard by a gore crow?”

The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead
The rising of the horns, ahead

in tenebris est veritas.

A short exhalation escapes her, hitting the back of her mask somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. Perhaps the words that followed could have remained unsaid, with evidence of his own memorialized scars present to her view, but there was something vulnerable in the moment that urged her to give them form. “To not let jealousy cloud my judgment.”

Then she intakes a breath of new air, certain that she will smell the cold outer reaches of the tundra before she sees them. So far there seems to be no trace of them, and so her feet must continue to trust the path he lays out beside her. Trust is easy enough to give to this man who had given her no reason not to, and in fact was very likely the reason she had not become the next cadaver to be dissected by bone-sharpened beaks and talons. But it was too easy to let resentment build in the cracks of such outstanding favors, and saying it out loud made the indignation that much easier to resist.

“I do not expect I will befriend a unicorn, even now that I know where to find one” she says, if only to have something else to say, though her voice does not share that same tenderness in regard to the absent companion. “I am better at hunting and dressing animals than rescuing them from their natural predators. But it is good that you can make use of such a creature. If you are capable of slaughtering so many gore crows at once, I am certain you have encountered worse.”

DEIMOS

The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head
The thunder of the drums dictates

Deimos could only take the words for the value they encompassed – uncertain if they were directed towards him – for while discernible emotions had pinpointed at his soul (love, lust, contempt, wrath, and everything else nestled in between), envy was not often one of them. Another furrowing of his brows followed, struggling to discern the underlying nuances, before deciding to simply ask outright. “Jealousy? Of what?” The moments had been few and sparse – confusion evident in the wake of his eyes turning to glance at masks and antlers.

He wound around another passage once more, the familiarity of the cavern giving way to a comfortable ease and pace in his stride. Belial’s treads were interrupted every so often by a toss of his bird, the feathers flying, the Sword’s subsequent sighs at the peryton’s antics mostly subsided. The next lines from the shaman were clear and concise; and likely no companion bond would center along her presence. He allowed a laugh to slip through, though it was quiet and hushed, not an echoing, bounding thing. “Some do not require rescuing.” Pointing towards the carnivorous deer, who had now unfurled his wings for the sake of taking more space, his tones still managed to take on a fond tone. “Belial simply decided to bond with me,” as if there’d been no other option.

Stare returning to the slight drift in the cave, and the downhill juncture in the floor, he nodded at her assertion. “But understood.” He wouldn’t persist in the subject matter.

The last statement though caused a snort, a smile to tip in the corners, some parts a snicker, other depictions a grin. “Yes.” Gore crows were nothing compared to some of the monsters nestled amongst the world. “Given enough time and travels,” and bold, daring, intrepid maneuvers, “you will find many that are much worse.” People included.

The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead
The rising of the horns, ahead

in tenebris est veritas.

Her rocking gaze tips up and down as well, estimating the height of the cavern and observing the patterns of cracks and veins in the stone. The path is a difficult one to retain, but her feet are trained to remember as she counts her steps in idle habit. She pauses only to better hang the gore crow over her shoulder, her breath steady and determined as the Sword’s caveats are assured. "If I am to bond with any creature, it will be a capable one. Self-sufficient." She nods in Belial's direction, invoking the peryton’s qualities as well as that which can be so rare in various others.

But the final explanation recalled the first question, pulling Chaele inward in a hesitating quiet. She opens a door that she had only just closed, mind reeling backward as her feet persist forward. She clarifies, “I have traveled far enough, but rarely to places with many others around. I have learned to hide and flee when needed, and to hunt and compete in the wilds. If I have seen an enemy like the ones you suggest, I have not faced them. But you…” She shakes her head, stepping as if there were needles in her boots. “They were nothing to you, the gore crows. Your power is unlike any I have ever seen. I do not need your sympathy, but I must acknowledge that I was careless in my ambition. That I desired to... contend.”

DEIMOS

The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head
The thunder of the drums dictates

His eyes followed her pointed juncture, towards the peryton now bounding, leaping, content with his prize, and the potential insinuation that Zuriel wasn’t self-sufficient. If he were around the unicorn currently, he might’ve laughed – could fathom her features would have turned and twisted into some form of equine scowl. But with her haughty demeanor and occasional demands, especially the likelihood of her form being curled next to a massive hearth at the moment, the notions were understandable. “There are many of those,” he permitted, quieter now as they stoked along another bend and winding interval.

Lighter things, compared to those of the delving inquiries; and his patience endured while she spelled out reasons and notions for why envy, goading, provocation, might have persisted towards him. The Sword’s gaze fell to the ground, pondering, wondering; for there had been many, many times where he’d been weak and still strived, where he’d grown and practiced and stretched out limitations, to a point now where he wasn’t sure where they began, where they ceased. Nor was he the strongest within Caido - deities and their demigods, spirits and their tethers, the world and the rest of its lines held those filaments. Deimos wasn’t certain what to say at first – he’d never been a creature that hid and fled, unless there were other measures necessary – existing in the protection and service of others for so long that he often ignored his own needs.

Eventually, words came to mind, but they were deliberately measured. “We all start somewhere,” not out of sympathy, for she hadn’t wanted it, but comprehending and perception, discernment of years and years before. “But I have also trained,” in unrelenting ways. “I always wanted to be stronger.” Goals, ambitions, determination, drive, and resolution – pinpointed squarely in a stalwart soul. She could have her aspirations; but to make them feasible within the moment. “Where your magic takes you depends on what you crave.”

The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead
The rising of the horns, ahead

in tenebris est veritas.

Chaele had said too much. She winces as the sound of his contemplative silence elongates in her ears, knowing that it was something better admitted to the wind than to the very object of her envy. Even as the silence breaks, his words ring like the sympathy they aren’t. She heaves a little sigh, eyes set distinctly on the path ahead.

Eventually a few nods rock her antlered head: the first one of comprehension, the next of pensive agreement, and the last to acknowledge the honest advice he has offered. “Is that what you crave?” She replies, eager enough to move on from her confession. “Strength?”

She considers what else could be craved, what reason there could be to tap into this power they share, to steal those divine threads from the tapestry of the world and fabricate them into one's own whim. Strength was defensible, sure, and aggressive and seductive. But when it is held in one hand, the other hand holds freedom. The ability to do the desired thing, for the sake of that same desire, despite the cost or the obstacle or the weakness. She had learned this and other things from a long gone mentor, who is just as likely to be roaming the wilderness as decaying beneath it.

“I have learned more from the land than the magic it contains,” she offers, as if to insist that she is not entirely without talent. “There are subtler powers, like divinations and wards. I am familiar with the rites of the haruspex, should you care to use one of your kills for fortune-telling.”