I Don't Care That Your Mom Died

Baltrich was the first one to say it - he and Amalthus originally shared the same graduating class from trainee to monk standard, and when the slightly older Indoline made to explain his traumatic past and what had made him decide to fall in with the Praetorium incorporation in the first place, the younger put up a hand prominently marked with a ring he had been given by his own maternal attachment, and said simply, "Amalthus, I don't care that your mother died. We all have our own reasons for being called to service. Some may let pain and sadness drive them, and that's fine. But I don't want to know about it."

Rude, thought Amalthus. Surely you're just saying that because your own cause is too shallow, and you know it so. See where you'll be, in fifty years, with that lackluster measure of aspiration. At this point, Amalthus hadn't been planning to kill his compatriot. If there was any poetry in that, it was merely an accident.

Minoth, also, turned out to be a disappointment in that way. Stood on the cliff with the wind whipping his stupidly, unnecessarily long hair, he dared to admonish his Driver, the man who had so generously given him the independence he had so desperately sought. Unthinkable!

"Amalthus, I don't care that your mom died. Put the baby down, and back away from the cliff. I don't trust you." Don't trust you like this, he might have said, but what would have been the point?

Amalthus didn't turn, didn't move, didn't blink. "So you don't trust me. I care very little for your opinion, Minoth. Surely you know that by now."

"By now...you conniving bastard. You never did, and we both know it. Save it for someone else who'll listen to your bullcrap, becase I'm done. I'm leaving."

Oh, parting so soon? Good riddance. You were useless to me. And for a Blade...well. That is surely saying something.

Malos lacked none in aspiration. He emerged from the crystal full of power and drive, and very nearly spared time for no question, not even one after his task, but luckily indeed thought to ask, before he left the dim office in the sanctum, "Who are you?"

It could be answered simply enough that "I am Quaestor Amalthus, of Indol - the Titan in which we now both reside." If need be, he could explain the meaning of his title, and the power structures that they worked within. He could detail his trip up to what would have been Elysium.

Instead, Amalthus did none of that. He began, laboriously enough, "I am a man who has been shown the truth of this world. Recently, it has been gifted to me by your- no, our father, but even before that, when my mother was cruelly taken from this life by men without a shred of integrity to their names - and those likely just as stolen as the rest of their presences in our society - I began to see the whole of what humanity is hurtling towards."

Malos smiled. Was it in agreement? Derision? Pity? Compassion, empathy, sympathy? "Heh. I don't care. Just a distraction from my purpose."

"I-- Ah. Yes." If the Aegis has said it, then it must be true.

"Look, Amalthus?" He'd never given his name. So that was a different kind of embarrassment staved. "You seem like someone who likes to be efficient. So learn this from me: shut the hell up, and don't go telling that sob story to anyone else."

As he sauntered away, a last quasi-salutation of judgement could be heard: "Mother died, my ass. They can't all be that stupid. And if they are..."

You know nothing of humanity, Aegis. And I...in time, I will know all. All.

"Master Amalthus, if I can ask?"

"Yes, Fan?"

"What is it that drives you to bring light and order to Alrest? A mentor, perhaps? The memory of loved ones?" A wish to leave an impact so deep and meaningful such that you will never be cast aside, and forgotten?

"Loved ones...indeed, you could say that. When I was no more than a boy, bandits - the lowest of the low, you must understand - murdered my mother in her sleep. They were such dirty creatures, the scum of the earth, but I brought myself above vengeance and swore to make my answering conquest one of charity, even nobility."

As Amalthus bore on, Fan's inquisitive smile drooped, and she furrowed her brow ever so slightly in order to make puzzlement out of the words he gave. Not vengeance, but still revenge? Oh, it didn't make any sense.

Meanwhile, the relentless continuation: "I see her face sometimes in my dreams, endowing my every venture with her good grace, and--" He stopped then, interrupted by a delicate hand raised opposite from the martial crosier.

"Oh, but Your Eminence..." She tilted her head so sweetly, so kindly, and Amalthus felt endeared. Oh, what a pity you are only a puppet... "I don't really care."

