[log] you need to wash your hands. YOU NEED TO WASH YOUR HANDS.

[logosmaxima]

Who: Magnus the Red & Konrad Curze (+ siblings??)
What: Magnus will have his revenge conducts a perfectly normal intervention on his brother's level of Stench.
When: Slightly before the 9th.
Where: The showers
Content warnings: Who even knows with Warhammers; will tag in comment headers as they come up. Minimum, someone's getting stuffed in a shower against his will.

Magnus the Red is plotting revenge on his brother.

He will not acknowledge what he is doing by that name, but it is most certainly revenge he is intending to take on one Konrad Curze.

All the ingredients are there: A tangible injury (to Magnus' pride), the sense an injustice has been done that needs redress, and the intent to cause hurt (to Konrad's ... dignity? His patina of filth?) in return.

But he will not call it revenge, because Magnus -- master of the ulterior motive -- has other well-justified reasons to hunt his brother down and shove him into a running shower until the stink's washed off of him. First and most importantly: Konrad needs it. (Everyone around Konrad needs it. Anyone who wants to live with him in the Library long-term needs it.) Second: Konrad is unlikely to acquiesce to this necessity if Magnus were to ask. Third: There is something off about Konrad's vitality that he had noticed, but not thought to question, last they argued spoke. Something that might or might not be tied into the intended medical condition that necessitated constant servitor monitoring. Thus, fourth: Since Konrad would not answer questions about what required such monitoring, he likewise would not answer questions about what had dimmed the palpable sense of inhuman strength every primarch bore coiled in his aura.

Thus, to address all of these at once, Magnus will have his revenge address them all at once by forcibly arranging the much-needed shower.

The Cyclops does not enact his plan immediately. (Revenge is, after all, best served cold.) He takes his time to luxuriate in the Library, to meditate, to think over all he has heard about the Imperium's future -- near-term and far -- from his other brothers. He does not avoid Konrad; nor does he seek his dark brother out, merely makes note of his habits and where he is -- and is not -- during the Library's endless lumen-lit day. He scouts the (woefully spartan) sanitary facilities, making note of their layout and relative dimensions, and what is and isn't present to use.

Then, when the time is right, Magnus strikes.

Like any good ambush, it looks wholly innocuous to start. Magnus does not stoop to sneaking up on his brother -- he merely approaches him in a moment Konrad happens to be near the living quarters. "Konrad," he says, warmly.

Then he makes a lightning-fast grab for his brother's shoulder. If this were a mortal -- granted, a mortal of truly prodigious size -- it would be nothing to spin the other man around and pin him in a restraining hold.

He expects much more resistance. For all his height, Magnus is not the most skilled of his brothers in physical combat. Konrad should easily break his hold, under normal conditions. This will be a useful test!

Comments

[logosmaxima]

"On Tizca," Magnus says, gently, patiently, "each of my citizens is as much a part of its harmonies as the great Pyramids. A far more important part for the potential they harbor. Should I let disease or destitution mar that, when I have the ability to prevent it? The duty?"

Prospero was also far from a hive world, with its wilderness still pristine and its population negligible compared to the heaving masses of Terra or Nostramo. Tizca was amply fed by her farms alone. Magnus knows he has done things there that the iron laws put to page by the ancient Smith and Malo Thuse would not permit elsewhere, where resources were inadequate to the surplus mortal population.

That does not make the principle any less true -- and primarchs, at least, were so rare that any expenditure was made for them. Thusoian concepts of the weak starving out need not apply.

But it did raise Konrad's own question of why their Father had not interfered himself. It almost makes Magnus reach for something -- treasonous, something he would not have said before hearing the outcome of Nikaea. (Something he has long-believed, but kept in that secret part of his heart he rarely turns his inner eye toward.)

Father can be wrong.

But that is not something politick to say to Father's lawgiver --

Father's lawgiver. Whose own role was to interfere and correct Father's sons on Father's behalf.

Magnus chuckles to himself, his eye gleaming gold and scintillant. Of course -- there it was: Father did not interfere where he already had hands ready to execute the task for him, and minds sufficiently brilliant to dream of solutions. Had he not left the problem of the flesh change to Magnus to work out on his own?

Why not this one?

