wound relentlessly

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame His heart suddenly lurched, ached, in the pit of his chest – he’d always thought it cold and unfeeling, long since removed from anything but hatred, scorn, and discontent. The Reaper; stoic and alone, doomed to desolation, death, and behemoth precision. But it pumped and bled steadily behind his flesh and sinew, slowly falling apart, beat by beat, crescendo by crescendo, until he didn’t recall the fathoms of reality. There were too many emblems and banners rambling through his skull, ricocheting and fleeing from those varnished canvases. He felt everything and nothing all at once; suddenly wanted to fall apart and be devoured by the grounds of the earth, swallowed whole, forgotten, worth nothing. The beast wished she was lying and knew she wasn’t, recalled bits and pieces like beautiful, transient portraits, lost in time, space, and worlds, kingdoms crashing down, him dead in a tomb, incapable of saving them. He breathed and his lung rattled, his insides begged to heave, his world flickered and distorted, and he stared at naught – the fields didn’t register, the pathways he’d taken to hunt didn’t matter. “I see them. I see them all the time.” He whispered, reticent and withdrawn, begging to be taken away from the brutal catalysts driving their forces into his brain. How many times had he awakened, gasping and clawing, desperate to cling to the things he thought he’d never had? How many times did he lay in anguish? How many times did he need to before it ended? The warrior lost the feeling in his legs, and slowly retreated to the ground, where he sat, hands suddenly over his face, hiding his contorted features. There was sorrow in the depths of his eyes and absolute despair in the channeling of his brows. There was tenacity in his bones but no fight left in his soul. The luxere leaned into him and he dared not weep, dared not grovel, beg, plead, and hiss in the feral interludes bombarding his presence. Perhaps in his last life he’d earned this heartache, this ridiculous, stupid agony. Maybe he’d made too many suffer, and this was his comeuppance, his just desserts and rewards. The cold lingered over his spine, felt like home, felt like torture, felt like torment. It wrapped around him like a noose, reminded him of serene, gentle words and love that extended despite every single damned sentiment, regard, and action he’d taken. The false, gnarled knots abraded his neck, sunk and clawed his skin, peeled away flesh when I never came back to see you hummed in his ear, nearly inaudible, gone without a trace like so many others things. Suddenly, he brought his knees up to his chest and curled into himself, hidden and notched by the thorns, by the brambles, of maddening recollections. “I lost her twice,” he gasped, hushed and tormented, but it sounded like a man broken by all the ties he’d left behind, incapable of having them ever again. Huyana was a tattoo on his heart, made it whole, made it collapse, because all he’d ever done was lose her, the rain, the need, the quiet, the tranquility. He couldn’t look at Kiada. Not after everything she said lacerated his insides and chilled his marrow. You and the Basin was everything to me, and gods, he wished he could have it again, he wished and craved and yearned and begged in the hollows of his soul, and knew it wouldn’t come. He’d tried to acknowledge them all, in his own way, down in the pits of his nefarious deeds and sinister machinations: they’d had purposes, they’d been great, they’d been grand, and then he’d died. “You had so much drive. Far more than most of the adults.” The bark of a laugh was sad and burdened, erupting from his lungs so sobs didn’t. Lord, how far he’d fallen, how damned he’d become, how anguished and broken he’d always be. Deimos still didn’t look up at her. He didn’t look anywhere, closed his eyes, watched the blue visions streak behind his lids, could feel himself shaking, voice suddenly airing the inquiry likely never to be answered or known. “Why? What was the point of bringing me back?” master of nothing place of recoil and grace

Kiada