you can't go back where you came from

Minoth has always rejected Amalthus. Amalthus, indeed, has always rejected Minoth. That's where he got it from, he reckons, and any other, less rigid answer would make a hell of a lot more scratch work getting to the solution.

It's messy enough as it is. He rejects Amalthus, yes, but is he allowed to? Is he right to? Would anyone else, in his situation, do the same?

Amalthus had always, implicitly, shown him his place in the world: a tool, to be used for the purposes of the Praetorium, which was ever seeking to be in alignment with the subtly-communicated and virtually-unrecorded intentions of the Architect.

They harvested these instructions from Morytha as well as from the top of the World Tree. They looked for clues in every piece of earth, every child's anguished cries.

Amalthus didn't actually want to help the child. He just wanted to know what the child symbolized, in a greater, grander scheme. Once he knew that, the screams were of no objective, and the child could be left to go the way of its parents, just earlier departed from the earth.

These misanthropic tendencies, Minoth abhorred. He found it straightforward to do so, and he considered that while so many things, as Amalthus had taught him, were both unpleasant and correct, if he was to assume his rightful nature as an instrument of the Architect, then what was intuitive to him likely had been intuitive to the big man, as well.

If he even existed. Minoth still had yet to meet.

It wasn't about that, though. It wasn't about whether or not he found himself on a different life path than Amalthus. That much is obvious, now. There is no going back, no undoing the weaving of life's tapestries and the writing of this individual epic.

What Minoth wonders, five hundred years advanced in age or very nearly, is what he can learn from Amalthus. Actually, what he already has. Where is he now, that he took for granted some teaching of the ambition-hungry Praetor and peddles it in his everyday life?

He makes what he want of history, of course. He tells the stories as it suits and serves him. He tells people what they want to hear, because it's he who wants to say it.

Amalthus had done all that. Now, Amalthus had convinced himself that it was all in service of what the Architect had told him, whispered so softly in his pointy ears (the better to hear the holy edicts, one supposes, and Minoth has heard it spoken of in other lost, spiritual religions), but still, the modus operandi were the same.

Minoth raises children. He takes in refugees because it's always been the work that comes easy. Easy, you say? Well, how about available? There's work you chase, work you can be unqualified, and then there's work you just damn well do.

Being a mercenary and fostering a child are both trials by daily-dodge fire. You can tackle each task moment by moment, attending to the needs of the client as they're presented.

Oh, but unconscious biases are tricky. You can operate as a brute for hire without much talking, but children sponge up everything. They're slicker than writ-writers, much of the time.

So if Minoth hates Amalthus and everything he stands for so much, then how could he possibly allow himself to teach children what he knows?

Because he's still Amalthus's Blade, technically. Until the bastard croaks, he's still written out in all his segments to follow the will of the master.

Blades aren't meant to conduct themselves without the input of a human. They weren't made that way. They should go nutty and corrupt if they start trying to do it.

(See what happened to Jin? Horrible case, horrible stuff. And of course Jin will be Lora's last Blade forever.)

Minoth paces. He used to run, to get himself jumping whenever he got jumpy, but now he's got an office, and it's space in which to pace. The rug is worn and worried, from all his infinite ministrations. The beetle cage is an unwilling onlooker, and every single one of their compound ommatidia are tired of watching the playwright pace.

Because he feels it, you know. He feels the connection, weak as a gnat that just won't stand still to be swatted and dies.

What, you thought he loved gnats? Once upon a time, maybe, but now he's old and bent, and they're vermin just like everything else in the world.

He stops cold. Swallows a swear. Oh, curse this cult of meritocracy.

But he's Amalthus's Blade. He wants to win. He wants justice, even if his heart tells him compassion, because human hearts have capacity for all four virtues and then, like the full spectrum of vivid colors, thousands and thousands more.

Now, for all Minoth knows, Amalthus doesn't so much as care that he yet breathes, anymore. That's certainly how it looks on paper, when one considers how much the Praetor lets himself indulge in culture.

But Amalthus only doesn't come because he knows he doesn't have to. He knows he's got his hooks in until the totality of kingdom come.

It's easy for him. He's a controller. He hates when things get away from him, so he writes them off if they do.

But Minoth hasn't gotten away. He'll never get away. And he can't go back into the shell and have another pop, because he's a Flesh Eater; he's expired. He's rotten milk two ways to Sunday. He's the type of thing you walk past in the street and cross yourself, because it could be contagious, you don't know.

Minoth used to think that Amalthus's ideas and ideals were contagious. He used to think, eugh, get that away from me! I'll catch something!

The years have revealed, however, that he was caught from as far back as frame one.

That's true power, in this crooked old world. The one that pulls the strings is the mastermind to whom all hopefuls must report.

Amalthus is the most powerful person in this entire world. Meanwhile, Minoth lives in a shack in Uraya, coughing up dust in the basement.

And that's not how a Blade should be. But it's his fault, isn't it?