Eternal Benevolence (1)

Once upon a time, Praetor Amalthus took humble pride in his capacity for all those things. That had been before his ascension to lead all of Indol, across the many years he spent working his way up from the lowest ranks of the Praetorium to become a Quaestor. His circumstances were tragic, horrific, he knew, but the pit of despair they created deep within him was also a source of strength. Without it, he would not have had the resolve to pursue his life's great work.

An end to evil. An end to strife. An Alrest where his darkest hour would become inconceivable, where no child would find their mother dead. An Alrest where no child would bloody their hands in wrathful revenge. It gave him so much purpose and meaning, saving others from the dangers of war and displacement, poverty and famine, petty greed and dark designs.

And then he saw firsthand that those he saved were not themselves free of the sinful conceits; victims were as capable of harm as their victimizers. Though he saved a child that day, he once again stained his hands with blood– and that endless hole within his heart expanded and devoured what positivity he had possessed.

It did not break his faith, but rather made him realize Alrest was hell itself, perverted by mortal evils against the Architect's grand designs. In a desperate search for answers, he became the first– the only –to scale the World Tree. Sacrilege, but it was his faith in the Architect over the doctrine that pushed him to make that ruinous climb. He needed to hear from the Architect's lips why he allowed Alrest to be the way it was, why he didn't intervene… why, why, why?!

Yet Elysium was empty, desolate, ruined desert, and all the Quaestor found were pieces of the Trinity Processor. One would go on to become Malos after Amalthus awakened him, his base nature informed by Amalthus' misanthropy, amplified and untempered by years of well-meaning service. The other– Mythra would become the legendary Aegis, a title she would have rightly shared with Malos, had Amalthus' influence not driven him to destroy all of the Architect's grand creation.

But Mythra … that wasn't the name she should have borne. Amalthus was reluctant to bring her, Pneuma , into the world. If he could have awakened her core himself, he would have done so gladly. Instead, he had to find another, someone he was confident he could control and influence. Someone with more heart than he, as well. If she had a shred of Malos' power and hatred, she would be dangerous to let loose upon the world.

Prince Addam of Torna, heroic fool that he was, seemed perfect. But even then, Amalthus could not ignore his failure to awaken Pneuma proper, but a hostile shadow of the greater whole. And he could not ignore the danger that Mythra posed. Not to the world per se, but for Amalthus' budding designs towards it. He did not share Malos' desire for destruction.

Even losing his compassion, his empathy, his love, Amalthus wanted to make Alrest a better place. He wanted to make all its people better . Finding Elysium empty and being freed of optimistic shackles allowed him to justify using any means necessary to make Alrest an idyllic place, a paradise for life that the Architect would approve of.

Perhaps one day, He would see fit to join them and acknowledge the righteousness of Amalthus' great labor. As Addam, Mythra and their allies fought against Malos, Amalthus was plotting, planning, scheming. Through the respect commanded by the Praetorium, he could exercise benevolent control over the rest of Alrest, setting standards and norms over decades if not centuries.

As an Indolese, he did not need to concern himself with old age getting in his way. Culture. Faith. Love. The Cloud Sea was too vast for one man to realistically control Alrest through force. No, it had to be slow, methodical, pervasive. And it was. Everything went in his favor– Malos was defeated, sparing the world of his intended destruction. A goblet laced with traceless poison led to the Praetorium's Praetor vacating his post, and Amalthus becoming the second most powerful man in not just Indol but Alrest.

He sent an assassination squad to take the first out of the way. Oh, it was so easy for him to justify to his most elite warriors– Addam and Mythra had saved Alrest from Malos, but in the process they had killed the titan Torna, dooming thousands. One threat had passed, and now it fell to Indol to discreetly wipe away another.

In a fell swoop, they disposed of most of Addam's supporters.

That the Prince and Aegis were not found amongst the dead sent shivers up Amalthus' spine, but interrogations of survivors mollified his fears. Both Driver and Blade were both so traumatized by the death of Torna that Mythra had regressed even further from the perfection of Pneuma, and Addam had sealed her in a ship sunk deep beneath the Cloud Sea. That was good enough for the Praetor.

Addam went into 'hiding' once he learned of the ambush, and Amalthus was content to let him live the remainder of his life in harmless obscurity; Leftheria posed no threat to his grand designs, and could be easily obliterated if Addam ever tried to interfere. Five hundred years passed, with things progressing along smoothly.

Not perfectly, but smoothly. Alas–

Malos was not as dead as they all hoped, his hatred for existence unable to be snuffed. He had partnered with Jin, a Blade who should have died with his Driver, yet became a Flesh Eater to live on, then given a chance at revenge by Amalthus' wayward Blade. They found Addam's sunken ship, and intended to bring the Aegis to bear against him .

Even when Amalthus was neither involved nor aware, the Architect ensured things went his way. Mythra's regression– a far more insecure form named Pyra –paired with the disposable Diver Malos and Jin had employed. A fool in Addam's image, intent on doing right by the girl who needed his help. Younger. More malleable.

Amalthus promised them help in their quest, to keep them under his thumb, to head off Malos' second stab at slaughtering Alrest. Once they defeated Malos again, he intended to bring Rex and the Aegis under his watchful eye, as easily justified to Alrest's leaders as the original assassination. They could be molded to be tools, or easily disposed of.

If only things had been that simple. Alrest's most trying and pivotal year took full swing in the wake of that false promise, cause and causation beyond even the most conniving schemer's ability to untangle and understand. Everything came to a dire head when Rex lost , and Amalthus had to resort to a contingency plan. Five hundred years of hoarded core crystals empowered him… moreover, they empowered the abilities inherent to Indol's goddess implanted within him.

Fan la Norne was no goddess, merely a stolen Blade renamed and retitled, with half her crystal stolen too, making him a Blade Eater. He could control Blades through her powers, and with that amplification gained by gorging on helpless Blades…?

Amalthus could control Titans, too: unbeknownst to the vast majority of Alrest, they were the next stage of life for a Blade. But all that absorbed power was not without its cost, and what kept Amalthus steady frayed. When Rex and Mythra refused his orders to strike down Malos' and his band with the Siren artifice, fury at disobedience and ruined plans pushed him to lash out, his mask as peaceful religious leader at last shattered.

They made a desperate play to stop him, informed by Foresight of surefire success. Little did they know that the Praetor's new powers allowed him to act outside the grand algorithm that informed the Aegis' foreknowledge of the future.

At the moment of truth, just as Mythra took on her true form as Pneuma and Rex prepared to swing his Infinity Blade, hidden flak cannons buried beneath Indol's skin erupted forth and made the sky hot fire and shrapnel. Though the Praetor would have preferred to err on the side of caution and ensure the Driver was dead and the Blade destroyed, he could not allow Malos' ship to reach the World Tree. As they tumbled into the Cloud Sea, he turned his full attention upon saving Alrest, Indol's tail swatting a futile effort at vengeance out of the sky without acknowledgement of Mikhail.

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Rex's injuries were superficial at best, but only thanks to Mythra grabbing him, covering his body with hers. Even in the Master Driver armor, he wasn't half as durable as a Blade. At the last moment, he found he had just enough strength and quick wits to fire his diving hook high and spare them a fall into the Cloud Sea.

His Blade was not so lucky. It would be another year before Mythra had recovered enough to be fit to fight and even then, the Aegis had lasting damage. Critical components of her true form had taken direct hits in the course of saving Rex; Foresight had led to the energy shielding normally extended over them being redirected in favor of their all-out offense. Guilt and worry ensured Rex spent every minute he could at her bedside, holding her hand, trying to keep her from slipping into the despondency bred by inaction.

It was a hard year for not just them, but all of Alrest. Amalthus' heel-turn was not a momentary lapse in judgment or mental faculties. He did not have any friends or loved ones or plucky, overly-earnest teenagers that could convince him to stay his hand. After crushing what remained of the Torna organization, the Praetor turned his attention towards the other rulers of Alrest.

His grand power over them all was shown by forcing every Titan to approach Indol, now wrapped permanently around the World Tree, as if constricting and choking the life out of its trunk. One by one, the Titans were coaxed to bend the knee in deference– or something similar to it, if they had no knees to bend. Many aboard the lower parts of Titans were made to rapidly relocate from flooding as their homes unexpectedly submerged, with an untold number of souls unable to find safe ground forever lost beneath the clouds.

Defiance was something he punished harshly, with Alrest's gathered populace forced to listen to Amalthus usher in a new age of peace and prosperity, proclaiming himself the Architect's Voice upon their world. And who were any of them to argue, when he controlled the Titans themselves and could dominate any Blade that entered his presence?

Yet not all life upon Alrest made its home upon living Titans. The number of ship-villages and flotilla-cities upon the Cloud Sea steadily increased as people fled the shadow of Indol's 'benevolent guidance', seeing it for the tyranny that it was. The rebellion against the corrupt Praetor began there, led of course by the one who provided the spark that set off Amalthus to begin with. Vandham's Mercenaries became Rex's Revolution, and for ten years they fought against Indol in every way they could.

