"I'll say it again: I didn't get this ability to make little toys! I am a C'tan, I am the Lord of Blacklight, I am the coolest guy on the Chain of Cool! I've put up with you for long enough. Stop laughing!"
"Heh-heh-heh, we're not laughing!" The Emperor's face was taut as he gritted his teeth and insisted that they weren't laughing at all. But the more he and Magnus did that, the more Hogg felt mocked.
Furious, Hogg lunged at the Emperor, grabbed him by the collar, and shouted:
"You're obviously laughing! You bastards! Whenever I get something good, I bring it over to show you, and this is how you treat me? You illiterate idiots! Can't you see I can create a fusion creature that could be called alive?"
"So you can make a sentient dildo?"
Magnus's remark plunged Hogg into despair. He let go of the Emperor's collar and collapsed to the ground, all the light gone from him. He looked like a middle-aged amnesiac crushed by life, who'd gone home only to find his elderly parents obsessively buying health supplements, his wife singing and dancing for the camera, his eldest daughter infatuated with a delinquent biker, and his youngest son in women's clothes begging to be kept.
Some people were alive, but already dead. Hogg had clearly grasped the truth of that saying. He was still alive, and probably wouldn't die anytime soon, but he'd never escape this vicious cycle for the rest of his life.
"Ah, a man's reputation precedes him. My good brother, I warned you back then to make yourself look a little more human, but you wouldn't listen. Well, now look at you. It's not that we don't believe you, but what was that thing you just made? You saw it