The crimson cyclops steps forward, pressing the bubble with the drone in it against the kine-wall. It merges seamlessly, passing the drone in its little shield through so it can go hover by Konrad, immune to the wet. "Not my curiosity, brother." Not only his curiosity.

"My duty. As Father made me to do it."

[curzed]

"I'm not destitute," is the immediate snarl. "This is comfortable, and this cloak is both expensive and difficult to make. Everything necessary for public propriety is covered." Destitute! He'd spent most of his life wearing patchwork rags to accomplish a similar goal, and occasionally didn't see a point in bothering with even that much. Had this been his fleet or even his so-called palace on Nostramo he certainly wouldn't bother if it wasn't for the delicate sensibilities of others.

The drone, as soon as it's released, takes a spot somewhere over the showerhead so it's out of easy splashing range, somehow managing to radiate indignation in spite of being an utterly emotionless machine.

Doubts such as whether or not the Emperor could be wrong don't need to be voiced. Shouldn't be voiced. That way lay treachery and betrayal, a galaxy on fire and several of their kin dead. He's not ready to entertain the idea, not yet, though it itched at him when he bothered to think of Nikaea, bothered to weigh the flashes of insight and knowledge as to what Horus would soon be doing. The deaths he'd forseen. The endless terror and suffering to come. If he knew, surely so too did the Emperor. And if he knew, and did nothing to prevent it..

Showers don't fill up tubs quickly, but there's a not insignificant amount of standing water now. it's being ignored, like the shower itself was. His sons had, when they dared something similar, made sure the water they used was already soapy, and the pressure hoses meant they could stay out of reach of his wrath without need of scrubbing or his cooperation. There was at least none of THAT going on. "Are you claiming to now be the family apothecary, Magnus? You know that's not at all what you're meant to do."

[logosmaxima]

Interesting to note which implication Konrad latches on to, with all his fierce and snarling pride. Not the implication of disease, but of poverty, and all that came with it. Perhaps, as another ancient scholar of the mind had postulated, that is what lurks in Konrad's shadow -- the specter of not having enough, of not being perceived as at the apex of whatever hierarchy he'd built himself.

Magnus will need to meditate on it. An upbringing of scrambling poverty might explain ... something, of how rangy and ill-fed Konrad appeared. Had he, perhaps, starved for a time?

"No, you live as much like a prince as any of us now," Magnus agrees. "It isn't the propriety or expense of your attire I refer to, brother. It is the care you take with yourself. Or don't."

Now that there's a reasonable amount of pooling water, Magnus makes a lazy gesture toward the (inadequate) soap dispenser, pressing down the actuator and letting it leak out all its contents in a sputtering stream. Now it's a nicely tepid bubble bath, redolent of artificial perfume and cleansing chemicals (ugh). It mixes poorly with all the other scents already swirling around, but Magnus hardly bats his single eye.

"I am not claiming. The Magus is master of many arts -- what my sons in the Cult of the Pavoni can do, I have taught them. I have long experience with healing faults of mind and body both," though one fault in particular had ... evaded him, had required outside help, don't think about it. "Why should I not use that expertise for my brothers? Especially in a situation such as this, with no experienced apothecary here.

"At least let me look," he continues, cajoling. "If you are truly right, then I will find nothing, and have harmed you not at all. If there is something that I can correct, then you stand only to gain from the resolution of that -- injury." Call it that, maybe. Call it anything but fault, deliberately engineered (or left in), and maybe Konrad would be just a little more willing to cooperate.

[curzed]

It's the easier accusation to defend against. The other ... who knew? He didn't think himself diseased, but he knew his fits were not typical.

He knew it wouldn't go well, admitting any of it to his brothers. He'd be betrayed, his weakness passed on, framed as madness and delusion. Even Sanguinius now saw every move he made as some portent of intentional harm, an echo of confrontations far in the future when it would be true. He'd hoped, perhaps foolishly, he'd have more time. At least different circumstances.

Is this where the break begins? In rising disgustingly overperfumed water, dealing with the false-friendliness and arrogance of Magnus? He'd thought it might be Fulgrim, or Mortarion. The cards had suggested he'd been fond of the one who would leave his secrets bare to others.