They made progress in inches, and lost it in feet, over and over again. For ten years, they kept their heads up despite the long odds. Imperial Indol was an unwieldy mammoth, and it seemed to operate without a head or strategic goals. Its gain-erasing victories seemed more accidental than purposeful.

Some believed that the Praetor was dead, and his closest advisors were struggling to continue on without him– he had not been seen publicly since his first speech. If only they could see the monster he became and remained for ten years– a hulking behemoth that kept himself locked away, shouting commandments to his Quaestors, his mind all fury and hatred, yet still bent on creating his perfect world. Driven by impulse and screaming unfounded prophecy, Amalthus himself was the reason why Rex's Revolution could live on, irrational decisions giving them countless opportunities.

Madness and monstrous deformity was the cost of gorging on five hundred years worth of collected core crystals. It would take those ten years before Amalthus would molt reborn from the monster he had become, like a butterfly emerging from chrysalis. Though his mind had calmed, it remained changed forever: he truly considered himself everything that he declared himself to be. The Architect's Voice, the Architect's Will, Ender of Chaos and Father of Order. Peace Manifest. There was no returning from the height his mind reached.

There was but one title he did not publicly claim, and that was the Architect's Son. If he had, his Quaestors would have scrambled to rewrite every book with an acknowledgement of his mother's immaculate conception by the Architect. In spite of all his tyranny, the Praetor still believed in the Architect as their maker, and refused to sacrilege a second time.

He would instead become the Architect's Son in another way, legally recognized and binding across Alrest. The push to codify it centuries past had been one of his plans, intended to introduce a feeling of equality between the haves and have-nots. In the present day, it felt to him like a divine touch had guided him to it for this unforeseen inevitability.

When he emerged from reclusion and took direct control of the war against the revolutionaries, all hope was lost for those brave few fighting for freedom. No longer did Indol's forces thrash blindly, crushing opposition beneath insurmountable weight: a purpose-filled mind guided it, paying heed to military advisors and shifting circumstances. Rex's Revolution fell swiftly.

Though the rebellion died where it began, most of its leaders and figureheads were taken alive, at great cost to Indol's forces. Killing them was not an option their blessed Praetor could permit, despite the danger. Their most zealous warriors gladly threw away their lives of fulfilling His Will, hollowly promised paradise in the Elysium Fields that Amalthus knew to be empty.

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Indol had changed in the ten years since the party's last visit. One of the Praetor's last acts before beginning his long seclusion was to gather Alrest's greatest architects and order them to improve upon the already vast elegance of the Praetorium's beauty. Amidst all the ruined settlements and buildings across every living TItan, the Praetorium stood out as a beacon of hope and purity, oh-so-white and filled with gorgeous gardens. No wall went unwashed for long, lest a single stain prove unsightly to the all-seeing Architect's eye. And what tall walls they were, quite needlessly so!

Even a decade prior, it had all been grand beyond any genuine necessity. Only a fledgling Titan would require ceilings a couple of dozen times higher than the average human, vaulted and gilded and inscribed with words of benediction no eye would ever perceive. Amalthus demanded those ceilings be even higher, the walls taller. More ornate. More murals, mosaics, paintings, statues– more more more . Over ten years of steady construction and civil improvements had led to a second city being built around the Praetorium, spiraling in miles around the now-immobile Indol Titan, hiding all but the highest portions of the World Tree.

They called it Amalthus' Ascent, in a long-withheld dedication to his finally-revealed sacrilege, turned into something it was not. All of the Praetorium's priests preached of it to their flocks– the Architect had called His most favored servant to him, bequeathing him with the gift that was the Aegis, whose resplendent light would banish the darkness in their darkest hour. Prince Addam became Saint Addam, murking the past. Further cloudying the waters was the erasure and censorship of any connection between Amalthus and Malos, punishable by the most permanent forms of censorship: the removal of tongues, fingers, and ultimately life.

Those who knew better and lived under Imperial Indol's dominion did not speak of the truth, and the fact itself was well-buried enough that the common populace knew only what the Praetorium taught them.

And the Praetorium taught them much. Even the smallest hamlets were sent Indolese priests, who would oversee the construction of chapels and churches and grand cathedrals if the population warranted it. Each offered a variety of services for free to the populace. Codified schooling was but one, set to educate children from the age of five to eighteen. Generous alms redistributed the wealthy's fortune to those in need of food and clothing. Hospitals and hospices offered whatever care was needed, or travel to a facility better equipped for their malady. They oversaw the establishment of guilds, ensuring every soul upon Alrest could find career training and gainful employment, no matter their disability or disease or quirk.

Were things perfect? No– human evil remained. Even the greatest of the established institutions had their share of corruption, and even the brightest cities had their crime-ridden underworlds. But most ordinary people in Alrest could all comfortably agree that things were better, and they were only getting better. Rex's Revolution and the free city-flotillas attracted less and less to their just cause every year. Tyrannical as the Praetorium became, things were good beneath its auspice. Their religious rule was more just than not, and progressive relative to what came before.

All of that made the procession through Amalthus' Ascent a disquieting experience for the rebellion's leaders. They were all paraded single file up the miles-long spiraling main street, escorted by victorious heroes, dressed as they had been captured days prior. The only clean thing attached to them were the shackles, collars and manacles they sported, golden and gleaming, connecting them with similarly shining chains. Mythra had the honor of leading the others, red-faced with the fury of a woman yet unbroken despite her contempt-inviting appearance.

She scowled scornfully, throat having quickly given out from shouting abuse at the people lining the streets. For Mythra, the fabled Aegis, they cheered and threw flowers, making the sign of the Trinity, unaware of the processor that inspired it. They all knew her, or at least they knew the version of her the Praetorium taught: a heroine returned, yet perverted by the influence of a misguided Driver. Outward as it seemed aimed, most of her hate was rather directed inward– for ten years, she had been hating herself for the ruinous mistake she made. Every day, she tried to reach for the powers lost to her, trying to will herself repaired. The Aegis, who should have been their greatest weapon, was no better than any other Blade.

Some of the most religious onlookers shouted words of encouragement and affirmation to her, holy promises they repeated: the Architect would soon fix her, make her whole, and free her of Rex's foul control. It just rubbed salt in the long-festering wound upon her heart, itself kept wide and bleeding by a refusal to address her feelings– of both love and loathing.

Eight others stood between Mythra and the last prisoner in the line. The fight against the Praetorium had taken its toll on all of them. Once, Zeke wore an eyepatch as a way to budget around his need for contact lenses; needing but one split his cost in half. Now, he wore a blindfold, his sight robbed from him, though he learned to fight in spite of that loss. The inner fire of Mor Ardain's Jewel no longer blazed as bright, leaving Brighid's outer fire at a low burn. Despondency marked the face of her Driver, as it had for years; Mor Ardain had once been an Empire, but that which Morag had loved most in the world had been crushed, turned to a republic puppeted by leaders chosen by Imperial Indol. Poppi shambled, her systems glitching, needing to be urged along by her sorrowful Nopon creator.

Their low spirits tanked further from the abuse hurled their way, though one remained brave, face steadfast and head held proudly high: ten years of struggle had left Rex a rugged man, tall and brawny and resilient. Though they were beaten, he believed in his friends and their future; he believed they would find a way through their darkest hour, so long as they held tightly upon hope. Rocks and rotten vegetables flew his way, but they would not break him. His faith may not have been religious in nature, but it was an equal match to the dark despair that had led Amalthus down his disaster-lined path.

Thrice in the miles-long parade of shame, they passed beneath triumphal arches built in advance of the Praetor's victory over his enemies, each sporting unflattering frescos and depictions of the battered heroes. The last mile before they entered the Praetorium proper was the hardest, despite the heavily-guarded street lacking jeering crowds. There, the silence amongst them became a deafening thing, and gave them nothing to focus on save for how weary they all were. Rex alone kept his back straight, refusing to feel the wear and ache in his legs, knowing that if he flagged, the others were sure to follow.

Yet even the revolutionary's veneer would crack once they were settled into luxurious cells, furnished like a hotel's bridal suite. They were all fed, allowed separate showers and given surprisingly fine clothes prepared in advance– recognizable recreations of their usual attire. Then they took Rex's love from her cell in silence, and the last he would ever see of Mythra was a forlorn look over her shoulder. In that moment, defeat caught up with Rex.

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Though it wasn't comfortable, Mythra preferred her new cell. As nice as it had been to flop down and rest her exhausted body after a twelve hour march, she couldn't bring herself to trust it.

Ten years of turmoil and conflict, being vilified by all of Alrest, ending with them all politely placed in a prison meant for nobility? It was duplicitous. Her new cell made her throat tight with anxiety over what would come next, but at least it was honest– dreary stone walls, only illuminated by the light leaking through a small, barred window high above and behind her. It wasn't even an eighth of the size of the other one, a claustrophobic box no one in their right mind would want to live in.

While the others were afforded comfort and reading materials and room to stretch their legs– well, Mythra was stretching her legs too. And her arms, but neither of her own will. Both of her arms were strung high overhead, wrists locked into manacles bolted to the ceiling. The clothing that they'd given her had included a pair of high heels that she regretted kicking off; their three-inch boost would have made her constrained pose more bearable. As it stood, she had to keep straining on her tip-toes to keep from intolerable strain on her wrists. Those conditions were all just more honest , and the fight she had put up while the Indolese guards tried to get her situated– breaking a nose with her elbow had never been so satisfying.

