Well, that was one-sided!
Chapter 01: the patronizing saint
Chapter 02: the universal executor
Chapter 03: the bastard prince
Chapter 04: the earthbound princess
Chapter 05: the untouchable jewel
Chapter 06: the bleakest knight
The idea that Baltrich wouldn't, won't trust the Blade of his ex-friend and current sometime-rival (rats just like to rat on rats, it would seem) isn't a far-fetched one. Minoth can't really blame the Magister for itching at the neck and not under the collar when the Flesh Eater rolls around the corner, apparently discomfited by his own very existence, and the fact of it.
But isn't Baltrich also quite possibly the only one who can ever understand? What it's like to be trampled by Amalthus's ambition, wanting basically to do the right thing but feeling like, if that's what you're aiming for, you're in either the best or the worst place in the world for it?
"If you leave, Minoth, I'm not sure I would find it within my duties, nor my rights, to allow you back here."
Baltrich's words say "not sure"; his face says "That'll be the damn day..."; his tone says "Imagine me even pretending that this affects me in the slightest."
Baltrich is, or soon will be, steward of the Praetorium's chambers, after all. Amalthus had never handled such trivial matters, instead aiming to advance himself to a supervisory position that controlled actual people as quickly as possible. Multiple people, not just the one under the Quaestor above Baltrich. But assistants are the ones doing the dirty work. With that in mind, Baltrich knows more about Minoth's comings and goings, illicit or not, than anyone else.
"Taking the hard line, huh?" replies Minoth. "Shouldn't say I'm surprised."
"Then don't," Baltrich says, down his nose.
In his heart of Cores, Minoth believes the two of them to be equals, compatriots, joint at the site of station. When Baltrich opens up about his real catty feelings and opinions, which is of course a rare occasion, Minoth drinks hungrily from the fountain. Real humanity, and some that can reference this god-forsaken place, instead of just speculating about it, or the world at large.
If Minoth leaves, he leaves the only person who's kept a finger on his pulse, with the other hand in the pot of pantheon that had set it a-jumping in the first place.
But there's no inuring Baltrich to his presence, is there? Baltrich, who won't even indulge in the sweet lie of not being able to make promises. Promises are only for the Architect to make, if him. Promises are for children, starving refugees. Promises aren't even orthogonal to this relationship.
What relationship?
So Minoth leaves, and finds that it's leaving Baltrich to his death that he'd done, later on.
He should think that the other man deserved it and still does, shouldn't he? For refusing to recognize what was so clear. For suspecting Amalthus but doing nothing except tattle to Rhadallis about it.
Minoth had put his oxygen mask on, but obviously he couldn't go back into a burning plane.
Could he?
He should have. Should have proved himself trustworthy. Should have made it even clearer, with crueler words: "I told you so."
How terrifying. How awful. How awesome.
Amalthus has called down a scion of god from the sky. It's been his life's work, hasn't it? So finally the Architect has answered to his call.
And Minoth, hopeless romantic that he is, is convinced that there is something in Malos to grasp at, something in the Aegis that the Flesh Eater can work toward and capture.
He won't be hard to catch, most likely. Everyone knows where the Aegis is moving, has been and will be. And Minoth knows, from comparing shoddily-passed gossip reports on both's locations, that Amalthus and Malos can and do travel separately - more and more all the time.
Catch? Capture? Tracking him with intelligence?
Maybe Minoth is no better than his Driver, treating the Master Blades as trinkets. Should they be permitted to act on their own, enact their own judgement and rain down whatever hellfire they see fit? Or should they be forced to work in tandem with humans, the "principal" inhabitants of Alrest, those who awaken Blades and control their very lives, to decide what is right and what is wrong?
And is Minoth a human, or is he a Blade? Is there even any such thing as an in-between?
The action's rising. Fast.
He's got to get to Malos. Got to get to this manifest vestige of the Architect and find out what the face of god looks like for himself.
Won't Malos be receptive? Seeing another who'd bucked Amalthus and the façading artifice of Drivers, but wasn't meshing himself all in with the rest of the humans just yet?
Preparing himself for this all-important imagined meeting has Minoth turning away from the humans he does know, all the good beyond the Praetorium (even on the steps of Indol!) he's found, in the hopes that Malos will approve of him.
And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe the Aegis was sent here to shake up what they've been doing for the past thousand years. A society where one nation is known for being particularly open to the treatment of two partner races as equals and just that: partners...some society it is, eh?
The very idea of Malos contorts Minoth's thought processes, seizes at the Justice line and pulls, yanks, tugs.
Suddenly Minoth's metaphysical plight has a window toward meaning. Divine meaning.
So Malos has Minoth on a string, without even meeting him - without even knowing he exists, quite possibly.
Well. No, surely Malos knows Minoth exists. How could the Master Blade not know of his Driver's- no, his awakener's other resonance, tattered but not yet broken, scattered in unseemly threads?