The silence and stillness stretches for a time, as tepid water creeps its inexorable undignified path. "You will find nothing," he concludes at length. "But if it will make you cease your prodding, then get on with it."

[logosmaxima]

Having made his offer, Magnus is willing to wait for the response -- yea or nay -- and watch as the water rises. As it creeps to and past the height of Konrad's knees, the cyclops makes a beckoning gesture and a too-thin towel floats in from somewhere. This he also passes through the kine-shield, and leaves hovering just in Konrad's reach. The offer, hopefully, is clear -- it's not a proper washcloth, but better than nothing.

Though he suspects whether or not the offer's understood, it won't be taken, and he will need to resort to other methods.

Likewise, he had expected his offer to look -- simply look -- to also not be taken, though there were thin branchings of the future where it was. Where Konrad grudgingly assents -- and when it is one of those that is realized, Magnus lifts his chin in gracious acknowledgment. "We shall see what I find, then. It would be good, if it were nothing."

He knows it will not be nothing, for all he has been restraining himself from peering into his brother's helices, blood, and flesh. Given permission now, he looks immediately with his inner eye, the outer one gone unfocused and brilliant with concentration. Expert that he is in biomancy, it takes him not long at all to parse out the secret ills plaguing Konrad -- and a slow frown settles onto his face.

"How recently was your secondary heart damaged?" That is not, actually, the old scar he most wants to ask about. Telling the age of injuries, however, is a tricky task even for the experienced -- tissue healed at different rates controlled by a complex interplay of factors, even in swift-healing primarchs and their Astartes sons. Age, condition, simple vagaries of the helices, the type of cell itself -- all had their role to play. Having a baseline for Konrad's healing rate would let him better estimate how long the other injuries had been there.

[curzed]

His cooperation is marginal at best and the towel left floating in offering, far too small to be useful for any actual drying but maybe useful for other things, is eyed balefully. And then ignored. "Three weeks, give or take a day." His grasp on time is not exactly impeccable unless he's paying attention and days blur terribly in the library.

The damage to his second heart didn't trouble him anymore. It was mostly functional, and as more time passed it would only become moreso. Unsurprisingly for any primarch, he's riddled with old injuries from countless fights, including a single bullet he'd never successfully dug out nestled up against one shoulderblade, but all of them are either completely healed or well on their way.

But not all of the harm is battle scarring. "It doesn't trouble me."

[logosmaxima]

"Mmm," Magnus acknowledges. Three weeks, and all that's left of the -- comprehensive -- injury is a faint network of scars and slightly erratic excitability in the once-damaged fibers. By now, he has watched enough cycles to know the risk of an out-of-step rhythm converting to fibrillation is nearly impossible -- and even if it did, it's the secondary heart, not the primary. Fibrillation would be a mere annoyance, and the risk of it does not explain the drone.

But the scars in Konrad's brain do, following a pattern Magnus has seen too many times in the Pyramid of the Apothecaries. Prospero's native population was nearly all psykers and mutants, and they'd been that way since their retreat to that sheltered world to hide from those who would persecute them. The founder population had not been large -- and the population that survived the repeated predations of the psychneuein was smaller still. Genetic abnormalities of the nervous system were an unfortunately common affliction.

The signature of epilepsy, written in the ruins of dead neurons and patterns of scar tissue, is not unfamiliar.

There are further questions he needs to ask. Questions, he realizes now, Konrad truly had reason beyond mere caprice to evade. Questions whose answers others should not overhear. The shower is -- reasonably -- loud, but its white noise cannot be expected to cover everything they might say.

Magnus looks down, taking his eye from Konrad as he traces a pattern on the mildewed tile with one foot. His hands work through a series of gestures at the same time, settling at last in a quiescent mudra as he murmurs, "I invoke the Symbol of Thothmes."

The room is not closed, and the door not locked, but this will do to prevent any observation from those who will not announce themselves by walking in.

That done, he continues, quietly: "How often are your seizures?"

[curzed]

Just being stared at is not something he tolerates comfortably, but he remains right where he is, as much from stubbornness as inability to actually go anywhere else, the steady rise of water and its ominous soapiness ignored. It's not as clear as one might hope, he hasn't bothered to wash himself or those pants in quite a while, and both the pants and cloak are still full of Kaiisteron's dried blood, now slowly becoming less dried and tinging the water reddish.

