Inverse Bearing
Minoth Origo is a bastard prince of Torna. The trouble about that is, no one can tell. He looks the very picture of King Khanoro's son - he even looks more like Zettar, really, but what are the fractions on a half-uncle's genetic gift when your mother's from a different continent entirely? That's what he tells people who get snippy-nosed about it, anyway.
No one can tell that he doesn't belong, but no one can quite tell the way in which he does either, not immediately. He certainly doesn't act so noble.
With tousled hair and subtle cape, high collar rising division between the curious face and the clasped-up uniform, he moves through the capital as an object of interest and, likely, attraction. He will never escape being positively ostracized by the Tornan people. This he knows, surely. Khanoro is an old monument. Zettar is ugly as his personality bids.
But Minoth is mysterious and handsome, and with the finely coordinated mind in head mounted upon well-articulated shoulders, he makes himself the best of Torna without so much as trying.
He doesn't want a throne, or even a farmhouse estate; what he wants is a playhouse. But, he makes do by installing himself as a regular fixture at the schoolhouse in Heblin, where somewhere around a score of children eagerly await his stories and his adoring airs about Miss Flora.
Flora, herself his effortless confidante, listens keenly as Minoth describes the hapless, bouffe specimen of a Blade he'd found in Indol, on last political visit, and in a rare moment of mirroring him, waggles dark brows at the child seated comfortably upon moody prince's knee to let them know just what she thinks about that.
"You wouldn't believe it. For all the talk about how much better we treat Blades over here, I've never seen one so eager to lie down and take it."
"Take what?" She thumbs a smudge of dirt off the child's cheek.
"Amalthus," Minoth says simply. He sets the child down, leans to kiss Flora's own never-smudged cheek, and heads out of the village, back towards Auresco.
If Flora Hentisane knows Minoth Origo, which she does, she knows that he'll deny ever determining that he has to get back to Indol, or else bring the Magister (is he Quaestor, by now? couldn't be) to Torna by hook or by crook. But he will think about it, and think about it, and think about it.
And stay his hand, because building a better world just doesn't come like that, to him. Never has. Never will.
He's good with helping people, but only when they come to him first, or when he can divine and cleverly recall the antidote to their quandary of the moment. Interference is out of the question.
Interference is out of the question.
Sentences uttered by exactly no one, in the face of the Aegis threat - namely, Malos, Amalthus's awakened creation wrought upon the world. Once upon a time, when Titans rampaged, the only way to combat them had been with devices scaled to their size. So then. The only way to force comedown on a Master Blade is another Master Blade, yes?
But the awakener can't be Amalthus, this time. Can't be Domnhall or Hugo Ardanach, either. Can't be Oren Sol Esteriole.
Could be the King of Torna, perhaps? Could be the High Prince, even better.
It's the expectation of exactly no one that it could be the damned unwilling Lord of Aletta, best of all. Minoth is a man of many talents, and thus of many confidences, but he's not the first person anyone would go to for such mountain-moving stuff as this. Dual daggers don't constitute a greatsword, at any price.
If the rest of the Aureus residents come down for the count, though, there isn't any other choice, is there?
So there's Mythra. Moody and bright, with an atom-bomb cherry on top.
(Nuclear, perhaps, but atom sounds better.)
Minoth heartily approves of the way she mouths off at Amalthus, though the way she has an inherent comprehension of the fact that no one really wants her scares him right down to his bones.
All of that is, however unfortunately, just background noise to the central conflict at head in Minoth's mind. Even as the issue has remained passive, it has consumed, consumed, consumed.
He hadn't been able to talk Addam out of sacrificing himself to the first of the Flesh Eater experiments. Easily weighed, to the jolt-haired Electric Blade, had been the costs of involvement versus noncompliance. Independence hadn't factored in; in his words: "He's going to do it anyway. He's going to keep going. I can't stop the future ones from being hurt. But I can save at least one."
"That one could have been you," Minoth snaps sourly.
"Well...it's not too bad."
"Not too bad? Addam, what are you not getting? You're a Blade and your Driver doesn't give a shit!"
Addam winces at the expletive. "I don't see how...well, that's alright. I mean, who does?"
Is it the sheer frustration at having to be someone who exists at any capacity in Addam's bumbling orbit, or is it the pocket-sized supernova of a realization that...shit. "I do, you idiot."
He hasn't half plan what to do with Mythra. He knows he'll never really make his father proud, or Zettar petard-hoisted. But for all how he can't do an Architect-damned thing to help Addam...well, it's the only thing he can do, isn't it?
"You're coming with me," he announces. Addam blinks, blithely interested. "Is that so?"
Mythra broods. Lora hushes. Jin squints, at the charity.
It's not charity. It's purely selfish. Only someone as daft-headed insane as Addam could keep Minoth out of the ground, on a trek like this. He'd taken a year to get in, but he'd gotten. Minoth bets Flora had helped, with that.
Addam's sword is huge. He's absolutely directionless. He laughs entirely too loud.
And Minoth, poor, human Minoth, is hooked.