don't delay, dock the dick

"I'm conducting an experiment," said Amalthus. Not quite imperious. A little shaky, underneath the moulded impression. Minoth could tell. Minoth was glad to be able to tell.

So glad.

"What kind?" asked Minoth, conversationally, not to say affably. He stood from where he had been seated behind a desk, and hated the way he felt unable to resist like he'd wanted to. Not even that he wanted to disrespect his Driver, but that he didn't want to be forced to bow, to kowtow, for no reason. To anyone. Nice guy - or gal - or not.

They were in Minoth's room. Nothing fancy, as a recently-promoted Quaestor's Blade, but a room of his own nonetheless. As if other Blades didn't get the same courtesy.

Truth was, they didn't. Minoth was privileged, in that way. The base-rank monks rarely awakened Blades, instead focusing on their own martial arts as a means to both offense and defense, but Magisters did more regularly - Amalthus had, you see. And, Magisters didn't get their own offices. They had to share a room with any Blade and a workspace with every other scholar in the library.

So, the point still stands: Minoth was privileged. He had his own room, and technically the run of Amalthus's since his Driver spent so much time in his office, if not away from the Praetorium completely, and so he should have been grateful, should he not?

So grateful.

"You know, you're really very important to me, Minoth."

Minoth kept walking, but it was with a stutter and a shudder in his chest and in his step.

So important.

"Really?" Amalthus looked boredly down at Minoth, and the Blade could do nothing to stop a single lithe blue finger passing its way over his ear and through his sideburns. Shuddering. Writhing. Worms and wrigglers underneath his skin, gripping his shoulder blades. It had never happened before. It would never happen again.

"I would have thought you'd be eager to get rid of it, especially since..." And here the yellow-eyed gaze passed over his chest. Not the Core, was Amalthus studying, but the area around it, still slightly bumpy from Minoth's unorthodox and even dangerous excursion some many months before.

"That was my choice," Minoth said, and tried not to grit his teeth. Because...that wouldn't be right. This man, Amalthus, was his Driver. He had given him everything - had given him life, and shelter, and prospects, and the chance to get snarled into whatever the hell was going on right now. So Minoth was fortunate.

So fortunate.

"Your choice?" Amalthus raised a single eyebrow by some exact degrees, and seemed to run his tongue along the top of his teeth. Removing stray bits of food, perhaps. Removing stains, and imperfections. "It was not your choice to be given a body which you so profanely desecrated. Don't fool yourself, Minoth."

He said it like he was doing Minoth a favor. Like he was gently goading an errant child. Like he was being kind, going out of his way but also very much not, and simply performing his duty as he had sworn.

So kind.

Just as Stannif was readying the intravenous injection, Minoth put out a hand to stop him. "Wait a minute. How long until that stuff puts me out?"

"Oh," Stannif smiled, eyes (eyes?) giving no bearing on much of anything. No, not anything. Not anything at all. "Oh," he said. "You'll know."

Wake up, it's over, they said. But this wasn't over. Not for another five hundred years would it be over. And even then...who knew?