Pah. A puppet, and no more. It is a blessing. And to speak of blessings, the one I gave that Von Genbu boy was quite a lot, in comparison to what he gave me in return. Only insolence.

"Zeke, have you ever taken another person's life?" He hadn't, he said. Hadn't seen the need. Fine enough. A good answer, boy. But, then...

"Why does anyone kill others?" the prince put forth, seemingly sagely. Amalthus was glad to listen to the incipience of such a clearly long-studied pontification in response to his highly insightful question. What have you learned, indeed, in my employ?

"Because they're in your way, or because you can't bear the sight of them. Right? You kill because you're weak."

"I would agree with that," Amalthus allowed with a gracious nod. "It was the very weakest of people who murdered my mother. Henceforth, I swore never to be so weak."

"Oh, old man..." His cadence gave a flicker of amusement, but his eyepatched face was all gravity. "Oh, I'm not talking about you. I mean, I am. But not how you think. You see, I'm not weak. I don't need to kill anyone. You seem to, though."

Weak? I am the Praetor. It is not within my calling nor my means to train in strength and fortitude. Amalthus was about to say as much when Zeke, apparently prescient of his objection, continued, "And I don't mean physically, yeah? I mean in here."

He pointed at his Core Crystal, but Amalthus could see that he meant his heart. Are you calling me heartless, Zeke? That's rich. You look down upon the very refugee camps that I have built and maintained. You look down, indeed...and that shall be your undoing.

At long last, after five hundred years, it seemed that Amalthus would be the one coming undone. Did he think himself in control? Did he think everything perfectly ordered and ordained?

"I asked Malos, long ago, why all of the damned bloodlust. To kill, to desecrate, to destroy, just for the sake of it? Just as the Aegis has said, I see now that it comes from you, but why? Why, in the name of the Architect, and how could you possibly think that it would ever be justified?"

"My mother," Amalthus started with a rattling sneer, "was killed for much of the very same non-reason. And you, petty fool, think yourself equal to talk of reasons? Of justifications? Of duty, to me? I am the servant of the Architect, the very manifestation of his will!"

He did not ask for commiseration from the man who had lost his daughter. He showed no compassion, even here and now at the end.

"You call me a fool?" Jin's tone was dangerous, beyond the cut of iciness. "I have no sympathy for you, and I have found much more than I ever would have thought in these past weeks, thought though I had that I had run completely out long ago. You..." For a moment, he made the preparatory motions to spit, but stopped himself for a reason unknown to us. "I don't care that your mother died."

"Me neither!" Rex piped in all too eagerly. "Look, Amalthus, I'm all for second chances, but everybody has to deal with losin' people. It's just...just how the world works. I don't care that your mom died, I care about how you choose to deal with it, and move forward. Really, I don't think you did too good of a job."

My accomplishments are far beyond anything you could ever dream of, you worthless boy. You think to call yourself the Master Driver? That title belongs only to me! And titles remain gifted by history even in death.

Finally. At long last, I have achieved the summit. I have gone where none else in this world have gone - even those amateurish fools have not ascended to the room of the Architect himself, yet. It matters not whether I have come in life or in death. He has summoned me here. How righteous I am. How blessed.

"So you have seen how they have twisted your providence? How they have made a mockery of my devotion?"

Klaus closed his remaining eye from its erstwhile calculations and gave a silent sigh. "Kindly hold your tongue, Amalthus. There are more important matters for me to attend to before I too will leave this world."

"But Father-"

"I am not your father, Amalthus. In fact, in more than just one way, you are no son of mine."

"Father, don't you see-"

"Amalthus. Listen to me. Please, for once in your life - and oh, I know what you'll say to that, but just...listen."

Amalthus folded his hands, though he didn't bow his head, and listened.

"I don't care that your mother died."

He could have taken it from every single one of those fools. The comrades, the traitors, that insufferable Ardainian woman and the pitiful Tornan orphan boy, even Rhadallis, on an off day. But this? From the creator of the world?

"Most unfeeling of you, Fa-"

No one, least of all the Architect, cared then that Amalthus had died, either.