Still, she was worried. Still, she stared at the door, chewing at the inside of her cheek. The occasional glance left or right only accomplished getting long blonde hair in her eyes, lacking the tiara that doubled as a hairband. Puttered out breaths breezed it away, but only for so long. All Mythra had to occupy herself was her own thoughts, and staring at the door to her cell.

The former had always been dangerous to her, especially since her failure ruined everything– a burden Rex could never share with her. Playing over how things could have been different was more engaging than staring at an inanimate object, even knowing how cruel her mind could be. And so, Mythra battered herself over the past. Not just the moment in which they lost their only weapon capable of posing a threat to Amalthus, but all the battles and operations since then… the losses and agonies they could have been spared, if she had an ounce of what made the Aegis into the Aegis.

Such self-deprecation was preferable to dwelling on what would happen when that door opened. She knew who would be on the other side. The Praetor had singled her out, lifted her above the others as a soiled soul who could yet be saved. Defeated and restrained, she would be vulnerable to whatever it was he intended, lest her sharp tongue prove enough to slay him on the spot.

Minutes felt like hours. Hours felt like days. When the door cracked a sliver in advance of his entrance– oh, how Mythra lamented the relief, emotional and physical, a great exhale taking a heavy weight off her shoulders.

"It has been far too long since I last beheld your beauty, imperfect as it is," mused the Praetor as he entered, dressed as he had been every other time she saw him: a holy bore. The robes of a Quaestor and the Praetor were distinct only for their color. Reaching the pinnacle of the Praetorium's structure had afforded him a hat several inches taller.. She always thought the Praetorium adorned its people ridiculously.

She bared her teeth to him in a scowl, her hoarse voice growling her clapback: "And I could've gone another five centuries without feeling your slimy eyes on me, you creep. Pull that stupid hat down past your chin, you'll look better for it." He chuckled quietly, unbothered by her slight. Mythra's sharp tongue proved to be neither stick nor stone; such words coming from someone at his mercy were sure not to hurt him. Still, the words bouncing off him did not change her scathing demeanor. "What do you want from me?"

"Do you remember our first meeting?" Amalthus asked as he took a few short steps into the cell, the heavy door shutting heavily behind him. To her surprise, he reached up to his hat, though not to yank it down and turn into a hood. He took it off and held it to his chest, almost as is in respectful deference.

Sad thing was, Mythra did– she remembered a lot of things, and a lot of them were things she would have liked to forget. Sometimes she wished Addam had destroyed her, and that Rex had found her core crystal, ready to reawaken as a blank slate.

That was one of the downsides of being the Aegis, a title which had felt heavier than not for as long as she could remember. The blonde Blade drew back her lips further, trying to lean back and away from Amalthus as he penetrated her personal bubble, stopping a foot away from her body but still too close for her liking. With her arms strung high overhead, though, trying wasn't good enough.

"Barely," Mythra lied to him, glaring with golden eyes. "You bored me to tears."

"Mmm. Not how I remember it. Even then, you were as much a Blade in spirit as you were in name. All sharp edges, eager to cut whomever dared try to handle you. If not with your words, then with your palpable disdain." the Praetor continued, lifting his empty hand to stroke along the styled point of his white goatee. "As I recall… I told you that you were quite lovely. It surprised me that you took the form of a woman, so short of stature and motherly in shape," he said.

Motherly was not a word that Mythra had ever heard applied towards her. She couldn't help but snort in derisive disbelief, followed by a scoff well before it really sank into her what he was referring to. In shape – three syllables that may as well have been a hundred thousand. "Did you crack your skull open this morning?"

His eyes lowered from her face, their irises striking a similar shade as Mythra's own, but their cast far more narrow. Some might see it as wisened, but to those that knew better– and she certainly did! –they reflected something sinister instead. "Malos, wretch that he was, lacked your gifts. All brute strength and muscle," he said with a thin smile.

The Praetor's gaze stopped upon the most motherly part of Mythra indeed, cleavage bared by a daring window cut into her mini-dress. Their great swell simply couldn't escape notice. A Blade's shape and size was defined from their first Awakening, with little change save for damage and grooming. It took cruel abuse of science for them to grow and change, as a human did; Mythra was no Flesh Eater. Whether her figure was pre-programmed or influenced by Addam's inner lech, no one would ever know.

She'd gotten used to her breasts catching eyes like a glue trap. Never loved it, but it just was what it was. There was a degree to which she liked the attention, admittedly– she liked all attention, always had. Quick glances and sneaked appreciation were flattering, and it bothered her when they went ignored. Amalthus had looked at them before. In that first meeting, he had called her lovely, but he didn't admire that beauty. He noted it.

As if reading her mind, he noted with that thin smile persisting, "I didn't appreciate what you had for what it was. Frankly, I had my doubts that you would be able to face him in battle. Granted, it took my hand to defeat him, and unlike you, I made sure he was dead. Did you know his shattered Core Crystal is embedded in my crown? No, of course not. How could you? It has yet to grace my brow. My coronation will come with the Architect's truest acknowledgement of my worth."

The way he was looking at her now, though– it made her skin crawl. It reinforced the insecure sense of vulnerability hanging over her, strung-up restraints keeping her from any sort of shifting movement that might dislodge his stare. Worse, the way she had to ootch up on her toes paired with the raise of her arms lifted her scantily-clad breasts high, already unnatural in their pertness despite their human-emulating shape and feel. Really, all that her attempt to lean back from Amalthus managed was to swing and sway her mammaries; no bra supported them beneath her dress.

Although she felt an icy chill, Mythra's face burned hot as she shot out, "Choke on your pontifications, creep. Are you just here to torture a captive audience with a dry monologue?" At least, Mythra had intended to shoot those words. Instead, they slipped from her mouth as a weak whisper.

Amalthus chuckled, his eyes drifting up to her face, gold meeting gold once more. The hand stroking at his goatee left it behind, reaching out to cup her cheek with an invasive touch that made her flinch away. "No, my dear–"

"Don't touch me, you bastard!" Mythra snapped at him, alarm returning her voice to her. She tried to jerk away, but was unable to get an inch of distance when it mattered most. "DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH ME!"

"–What I mean to say is that I'm not the man you met five centuries prior; I've grown in the last decade, unlike you. There is so much I've learned. The Architect tested me, and through his grand design, I have become a man able to cherish you for what you rightly are," he told her, unflinching in the face of her outburst, even though it sprayed impolite spittle on his face. His smile widened, his grip growing firm on her cheek as he stroked at her cheek. "Looking back, I can see the mistake that I made. Saint Addam was needed to awaken you–"

"Keep his name out of your mouth!" The relationship that Mythra had with her first Driver hadn't been great; the trauma of destroying his homeland never had a chance to heal, manifesting in split personalities. Even so, Mythra cared about him, and she hated what Amalthus had done to his memory.

"–It should have been I that was fighting alongside you against Malos. That may have spared Torna its fate. Your power was too great to be entrusted to him, and you… you're incomplete, my dear. Lovely and beautiful, yes, but incomplete. Alrest would look so different today, had I awoken the Pneuma core rather than Pathos," he continued, his thumb stroking along her skin. "Your hostility does you a disservice, and holds you back."

When he dared to touch her lips with it, Mythra took the only opportunity she had to retaliate, but trying to bite off the strongest finger of his hand hurt her teeth more than it hurt him. Amalthus' expression shaded, with only the slightest wince of pain shown. He pulled it free and painted her lips red with the blood she spilled, undeterred from continuing: "You needn't worry. It will be as you've surely heard; I've had no secret of my intentions for you."

Amalthus' bleeding thumb dragged down along the side of her neck, towards her chest but not towards the breasts he claimed to now appreciate. "Today, I will make you whole, and tonight, I will free you of that pitiful boy's chains. And together…"

Mythra did not hear the end of the sentence, her scream burying the words as his life's blood stained the green of her core. That afternoon, he showed her what he had learned in his period of bestial madness– only through the mass consumption of Core Crystals could one begin to comprehend their true inner workings, and the power stolen from 'the Goddess of Indol' gave him the means to manipulate them.

Meeting her other half face-to-face was disquieting, but their physical splitting was only a temporary thing, a necessary part of Amalthus repairing the damage he had caused to them both. "At last… you are perfection itself," the Praetor whispered to the result of his work, cradling her ashen face in his hands as a woman neither Mythra nor Pyra wept tears over what she had lost, and what else would follow in its wake.

"You haven't won," she whispered to him.

"By night's end, you'll sing a different tune, precious daughter of the Architect," Amalthus murmured to her as he bent to kiss her brow. "That, I promise you."

Dread filled a hollowness within Pneuma.

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The cells that Rex and company occupied lined a hall, their bars allowing them to see and communicate with each other– they made the lot of them painfully aware that only Mythra was taken. When guards returned to them, it wasn't with her or to fetch another prisoner for an interrogation. It was to deliver dinner to six of their number, and formal invitations to two.

