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07-17-2016, 05:03 PM
 As soon as her words fell, dulcet and quiet, unearthly and shattering (No you’re not), he wanted to flee. The measure, the movement, the motion, the desire to simply run was instinctual, sculpted from years dedicated to barrenness and nothing – where no one could touch, where no one could see, where no one could understand who he was and what he did and what he’d become. He’d been blessed in the outstretched arms of heathens and fiends, disciples of the devil, where insurrection and treacheries combined into callous, nonchalant, glacial indifference, because then he wouldn’t have to care when they died, when they bled, when they cried, when they called for their mothers and when they gasped for their last breath. It’d been so much easier to drive calamity and acrimony through their ribs, to lacerate, harpoon, ravage, and destroy their souls, when he’d been a mere statue, covered and coveted by Lucifer and Mephistopheles, feared by everyone and everything, and they’d leave him alone. He could’ve rampaged his way through sinful credence and seething rigidity, smoldered havoc, lavished iniquity, and not a single being would’ve dared to come any closer. He could’ve been the most impending, formidable malice the world had ever seen, and not one figure would’ve come to see fall apart; the mordant, acerbic embrace of the Reaper, cold and calculating, merciless and decadent, beautiful and dangerous.
But then she’d dared, foolish and patient, gentle and kind, all rain and compassion, somehow wearing down his roughened edges and scalding, blistering, bestial demeanor, bearing sweet nothings when he collapsed at her feet and told her of how he’d failed, of how they’d all failed. Instead of drowning him, instead of throwing him into the sea, instead of casting him aside as so many others had done, she took him in her heart and smoothed out some of the noxious, nefarious slivers, not caring how much he harmed, how much he wounded, how much he gave into ruthlessness or severity. And when she’d given him everything, moments and images and children he never thought he’d have, she left. Then he had a herd to run, an empire to watch, protect, and serve, and all these sentiments running through him had no order, no semblance, too many colors and hues, too many pains and torments, and in lethal, malignant layers they unfurled over his mind – until he’d suddenly cared about more than just his family, but his entire brethren. From the ghosts, to the apparitions, to the engineers and sleuths, warriors and babes, he’d taken them all into his stead, reached out, guarded in his brutality, in his detachment, in his piercing, pulsing maelstrom. The King never told them when he was tired. The Lord never told them when he’d had enough. The Reaper never descended from his mask of brooding, deplorable reticence so they could see he ached, he pained, in the same way they did, each and every day. “Yes, I am,” he repeated to her, not Huyana, but Hotaru, pink and roses and cunning, trying to snake her way through his rigid, composed being – and he raised his head in defiance, still with too much strife coiled behind his eyes. So he lied to himself and to her, listening to the answers she’d conjured for him, to the softness, to the quietude rushing over their senses. He watched her carefully, eyes roaming where scars lay, where wounds had been, where blood had stained, where he’d offered vengeance for her in their brooding, brewing silence. I trust you with my life, she’d said after, and the statement caused him to clench his jaw, swallow, and look away – too many feverish notions beat fraction whims behind his eyes at the sentiment, sent his soul reeling, and he had to stare at the horizon, at the sky, at the caves, for a few moments before he could look upon her again with the same savage, nefarious art as before. (He wondered, deep in the corners of his formidable, menacing mind, how many had ever trusted him at all – how many were glad he was there, watching over them, protecting them, shielding them?) “Next time, tell me. I can fight them.” It was the one thing he’d been capable of his whole life – to slaughter, to terminate, to massacre and sever – not politics, not sleuthing, but vengeance and power, bloodshed and ruin. He could at least offer her that. Her final statement tugged at him though, and a quick, barely-noticeable smile curled at the edge of his lips, vocals entrenched as part jest, part truth. “That would be fine.” DEIMOS
delivered from the blast
last from a line of lasts and now the kingdom comes crashing down undone |
image credits
@Hotaru
