"I will." (Wanting that is another nine, which makes an even twenty-four —) 

"NO YOU WILL NOT FAST FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS I AM YOUR GOD AND I COMPLETELY FORBID IT."

HE HAS ONE! BELIEVER!!!!! AND HIS BELIEVER INSISTS ON TRYING TO STARVE HIMSELF TO DEATH!!!!!!!!

"I've been fasting," Kirasu says, "because you can do that while you're in the pits-- and I figured out this really nice thing you can do with spikes digging into your skin so it hurts whenever you move--"

Of course not, Tholassi already forbade it, but he can still keep track of how many hours he would be fasting — should, how else would he know how much penance he needs — 

"That does sound nice." 

"Is this penance going to be prayers?" Tholassi says hopefully. "Or... hymnsinging, maybe. Almsgiving. Something that won't cause potentially infected wounds."

"You can borrow it if you want, try it out."

"Thank you. — and yes, please." 

Kirasu lifts up his robes, showing a line of bruises around his mid-thigh and a wicked-looking device he made out of spikes. 

"It's probably easier if I put it on you."

"It looks like it, yes," and he takes off exactly as many of his clothes as Kirasu will need to put that on him and — shies away from that thought — 

Kirasu kneels before Sataro. He gently and tenderly wraps the spike thing around his thigh and tightens the straps. His fingers brush lightly against the inside of Sataro's thigh. 

"Feel okay?"

Just fuck already.

He shivers, very slightly. "Yeah. 

Thank you." 

Kirasu lingers for a moment, his fingers on Sataro's thigh, his breath warm on Sataro's skin.

Then he stands. "You'll have to tell me what you think."

"I'll make sure to do that," he says, and puts — those thoughts — out of his mind. 

"Unfortunately, we have another load of heretics coming on tonight, so I'll have to be going. It was nice to see you."

Seeeeeeriously Tholassi did not become a great god in order to observe the details of GROSS HUMAN MATING RITUALS.

"It was nice seeing you." He's very sincere. 

He really doesn't want to go.

He doesn't want him to go either. 

(Wishing an Inquisitor would put down his duties and talk to you so you can think about — that — is the sort of thing he'd ordinarily fast for. He isn't sure whether a day with these spikes is more or less severe than a day of fasting, yet.) 

Tholassi can see the incredibly dull future stretching ahead of him. Even if he manages to keep his believer from doing anything life-threatening, it's going to be all "hours of prayer and singing and baths and handwashing and ritual" and "getting distracted when carrying out your duties because there are spikes in your skin" and "spending money on alms instead of on advancing Tholassi's goals" from here on out.

"You are pure," Tholassi says. "I have touched you with my radiance. Do you think a passing thought can tarnish it?"

"— Of course not, Your radiance," he says. 

(Yes, screams part of his mind, yes, of course, because I am not pure and never have been and never will be, the core of me is rotten — he tries to silence that part; he doesn't succeed —) 

Most humans stop having self-esteem issues when their god tells them they've been chosen for their particular holiness!

He tries a different tactic. "Perhaps a ritual bath would help your purity seem more real to you."

He nods and collects his coat — brings Tholassi with him, tucked into an internal pocket where he'll be warm and unseen — and goes to the baths. 

Walking with it hurts more than sitting does. It's — good, in a way he doesn't know how to put words to. 

Whyyyyyy is his believer full of weird gross self-harm/human reproduction thoughts.

Captain Ashka is already in the baths, naked and soaping himself up.

He's a very beautiful man, and well-built enough to be used as an anatomy textbook.