sublime

- lofty, grand, or in thought, expression, or manner

-tending to inspire awe usually because of elevated quality (as of beauty, nobility, or grandeur)

archaic: high in place

Samson

When I was a boy, barely ten or so, my brother and I had a tutor.

I don't even remember his name anymore if I ever kept it in my head. I don't remember his face. I don't often keep faces if they aren't useful to me.

But I remember that he didn't last very long in the household. Thought he was a smart guy too. One day, he went off on a tandem about nortan nobles houses being fingers of a fist that work together to form society and crush the weak if they dare to move. He tried to talk about how unity at least needs to be procured to a point that makes us not lose the war against Lakelanders, and it needs to be shown in strength to handle the

I barely listened. I only asked myself what finger on the hand is the most useless. Most people would say it is the pinkie. Who needs that tiny finger, it can't grip anything, right? Who needs a tiny bone when they still keep their thumbs? Losing your thumb must be the worst if you cannot afford to grow it back directly with a skin healer.

He caught me staring at his hands and went on an even bigger tandem. Raised his voice to an unhealthy degree too. You don't raise your voice in the presence of people that are outmatching you, by blood status, power or whatever it is that does make them superior. He was there to teach me a lesson about the crushing hand of Norta. He helped me learn something else.

As it turns out, losing your pinkie is the worst. It balances the rest of your hand. I could watch him struggle to pick up things for over a week until my parents finally had pity with him and had him regrew the finger. Then he disappeared from the house never to be seen again. I had to go to bed without dinner for another week and most of my privileges were revoked. My brother snickered every time he left the room I stayed in.

A pinkie might be the most painful to lose in the long run.

But here's the thing: Every finger on your hand hurts if you are forced to cut them off yourself.

Pain is always horrifying, and categorizing it by severity has brought me to the conclusion that it is inconsequential to not value it. Breaking someone's body is as valuable as breaking their mind. It depends on the time you can invest in the matter. And how visible the wounds you leave with them can be.

The black cloud of thoughts swims in formless screams over every room, and I eat through some of them, every time I stop my steps. I'm not in the mood for most of them and are not allowed to touch others. I am a whisper in their heads, but they are just the same around me, tempting. Like fruit that hang ripe for the taking.

But you don't need to read thoughts to see some of the people in Whitefire are so damaged and broken they should just fall down and whine. They should kneel and stop pretending they can control anything. They are not the pinkie of the fist. And still, they are walking down the limelight of the corridors and sit at the round table and I am here. Outside at the doorstep, wandering around like one of their measly henchmen. Like I need to beg for crumbs.

That thought alone is enough to make me grow frustrated. As if I would ever beg anyone for anything. It is always the other way around.

Soon enough, soon. I am here for a reason. Even if cannot penetrate the thoughts of anyone in that room in there, I don't need to. Not when the queen inside is a whisper as well, and one that works incredibly artistic with the thoughts that dwell inside.

Instead of pacing or making a fool out of myself, I stand still, smoothing over my new glove without any ripples. I stand there for another minute. Then two. My leg twitches. I shift my weight.

Not one for waiting, I slowly loose patience. When the door finally clicks open, a flood of coated cloaks and wrinkles spreads. The group of old men moves in a formation. Some, like Samos and Provos, stride straight past me. It rings in the ripples of my mind, an insult to be repaid in time.

They know exactly what they are doing. And if it wasn't for their given safety on top of the food chain, I would rip them apart before they could even take a shaking breath between their beards and dry lips.

Then there's Viper.

My father in law is so weak he needs a cane to walk and his right hand yes man Hector to escort him. He drags himself over the shiny ground and his dark soles leave streaks as he does so. He is so weak that he can't even stand straight, the snake pin on his chest gleams like an outer heartbeat, weakly golden and copper in the light. His face has the same white color as the wall, maybe a little less strong and more broken into his veins.

But he is patient in his misery.

He has married a woman that will always shame and betray him, and he has loved her for over two decades. She doesn't love him. And he not only knows it but lets her lover walk in and out.

He is a joke and a dying one at that. It's in the bubbling tumors that spread in his brain and the rest of his body for years, barely contained but never cured. Right now, I would only need to kick one of his legs and he would fall, unable to stand up. Relapsing while his legacy is only one rotten, sick daughter herself- luckily, there is also me.

Right man Hector glares, but he is toothless in his primitive protectiveness of duty. He has nothing to say, ever, and he doesn't try to. His wife is far away, his daughter is a child, and his son is a lunatic.

"Oh, Samson. If I'd known you would show up today, I would have put on my good coat. Here I thought it was just friendly meeting after meeting with Volo and Isaac." He tries to sound light. He fails on a level that makes him more miserable, still dragging himself toward me. "I didn't know you were back."

I have been back and inside the Viper household for three days, and he only tries to make flimsy excuses.