"Are you bloody kidding me?" Nia hissed as she crumpled up the fanciful card. "Would sooner choke on my tongue than break bread with that feckin' arsehole," the unhappy Gormotti-presenting Blade tossed the paper out between the bars.

"Yeah…" Rex's expression was grim, but what he read hadn't inspired her to deeper anger. After stewing in defeat, a face-to-face encounter with Amalthus gave him hope ; he reunited the man-that-was with the boy he had once been, full of optimism and empathy for others. "I don't blame you, Nia. But it's something. Maybe we can talk some sense into him, or figure out where Mythra is. We'll need to know that if we make an escape attempt."

Nia gave Rex what could only be described as a look : it was one that she gave him on a near-daily basis, simultaneously infatuated with her Driver and amazed (in a bad way) over what he said without a second thought. "Hell, how do you figure that? I don't see this bein' something we pull out of–"

"We will. We've always figured something out, no matter how bad things have gotten," Rex said as he straightened, and despite it all, she believed him.

They all did. Morag pursed her lips with more emotion than she had shown since her brother's death, and Tora got to work putting together an ad-hoc repair/upgrade kit for Poppi, already dubbed QT Pi Omega. Pandora set to work fashioning makeshift blades for Zeke, who meditated in still silence opposite of Brighid, singing a soft song from Mor Ardain's ancient past. "Don't know how I fell for this feck," Nia muttered to Dromach, whose cell was beside hers. He only grunted dubiously at her, not needing to see his Flesh Eater of a Driver to know she was smiling.

Those not invited only touched their waiting meals when Rex and Nia were escorted out, free of restraints. They were under heavy guard, but not so overwhelming in number that they couldn't have fought– eleven years of fighting together had made him adept at wielding her Aqua Scimitar. With the loss of Mythra's powers and the time it took for her to return to fighting-fit shape, she had even become his default preference for combat. Mythra's Breaker Sword and Pyra's Primitive Sword just didn't pack the same punch without everything that made the Aegis into the Aegis.

An inhibitor bracelet on Nia's wrist kept her from arming her Driver, in any case.

The Praetorium's Heart had grown so vast that it took the better half of an hour for them to reach Amalthus' audience room, disrupting their hopes of memorizing the layout for when they made their play. It had nothing on their walk of shame through Amalthus' Ascent, an easy trek made with the conviction in their hearts. Relative to the grand halls and the throne room, it was a quaint room– and that meant it remained opulent and oversized to the pair of them.

A long dining table situated central of the lush, red and gold carpet leading up to the triple-tiered dais. Amalthus' throne had been parked on the lowest of those three tiers, which would put his feet at eye-level with those dining, if not for the robe covering them. Far behind him, one wall was made of crystalized titan-glass, overlooking the beauty of one of the Praetorium's Five Wonders: the Hanging Gardens of Indol, said to contain one of every plant to ever grace Alrest.

"Thank you for joining me. It's been too long since we last met. You've grown to be a formidable man," Amalthus observed, smiling thinly as he studied Rex on his approach to the table. Their escort had split into two groups, one keeping close to either prisoner. He drifted a look over to Nia and said with the same false veneer of pleasantry, "And you remain as you ever were, I suppose."

Nia scoffed at him, almost lifting a hand to flash him an immature gesture. He was far and away wrong about that– as a Flesh Eater, Nia could grow, and grow she had. A few inches taller, and a bit rounder too where it most counted, without sacrificing her svelte build and predisposition to a feline slink with each step. She had long since abandoned the baggy clothing of yesteryear for garb more flattering to her shape, showing skin in vain hope of attracting Rex's eye. Ten years, and he still didn't seem to realize how Nia felt towards him. Ten years, and she still clung on to the hope he would love her as more than a friend; the fact that Rex and Mythra were putting off romance until Amalthus' defeat gave her hope.

Rex came to a stop behind his chair, flanking the head of the table, hands resting on it. He stared at Amalthus for several seconds, before giving the impressive spread on the table a longer look. It was a mouthwatering feast, to be sure, and his stomach gave a little gurgle; Mythra being taken away had robbed him of his hunger earlier. Even so, she remained his priority. When the Leftherian looked back up at the Praetor, he proved as much. "Where is she? Don't play games with us."

"The Aegis?" Amalthus' smile widened by degrees. "Sit down, and she'll join us in a moment, I think. It's been a trying afternoon for her."

Rex's fingers tightened, color flooding out of his knuckles. "Have you hurt her?" he demanded to know, even as the guards flanking Nia physically urged her into the seat. The men surrounding the former Master Driver closed in to do the same.

"No. That, I promise you," the Praetor swore, with a bow of his head and a precise gesture invoking the Trinity. "Ten years of strife, over at last. I only wish it had not been so bloody; had you only obeyed my orders to turn Siren against Malos, none of this would be necessary."

"We could've stopped him and Jin, if you gave us the chance. Some understanding and a good heart-to-heart goes a long way," Rex replied a bit tightly, shrugging off a hand that sought to push him into his seat before taking it himself.

Nia, seated across from Rex, went studiously silent, her nose twitching. She was not looking at the food.

"Did you not have several face-to-face opportunities with them?" Amalthus asked mildly, before lifting his hand in beckons. A robed figure strayed away from a station set up to the side of the room, moving in smooth steps across the chamber's stone tiles with an amphora cradled in manicured fingers. "Opportunities that bore no fruit. Not that it matters; your crime was disobedience against the living hand of our creator." A beat, and then he asked, "Wine?"

"I don't drink," Rex grunted.

"Yeah. Gonna need that whole thing if I'm gonna sit here through this," Nia said quietly, staring at the robed figure as they angled towards her, face and hair hidden by the garment that shrouded them.

The conversation continued between the two men, Rex radiating tension. That wasn't quite the source of what left Nia's shoulders hunched up, however. She continued to stare at the apparent servant as they poured a few swallows of wine into the glass, before beginning to pull away. Before they could get more than a step away, the Gormotti's claws cinched a fistful of that robe. "What the feck are you doing, playing waitress?" she hissed.

"– Nia?" Rex swung his attention over, falling off mid-sentence in the back-and-forth with Amalthus. He didn't hear the words that answered Nia's abrupt question, though he of course recognized the stricken state that they left her in, cheeks turning pale. "What's wrong?" The obscured server moved away once Nia's fingers fell aside, moving towards Amalthus' throne.

"Tch…" Nia struggled to even look at Rex, quickly gulping that wine.

"Hmm. Funny. I never considered the power of a gormotti nose before, you know," Amalthus extended a goblet towards the server once they reached his dais, gaudy and golden and encrusted with diamonds. He took a sip from the opulent cup and then asked Nia, "That's what gave away the little deceit, isn't it?"

Silence from one guest, but not from the other. "What's he talking about, Nia? Say somethin'." She only looked away from her beloved.

"We will be in need of a master sommelier in the future," Amalthus continued to Nia, "and it's my understanding a keen sense of smell is pivotal to that. Perhaps you'd be interested in the position? That's what this dinner is all about, you see. How you and your friends will integrate into Imperial Indol's structure."

"Choke on a hairy chode, you sick freak," Nia sneered. "You put me near your wine, and you're only drinkin' piss and vinegar, promise."

"Someone explain to me what the hell is goin' on right now," Rex demanded, shoving his chair back as he pushed to his feet. The guards flanking him closed in to keep him from moving any more than that, within arm's reach.

"The plan was to wait until you had your fill. One thing I learned in my earliest charitable works is that a full belly can placate even the worst of tempers," Amalthus chuckled, then, and looked aside to the obscured figure. "Go on. Put down that amphora and take down your hood." As he did, his attention turned towards the crudely-speaking Blade Eater."

After a moment of hesitation, she revealed not the face Rex was desperate to see, but one he'd gone so long without thinking of that he had almost forgotten it. Even so, he reacted sharply to it, slamming down on the table and calling out her name, wide-eyed with shock. "Mythra!"

Pneuma smiled uncomfortably. "Hello, Rex. Nia, please don't… do anything rash."

"Sod that. Why aren't you gutting this fucker? Pourin' his fuckin' wine, Myth? Really?" Nia demanded, smashing her glass against the edge of the table, making her own weapon.

***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***

Before:

Well after her tears had dried, Amalthus told her what he expected of her: "You will silently wait upon us, until I call on you to end our one-woman masquerade."

At once, Pneuma was the best of both Pyra and Mythra, lacking the insecurity of one and the hot blood of the other. That did not mean she was predisposed to calmly accept what Amalthus was demanding from her, whether or not she was his vulnerable prisoner. She certainly didn't feel any gratitude for him repairing what he had broken; the merging of her disparate halves was an unwelcome thing. "And why would I do that?" she asked him, with a level stare.

"Because both your former Driver and his favored Blade are ultimately expendable to me. The choices that you make tonight will determine their fate. They are nothing more than leverage to me."

"... Then why not just let them go? Let them walk free, and I'll do whatever it is you want," Pneuma said, meeting his eye once again, no longer gold-on-gold but the same cool green shade as her hair.

