stewardship

It's the illusion of free choice. It's the calm before the storm. It's the way Amalthus's briefly lowered eyelids tremble as they summon patience to him, in the face of Minoth's (dare it be said, perfectly reasonable) request for clarification.

"Human cells? But...how did you ever think to do this?"

Why couldn't you have just stopped at trying to have sex with a Blade, first?

But Minoth knows that Amalthus would never do such a thing. Personally, he would find it uncomfortable, if not debasing. Unnatural - again, personally. And Stannif can hardly be considered a viable control subject, nor effective inspiration for any wider test group.

Procreation is what the refugees do. He's seen Amalthus snivel at it, proselytize his theories on childbearing and -rearing.

Baltrich, by virtue of not being a researcher, has enjoyed the privilege of keeping himself and his Blades - two, Common, Kivue and Nosesne - well apart from the ambitious Amalthus. But now Amalthus is a Quaestor, and Baltrich remains a Magister. And Kivue and Nosesne, why, they're merely Blades! Meant as gifts from the Architect to serve the Praetorium's will, may they only continue to act as His acolytes.

Not that those two would ever have had anything to do with Minoth, of their own volition, had he not developed a tenuous relationship with Baltrich of his own. Implicitly, they intend to counsel him.

"Of course you wouldn't want to disobey him. He's your Driver."

Nosesne is the romantic one, and Kivue the cynic. Its tone carries some of insistent self-reproach, some of lingering qualm. Their Driver is pompous, vain, often uncharitable, but he is not professionally avaricious and hypervigilant the way Amalthus is. Nosesne puzzles, tries to imagine Baltrich asking of them something so clandestine as this.

Meanwhile, Kivue provides her judgement: "I don't envy you. But I wonder if there truly is any reasoning with him?"

Minoth looks at them, thinking, but soon averts his eyes. "I don't know."

Minoth, the Dark Blade of the Praetorium, ever his Driver's shadow. Both are standoffish, except in rare moments. Except when they think that someone is really looking, and then they turn it on.

The trouble is that Minoth really doesn't like disobeying his Driver. It's not all that pleasant a thing. And, knowing how Amalthus will react when he knows (and he always, always, always knows), what's to be gained?

Amalthus might not like Minoth, but it's unfortunately not true that he doesn't care.

Take Baltrich, when Nosesne contrived to remove the horns from its headpiece and replace them with segments from Kivue's armored pigtails. Kivue had been prepared to stand in front of their partner and defray all the arguments, but Baltrich had just wrinkled his nose, attempted for just a moment to discern what had changed, and shrugged it off.

Minoth should be so lucky, to face such ambivalence about the way he wears his hair.

(Isn't he lucky? Isn't he privileged? Isn't he blessed?)

So he has to do it. He doesn't have the stones not to. And doesn't his Driver know best?

I should have said no. I should have said no.

I should have known that the only thing I have to give to this world is my own body as the last line of defense against the poison that lurks inside Amalthus's mind. Maybe I can save him. I hope I can save the world.

Thinking this is all it takes for Minoth to find a seething peace with the decision he made. Because, if his body is given, perhaps Amalthus will stop. Perhaps he, being close enough to his Driver as it is, will become the living example that this is not the way.

And if nothing else, he will save another Blade from becoming the first to breach into this great and terrible unknown.

To broach it, a conversation topic. To pierce the veil.

Truly, without any prior instruction? Or...no, the Judician technology. That's right. So maybe it is possible. To become...something greater. Something other than a mindless, servile beast.

How delusional his thoughts sound, indeed. Saving Amalthus. Saving the world.

If Amalthus were any kinder a person, Minoth would even want to believe it; would cherish and revere his fount of influence for the visionary stuff that it is.

But it's not so. The icky dislike Minoth feels for his Driver is all too often subsumed by an instinctual deference - his Core identifying not just its corresponding ether receiver but a personality attuned to the kind of justice it's best able to dish out.

It'd be nice just to know, you know? To have that clarity. But Minoth is not allotted this. Even without companions that enable (perhaps if they were brave? but Indoline, as socialized, are primarily compatible with Blades of truth, and Baltrich, mystifyingly, even has capacity for compassion), he feels the inordinate pressure to be able to turn away, and cannot.

Did he not have other Drivers, once? Is Amalthus's mind so impossibly strong?

A kinship with his past self, Minoth would so dearly love. But if it's not to be had, going forward...

Would this, then, make him independent? Had Amalthus been offering it as a carrot, to describe the operation of Flesh Eater Blades apart from their Drivers?

He couldn't possibly be stupid enough not to know. Certainly, Amalthus does some things that Minoth finds, reductively, stupid, but Amalthus is a very, very smart man.

Severe. Ambitious. Opportunistic.

He was once a salvager. It's all but established that he desperately wishes he had been the one to discover and recover Judicium. Without a doubt, he will be scavenging for the remains of his carnage now, on Spessia where the chimeral Titan weapons blazed.

(Did he kill, purge, exterminate and genocide just for the sake of fascism? Or was there something he wanted from it? Is there a deep-buried, human-sympathetic reason that he did what he did?)

Jin was always a target - Minoth was not there, but he had heard the horrific tale of Gort. Of course Lora's bounty hunter, abuser of her mother, had come to be connected with Minoth's own umbilical wound.

Jin, he's not worried about. Not for Jin's own safety, that is. The Paragon will fight back, as soon and as surely as he is awakened. But Haze...?

Haze is weak, susceptible. Oh, she has many an uncanny strength, but her hidden cynicism is not like Kivue's; she could not hope to stand up and fight anyone, apart. And she is not physically imposing, like Nosesne. She has no Electric Bitball to hurl, no Ice Ether Cannon to unleash.

(He hears that Rhadallis has been assassinated. No bets on who the mastermind was. And of course, Minoth doesn't have to be anywhere near the scene of the crime to know how it went down: Common Blade, gifted the expanded radius of resonation that comes with the pink-and-blue Core. Because then it looks as if the Blade alone revolted. Because of course it would - don't you remember, Minoth did.)

Especially with no memories. With no Driver but the one in front of her.

But is it better, then, for Haze to be dead forever? What of the royal family's other awakened Blades - or had they none? Who else could hope to save her from that infernal end?

She could be defiled in any uncountable number of ways, regardless of who finds her. But, Minoth reminds himself, he is uniquely capable of understanding Amalthus, better than anyone save perhaps Malos. And what, truly, did Malos actually know?

They had a mournfully toxic emotional bond. They were not, however, woefully incompatible. Much the opposite.

Amalthus, as is now apparent Alrest-wide, acts on his own personal sense of justice. Minoth had spoken to that, in spades. If it had been Amalthus's own cells that Minoth had received, perhaps he wouldn't have felt the weakness and the pain that he presently does. If he had not been so similar to his source, he might not have had to run away.

But it must mean something. It must...there must be something. Throwing a gun up in the air in the first act isn't just for faux-rebellious show. Someone has to survive to the third act and catch it, now. Or else, what's been the point of it all?

What can he do now that he couldn't do then?

Can he act against Amalthus? Can he call himself up on the carpet, expose everything they've done?

Or is he still a coward? Is he no longer as quick-thinking and clever as he once was?

He's not a human, is what he's not. He's not clean, not pure. He accepted it when he entered that laboratory four years ago.

My full strength anywhere, without my Driver. Yeah, right. But your Driver is with you, even still.

Without Amalthus pushing him to the edge, he's nothing. Without Amalthus releasing him at that cliff-face edge, none of them would be here at all.