The cherubic, drink-loving Proctor and gifted razor-dancer who once wanted to draft Darrow, warned against pushing him, and duels him on Olympus.
Mercury is the Proctor who almost chose Darrow in the Draft — his Drafters objected — and who alone among the Proctors warned the others not to push the dangerous boy; he tossed Darrow wine and called him brilliant as the war played out. When Darrow storms Olympus, Mercury meets him in a hall drunk and laughing, dancing in a bathrobe through his soldiers' sword-thrusts with a grace Darrow has seen nowhere but the mines — kicking, flipping, cutting off a thumb, felling half a dozen with a razor wielded like a poet's quill. Darrow, faster and stronger, cracks his off-arm with a punch and beats it broken, but likes the cherubic little man too much and fears his razor too much to duel him to the death — so he simply stuns him with the pulseFist and ties him up, laughing still.
A rare Proctor Darrow does not hate.
A small, squat, cherubic man with a baby face and rosy flushed cheeks, coiled golden hair drooping over his eyes; in a bathrobe, tipsy, wielding a razor with dancer's grace.
The genial, gifted Proctor who favored Darrow, dueled and captured on Olympus.