[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

[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.