Not only Kaiisteron's either.

It isn't til the series of unfamiliar gestures, and the equally unfamiliar pattern traced on the floor that ends in the sudden cessation of all psychic and warp-born power, that Curze does much besides glower from his soggy prison. The sharp jerk back doesn't go further than that but sets the water briefly roiling with the motion, bewilderment masked almost as soon as it appears into wariness. The drone continues where it is, sedate.

Medical training is not part of Konrad's extensive inherent knowledge base, or much of what he'd learned through his life beyond what was needed to perform his duties. Did such things leave some sign he didn't know about?

Of course it did, else Magnus wouldn't be questioning it. "Infrequent." Too often, especially when they chained. "A handful or two a year, rarely lasting longer than an hour."

[logosmaxima]

Given the context, the sharp jerk might've been alarming -- but there's no ripple of pre-seizure clouding in Konrad's aura, no strange electrical activity in his brain. (If anything, there's a smoothing of that silent lightning back toward something more normal.) Magnus is intent enough on his line of questioning -- and accustomed enough to his sorcerous powers being met with alarm or disdain outside his Legion and his world -- that he does little beyond note that it happened and press on with his question.

The answer is unsettling. Horrifying. Enough so that Magnus closes his eye, turning his head away to spare Konrad his expression -- pain, and pity, and something like fear on his brother's behalf. At odds as they have been in the past, Konrad is still his brother, and Magnus loves his siblings with the same grandiosity he does anything else.

"Five minutes," he finally says, slowly, "of seizure activity is a medical emergency in a mortal. Inevitably fatal, if they aren't found and treated." He supposes it's a testament to the resilience their father build into them that Konrad could endure far, far longer than that.

"The ones who are -- who survive -- are scarred by the experience." He taps a finger against his head to indicate where those scars reside, and finally masters himself sufficiently to present a calmer face to his brother once more. "This has been happening since you were a child, I presume. From the damage to your brain."

Damage that, given its extent, could explain a great deal about Konrad's erratic nature. Memory deficits, personality changes, emotional instability ...

[curzed]

"I am not a mortal." The defensiveness is creeping higher, lips thinned, bearing anything but relaxed. He had no desire for anyone's sympathy, their pity. He's perfectly functional! He has no concern at all of what the Emperor would do if he found out; the Emperor already knew. Knew, and had stopped one such fit before it could really get its claws in, before he could humiliate himself in front of his brothers, their sons, and his own court.

And had done nothing else. None of this was a mistake, it was simply a burden to bear. "It has been so since earliest memory. My captains are well instructed on what actions to take if I am caught in the open." Few ever really wondered why Curze always had Shang, Barbatos or Sevatar nearby, without fail. They could be trusted to clear an area in very short order if necessary. "In their absence, this device serves a similar purpose."

Maybe Magnus will leave off, if that much is offered.

[logosmaxima]

"I do not offer the comparison to denigrate you, brother." Even when he is not trying to provoke, Konrad is all edges. And perhaps it is right that Magnus should be cut a time or two by them, given how he's put his brother here, but it is nevertheless tiresome to deal with.

A breath, two. With the Symbol of Thothmes in effect, even he is cut off from the Great Ocean -- mostly -- and cannot turn to contemplation of its currents to regain his poise. But there are the Enumerations, and he works through them until the annoyance (worry, vindictiveness, concern) withers to dust.

The Magus is master of his own mind.

Magnus nods thoughtfully to Konrad's recounting of his own history with the seizures, turning his eye once more on the little drone. "It summons help, then?" Presumably.

Little chance he'll leave off completely.

By now, the water's up to mid-chest, and Magnus adds, "If you won't scrub yourself, I am letting that rise to your chin." Konrad's choice on how awkward this gets.

[curzed]

If it's genuine compassion, he doesn't know what to do with it. When had anyone of his so-called family offered anything like a hand of friendship? ..Besides Fulgrim, who would eventually betray him, and Mortarion, far far away? And before them ... not a soul. He can't tell what's a threat, an attack verbally or otherwise, and what's some unknown mysterious third option. "In theory. That depends if who it alerts deigns to answer."