"Play your part well, and I just might… after I've had the satisfaction of humbling them," Amalthus' smile showed teeth. "Such pettiness is beneath the Architect, but favored or not, I am only a mortal man, weak to certain temptations." His eyes dropped from her face briefly, only to bounce back up– a moment's flicker at other allures, but still enough to make Pneuma shudder. "And I would say they owe me that satisfaction, given your failure to defeat Malos. The last ten years have not been easy for me."

Rather than call her captor out on his claims of victimhood, Pneuma bit her tongue. For their sake… and of course her own, with the building unease within her.

***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***

That shatter heralded a silence for them all, one that lasted shorter than it felt. Rex was still reeling from the reveal that his beloved was still in the room– albeit not wearing what he considered her true face. Though the Aegis still stood close to the Praetor, Amalthus seemed alone and isolated, watching the heroes of the Revolution with the same smile; his distance atop the dais was like that of a child watching trapped insects through glass. Nia clutched her impromptu shiv tight in hand, its jagged edge easily capable of slicing open a jugular.

The woman that Rex called Mythra– the woman that was Pneuma now, in body and soul –hesitated to answer the Gormotti Flesh Eater, her smile becoming an ill thing, entirely forced. The four of them might not have been the only people in the room, but they may as well have been; a discreet gesture from the Praetor kept the guards from pouncing on Nia. Her tension seemed poised to leap upon the table and make a mad, leaping dash towards Amalthus.

It was Nia again who broke the stillness in the room, impatient. "Say somethin'!" she snapped at the Aegis. "Do somethin'! If you're in that form, aren't you the real Aegis? You can crush that fecker's skull on the spot, I know it, you know it. So why aren't you? You forget how many of our friends and comrades died 'cuz of him?!" she demanded.

The Master Blade closed her eyes and breathed deep, trying to hold on to her inner calm in spite of the fair question. Even clad in the robe, the rise and fall of her prominent chest was notable, and to Rex's staring eyes, he couldn't believe it hadn't clicked sooner. What other woman could be so tall, so lean, yet so… pronounced?

Rex's voice had her eyelids reluctantly raising. "Mythra, what's goin' on? How'd you end up back like… that?" he asked her, and she met his golden eyes haltingly. She saw none of the hope or optimism that the others had, back in the cell; she saw the man that she loved on the precipice of breaking without yet realizing it, confused wrinkles redefining a face usually so courageous.

But rather than answer him, she glanced aside at Amalthus. The script he presented her with had no dialogue, no alternatives; a simple demand to play her part until he deemed it time to reveal his deceit. Knowing what sort of consequences were on the table, the Aegis did not dare step out of turn. She did not dare speak without permission– and in a moment of weakness, she wished he would opt to speak for her. But the Praetor of Imperial Indol did not alleviate her burden. "Introduce yourself to them, my dear. Tell them who you really are."

Disquieted, the legendary Aegis then looked back towards the dining table below them, her high-hanging ponytail swinging behind her with the turn of her head. Though she looked at her beloved and her friend, she found herself staring through them, not willing to meet either one of their eyes again. "... My true name is and has always been Pneuma," she told them with what calm she yet retained; her distress leaked through what she said next. "Please, please stay calm," she pleaded. "Amalthus–"

He clicked his tongue behind her, and she flinched before continuing on, "The Praetor has restored me to my original form." A coldness built in Pneuma's belly, her chest tightening, her heart beginning to pound faster in her chest, as if a rush of blood would drive back the chill of despair. "Permanently. As part of that, he… has made me into his Blade. You are no longer my Driver, Rex," she said, her voice almost cracking with the admission he should have already been aware of. With a step forward and a lurch of emotion taking her close to tears she added, "But– that doesn't change how I feel about you. I still love you."

As Mythra and Pyra both, she had told him that. She had told him that she could wait until their war was finished, a decision she now keenly regretted. What was lost, she knew, could not be regained. Behind her, Amalthus chuckled softly–

"How can you say that when you ain't even trying to fight him?!" Nia shouted furiously.

Rex, though– "That's not possible," he said, quiet yet somehow louder than his shouting Gormotti blade, his hands curling into tight fists at his sides. "That's not how Blades work. You ain't– you're my Mythra, not Pneuma," he said, an agitation beginning to well up towards his surface. "He can't control you. Fight him!" And to think, he had posisted the possibility of talking to Amalthus.

"Rex, I'm sorry." The gathering but yet unshed tears began to sting, blurring Pneuma's vision. She took another step forward, reaching out towards him, yet so high and far away. Between the stretch of her arm and the spread of her fingers, showing a flash of her painted nails– a match to her hair and eyes, but not a feature inherent to her true form. Something similar could be said of the clothing she wore beneath the robe; her true armor would have been protruding against the robe. "Nia, I'm…"

"COME THE FECK ON–" Nia blurted.

"– Mythra!" Rex reached.

"That's enough of that," Amalthus said, his voice boosting magnitudes, echoing throughout the vast audience chamber. It cut through the three aggrieved voices with steady power. "As touching as this moment is, truly, it won't involve you touching your former Blade," he said as he rose smoothly to his feet, coming up behind Pneuma in three smooth steps.

Despite it being an astonishing show of needless wealth, he discarded his goblet of wine like it was a paper cup to be crushed and dropped into the Cloud Sea. "You must understand, Rex, that I am the living hand of the Architect. When it comes to Blades… impossible does not apply to me. Surely, you've learned something of a Titan's life cycle by now? With my control over them… well, my boy, it should be a rudimentary deduction." Amalthus smirked. "Even for a brain-damaged fool like yourself. Bashing your head against every problem you've ever faced wasn't going to work forever, you know."

Pneuma froze at the touch of his hand to her shoulder, her eyes wide. The tears she had been holding back began to trickle down her cheeks, not streaking through the soft touch of water-proofed cosmetics that a maid had applied to her. Mascara and liner made the pale green of her eyes stand out much more strikingly. Whether it was as Pyra or Mythra, she had never felt a need for such things before– she was fabulously beautiful on her own. But earlier, when she gazed upon herself in the mirror, she couldn't deny that a little touch pushed her past perfection's definition.

"Get your hands off her," Rex growled, beginning to shove his former seat back to move away from the table. "Get your fuckin' hands off Mythra right now!" he shouted, even as the guards finally closed in around him with a gesture of Amalthus' spare hand. Four of them together worked to restrain him, each a strong Indolese unto themselves, but lacking the passion and wrath of Alrest's living legend– the Master Driver.

Once upon a time, anyway.

Across from him, Nia was twisting around, starting to put the business end of the shattered wine glass to work. One of the men cried out as she stabbed him in the gut, but in an already tight space, committing to that act opened her to the larger men grappling her. "FECKIN' FECK OFF," the Gormotti Flesh Eater hissed, flailing with claws and snapping with sharp teeth.

"Simpler to show him, hm? I don't know what you saw in him," Amalthus murmured to Pneuma conversationally, before directing his stare towards Nia.

"Don't. Just let them go," Pneuma whispered, aggrieved. She knew what he was doing– he had done it to her to stop her from attacking him the second he was freed. It would not be the control of a Driver over their Blade, but the exertion of a power stolen and vastly improved.

"Behave yourself, and keep that crude tongue of yours from wagging," Amalthus dictated, a soft blue glow showing beneath the chest of his robe. Something flickered in Nia's eyes, and though her fury remained, it no longer burned in them. She dropped the bloody glass in hand, and just like that, she allowed herself to be seized by the three guards who weren't clutching a bleeding belly wound. "Direct your eyes towards your other Blade, my boy."

"What–" When Rex registered that they had Nia in a sturdy hold, his struggling tapered off. He didn't let them take him in the same sense, still tense, his body lined with hard-won power, ready to fight. Right away, he noticed the difference in Nia's expression– the slackness of it and the looseness of her body, as she stared with hateful eyes at Amalthus. "What did you do to her?"

Losing control to Fan la Norne's ability to rob it from others… no, from Haze ' s ability, her friend five centuries prior … Pneuma swallowed hard. Amalthus' empty hand slipped around her neck, gently caressing her throat just over something she hoped Rex would never see, hidden by the robe. Lazily, he drifted those fingers down, towards what kept the robe shut around her under-dressed body.

"Just to behave. I could tell her to do much more, if you don't. Now, focus on Pneuma for me. There's something else she wants you to see. Isn't that right, my darling jewel?" Amalthus asked, and the Aegis squeezed her eyes shut, not needing Foresight to know what would happen next. She nodded, but that wasn't good enough for her new Driver. "Say it. Say it loud. Make sure Rex can hear it."

Everything about the situation would have been so much easier for her, if only he would use those powers upon her again. Only in that first moment had he, however. Everything else from her return to her true form to the present? The Praetor only needed to remind Pneuma of what he could do to her friends and most cherished partner.

He wanted her to submit and obey of her own free will.

"Rex… I want you to see the outfit that my new Driver picked out for me," she said, her voice clear yet trembling. Amalthus' fingers flicked the clasp, but Pneuma did the rest, spurred by a gentle press forward against her nape before he released his hold on her. With hands more steady than she cared for, she slipped the outerwear off one shoulder at a time.

