For a moment, he merely stared at it, the reality of the situation slipping between his paint-stained fingers. It was beautiful, and it was them, and somehow, it didn’t feel as if he himself had painted it.

Sam seemed to possess the coy beauty of one of the creatures speckling the inside of George’s room, her magical beauty no longer fleeting, but eternal and dazzling on the canvas. Her eyes possessed life and intelligence that shone as radiant as any star, and somehow she was more herself than her real version could ever hope to be.

Her brother was the very same, his expressions brought into this other world with a careful hand, and he sat there, his every limb pulsating with the essence of himself. Although his eyes and body were tired by the strains of life, there remained life in him, beating through his heart and body like his lifeblood. Simply looking at him, at every aspect of his body language and face granted the viewer a striking sense of who he was and, even more so, what they should think about him.

The painting made the viewer love the two subjects. In the very same way that a brother would love his siblings.

Something in the way Kreig had let his arm fall limply to his side, something in how he suddenly held his gaze steady and wide on the canvas, must have told his siblings that it was done. He had created it. At no later hour than 3 at night, too.

Enraptured by what he couldn’t believe he himself had created, he was only brought out of his stupor when he suddenly noticed that the couch was empty.

“-Whoa! Is that really how I look?” Sam said from his left side. “You’re sure you painted me ‘warts-and-all’?”

George, peeking out from Kreig’s right side, let his gaze hop from the Sam on the painting and the Sam in real life. His nose crumbled up. “I’d say it’s about the same.”

Her tanned face grew a shade deeper. “I’m not sure how to feel about that.”

During the duration of a short moment, Kreig wondered if he should feel insulted at the insinuation that he would be dishonest in his depiction of them, but that moment passed with the recognition that his siblings surely meant him no harm. While these thoughts flitted through his mind unbidden, George leaned in closer to the painting, willingly letting the noxious smell assault his nostrils up close. Kreig had purposefully used as little of the chemical solution as he possibly could since the smell was absolutely abhorrent, but George didn’t seem to mind it as much.

“...It’s really good.” George glanced back up at Kreig, meeting his gaze. “How would you feel about displaying one of your paintings?” He must have noticed the faint shudder that trembled through Kreig’s left hand, since he quickly capitulated. “Not of the ones of your friends or us, but if you ever just paint like a celebrity or something, or maybe just a stilleben, it would clearly be worthy of exhibition.”

Exhibition.

Kreig had seen many paintings exhibited freely in his days. You couldn’t wander down the halls of the Emperor’s palace without subjecting yourself to the innumerable glares of the hundreds of portraits dotting the halls like fixtures of the past. Nobody in the royal guard knew exactly who the people portrayed were, but many rumours suggested it was the paintings of criminals right before execution, or of the Emperor’s lovers, or the members of a family line spanning a millennia. Kreig hadn’t much cared one way or another; he didn’t like looking into their soulless, staring eyes in the least, meaning his gaze was more than often drawn to the small collections of non-portrait paintings.

He only ever saw them as he stalked down the halls on one official business or another, but they always brought him a certain sense of calm. Pictures of nature. Paintings of beautiful scenes in forests and plains. Animals and creatures he had never seen and likely never would.

Now that he thought back on it, despite how unfeeling those portraits of people had been, they had at least been brought from a painter’s hand completely unsullied. The painter had no help from any outside influence, only himself and his effort. He had been taught by a master once, yes, but even that master had cultivated his skills from only himself. It was a pure effort, wholly unlike Kreig’s own.

After all, Kreig had been assisted by the system. It was a firm, guiding hand, making sure his lines were smooth and his anatomy on point.

It made his brush do what it had to, it made his sword strike true, it granted him power and age no man should bear. Kreig owed everything he was to the system, and therefore, he was tainted. Dishonest. Impure. Only those whose results had come from their pure, unassisted effort should be allowed the honour of hanging their soulless portraits in the halls of the Emperor’s palace. To hang a portrait birthed by the system there would be to make a mockery of the Emperor himself.

And that was why Kreig softly shook his head, a defeated refrain bobbing familiarly through his mind: ‘you are nothing without the system and you have nothing to bear pride in.’

“I would rather not,” he said to his brother, watching as a hint of disappointment flashed through his eyes, and Kreig knew he’d said the wrong thing but it was too late to take it back and make his brother happy again.

George smiled thinly, his eyes softening. “Of course. Take your time.”

Kreig couldn’t say he liked the way that sounded, but before he could consider the words deeper, Sam pushed her face into his view. “Yeah, that’s great, but what about payback?”

Silence reigned.

George narrowed his eyes, keeping his gaze level with hers. “The hell do you mean by payback.”

A characteristic sly grin flashed across her face. “For the painting! It’s not like we can just have Kreig paint us and then just not do something, right?” There was a mad, sleep-deprived glint in her eyes that seemed to suggest tomfoolery.

George was equally as tired as her, a connection Kreig sadly didn’t have, and in this bond, he must have realized something, because all of a sudden a small smile crossed his face, bearing that same frenzy as hers did. “Aha. Gotcha. Heh.” He straightened his back and twisted the glittering tophat on his head. “Say, Kreig, will you take a seat? On the couch.”

Two pairs of raptor-eyes turned on Kreig and all of a sudden he knew that he was trapped in a web that he could neither escape nor understand.

And, as he always did when he had no idea what was going on, he defaulted to the one thing that usually worked in these situations: obey the orders given without question.

Fingers trembling, pausing only to brush over the painting and applying the drying skill to it, he placed the brush in a small vat of murky water before plodding over and taking a seat on the couch. There he sat rigid as a stone statue while his siblings gingerly moved the painting he’d done of him to the side and then grabbed a new, blank canvas. They placed it on the stand, sharing speaking looks that chatted in a language Kreig didn’t speak. Somehow, the two of them seemed to have a telepathic link, borne of shared mania. It scared Kreig just a little.

George’s face peeked out from the side of the canvas. “Take a cool pose.”

Oh. Oh lord.

Sam grumbled about the stand being too high up before also peeking her head around, her eyes hard and stern. “Yeah. Take a cool pose!”

Even if Kreig knew what a ‘cool pose’ looked like, he wouldn’t have been able to take it, what with how his limbs were all paralyzed in confusion. And now both Sam and George were looking at him in the same way. Like two hounds gazing at a piece of meat.

“Come on, just lie down on your side across the couch. Like-, like one of our French girls,” George said waving his hand as if to show how it would be.

Spurred by (somewhat) clear orders, Kreig laid down on his back to the couch, arms folded across his broad chest.

Sam shook her head. “No, no, like, on your side, facing us.”

Kreig twisted his body to face them, his long legs straight and hard.

A smile began skidding over Sam’s features. “Yeah, yeah, and now put your arm under your head, like, hand on your cheek.” Kreig tried to do what she said, watching unhappily as her smile grew into a grin. “And now your left leg folded a little. Heh.” Kreig couldn’t tell why, but as he moved his body like a puppet to her words, he felt like a consort in the grasp of a nobleman. Despite that, he had to admit, the pose wasn’t completely uncomfortable. Apart from the fact that a fair portion of his legs was dangling over the edge of the couch, marking the whole thing as just a bit too short for him to lie on comfortably.

Happy with his pose, Sam gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up before ducking back behind the canvas, George following suit. Kreig couldn’t say he was overly hyped about being behind the canvas again, but since it was his siblings doing it, he had no qualms.

Their portrait took less than an hour to fully create, but it contained just as much effort as what Kreig had made for them.