things without heads, mouths without teeth
The weather is clearing, the wind combs the young willows' hair.
.The ice is melted, the waves wash the old moss's beard
The religious man decried the world, and his beleaguered attendant stood to hear. Clouds of musky silence ringed the world.
"I have seen hell," he said. "It is all before me."
Still, the attendant was silent. It was in his nature to see beauty in sin. Sin was humanity; sin was his soul.
Minoth yet loved the world.
So as he stood there, watched his originator, trembled with the fear of meeting judgement in his glinted yellow eyes, he came to decide something.
He decided that he would walk away, and forge his own path. Just as the Quaestor had done. Just as the Quaestor was about to do.
Amalthus, of course, did not stop him.
In the Tree, Malos was pure. Carved in the shape of a crucifix, he seemed primed to be naught but a messiah.
Of course, that was only how Amalthus could see him. Presented with no window into the violet Aegis's nascent soul, he painted with his own.
He thought he instilled purity, cleanliness, godliness, all he was meant to as the only one who had ever traveled so high.
He thought it was down to him, and then again so up.
He thought he had control.
He most definitely did not have control.
Malos emerged as a man, cloaked in all malice and draped in all bluster. He had muscles, armor, cheekbones, eyes, all boring intimidation into on-lookers' souls.
The perfect instrument. The perfect weapon. The perfect sword. The perfect Blade.
Even his breathing was perfectly even-tempered, perfectly measured in time.
He was perfect. None but Amalthus could have made him so, after all.
None but Amalthus could have been so weak as to let him be so self-possessed, after all.
None but Amalthus would have stood by and let him be so wicked.
Once the Quaestor had picked himself up off the floor and righted the cape that hung about his shoulders, he needed an action to take - to dismiss the Aegis, or to be dismissed himself.
Of course he wasn't going to choose to just leave it there.
"I will call you when I have need of you," he said.
You will not call upon me. You, unlike Minoth, will know your place.
Malos smirked, let the potent crease of his eyes tease its way into a grin, and then vanished into purple ectoplasm and escaped without a trace.
He didn't know where he was going. He didn't know what, or who, he was going to do.
But Amalthus was a fool. Amalthus thought he was a ruler.
Stupid Quaestor. Didn't you know?
Malos was the only king fit to exist here.
Only a few weeks passed before Minoth felt himself well enough to return to the Praetorium. At the very least, he would stand at the gate and observe the place he had been born, make any final judgements, before abandoning it forever.
There was nothing more here. Everything was false, empty.
No one cared about anything except themselves.
As he sat down upon the base of the grand staircase, something potent slithered up from beneath the railing.
"I haven't seen you before," it said.
"I haven't seen you either," Minoth returned, and continued to tie up his hair.
"You smell like him," the demon prodded.
"Him?" A mutual friend?
"Well. Not so much a smell, as a..."
And then Minoth sensed it too.
Amalthus's control, again.
The constriction, undying and unending.
Little by little, the demon's form coalesced. There was a nose, a peak of hair, hands that grasped the white marble with gruesome indifference.
"You're pretty interesting."
"Me?"
"There's a god right next to you, and you're not falling all over yourself to make an offering."
"I'm not religious," Minoth replied, less stiffly than was apparent.
"Neither am I," snickered Malos, and took the opportunity to crawl beneath the Flesh Eater's skin.
At the present moment, Minoth didn't mind being controlled.
"You're not like him."
"I'm not."
"You're not like me, either."
"Oh? Try me."