That robe of hers looked every bit holy from the outside– modest in cut and length, obscuring much, even if it couldn't downplay Pneuma's shape. It was covered in embroidery invoking the Trinity. What awaited Rex's angry eyes was not something that belonged in the religious heart of Alrest's theocratic empire. It belonged behind closed doors, something to be kept in a discreet drawer when not in use; in public, it would have been out of place one step past a seedy street corner.

"What?" Rex could only grunt the word; on some level, he had still expected to see her armor. Not lingerie.

Beneath the robe, Pneuma wore only two items, and neither one was a shoe. Save for painted toes, her feet were bare, as were her ankles, her shins– her whole legs were nude, right up to just beneath where her shapely thighs led into the womanly flare of her hips. There, the shimmering and joyfully pink satin of her babydoll was solidly opaque– oh, she was glad of that. It stopped him from seeing what she hadn't been allowed to cover up.

Alas, the same could not be said for the rest of the garment. Its pink turned paler the higher it crawled on her body, and just beneath her navel that paleness accompanied a scaling sheerness. Both of her breasts were caught up in its scooping, cleavage-baring neckline, creating a proud plunge that made Mythra's former eyeful seem downright chaste. And that was even before weighing in the fact that the sheerness was such that the Aegis' shaped bosom may as well have been covered in plastic wrap. Her puffy areola served as regal seats for thick, stiffened nipples that refused to stand down. Thin strands barely held the dress up, the only part of it to run up along her chest. Her Core Crystal gleaned resplendently.

That was only one thing, however, and she wore two. The second was worse in her eyes, and out of discomfort she reached to touch it. Just below where Amalthus had caressed prior, a tight collar dominated Pneuma's neck, fused red and gold metal in mockery of what once was. Its forefront was engraved with the Trinity. Lights along its sides flickered, signaling ongoing functions and tracking that her Driver had not yet revealed to her. There was nothing fashionable about it.

She wore it because she was his . Not just his Blade, but his property, his to do with as he pleased. Amalthus stepped up closer behind her. Though the babydoll's skirt fell low enough up front to keep her modest, her thick backside kept it from adequately covering either buttock. Pneuma grimaced as his hand enjoyed its first casual moment with her ass' swell, caressing that which his hand could not adequately contain. The tears slowed as her cheeks heated, thighs pushing close in denial of uncomfortable truths.

"... This is some sick fuckin' joke, Mythra," Rex said weakly, unwilling to believe what he was seeing. "Let's get the laugh out of the way and move on."

"You had your chance with her, my boy. And you had your chance to defeat me. Both were wasted," Amalthus said; Pneuma could feel his smile through the way he squeezed at her backside, her breath hitching briefly.

"I'm sorry. You just– just… he's going to let you go, if I… you need to survive, Rex. Nia. Please," Pneuma said faintly, at a volume Rex was unlikely to hear. Her eyes closed with the utterance. At a distance, the movement of her lips looked more like a sighed moan. With the robe off, her hands hung along her sides… until she felt Amalthus slip his hand up from her ass and over the sheer babydoll, both hands matched in pace along her hips, her waist.

Antsy fingers chased after the Praetor's touch, although stopping him was not on her impulse. When he grasped hold of her breasts, a truer moan escaped her, faint but unlikely to be mistaken for anything but. Their introductory squeeze was gentle, but Pneuma's grasp on his wrists were not, despite making no effort to dislodge her Driver.

"You BASTARD," Rex roared, abruptly throwing himself forward, almost tearing entirely free of the guards subduing him. His hands grasped at whatever they could reach on the table, anything to twist and bash at them with– whatever he could do to get away and get to his Mythra, he would.

"Have you forgotten your other Blade?" Amalthus asked with a sardonic drawl, his blessed hands giving Pneuma's chest a righteous benediction in the form of an affectionate massage, at odds with everything else. "Then you won't mind if my men enjoy her– go on, all of you, let him go."

They did, and for almost a quarter of a minute, Amalthus seemed right on his assertion. The crushed rebellion's leader shoved free of the men releasing him and charged towards the dais, up all those vaunted stairs, making a maddened scramble to save the woman he loved from a man beyond redemption. What the Praetor's implications did not stop Rex, but a disgruntled whimper of enjoyment disagreed with stopped him in his tracks, just feet from reaching them. He looked over his shoulder, and though his anger burned hot, his conscience froze him.

Seven men now surrounded Nia, her victim having retreated for medical care. One held her up, his arms looped under hers. That kept them raised and away from where they might interfere with the twelve hands given leave to molest a Gormotti bitch responsible for killing so many of their comrades. Though she squirmed, she did not try to fight their invasive touch as the lot of them got acquainted with her flesh. Some tugged at her clothing to reveal more, while others simply reached beneath it or groped over it. Already, one of her breasts was uncovered, a small thing palmed by two hands that dwarfed it.

Even then, seeing another man take advantage of it, Rex didn't understand why Nia had gone with the low neckline. He loved her back, but still as a friend. "Stop," he said, his voice rough. "Leave her alone." When one closed in and took the first kiss that Nia hoped to give Rex one day– "STOP! I'm– I'm backing off. Stop it." He began a tense backpedal, hands up in surrender. "You made your damn point, Amalthus, but… you're not going to get away with this," he promised.

The Praetor glanced over at the leader of his guard and nodded, who put an end to anything more; they still remained holding Nia, quarter-exposed, dazed and squirming slowly. For all the threats that her eyes screamed, her panting mouth told a different story. "Not quite yet, I think. There's one more thing I'd like you to see, and then I'll send you and your Blade on your merry way," Amalthus said, as though his mercy towards Nia's virginity was a maginamous act. "Pneuma… my dear, sweet treasure. Did your former Driver ever see you naked, in any form?"

"... No," the legendary Aegis whispered, only heard by the man before her, and the man behind her, who was beginning to press against her. She felt his presence ahead of his hips bumping lightly against her plush posterior, nudged by the unseemly lump breaking what ought to have been austere lines across his robe. It made her flinch, throat tightening.

"So, then, he has failed to cherish you in the way a man can best honor a woman. Is that right?" the holiest of holy bastards inquired softly, almost sounding as if he actually cared. That nudge– that stiffness –it told a different story, but not one that Pneuma was in a position to dispute. Amalthus' blue hands gave another leisurely squeeze to her breasts before drifting down the babydoll, over her ribs and down to her hips. Those he held still, subtly coaxing them back, refusing to let her build even the tiniest distance between his covered anatomy.

"Myth." Rex's jaw clenched, his eyes burning with hate so fierce that the sheen of tears in his eyes should have turned to steam on the spot. A vein in his forehead seemed primed to burst, but a glance back at Nia kept him steady.

"... Don't cry, Rex, please. I don't think… I could survive that," Pneuma murmured, before admitting words that should have killed her as much as those tears would have: "... He hasn't." Even then, her fingers stayed around Amalthus' wrists without trying to rip his hands away from his body.

"Then show him what he lost by waiting so long," the Praetor bid her, "and do so with your own hands, of your own will." He released her then, showing Rex empty palms, cruelly reinforcing that the woman he loved was acting of her own accord.

Neither boy nor girl said a word. Rex stared at her, his outrage beginning to fade in favor of that other emotion. The tension in his jaw went towards another purpose, holding back the flood sure to run down his cheeks. He trembled, his bottom lip beginning to quiver in threat of an outburst none would expect of such a powerful-looking man in his prime.

Pneuma could not look at him. With her eyes lowered and her hands given purpose, she began to do as her owner had bidden. The thin strands serving as the babydoll's shoulder straps almost struggled to stay put as she pushed them down either shoulder, their material soft but their fit tight. When they were around her biceps, her arms gathered briefly around her chest, as though to hide what the sheer fabric already revealed to Rex. Neither of her hands were shaking once they began to peel the pink down her pristine flesh– a surprise, given how cold they felt.

Is he looking… at them? Or at me? Pneuma had caught him gazing at her chest before; all but the most loyal of men had, whether she was redheaded or blonde. In either form, she never enjoyed the attention more than when Rex was the one giving it to her. Now, though, the thought of him having to see her like this made her skin crawl, and far more than Amalthus' insidious leering had. What ice she felt seemed to inspire her nipples to a slighter hardening, areolae goosebumps.

Down went the lingerie, revealing a stomach fit yet slender, and hips made for motherhood a Blade was not capable of. For a moment she hesitated, almost looking up, especially not wanting Rex to look at the part of her she was about to reveal– but warranted cowardice kept her eyes averted from him. With a deflating exhale, she pushed the bunched-up garment all the way down. Once it cleared both ass and hips, the satin slipped down her shapely legs with much more ease.

