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Michael Cronin knew that he had to report to his emperor. The escape of the elves disheartened him. That damn human commander had to blunder on everything that would give him the possibility of pleasing the emperor. Now, he had to explain the failure to the one he loved more than his wives and children. It took him a few months to arrive at the emperor’s palace with ten soldiers.
Four horses died on the journey and five soldiers were either lost or killed while traveling through enemy territories. Traveling through swamp, bog and forest was far easier than confronting enemy troops that were on constant patrols of the road, rivers and forest. If Cronin had more time he would have investigated the patrols further. As it was, he put his men at risk by capturing and binding one of the enemy officers on patrol.
So far his prisoner had not spoken a word, not even in his defense. The emperor had ways to make even the most devoted of the enemy speak their ruler’s secrets. Even after death one could be made to talk. That is why the emperor loved him so much and tolerated his eccentric behaviour. He liked to play with the dead and for that reason most of the soldiers left him alone.
Unfortunately most women, even whores, left him alone too and even avoided him completely. If a whore spent a night with him he would have to spend twice as much. On the contrary his wives would cost him three times as much as a regular whore. Having a total of forty children with them did not help matters much, in fact he rarely saw them at all anymore. They now spent most of their time with the kids, which allowed him to spend more time with his duties as a man in service to the emperor.
Upon arriving at the palace gates, him and his party were let in. The soldiers took the horses to the stables and his prisoners were roughly escorted to the dungeon. Two body servants escorted him to a bathhouse that he usually shared with other nobles. Today the bathhouse was empty save for him and his two body servants. A preference of gender he did not have when it came to body servants, so one was male and the other was female.
Age did not bother him much, but he required that they be older than twenty. Of all the strange things that he admitted were or might be wrong with him, being a pedophile was something he was not. His demented ways were avoided while his face and body were much sought after commodities. In the bathhouse he was always treated like a lord. The fact that business and your reputation in the outside world were forbidden to be discussed in the bathhouse made it his favourite place to be. Cronin was always accused of being obsessed over cleanliness.
Close friends of his knew the real reason that he spent so much time in the bathhouse. He came to relax with his body servants as they kneaded out all of his worries, sorrows, stress and many other things that bothered him. Together, it did not take long for his body servants to rid him of his travel stained clothing. He lowered himself slowly into the moderately hot bath water using the supports provided for stability. Cronin once knew a man who believed that the weak were the only ones that used the supports.
One day the man was in a hurry to bathe and getting into the bath he slipped on a bit of soap residue left behind by the previous patron and split his head open so badly that the servants were cleaning blood out of the bath for weeks. Chucked over the side of fools’ cliff, his useless body was. It felt good to have his shoulder muscles kneaded until the kinks were worked out. That was what his male body servant, Jessie, was good for.
He usually messaged his back and chest and arms. However, while he did that Veronica, his female body servant, messaged his legs, feet, buttocks, mid-section and various other parts of his body. Michael felt real close to his body servants. They had been in his service for more than ten years. Now at the age of fifty he needed the bath house more.
It was not due to his age, but due more to his bodily hungers that continued to grow as the years passed by. A natural occurrence was increased need for bodily pleasures the more that one followed the darkness and shadow. Michael did not mind it much, but he became more wary of things and people shying away from him. He was avoided like the plague. Suddenly aware that the sun had taken its place where it usually positions itself at mid-afternoon, he abruptly got up making apologies to his body servants.
Cronin did not remember falling asleep, but he must have. Hours he was in the bath and the emperor was waiting. Despite being the emperor’s favourite, he would probably have hell to pay for letting him wait despite the two prisoners he had found and the soldier that was on patrol.
Getting dressed quickly, still paying attention to detail and his noble upbringing, in the fine clothing left folded neatly on the bench where his travel stained clothes used to be he set off to the audience chamber where he suspected the emperor was waiting for him.