He's no longer certain Sanguinius would. Wasn't sure that his brother wouldn't just watch him thrash on the floor in incoherent agony, but that might be acceptable so long as no-one got within reach.

The rising water still doesn't perturb him. Its threat is at worst, getting thoroughly soggy, even though he's leeching dirt and blood into it like an oversized grotesque teabag. "And then what? Will you drown me if I don't cooperate? My own sons have done worse." That. That sure sounds like a taunt.

[logosmaxima]

"Why might that person ignore its alert?"

Magnus has a solid guess on who the individual in question might be -- he had not noticed Konrad's First Captain lurking insouciantly around (you call a primarch "uncle" once--), nor any other Night Lord; of their whole galaxy, the Library had picked only four of them to bring, and two newly arrived.

But he cannot understand why Sanguinius would ignore a call for help. So perhaps his supposition is wrong, though it proposes an insanity in its breach: Konrad trusted his functioning to a strange mortal over his brothers.

(Perhaps not so insane, if considered: Look how well family had done by him.)

Regardless -- Magnus' eye narrows at the taunt, and then he smiles. That is not his usual kindly smile.

"Drown you? And put you out of your soggy misery too soon? No, no. I have methods your sons could not conceive of."

[curzed]

"Because he's convinced I want to kill him," is the terribly dry answer. In the water, he makes a rather soggy gesture of negation. "Which I don't, I'll be clear, but nothing I say or do convinces him otherwise. I can't rely on that for the security of others."

He's killed before, during his fits. He likely would again. The best he could do was make sure no-one else was in the vicinity, and perhaps... perhaps Sanguinius would do that much.

Not for him, but for the safety of others. "The servitor who owns the drones made certain they can only relay location and track symptoms, it doesn't gain that information itself." He laces his fingers behind his head, some dark kind of amusement flickering in by degrees. Of all the things he was wary of, water is not it. His state of hygene was far less deliberate than simply not caring. "So I do what I can with what I have."

An alarm, and hoping someone answers. Hoping the only one with a prayer of restraining him would choose to.

"I don't die here." No uncertainty. At all. "All else is annoyance at best." If he thought it would actually keep him dead..

[logosmaxima]

If -- before they were all transported to this wondrous Library together -- Sanguinius had told Magnus in confidence that he feared Konrad would kill him, Magnus would be ... concerned, he thinks. For both parties, but not entirely disbelieving that the evil-minded, volatile VIIIth would do such a thing. He would naturally investigate such a supposition, but his biases being what they were ...

He would likely find the evidence he expected. Especially dredging the Great Ocean for it, where expectation shaped so much.

It contrasts oddly to how he takes that information now: Worried, for both parties, but the more so for how Sanguinius came by such a notion. It was not in the Great Angel's nature to be paranoid -- quite the opposite.

"I see." Partially. He'd need details out of Sanguinius. More pertinently, though: "What sort of alarm should I listen for? And what does this servitor look like, and respond to?"

Both facets of providing more of the security Konrad was rightly concerned with -- if he could get straight answers from his brother.

The apparent bravado wins a slightly malevolent laugh from Magnus. "Perhaps you might wish you had," he retorts, and twirls his finger to start the water spinning in a primarch-sized vortex. The soap immediately foams to implausible rafts of suds (Magnus stop that) to complete the watery torment as thousands of swift fingerling currents relieve Konrad of his patina of grime and old blood.

[curzed]

"I don't know. It hasn't been needed since acquiring it." He knows it has an alarm but that's about it! Whether or not it will even work is another question. "..The servitor responds to SecUnit alone, Rin around others. It has dark skin and dark hair, and is intensely avoidant of being watched directly."

Anything else is going to have to wait. The drone levitates a little higher when the water turns to soapy froth, thoroughly unwilling to get wet, and Curze's snarl of resumed indignant fury is literally drowned out a moment later.

It's not like he's actually going to drown. That's what the added lung is for. And there's no sense that there's actual fear or anxiety over such a fate at ALL in the resumed fight to get out, just sheer affronted pride.

The water doesn't stay pleasantly almost-clear for long, such is the amount of blood and filth both on his person and deeply imbedded in what few clothes he wears. It stains dark and unpleasant very quickly, the light smell of soap overridden by degrees with slaughterhouse runoff of old bad blood.