Unfortunately, Rex made a noise that told her more than she wanted to know: a pained grunt as his former Blade ran a blade through his heart, and at the same time impaled hers too. Too late did she try to cover herself high and low, hand and forearm inadequate for the former task given their size. Pneuma's other fingers could cover that precious delta at the apex of her thighs, positioned just over a perfect gap, but they did so far too late. One second of visibility was one second too much

For a woman who thought herself to be in love with another man– her usually prim-looking pussy had taken on a shameful state. Ordinarily, it was a demure little thing, its lips neatly tucked-in atop its mound, a demure pinkness most noticeable for the pale flesh around it. Inside, it hid a passionate inferno, a heat that seemed frozen out when Amalthus first presented her with her apparent evening wear.

Some time after her nipples had turned traitor, though, it had thrown their lot in with the way things were going.

Thus, her fingers did not hide a sheath preserved and held in trust for the day her Driver could claim it. They futilely covered a blushing, hungry hole that sported visible, dewy desperation upon its swell. Not even the proximity of her icy fingers could quell the warmth down there. "I'm sorry, Rex," she said mutely, cheeks flushed crimson with humiliation, yet somehow not as dark as her cunt's scarlet. "I love you."

"Y-you… don't gotta do this, Myth. Don't worry about us. Nia wouldn't want you to put up with it, and… and I don't either. You… you can fight it. You can fight him, I fuckin' know it," Rex's voice did not crack. It was already broken, barely managing to hold back sobs.

But Pneuma was not willing to pay that price. She closed her eyes tight, expecting tears of her own to come; they failed her. At that crushing moment, she expected to break down, but what instead hit her was all emotional fatigue, drained by the demands and rigors of her unfair situation. When she was embraced a moment later, she sighed with deep relief.

Even though she knew what it meant. The embrace did not come from behind her, and it only reiterated what she already knew of Amalthus' desires. Still clothed, his arms wound around her possessively, one hand going high and the other low, both disrupting her attempts to spare Rex the sight of her future. Of the two, the former hand streaked up between her breasts, ignoring their sensitivity in favor of tilting Pneuma's face left, towards where his face was descending over her shoulder. The other slipped long fingers beneath hers, driving a soft whimper from her at the slightest touch.

Oh, but how Rex whimpered too, even Amalthus asked Pneuma softly: "And who do you love more, my treasure?"

Rex made no sound at all when Pneuma answered reluctantly, for the sake of keeping him alive and well… "You, Amalthus." The lie hurt to whisper, but still, there was a comfort in being held. Unfairly, it doubled after the Praetor descended further, gracing her untouched lips with a kiss Rex had been holding off for years, fighting the war they could never win.

At first, it was a brief thing, a glide and drag of his lips to which Pneuma's body responded automatically, shyly matching the movement. Her eyes closed without thinking, more tension bleeding out of her body– out of her shoulders and core, anyway. A tiny squirm of her hips and a backwards push unwittingly teased at his robed cock, a motion made to try and cope with the tight clenching in her most feminine core. Beneath the hand that hid that slit, his fingers delicately caressed her, egging it on.

A brief thing, if only so he could vaingloriously murmur against her mouth: "Perfidious of you, my Aegis. But as I told your lesser blonde self… you needn't worry. You will love me by the end of this dinner." Pneuma wanted to spit back a no and claw back as much of her dignity as she could, but the dark emphasis put on his lewd promise came with a slip and a hook. And that was more than Pneuma had ever done with her fingers in either of her forms!

She was a Blade – her apparent human physiology and emotions were there to connect with humans and nopons and whatever other life lived on Alrest. Arousal had only come to her in fleeting bursts in the past, and never felt like something she needed to act upon. For all the motherhood Amalthus mentioned earlier, she wasn't capable of such a thing. Blades and humans couldn't copulate. Sex was always a far-off romantic goal with Rex, one she could wait for– impatient decades, if need be.

Pneuma's eyes struggled to open as she felt his tender probe inside her, their lids heavy as lead weights. They formed glassy slits, and could not even focus on his face to meet his eye. Thankfully, she would never know that he had her cross-eyed at a second's touch. Her lips parted just as slightly to hit him with words his bastardry deserved– but instead she just whimpered softly, trying to squeeze her thighs tight to hide the eager squirm of her hips. The amorous gap between her inner thighs kept her from blocking access.

Then the Praetor's fingers found something that seemed akin to a reset button, pressing and rubbing at sin-seeking flesh. She shuddered as foreign-feeling bliss shot through her, the green-painted toes of one foot curling tight while her other leg's bone seemed to turn straight into goo. Starting high, the ongoing whimper pouring out of the woman only seemed to ratchet higher with intensity, and her hands beelined towards methods of coping with the unfair and unfaithful ecstasy she was feeling. Again, they found his wrists.

She did not hear Rex collapse to his knees with an anguished groan. She did hear Amalthus speak his orders, close as he remained to her: "Take them and the food away… and leave me with my future bride. We are not to be interrupted," he told them. The words did not hook Pneuma's attention like his touch did, which was just as well. When he met her mouth again, he took her away with foreign wonder, his tongue brazenly invading past her lips to tease and toy at hers.

And an invasion it most certainly was. Pneuma did not welcome him; she knew that she didn't want him inside her in any sense of the word, whether it was his tongue in her mouth, his fingers in her cunt, or his cock remaining pressed up against her. The only reason she wasn't trying to turn their close-quarters tangle into deadly combat was because he was her Driver, and held the life of those she loved most over her head–

But alas, her body did not care about the ten years of struggle that led to the present crossroads. She did not welcome him, but her body certainly did, tongue stirring beneath his tickles, shy and inexperienced yet taken by the new sensations. Tight and virginal, her cunt was growing even tighter in response to him, unaware that the slim thing teasing her g-spot wasn't a cock with a load waiting for her deepest place– unaware that it was infertile, impossible. In the face of her aroused outpouring, the resistance wasn't contradictory, but a plea for more and more. Both her whimpers and the squirm of her hips matched it, the latter taking on an instinctive if clumsy roll to get more of him.

"That pathetic man-child never even managed to go this far with you, hm?" Amalthus asked after long moments of making Pneuma quiver. "Hard to believe that Addam himself never sampled what you had to offer," he said as he drew his face back an inch, smiling down at Pneuma's reddened face, dazed and dumbstruck by all he had done to her without yet nearing a peak. "Though I suppose it's understandable, given his good nature. Blonde doesn't become you. It leaves you rather shrewish… and as a redhead, your need for validation lessens you greatly. Like this, though…"

"... shut up," Pneuma managed to mumble, forcing her eyes to shut. Her other mouth, the one who had no voice to speak with, wanted to tell him keep going, don't stop . Unfortunately, it slipped out of her despite another tight clench of her cunt, her natural lube making it as easy to ease out as it was to ease in. "You're… the worst sort of monster," she told him, squeezing his wrists and digging her nails in.

A patronizing chuckle leaked from the Praetor, who slowly pried himself free of Pneuma's grip. He continued undeterred, "You are true perfection, in both temperament and body. You know your true value." Unsoiled fingers stroked through her ponytail's silky-straight fall; those stained by her pussy's leak dragged up along her body, leaving a cool trail on her skin. "Not that I have any intention of using Siren, of course. Such grotesque force will not be necessary in Alrest's due golden age. Having you proves everything I claim to be to those who may yet doubt. With the Aegis by my side, none can question the righteousness of my rule."

"I hate you," Pneuma told him next, just as softly. And she hated herself for how lax she remained, allowing him to leisurely stroke at her hair. Though nearly a minute had passed since their kiss ended, her breath remained spent, each new one slow and heavy, unable to deny the warmth melting all the ice she possessed before Rex.

"For now, yes," Amalthus acknowledged, rolling one of her tight yet thick nipples between damp forefinger and dry thumb. "But… taste what I've done to you, my treasure." That pussy-pleasing finger went next to her lips, which Pneuma stubbornly sealed. Her willpower did not survive a dry nudge of his body, reminding her once more of what else awaited her. After a discontented grunt, she allowed him to slip it into her mouth. At first he dragged it across her tongue's taste buds, but that quickly shifted to her willfully licking, suckling the tang of her body's submission off his skin.

It didn't taste good, but– it felt good. Not as good as his finger had in her other mouth, but still good , better than their deep kissing. Pneuma groaned softly as he took that away from her too. She grasped slapdash at his body for a bit of support, only to find her nude body turned towards him, left on unsteady feet as he took a step back. "This disdain you feel… it's not something I expect you to ever get over," Amalthus told her as he removed his hat, dropping it with as much respect as she had shown the babydoll prior. "You and I have so much history together, after all. But–"

A few casual brushes across his robe, and his holy vestments began to slip away quickly, obviously designed to be shed in a hurry. Once it pooled at his ankles, the Praetor continued with a wry smile that scared her more for the fact it touched his eyes: "One can hate and love at the same time. My feelings towards the world constitute the greatest proof of that fact," he said, with a wide spread of his arms that turned his nudity into a grandiose statement.

Pneuma swallowed. She tried not to look, but he was just there and inevitable. The legendary Aegis was as much a prisoner to her cunt's callous desire as she was to him; as a whole, she could be no stronger than that of what was clearly her weakest part. So she looked at Amalthus, blue from top to bottom, and rather fit beneath the billowing robe of a Praetor. Not rugged in the way Rex was, mind. He was lean but roped with muscle that Pneuma might have appreciated, if not for what magnetized her eyes.

