Re: quiet home garden: alyssa & damian
[As mentioned before, Damian was a man woven of contradictions. He was, unfortunately, very human. But, by that same coin, he was not. He was apart. A simulacrum born of mortal flesh—flesh that could be made immortal. He was meant as heir and vessel both, for Grandfather. A form to follow and inhabit. He certainly was not meant to exist beyond this in any real capacity. But, for all he was alone in his brand of humanity, he too was close-veined with human weaknesses. A most unfortunate reality. His mind had fingerprints molding into every surface, sulci and gyri ridged with imprints, the life-lines of palms that had held him and massaged his mind into what it was. It had not yet hardened, his brain. It was still plenty malleable, and Alyssa could create what she willed in the clay there.
The woman's words slithered, slippery as serpents in the see-through world of camera obscura, and they found the cave mouths of Damian's ears and penetrated. Come diekilldiekill with me. Come with me. The concept of Elysium was much like that of Aaru—Sekhet Aaru, the field of rushes man went to, if his heart, the crucible of his soul, weighed lighter than a feather. One had to endure trials to enter, even after the weighing, but it was paradise in the afterlife. If this was their Elysium, it was their Aaru, and, oh, did they not belong. Duat, Hades, Hell, yes. (This made the man think of Misha, a concept that was so real to him, so corporeal, it managed to invade the swampy expansion of mind Damian was currently experiencing.)—As with his other contradictions, and these likely surfaced for Alyssa's perusal, were the twin certainties that death was not the end and that it was, irrevocably. Die and kill were concepts linked in the assassin's mind by steel of blade, and he was happy to do either. They were, indeed, the same.
Damian followed Alyssa on silent feet. His mind wheeled with the starshot over head, the construction of the earth beneath his feet, and everything that was snared in the web in-between. He thought of nothing and he thought of everything, and he was a sword, a weapon, a killer. The shadow of the Quiet Home loomed, destroyed only by the swinging bands of light that penetrated the night as a lover's gaze. Damian saw the tip of Alyssa's finger, then she opened a hole inside herself and screamed a raw sound as she fled.
He did not flee. He never fled. However, where he might have normally maimed or emptied the chlorpromazine into carotid artery, tonight he had no such reservations, as he had no reservations at all. Stalwart, empty, an extension of the will of another, it was as it was meant to be. Damian came up the path to the House without hiding himself, and once the beams of light landed on bare feet (he had removed his shoes, they were tied around the back of his neck), then skirted up to make sense of the intruder, he had already moved. He shifted low, remaining on metatarsals, taking one of the men's hands as it held its flashlight. He made certain his grip was light enough to leave no traces of interference and he swung at the second guard's head with the first's hand. His aim was true and good, but he had to move faster, faster now.—Damian caught the second guard as he fell. These poor men were not trained to deal with anyone with any true skills, so it was stupidly easy, but Damian did not even think on this. He thought on nothing but striking the first guard's throat with the second's flashlight (though he had to assist the second guard, who had lost consciousness) with his grip. It would look like a tussle, more or less, or an accident of a more tragic, more slapstick variety.—He left the chlorpromazine. (Indeed, he did not even know which drug it was.) He left the flashlights on. He left everything, save the two men alive.
It took less than twenty seconds, and once it was done, he took to the trees Alyssa had been swallowed by, and still, he felt nothing. This was war, after all.]