Alloy Sheeting
Prime directive, for a Blade: the Driver never comes to harm. If the Driver is in danger, you shield them. If the Driver is wounded, you heal them - whether you're a healer or not, you summon the properties of the element available to you, and you cauterize or invigorate as best as you can.
The Driver, too, has a responsibility to the Blade, but the relationship is not strictly bidirectional; instead, the Driver relies on the Blade for protection, and pays all due respect to the care of the weapon they have under their possession. The best Drivers are the most caring towards their Blades, in all capacities that the Blades would enjoy such attentiveness, but since Blades naturally have fewer material needs than Drivers, and because the dependency stands as a fact of nature...the hierarchy flows.
And this, for most Blades, is fine. Their inbuilt devotion to their Drivers makes it easy for them to devote their energies and totaled lifespans to the service of those humans who have awakened them. For mercenary Drivers, the Blade will often enjoy the exercise of a fight, and just as much downtime as the mercenary's own routine allows, while towndwellers install their Blades as part of the family.
The system is rife for abuse, indeed. But in the vast majority of cases, what extent there is drawn up for mutual respect and reciprocity is most agreeably used.
Too, many of those Drivers who come into contact with Core Crystals for resonation are already equipped with the physical and mental resources to be able to accomodate another life. Cases like that of Lora and Jin are few and far between. Trafficking being its own world, you generally get strapping young people or experienced older folk who arrive at existence spent alongside a Blade.
All of this is quite squarely not to say that Blades should be content with their lot, because the system is good, actually. Rather, if there is good to be gleaned from an infrastructure that subjugates one race to another, that good is the fostering of relationships deepened by love, trust and care.
Minoth had not enjoyed this in Indol. Addam didn't quite enjoy it with Mythra, in Torna and Gormott and Mor Ardain and Uraya and Coeia and Spessia and everywhere else they'd been on Alrest, not quite jigging along with each other anywhere.
You take a prince, rich beyond belief in the context of his country estate that makes him out to be a farmer, in peacetime, and you take a Blade turned Flesh Eater by some sideways quantification and qualification of will(s), and you don't quite expect that one is going to protect the other. You don't quite expect that either would need anything of the sort; there they are, in combination, experienced young people and strapping older folk, or something like that.
But as with all well-taken worldbuilding, there must come a crucial, colorful contradiction. We must find, after it all, that Addam may not, in fact, need protection from his easily jibable reputation and situation (his station, bastard or not, is cushy, isn't it?), and Minoth may be weaker than his prime but still holds his own quite easily, but what is difficult, here: most people don't understand that Minoth, as a Blade or as not quite a Blade, is still an individual in need of care and gentle treatment, because a Blade is especially vulnerable to the trapping factors of an old Driver juxtaposed versus a new. Minoth might very well be the only Blade in current existence to pose proof to this problem, but here he is, and there it is.
His least favorite person, indeed. And it makes Minoth sound just as much a coward as he'd professed, doesn't it? So perhaps Addam could have chosen stronger, more robust, more rigorous wording. But it gets the job done.
Lora stands back, slightly disquieted. "O-oh, is it like that?" To her, it's unimaginable - she doesn't quite know the scale of Amalthus as a superlatively bad man, yet, and since Gort had been just that, the distinction becomes cloudy, doesn't it? Because some fathers or partners can be not wholly horrible people, but still inspire distance at madcap in their dependents.
Hugo nods solemnly. "We'll make it our duty to ensure further encounters proceed as smoothly."
Everyone nods in time. Even if it's not so easy to understand, it's easy to act accordingly. Minoth and Amalthus, separated. Got it. Dusted and done.
But Addam's face is the grimmest of all. His expression remains even in the sunlight of the square, even as he lends his subpar expertise of mentorship toward Mythra yet again. A fine problem, isn't it? One that we can just dance around?
"Thanks for that," Minoth murmurs (more grateful than a mutter, less sheepish than a mumble), uncharacteristically forward at such a delicate moment. Usually he'd just ignore it, and not even assume his manner to mean that he's taking the gesture for granted. That's just the way he is, isn't it? Man of few words, when he wants to be, which is actually surprisingly often.
"I haven't even done anything," Addam says sharply. "I should have put myself more on the line for you - and I know, I know, it doesn't do to self-castigate, but it disappoints me to see how little you value yourself."
Minoth considers this, fingers pulsing in a rhythm over his thigh. What tension Addam had intended to inject into the conversation is now palpably present. Likely quite necessary. "I value my actions over my words, as it turns out," he says at last. "I won't take it so easy."
"I'm not convinced that you can," Addam insists.
"Do I deserve to?"
"Yes! Yes, that's the entire Architect-damned point! You deserve to, just as any other Blade!"
"Is he so commonplace, to you, then?"
The thin, level, familiar voice cuts across the courtyard with damnable ease.
Addam doesn't grant him a glance.
"Buzz off."