Cult AU

[keenly]

Dramatis Personae

ADIUTA
Elven Servant
Friendly but brainwashed.

MASTER INPROBUS
?????
Just a nice guy.

HARIOLUS
False Divine
Was not elected as Divine in Tevinter, so started a cult claiming himself as the true Divine.

EWAN
Praestes
Trying for promotion?

FAMULA
Human Servant
Serves Benedict.

FAMULA
Human Servant
Was forced to sever two of her fingers.

Comments

[sulahnan]

A faint line is drawn between her brows. Consternation, perhaps,or just confusion.

"What would you have me say, master? This is Home. Nobody leaves Home."

[altusimperius]

Yeah, that's what he thought. Bene waves her off with a groan.

"Nothing, never mind."

He settles himself on the bed, arms folded as he watches the door, the very image of a sulking child who's been sent to his room.

[sulahnan]

The servant stays where she is, hands folded in front of her, head bowed, looking like she might become a feature of the architecture at any moment. But her gaze flickers up towards Benedict once, twice, and she hesitates for the duration of a heartbeat before slowly walking around to the opposite side of the bed.

Bene's back is to her, but the sound of a shift dress whispering over delicate curves to fall in a heap at the floor is hard to mistake. Even harder to mistake feeling the easing of slight weight onto the mattress.

[altusimperius]

Eye cutting uneasily toward the sound, Benedict pins the servant with his gaze.
He is... concerned.

"What are you doing," he asks in a small voice.

[sulahnan]

She's sitting with her back to him, and she turns her head to speak over her shoulder.

"I'm having a lie down," she says, clearly still wary but having come to the decision that a man who behaves like a petulant child the way Benedict is, is unlikely to be testing her. "This way, if they come back, you can say I was serving you."

[altusimperius]

That's actually... better. Than he'd imagined.

"Oh," Bene says, blinking, "go ahead then." He settles back in, and even picks up his pillow to set it on his other side for her.

And waits some more.

[sulahnan]

After an...uncomfortable silence, spent staring at the wall and practically feeling Benedict's wakefulness radiating, the Famula sighs.

"If you have questions I can try to answer them," she says quietly. "But there will be things I cannot tell you."

[altusimperius]

"I could've guessed that," he sighs, but his mood has already begun to improve by someone simply having a conversation with him.

"What is this place? Why do all of you look... like that."

[sulahnan]

"Like what?"

[altusimperius]

"Um," he struggles to put the impression into words, "like slaves, but without all the benefits." Maker, at least they let them look like people.

[sulahnan]

"Slaves have benefits?" She asks, almost laughing at the absurdity. "The Famulae with shaved heads have been deemed unfit for breeding. They are stripped of their beauty so they won't be a temptation to the masters, and assigned to serve wherever physical attraction would be...inconvenient."

[altusimperius]

"Ew," Bene scoffs, wrinkling his nose, "breeding? Really? Is that what you're for?"

Quick on the uptake, this one.

"Do you... like it? Like is that what you want?"

[sulahnan]

"It's the purpose that the True Divine has given me, and I'm grateful to serve."

[altusimperius]

"Huh."

He mulls that over for a few seconds.

"...well I'm not going to. Do that. If it's all the same to you."

[sulahnan]

"...I believe you."

It sounds a little bit like surprise, spoken in earnest.

"But you'll have to eventually. Perhaps not with me, but with whoever is assigned to you if you accept your purpose and everything that entails."

[altusimperius]

"Yeah, I already have a purpose and it's not that," Benedict sighs, rolling his eyes, "...I mean, I may not. Actually know what it is, but it's definitely not fucking some Soporati woman to make an insane person happy."

It's nice, at least, that they can chat like this.

"What's your name? Don't say Famula."

[sulahnan]

She is silent for a long moment. "It's...better if I don't tell you, I'm sorry."

[altusimperius]

"Fine." He's not going to press the issue, not after what he's seen.

"How'd you come to be here?"

[sulahnan]

This silence is even longer, but eventually she finds her words.

"I lost someone very dear to me, and felt it so deeply that something snapped. I was adrift, with no motivation, no purpose, no desire but to see them again.

"But then, I was found. The Divine helped me realize that though the body was dead, the love we shared lives on in me. And to be given the chance to give my children some of that love... I feel I am ensuring the legacy of something very precious indeed."

[altusimperius]

The story actually touches Bene in a strange way, and he angles his head toward her.
"That's nice," he says, with quiet sincerity, "...but what does it have to do with kidnapping people?"

[sulahnan]

"I don't know," She rolls onto her back, pulling auburn locks over her shoulder so as not to lay on them. "Some find us on their own. Others are saved from bad situations. We aren't told how the masters come to be here, only that they were delivered by providence."

[altusimperius]

His lip curls slightly at that. Providence. Okay.
"How sure are you that their previous situations are bad, when that's the story?" To call him skeptical would be the understatement of the century.
"Look, I'm from Minrathous, I know how people like to talk. They make it seem like there's no other right way to live your life, Maker this, divine ordinance that. But then they do things like use slaves as blood puppets, so." He wavers his hand around.

[sulahnan]

"Because my brother was a mage," she says, simply.

[altusimperius]

"In the South?"

[sulahnan]

"Yes," she turns her head to look at him, then rolls onto her side. "Many of the masters here have been given the chance to thrive in a way they could never dream of, locked away in Southern Circle towers. And none have to die in those barbaric Harrowings."