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by EssayOfThoughts
SPOTLIGHT
EssayOfThoughts' Intestinum
Intestinum is three things.
Firstly, he is a failure born of failures. His mother is a Plagueborn who is always sick. His father is a Necromancer unable to cure her. He himself failed his trials, a mere Necroservus to his father's ability to curse and to cure.
Secondly, he is and always will be, a child in the eyes of his father. His failures mark him down as lesser, as ever the student, never the teacher. The apprentice, never the master. Sometimes he bristles at this. Bridles. Other times he is content in his place because, for all he and his father disagree on just about everything, his father never pushes him to do something he disagrees with.
Despite all their disagreements Aerugosanguis is still his father, and remembers that there is duty in that role as much as there is in mentor or Necromancer.
Thirdly, he is no fool. He has loyalty and doles it out where it is earned. To his father out of respect. To his mother out of love. To Tethys and Telchine, leaders of the clan, out of gratitude - they could have thrown him out when he failed, but they made a space for him, had him help Porcelain identify sickness and provide temporary treatment until his father could arrive. He even offers respect to Nosoi, whom he disagrees with on a few levels even more fundamental than his father, because with all her failings she understands his, and offers no judgement. But there are others who have not earned it and to whom he offers only the most cursory courtesy.
Pleurisy he doubts. Pestilentia concerns him. His own daughter, soon to leave them, his precious Ondine, a Necroservus just like he is, he fears for so much it overrides the respect he holds her in.
She raises a valid point, however.
He and she and Pestilentia can all do something no Necromancer can. A Necromancer can curse and cure, and with two arts to keep an eye on no one is their singular speciality.
A Necroservus can only curse, but some can curse precisely to cure. He'd learned it first, mimicking his mother's feather mutation and replicating it in others, forcing muscles to build and strengthen atrophied wings. Pestilentia he was teaching, though most days she seemed to pay only half an ear, too loyal to her mentor to take tutelage from another without his permission. Ondine...
Ondine picked it up like breathing - something she had to learn to do, to remember to do, but that flows in and out as readily as any other function of life. Ondine, he thinks, will surpass him.
Maybe... maybe that is why she seeks to leave. Maybe that is why she is the one who realised the idea that had never occurred to him - his one bit of folly and foolishness.
The histories were written by the Necromancers after all. As she had said: why would they ever record those who could cure what they could not?
It has raised a question in his mind. It has left him spending hours writing letters to any and every other 'servus he knows.
How many others, he wonders, can cure with a curse? How many others, sidelined by their masters, relegated to secondary, are just as powerful if only in a separate sphere?
He gazes out - across the Ashfall Wastes, across the waters, to the far far far horizon, barely visible even on a clear day - to where the Plaguelands lie. What he thinks might be the closest thing to treason for a Necromantic dragon.
Are we secondary, Lady of Plague? Or are we as much your Hands as they are?
Firstly, he is a failure born of failures. His mother is a Plagueborn who is always sick. His father is a Necromancer unable to cure her. He himself failed his trials, a mere Necroservus to his father's ability to curse and to cure.
Secondly, he is and always will be, a child in the eyes of his father. His failures mark him down as lesser, as ever the student, never the teacher. The apprentice, never the master. Sometimes he bristles at this. Bridles. Other times he is content in his place because, for all he and his father disagree on just about everything, his father never pushes him to do something he disagrees with.
Despite all their disagreements Aerugosanguis is still his father, and remembers that there is duty in that role as much as there is in mentor or Necromancer.
Thirdly, he is no fool. He has loyalty and doles it out where it is earned. To his father out of respect. To his mother out of love. To Tethys and Telchine, leaders of the clan, out of gratitude - they could have thrown him out when he failed, but they made a space for him, had him help Porcelain identify sickness and provide temporary treatment until his father could arrive. He even offers respect to Nosoi, whom he disagrees with on a few levels even more fundamental than his father, because with all her failings she understands his, and offers no judgement. But there are others who have not earned it and to whom he offers only the most cursory courtesy.
Pleurisy he doubts. Pestilentia concerns him. His own daughter, soon to leave them, his precious Ondine, a Necroservus just like he is, he fears for so much it overrides the respect he holds her in.
She raises a valid point, however.
He and she and Pestilentia can all do something no Necromancer can. A Necromancer can curse and cure, and with two arts to keep an eye on no one is their singular speciality.
A Necroservus can only curse, but some can curse precisely to cure. He'd learned it first, mimicking his mother's feather mutation and replicating it in others, forcing muscles to build and strengthen atrophied wings. Pestilentia he was teaching, though most days she seemed to pay only half an ear, too loyal to her mentor to take tutelage from another without his permission. Ondine...
Ondine picked it up like breathing - something she had to learn to do, to remember to do, but that flows in and out as readily as any other function of life. Ondine, he thinks, will surpass him.
Maybe... maybe that is why she seeks to leave. Maybe that is why she is the one who realised the idea that had never occurred to him - his one bit of folly and foolishness.
The histories were written by the Necromancers after all. As she had said: why would they ever record those who could cure what they could not?
It has raised a question in his mind. It has left him spending hours writing letters to any and every other 'servus he knows.
How many others, he wonders, can cure with a curse? How many others, sidelined by their masters, relegated to secondary, are just as powerful if only in a separate sphere?
He gazes out - across the Ashfall Wastes, across the waters, to the far far far horizon, barely visible even on a clear day - to where the Plaguelands lie. What he thinks might be the closest thing to treason for a Necromantic dragon.
Are we secondary, Lady of Plague? Or are we as much your Hands as they are?
by EssayOfThoughts
