DEIMOS
ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood
spit out the blood
The easygoing wake lasted for a breath or two more, and then he could feel the residual mettle clawing its way over the surface, threatening to overrun any other emotion. Zuriel turned her noble features from Evie, a light snort billowing in her direction, before her muzzle briefly grazed over his shoulder, as if she could feel the storm brewing below his chest. The pathway opened in rime and ice and snow, but he wasn’t certain he was ready for the impending wake unfurling right then and there – despite the inquiry.
The anger threatened to overrun everything else. He could hear it in the clench of her teeth, in the length of her stride, in the sweeping, stomping turns they made towards the beckoning Citadel. The warrior understood it well enough – the depths of rage, the culmination of grief and contempt burning and blazing, until the inferno swept and collided, until there was naught more than those combusted aches of devastation, the driving need to break the world apart with bare hands. So he remained silent, quiet, as the eaves broached and collided, as his eyes kept towards outcrops and trail markers, not flinching at Amalia’s name, at people who’d been so integral to their lives, gone. Ghosts labored and lingering, despite the way their lives had been so deftly intertwined, despite how many times he might’ve tried to avoid the heartache.
And when the words faded, when everything seemed to settle, briefly, his own rumble craved to follow suit. To stay in those hushed thresholds – tempting, smothering, suppressing every dirge and requiem. But he couldn’t now. The General clenched his jaw and then eased them apart, staring straight ahead. “Then you do not have to.” He’d never been one to force his ideals, his opinions, his beliefs, on another, even when he was contorted firmly into Old Gods’ proportions. “I do not know where she is.” The name not needing to be said – a presumption, perhaps, but there nonetheless. “Noah was made the demigod of Vi, and when I asked -,” he ceased there, a roll of his shoulders unfurling the mess of emotions threatening to overwhelm and tangle him in gnarled knots. The once-Shield had made her feelings clear well before, regardless. The sharpened state of his piercing eyes settled firmly on the spires in the distance, and nowhere else.
“I am sorry about Sam.” Because he was – and about Bastien, and Rexanna, and a thousand others that had made their hearts and souls known, even when the Voice held the latter in her grasp. A pause, listening to naught more than the wind billowing, to Belial’s wings unfurling ahead. “Did you have a goal in mind?”
The anger threatened to overrun everything else. He could hear it in the clench of her teeth, in the length of her stride, in the sweeping, stomping turns they made towards the beckoning Citadel. The warrior understood it well enough – the depths of rage, the culmination of grief and contempt burning and blazing, until the inferno swept and collided, until there was naught more than those combusted aches of devastation, the driving need to break the world apart with bare hands. So he remained silent, quiet, as the eaves broached and collided, as his eyes kept towards outcrops and trail markers, not flinching at Amalia’s name, at people who’d been so integral to their lives, gone. Ghosts labored and lingering, despite the way their lives had been so deftly intertwined, despite how many times he might’ve tried to avoid the heartache.
And when the words faded, when everything seemed to settle, briefly, his own rumble craved to follow suit. To stay in those hushed thresholds – tempting, smothering, suppressing every dirge and requiem. But he couldn’t now. The General clenched his jaw and then eased them apart, staring straight ahead. “Then you do not have to.” He’d never been one to force his ideals, his opinions, his beliefs, on another, even when he was contorted firmly into Old Gods’ proportions. “I do not know where she is.” The name not needing to be said – a presumption, perhaps, but there nonetheless. “Noah was made the demigod of Vi, and when I asked -,” he ceased there, a roll of his shoulders unfurling the mess of emotions threatening to overwhelm and tangle him in gnarled knots. The once-Shield had made her feelings clear well before, regardless. The sharpened state of his piercing eyes settled firmly on the spires in the distance, and nowhere else.
“I am sorry about Sam.” Because he was – and about Bastien, and Rexanna, and a thousand others that had made their hearts and souls known, even when the Voice held the latter in her grasp. A pause, listening to naught more than the wind billowing, to Belial’s wings unfurling ahead. “Did you have a goal in mind?”
watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same
then let your soul do the same