Maybe Malos will look down upon Minoth for being weak, for not fully breaking away. Maybe Malos will hold Minoth responsible for letting Amalthus climb the World Tree in the first place. Maybe Malos will think Minoth the platonic ideal of this world's unfitness.
But unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, for Minoth, Malos knows he exists, sets him aside, thinks nothing of him at all.
This is the one that hurts the most. The one that had seemed the most debatably like destiny, and turned out the most definitely like defeat.
Addam Origo is unwanted in his own home, which isn't really his home because he was born somewhere else, and the people that don't want him there are the ones that made him that way. He wants no part of their ambitions, is uneasy with the idea of public adulation but delighted with the idea of a capacity to use power to help those bright and purposeful people who populate the lands whose heads he lingers near. Minoth could die for such a perfect parallel.
And Addam is compassionate, sympathetic and empathetic to Minoth's plight. He can't understand Amalthus's greed and coldness, except that he can. He is even more terrified by it than he is that of his uncle's, for his uncle's histrionics keep him relatively harmless and Zettar hasn't the aptitude to awaken Blades regardless.
Addam offers Minoth refuge in Torna. Mostly temporary, but occasionally the taboo of permanent settlement is broached.
Minoth is a wanderer, or he's a homebody. He's not a homemaker, not anything so hardworking as a farmer. He's quite surely a candidate for the position of once-was-traveler, now-is-hermit. None of this estate business, with no stage to speak of.
But he'll do it, if Addam wants, won't he? He'll trust Addam to provide the stability from which Minoth can work to build that dream private-public life and career. Addam has money and he has a kindness in his heart that assures Minoth his hopes will not be in vain.
He'll stay with Addam. No arguments. No complaints. With Addam, at Addam's side and back, is where he's meant to be, indubitably.
Until Addam calls that intergalactic belief into question.
"Leave? What do you mean, leave?"
Once upon a time, Minoth would have salivated over such untether. Now, though, the realization that Addam is speaking of a life beyond his death, and one where Minoth is not the de facto inheritor of Aletta for as long as he should live, hits his face like a wet rag.
"I had thought we should always be friends, Minoth." There's a hint of reproach in his tone. "I didn't mean that I should be your one and only friend and love, forever."
But how could he not be? Doesn't Addam see that their love is practically written in the stars? If he doesn't, Minoth will climb up there himself and write it with the pen of poetry, burning his arms and legs and eyes all in the process.
Once Addam is gone, Minoth can pine after him, as one pines after a dead lover, with impunity. It's difficult to sit with himself when he realizes that the concept might actually be appealing.
Actually missing your Driver, and wishing they were here with you now. Not something every Blade gets to do, is it?
It seems that's to be Minoth's ultimate destiny, instead.
Is Minoth a bold person? Certainly. He says what needs to be said, never backs down from a challenge (unless it's arm-wrestling with Lora, and Architect knows he'll never live that one down until he's old and gray enough to take a loss with humor - and knowing his luck, he won't be old and gray until long after Lora's good and gone). He's certainly not timid! No one would ever say such a thing as that.
He's not obnoxiously bold, though. Not brazen, never audacious.
(Well, maybe sometimes audacious. Several inadvisable flirtations exchanged with Addam come to mind.)
Try another angle: he's not got that unpleasant quality of a man that you often find, where he conceives of himself as able to act in any way he pleases, around women or other company, so confident in his own charms.
Maybe, in that way, Minoth's not bold. Because he's not so confident in his own right to be wherever it is that he is, all the time.
Though Flora is an incredibly warm, understated person in whose presence Minoth has been so lucky as to be at many a juncture, it takes him quite the effort and encouragement, from within, to make himself truly comfortable around her.
She's a princess, yes, by marriage and only nominally in the way that sometimes Addam is a prince only nominally, and if she's married Addam she must not be all that serious about much of anything, must she? But Minoth tiptoes upon eggshells in his suddenly-clumsy boots all the same.
They're chatting quite peaceably, over dumpling soup and pickle garnish, when he says something that must be deserving of a particular sympathy, because Flora, of a sudden, lays a gentle palm atop Minoth's hand and squeezes.
"I'm sorry. I hope that's getting better, day to day?"
He cannot for the life of him recall what it is he'd just said (the general area of interest wouldn't help - there are a thousand inconsequential points of discussion to be had about turning from a Blade of the Praetorium, of unknown national origin, into a Flesh Eater of Alrest and no other specifier).
So Minoth smiles at Flora, nods generically with the shadow of agreeable words on his lips, and goes back to his soup.
It's the same the next time he visits the garrison, briefly greeted and comforted all in one. And every time after that.
The next moment they're alone together, he decides he'll chance it.
She'll smile sadly up at him, with cocked head and stilled-swinging braids, and he'll reach to grasp her cheek with his hand, so ginger he can hardly tell the difference between a flutter and a tremor.
Minoth, the heartfelt beast of so many capacities, will be the perfect gentleman, and bend down to kiss Flora so softly, enhancing their connection. She'll kiss back, but only just as softly.
And then he'll retreat, still cradling her face, and Flora will say, in the smallest tone, "Oh, Minoth..."
