"My benefactor? Aye, he's a cold bastard. Cold as Weiss, if not colder. He looks like snow, and has the eyes of an albino rabbit. I question at times if he's mad, for it takes a touch of sea fever to risk incurring the wrath of the powerful when he's anchored to the land like a frost-bitten tree. That is the sort of man my benefactor is," Cygnus explained, continuing to wrap the linen around Altair's torso. "But you must know that I have all of the choice in the world... and if I so choose to not sell you to my benefactor, I know more than a handful of rich men and women who would spend a pretty coin on you. And some worship pyre gods, some would like beating you more than I do, and some might even strip the flesh from your bones and feast on you."<br/><br/><i>I have no choice but to hand you over to Freud. It's a cruel jape, but a jape nonetheless, to sell you to anyone else. If the King even considered the slightest idea that I might have betrayed him, I would lose my head, if not everything else. <i>He would freeze off my cock and end my lineage if I dared to cross him, </i></i>thought Cygnus. He concluded his treatment, leaving him with one strip of linen in hand. "Regardless of what I may do, you should know that you shepherd your path. And you have shepherded yourself onto this path, a path of whipping and blood," he chastised. "It was by your hand and action that you now lay here, like this."<br/><br/>The state Altair had been left in by his flogging was a sheer drop from the state he had been in when he had been first captured. His alabaster skin had been whitened to a chalky quality, and he resembled a living corpse. Much of his body was now wrapped in worn, browned linen, linen that was stained with the blood of those who had used it before. The slave that had once held his head up high and walked with the stride of a water dancer had been reduced down to laying on the bench of the brig and shaking more than a ship in a storm.<br/><br/>He had been confident that he had extinguished the last of Altair's pride, until Altair defiantly spoke.<i>Do I feel powerful? Am I satisfied with what I have done? </i>Cygnus felt some satisfication at the effects the whipping had left on Altair. At the end of his small defiances, the slave recoiled, as if the words he had spoke physically hurt him. Altair's melodic voice had been rendered into the wheeze of a dying old man, lacking the vain quality it had before. His golden hair was matted and resembled blood-drenched gold, scabbing sanguine flakes at the tips of his hair. But in part, the effect he wished to have upon Altair had been lost.<i>No, slave. I will only be satisfied when I can manipulate you with the ease of a kitten.</i><br/><br/>Cygnus eyed the lone strip of linen in his hands, long and strong. He quietly circled around Altair, so that he was behind. Wrapping the cloth around his hands several times, he pulled the cloth taut. Then he brought it in front of Altair, wrapping the cloth around his neck. The linen hugged the slave's neck with the pressure applied by Cygnus' hands, but did not choke him. It pressed against the slave's windpipe, but still allowed him some room to breathe. The captain leaned forward, pressing his mouth against Altair's left ear.<br/><br/>"You forget yourself again, slave. Is it so difficult for you to silence yourself and prostrate for mercy? I whipped you twelve times, and yet you still have enough inside you to defy me once more. Do you underestimate the mercy I've offered you so far? I could've given you twenty lashes, with whips worse than the one you tasted this morn... if I wish, I can still give you more lashes. You have plenty of flesh I haven't touched. Your legs, your arms, your face, your belly. I could whip you until the only thing that would be left would be blood and your entrails," Cygnus threatened. The linen around Altair's throat tightened, cutting him off from desperately needed air. "Beg me for forgiveness before you cease having air inside your lungs."