His cock. He had her first kiss, and now he was the first man she saw properly naked; even in the Revolution's grungiest hours, when unlikely bedfellows were common and showers were co-ed? Pneuma had saved her eyes for Rex. It gave her fresh cause for shivers, lifting a hand and coming close to chewing on a nail as she gawked at him from feet away. Between length and thickness, the size of the thing made her clench, and not even her pussy knew if it was in a good way or a bad way. There was no evidence of a foreskin in place, his light-blue skin giving way to a darker navy upon its crown.

Turgid, it stood tall and proud, but not so proud that it didn't waggle as physics dictated when he took backwards steps towards his throne. In spite of everything, the little humor of that moment twitched her lips with the slightest semblance of a smile– the tiniest joy amidst all the despair. With Amalthus' next dictation, it vanished: "On your knees before me."

For all those preserved innocence– both Mythra and Pyra had heard things. They had engaged in gossip, and had asked curious questions. Even more than that, there was just some knowledge inherent to Blades, and the Aegis had more than most. She knew what was coming next, and her disquiet over it made her mouth dry in spite of her cunt continually flowing dew. "Haven't you made your point already?" she asked weakly, already approaching, unable to stop the swinging of her hips whatsoever. "Can we… at least take a break?"

"No," the Praetor refused, with a plain smirk and eyes that felt no guilt upon meeting hers. "Pretend that you don't want this all you like, my treasure. So long as you obey…" He shrugged a shoulder, closing his eyes briefly. When they opened, he smiled at the sight of her swaying breasts. "Then Rex and all your other little friends survive. Who knows? If I let them go, I may even let them start their 'revolution' anew and run its tide for several years."

Although her face flushed with a fresh flood of humiliation, Pneuma couldn't deny the truth that he spoke– she could only quibble over the technicalities of love and lust and where they intersected. She did not waste her mouth on it, however, putting her hands to Amalthus' splayed knees as she took to a supplicant kneel between them. As she leaned in towards his risen member, she tried to hold her breath, intent on sparing herself its scent through her nose or a hint of its taste through her tongue, as daft as asking for a break .

He demanded nothing from her, lounging back in the throne. Without onlooking eyes, the Praetor abandoned the posture and poise one would expect Alrest's preeminent leader to possess in favor of comfort, gazing down at Pneuma, his cock intersecting his view of her face, dividing it straight down the middle. "There's something to be said for the power of controlled opposition, isn't there? Allowing all of one's enemies to gather in one place, under one banner, guided by a man with more confidence than common sense," he said, his body listing to one side, chin pillared upon risen fist. "Until recently, I've been an absent leader, indisposed by what one might consider a malady. That's the only reason Rex's 'revolution' seemed to have a chance."

Pneuma swallowed, keeping her tongue silent. Throughout Amalthus' monologue, her eyes refused to budge from the presentation of his circumcised manhood. The slit that ran along its tip was longer than she expected, and a touch more open too. It leaked much the same as she did, though not nearly as voluminous. Clear hints of pre-cum welled out of it and ran in trickles to one side and the other, depending on the last way he shifted his body. In spite of her determination to keep aroma and flavor at bay, her mouth watered unfairly with curious anticipation.

Why… Do I even feel this way? I love Rex. I hate this man. He's stolen me from the one I want to be with, and he has all of our closest friends captive. So why is my body reacting like it is? Pneuma thought in a daze. She squeezed his knees lightly.

"Ah. I should say, I've a clean bill of health and what I suffered from was far from contagious," the Praetor added, smirking lightly. Pneuma still didn't look up at his clarification, but she did look down. Between the man-spread of his thighs, beneath the risen pillar of his cock, his balls awaited her. They weren't smooth at all, rather wrinkled in fact, but they were as hairless as the rest of him, and plump enough that they looked like an uncomfortable weight to bear. Almost enough that she suspected his natural gait was bow-legged; the way most people surely looked at her and assumed her spine was buckled, despite all the proof otherwise.

A relatable problem. Just as those shows of his lust were relatable to her, between her hard nipples and his hard cock, her leaking cunt and his leaking cock. With that thought, she could hold her breath no longer without straining it, and her focus on the stall slipped– she inhaled briefly through her nose, struck straight by the slap of his masculine musk. Strong, and unlike anything she had ever encountered, given all that she had avoided. The heat of her arousal did not diminish for it, and a moment later, Pneuma tentatively parted her lips.

Not for anything more than that, just for the sake of breathing– it resumed exactly as it had been, heavy and slow, deep, raising those lovely breasts of hers, which dropped heavily on exhale. That penetrated her mouth with a shadow of its taste. For all his bastardry, it was not foul. "Not that I've seen a Blade take to human illness. Though, a Blade emulating heretofore unknown biological functions is not outside the realm of possibility. Nothing is, my treasure. Especially not for you and I. Wouldn't you agree?"

In fact, it only sped the watering of her tongue. Pneuma found herself blinking slowly, slovenly, and licking her lips. Her head felt both light and heavy at once as that heat within her seemed to reach a vertex; it seemed unpredictable to her but ought to have been a foregone conclusion. Briefly, her eyes lifted off Amalthus' one-eyed snake to meet the blue-skinned snake's golden gaze. "Well?" he asked, his smirk slashing wider, and Pneuma found herself briefly confounded.

Well? Well what? Was he asking me something? It had all gone in one ear and out the other, despite her typically extraordinary power of recall. Pneuma only puzzled over it for a few moments before settling on what seemed to be the most likely possibility: Amalthus was prompting her to follow up on his orders. She knew what his intent was when he asked his collared Blade to take to her knees before him, after all. His cock's hardness and leaking spoke for itself– and besides, hadn't he been saying something about it being clean? Safe?

Again she licked her lips, her glassy green gaze falling quicker than it had risen. Before Pneuma's slow-moving mind realized what they were doing, her hands were massaging inward his legs, following the lines of his agile thighs. Under her soft-skinned hands, the firmness of his thighs was just… so enticing. Inches away from what most interested her, and what she believed he expected, Pneuma paused– at least, her fingers paused. Her body leaned slightly forward, hot breath slipping from her plump lips, tickling against his cock.

"Mn," Amalthus grunted faintly, and Pneuma twitched– not in her face or with either hand, but lower, her cunt titillated by the hint of reaction. A quick glance down at herself peeked between the hang of her breasts, able to see a tiny hint of her treacherous twat. She hadn't realized how spread her thighs were… or for that matter, how visible her rampant need was. A notable, if yet small puddle had formed between her swollen cunt, a problem that she had never encountered before. "... Well, Pneuma? Is something the matter?"

When she next looked up, her fingers had inched along, flanking the pelvis that served as his royal cock's dais. "No," Pneuma finally mumbled, embarassment bubbling past the persistent sense of humiliation achieved. "Sorry, I just haven't done this before, and…" Her teeth nipped at the swell of her bottom lip shortly, before her fingers threw all caution to the wind and went in, grasping near the base of his long thickness with one and just over it with the other. The blue shaft was simultaneously stiffer than she expected, and less solid too. Beneath her fingers, she could feel so much texture …

"And what?" Amalthus prodded wryly. "You have no need of secrets anymore, my treasure."

"I'm not sure what to do next," Pneuma confessed in a heavy whisper, yet her voice was faint.

"You're off to a fine start. Admittedly… you're not doing anything I've asked you to do," Amalthus told her with a chuckle. He reached down to her with his empty hand, grazing along her green hair with an unfairly soft touch, leaving her high ponytail undisturbed. "All I asked for you to do was kneel before me. What you're doing now is what you want to do, not anything that I've demanded of you."

That sent a cold stab right through Pneuma's gut, and her eyes swung right back up, protesting softly, "That's not– you asked…" A tidal wave of frustration crashed against her, and she muttered at him in a tinge of Mythra-influenced irritation, "What else did you expect when you told me to get down here and shoved this in my face?" Despite that, her hands began to move slowly, her first real moments with his cock spent experimenting. The first stroke came with a lessened grip, a feather-soft slide up his cock that quickly encountered that first bit of drip.

"Intellectual conversation. Perhaps a lively debate on a topic where we have diametrically opposed views, so we might get to know each other better," the Praetor told her with a lift of one shoulder, no-showing that touch but watching her keenly all the same. "I didn't expect you to give in to your natural desire to copulate so freely, given how long you've waited. Not that I mean to complain, of course."

Pneuma gave a red-faced scoff. Her fingers tightened around him, but only lightly, and not with malicious intent. "Have you ever stopped and wondered if anyone loves the sound of your voice half as much as you do?" she asked him, surprising herself with how comfortable she felt clapping back at him. The grip with a little pressure felt better and more natural to her, understandably more tactile . A little firmness went a long way. She kept going with it, her hands rising and falling along him steadily, face kept just inches from his cock's crown. To fully encompass him in her hold, she would have needed two hands and a half, at least.

It's going to stretch me out so much when he puts it inside me, she thought dizzily, feeling herself clench again; her knees spread outward a little bit further, hips squirming in earnest askance of some attention yet to be received. I can't even imagine how just one hand worth of it would fit in me–