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Cultists, on the other hand, are men. Brutes perhaps, but still men. They knew exactly what they were doing. What they are <span class="mu-i">still</span> doing, considering that despite all of the effort spent and lives lost, they are basically unchecked in the southern Tributaries.
You don’t even want to think about it.
Still though, among those Cultists, there were Witches, and even Strangers, who by some means unknown to you were kept tame. They all had those eyes, and beyond simply being unsettling looking, you never really had such a response to them. And Amalasuintha – she had those eyes. When she showed them to you the first time, you didn’t even flinch, and you had seen them plenty of times since. So then, why exactly did seeing them that time in the morning get to you? And why does it seem to be getting worse, not better? It does not make sense. Once more, you rack your brain, but as the minutes pass, the only answer that comes to you is that your nerve is not as strong as you thought – which has occurred to you previously, and now, just as it was previously, it is not the answer that you want.
And truly, it is not an answer that you even believe that much. If you were really so weak as to be spooked by your wife’s eyes like that, then that weakness would surely have manifested somewhere else before now. Those early nightmares you got when you were starting out don’t count of course. Most everyone gets them bad at the start, and then they taper off as your duty hardens and inures you. As it stands, you have not dreamt of your first Stranger in years now.
And the fact that everyone gets the nightmares is not the only reason why you don’t hold them against yourself like you are holding this eye nonsense. It is one thing to get spooked in a dream, where nothing makes sense, and you have no real control over anything … but to be so thoroughly scared while waking, and by your own loving wife, too … it is not just embarrassing, it is disgusting. You are better than that. Stronger. At least, you thought you were.
With no good explanation for it, and no other recourse around it, you have started trying to wake up before Amalasuintha does – which works, of course, but the fact that you have to go to such great lengths galls you. She has not said anything about it, but she knows obviously, and that galls you even more. But you are seething exceptionally hard this morning because last night, you had a nightmare – the first one that you have had in a while, at least that you remember. It was stupid, but … you dreamt that you were back on that stretch of moonlit forest road, where Arbogast and his wife held up the coach. Everything was going as fine, up until the moment that you realized that you needed to pull your Socket and install it into the decoy. Everyone just looked at you blankly, so you tried explaining why that was necessary for the deception … only for your wife to tell you that the Socket was already installed in the decoy.