"...no. I'm sorry."
Despite all his usual illusions of sense, of being a Blade in charge of his own destiny and secure against most all assailants, Minoth knows, in the back of his mind, that he might be making an error in judgement by being so lazy, so uncoiled, around the fire with the Tornans-in-honor. When they meet shifty characters in town - or even straightforward ones - he's all business, all crossed arms and low invocations. Doesn't like jokers, doesn't act like one. Sort of like Addam's appointed enforcer, and he does it well.
Around Brighid, though...
Well, Minoth gets positively lethargic.
In battle, he keeps up with her as well as anyone who isn't Aegaeon, dancing the dance Jin calls her to in circles around the flame, but never stepping into it. Yeah, it's a matter of pride, it's showing off in front of them all ever since Lora had bought the bait that he moves so well and steps self-assuredly, but with a model like Brighid, who wouldn't?
That's why Minoth throttles right past awkward to adroit. All his finest scripts, his snappiest lines, he writes for her. All his most genuine compliments about the delicious, one-of-a-kind scents that waft up from the campfire and all gathered there are directed at her. All his summoned-up chivalry is prepared for her.
He can't help it. The Jewel is just that magnetic, majestic, magnificent.
At the same time, Minoth keeps respectful distance. He knows Brighid is aware of his fawning, of his favoritism that extends beyond fair treatment of Haze or not-unkind jibing with Lora. He knows, for certain, that everyone can tell the way he treats an eligible girl, and it's not the way he treats Mythra.
He calls her "dear" with all the boldness he can muster, to make it seem as if he's just that flamboyant, just that self-secure - and it's not that he isn't! Oh, the playwright has command of all languages, all phrases turned on the point of a toe and a dime. But he's deluding himself if he thinks she'll ever say it back.
For the first couple days, even weeks, Brighid smiles at him thinly, then evenly, then diplomatically. Then she starts dangling chuckles, titters, giggles in front of him, letting him know that she can be amused, indeed, but doesn't allow the privilege to just anyone.
Brighid is ruthless! Attentive to her own wisdom and only sometimes that of Aegaeon, ignorant of Hugo's more minor contusions, unwilling to give Mythra the barest inch of quarter. What does love even look like, for Brighid?
Why not, to treasure those spectacular individuals you come across, when you know they'll never remember whatever it is you said, did, felt?
Minoth's certain Brighid isn't writing anything in her journals about him. He has to be, or else he'll stare, with open eyes and then again those closed, at that silent, dormant Core Crystal knowing that he's just gone down in history as the greatest fool the Jewel has ever known.
Every conversation with Jin had been a prize - not just in the sense that they had been deep discussions, every one of them, but in the context of Jin being so closed-off, so unready or at the very least unwilling to share what he thought, unless directly asked.
Jin didn't talk with Aegaeon about memory, about legacy. Jin didn't talk with Brighid about duties of care. Jin didn't talk with Addam about the responsibilities of a leader.
Minoth had identified with immediacy that Jin had identified him as a kindred spirit, mellower than Lora but with some of the same moxie. And Minoth had toned himself down, for these conferences. He didn't trifle with those chances. He'd come down to where Jin was, imbibe in the Paragon's steel-misty milieu. He'd be quiet, when they dug, train himself to the fortitude.
Did Minoth ever delude himself into thinking that he would ever be anything other than a chance visitor to Lora's mythical orphanage? No, of course not. Minoth doesn't let himself count guarantees over anyone's coinbox. Only when the projectile of weighty change hits him in the back of the head does he realize that he's contrived roots where there are none, where there will never be.
Jin had been curious about Flesh Eaters. A little too curious, in Minoth's opinion, but it's not Minoth's place to gatekeep, to stigmatize, to do whatever the hell it is you do with lived experience when you can't really do anything great about living with it.
Is it? Was it?
Can he blame himself that Jin turned out this way? That Jin went beyond Minoth's freewheeling dreams and carved the name of Blades without Drivers into history - history that Minoth himself isn't even writing?
The idea that they share a connection, however distant or twisted, is somehow more tantalizing than self-recrimination. Ha, and if the Minoth of 3564 could ever have imagined that.
Maybe Jin is, had been, one of the original thirteen Blades. A myth? An impossibility, given that the Titan cycle should have long and away eaten through his armor to render those wings into flesh and stone?
Despite himself, Minoth hopes that Jin'll come back. Come back to what?
To him, right? To their friendship. To their kinship, now in a sense reforged.
What's the point of living so long, so much longer than all others, if those bastions of time past that were once there with you don't reach out, don't connect? They call themselves Torna - wasn't that their party, their team, long ago?
Ah, it's all a crude dream. To think that Jin will ever want anything to do with Minoth, the champion of the losers, again. As if he ever had.
He's found new community. Other Flesh Eaters. Others who act in defiance, who live in defiance, who exist in defiance.
And Minoth hadn't done that, had he? Not really. Not at all.
So he must continually trawl ancient memories for a spark of that splendor. How pathetic.