#solokov

I... i can ship this

Autolatry: self-worship

*****

It is not long before he hates them all.

It feels like the hatred is almost expected of him, which of course only further infuriates him to no end. He is, after all, a genius; the very definition of genius is one who does not fall into predetermined patterns. It is apparently the pattern of a genius to scorn and condemn the men he works for. He scorns and condemns the fact that the pattern is so. It is a paradox.

(This is a small comfort. He loves paradoxes).

He progresses, through the months and years, from hating his clients to hating the city to hating just about everything. The city is cold in every way. It is bitter cold, but not beautiful like the cities of Tyvia; it has no color and no snow, just grey and salt and ugly lines. Its food is horrific (even the liquor; especially the liquor) and its people are worse. Its people do not appreciate the eloquence of his designs. He makes them brilliant beautiful machines that can startle and shock a man into dust as fine and Tyvian snow, outline the contours of his bones, frame him in blue fire as brilliant as the Void; he gives them soldiers with legs like delicate insects and gates made of living light - and they see only the murder.

Imbeciles.

He makes a brilliant remedy for the plague that men say is animalistic, crude, that is mass-produced and sold on the black market.

Idiots.

He works his hatred into the titles of his paintings. He couches it in long phrases and eloquence and names that mean nothing. He paints the portrait of the Regent, and the High Overseer, and more, and he bows and scrapes to their will as geniuses should never bow, and the name he scrawls in the corner of the painting is just a long and verbose way of saying hate hate hate hate hate.

He is better than this.

He is so, so much better than this. 

Alone in his bridge-top-tower workshops, he creates a painting to illustrate this, one for him and him alone: a man who appears out of the Void of invention with hands spread wide to offer gifts, with shadows in his face, who is just about to step free of the frame.