It is a void and wasted few syllables of words speaking about his shameful condition on display. I cross my arms, gloved hands holding to my own ribcage, black on blue and white leather and fabric. "What are you doing here?"

He crawls along the stone and the bright light like one of their snakes. His cane leaves a pattern of gong strikes behind that spread to my ears, almost like the squeezed together thoughts in his head. "My job."

"You can't even walk. Leave the meetings to me," I say.

He shakes the cane like an index finger shushing a child. If I didn't need his useless self, I would break his bones with the walking stick. The image passes between our mental connection and he shakes his head too. "You're still not a Viper. If I have to, I will leave them to Hector until Daliah has returned in around a week or two. Stick to reading your wife's reports until then."

I blink through another cloud of his hazy thoughts. I know he knows I am inside. "Her last report was just a love letter about Ptolemus Samos."

Always hiding behind his back, singing songs about his strength, or his unwavering stance, or whatever it is that tints everything adoration.

Ptolemus should be long, long dead, bled out on the night of the ball.

But now he is at least not hanging around the capital anymore. His use has been shifted to other parameters. He is good at least good at killing things. You can always use someone like that. People have their merit sometimes.

"Hadrien is true to reality," Hector insists from the sideline, even if no one asked him. He looks boring and plain in his black suit. "He only writes down what other people tell him or what he sees."

The other topics get left unspoken. None of them is stupid enough to say anything on the stepstones of the palace. At least that is something you can count on.

"ou know, there was a time they had a very protective relationship. You might have noticed already. It was a little easier knowing that." He says that to stir something in me, and it's bullshit and it is useless. "And then, I needed Macanthos. She was highly influential. It was the best match I could have hoped for. He was a nice man. You would have hated him."

I'm not a child to be told about a dead, scarred woman, scorned by another alive, scarred woman. I have heard it all a million times in the repetition of the merry widow's brain coils.

And I am also not interested in playing favorites with people beneath the heel of my boot. I don't need the Vipers to love me. I need them to serve properly.

"Everything about your family is morally despicable and illicit," I only spit the words beneath his useless shoe soles. "I don't have time for this."

And it's true. I don't have time for this at all. I didn't kill two men and interrogated a diplomat last week only for the slowly dying in the capital to block me. If I could get a title or anything official beyond the name they think but never say...

I pass them on the staircase and walk past, squared, and much bigger than any of them.

My only silent demand is a spear rammed straight through the squeezed together headache.

I expect you to share what you just discussed, Viper.

I round up the longest, biggest set of white stairs, to the rebuild and remodeled Square. Not one particle out of order, it's almost lurks and stands around me in stone and letters.

The sun isn't rising, it isn't dawning, nothing like that silly motto of the red rebellion. The sun is a steady point. It rises up to fall. The thought makes me smile a little. Finish your similes and metaphors before you spread them into the world, small-brained , emotion-driven red rats.

My boots clack on the pavement. The damage has been fixed. The streets have been repaired. Now there is only the lingering matter of the heads inside the palace to deal with. The ones that won't or haven't already rolled. It will be my pleasure.

Beside the bridges, on long poles that gleam like glades and needles, banners sway in the poor excuse of a breeze. I study the face on one of the images besides it.

There is a distinction between empathy as an instrument of intelligent consideration and the act of loving something and caring for it beyond human capabilities to be made.

One is the act of working through someone with precision and patience. It is, as my wife would put it, archaic in the sense that a hunter can understand the prey. The other is selfless and boring.

Both are a waste of time, but at least one leads to a certain degree of success if you want to invest that wasted time. And energy. I understand empathy in an intelligent sense. I just don't care for it. And it is easier to just take whatever you need out of someone's head. You break them open and skin them alive. You cut through their defenses and twist them until they surrender or die. It's more satisfying that way.

You take what you want, and you take it when you need it. Because you deserve it.

Elara has made an art of cutting a brain into small pieces over time, neither lost in either definition of empathy, but at least understand it to some degree.

It's all I think about seeing the banner with her son's face sway in the wind. I stare at the winding banners for only a second longer, and I try to reassure myself with the knowledge I have and the promise that is made.

I can see her face and her voice reasonably inside the head wearing the crown. She took her time carving a vessel hollow to be impressionable. Children are just quaking, empty things, after all. I never had the luxury to take my time or get the perfect example to take a hit and try myself.

A few days aren't enough to leave a lasting impression in a mind. If you want someone utterly broken you need to savor their defeat in the measurement of blood and tears.

Right now, right here, is the moment they'll talk about when they talk about me, because I contain any anger and insult to hand it back. And I walk through the rebuild street and beside the rubble removed. The cloud is a storm in the distance, and I remove myself from it, walking to my residence, the one that the Vipers occupy.

Thoughts may be tempting like big fruits, but the city is already taken, and we will not let it go before it is devoured.