Quoted By:
<span class="mu-i">A bit more than sixteen years ago, in the Empire’s Old Hinterlands: </span>
Your name is Odovacar, and it seems that you are not sure about anything anymore. For a start, you are not sure what is wrong with you. A fortnight ago, your Socket just … failed. You were checked before returning to the Full Brother’s dormitory, and things went exactly like they had since you had the Socket installed. It worked fine as a replacement for the eye that was pulled to make room for it, but when it came to interfacing with the testing equipment – or a Spot-Dosimeter for that matter – the results were erratic, to the point that they were not reliable. As you had been dozens of times before, you were scheduled for a quick recalibration, right before morning prayers. After arranging to be woken up early so you had enough time, you went to bed. And when you woke up, the dammed thing was dead.
You could not see out of it, and when they hooked you up to the testing equipment just to make sure, they could not get any readings. Complete failure like that is uncommon, but even odder is that your graft – the remains of your left optical nerve, which connects and interfaces the Socket and your brain -showed no signs of rejection. Even still, the Ophthalmos was worried that there had been a breach in the shielding, and you might have been dangerously contaminated by the Strangeness from the Socket’s death. But after being checked, you were found to be well within the range of Strangeness considered acceptable for a Dosimetrist.
In the end, they pulled the corpse of the Socket, and sent it away for testing. Two days later, you were summoned back to the Operating Theatre, and a larger, higher resolution Socket was installed in your left eye socket. Now, it always takes time for a body to get used to a Socket, and vice-versa, but it has been whole weeks, and your readings with this one are as erratic as they were with the old one.
To make matters worse, you started getting pins and needles in your feet and occasionally in your hands, which you to be a symptom of lead poisoning. You reported it, and your direct superiors and the Ophthalmos were … sympathetic, but ultimately, they have not done anything about it yet. You should not be too surprised about that, lead poisoning sort of comes with the territory. It is not called the Inquisitors Illness without cause, after all. You have started getting headaches too, but you decided against bothering anyone about them, as they are still fussing over why you cannot get proper readings with the new equipment. After a lot of back and forth – none of which you have privy to – all they have decided is to send you to a specialist Ophthalmos, apparently the one they sent your dead Socket to.
There is something else on your mind, however. Something weighing much heavier than the pound and a half of hermaphrodite where your left eye used to be. Aborgast’s maid, Amalasuintha.
