thebastion | Day 248, Night ♈ Open

Who: the Emissary, the Disciple, the Psiioniic, and you!
Open: Open like love is a door
When: Day 248, some hours after this.
Where: Near the entrance to the Skyway.
What: The trolls finally drag their asses into the Bastion.
Format: Starting with prose, but will follow.
Warnings: Troll blood and injuries. Also, the Psiioniic.

Darkness descended suddenly upon the three trolls as they passed into the limits of the Bastion, the sourceless, diffuse light from the Skyway fading to almost nothing within the span of a minute. Though a bit surprising (at least, until the Disciple explained this was normal), to someone nocturnal it was like coming into light after hours in the dark. Night felt safer, and the lights in the windows were a welcome sight, even with the architecture so unmistakably alien.

They must have made an odd sight, the three of them. Though the Disciple had already lived here for a little while, her two companions were new. One was a woman, with huge spiraling horns (yet somehow wearing a fedora), her black-and-red pantsuit stained liberally with something dull yellow. The other was male, carried on her back, severely emaciated and barely conscious, with the same yellow substance oozing from and beginning to crust over dozens of punctures and gouges, the worst along his spine and head. (The yellow stuff, of course, was his blood. We are all completely blown away by this stunning revelation.)

The Emissary glanced from building to building as they passed, trying to determine which one was their destination. Not having an amulet of her own, she couldn't read any verbal signage, and while some of the visuals explained themselves, none suggested a culling hive¹ to her. If they were to run into any locals outdoors, she hoped the situation - and the Psiioniic's urgent need of care - would be more self-evident, without the need to play charades.

¹ "Culling" means "taking care of," or "nursing back to health." Obviously. Everybody knows that.

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"I...see. And--you say it's more peaceful right? This Beforus." She finally remembers her apple and pops a piece in her mouth.

"Peaceful enough that one might remember it fondly if they were able to and try to emulate its hemocaste relations?"

What an oddly specific scenario. Aradia paused, not quite taking her meaning.

"I suppose so," she said. "It's no utopia, but I certainly remember it fondly. Why, how does the hemospectrum work on Alternia?"

An oddly specific scenario indeed. So much so that it only happened once in all of Alternia. Well. Twice. Technically.

"Well. Those at the top of the spectrum use those at the bottom. Rust to yellow is usually slaves. Psii--he was a slave basically. Sort of. I mean, he did factory work and he had no choice in the matter. He had hardly enough to eat. Olive up aren't usually slaves, but...every caste tends to be used by the ones above them and use the ones below. And you better believe trolls take advantage of it. 'At least I'm not a rust or a brown', a yellow might say. But a green or teal or blue might be keeping them as a servant, using them or killing them as they desire. You don't need to justify killing someone below you. You might get a slap on the wrist if they were someone's property but then again they might say 'it's only a lowblood'. They see the lowest bloods as replaceable. And don't get me started on indigos. Violent ruthless clown monsters."

She's worked up again, mouth twisted in a snarl, "That's why we thought you were lying. A joke, to think the Empress might take a rust as an adviser. The Condesce wouldn't deign to see a rustblood in her presence, let alone take one as a trusted friend."

Aradia listened quietly, lacing her fingers together and resting her chin on the backs of her hands, her expression growing more and more concerned as the explanation progressed. She took a silent moment afterward to process it. Of course it was going to be bad, but... she hadn't anticipated just how bad.

"It used to be like that on Beforus, too," she said at last. "At least, some parts of it. Long, long ago." She'd visited some of those time periods, and done everything she could for the lowbloods that lived then, but... "Only Empress Feferi's reforms were able to stop the practice altogether. She's the one who abolished slavery and the caste system. So by the end, it was the other way around, almost. Highbloods had the duty of taking care of those further down on the spectrum, especially those who for whatever reason couldn't take care of themselves."

Ultimately, of course, the system had far overreached its original boundaries, as systems were wont to do. She'd heard of trolls denied the right to work based on some trivial handicap. But compared to a world where slavery and exploitation were the norm, it must have sounded like paradise.

"Her Majesty... I think she saw our friendship as a symbol of that," she added. "The highest of highbloods, standing as equals with with the lowest of the low... It was very good press for the movement, as I recall. Not that it was an act, of course, we'd already been friends since she was very young."

So, perhaps they could have done better. Maybe if they'd had an heir on their side, if perhaps, they could have convinced someone high up to take up their cause. Things could have changed. She sighs deeply.

"Sounds lovely. So much like what we fought for. I never imagined something quite as--life changing as highbloods caring for the low. Especially those who couldn't care for themselves. Mutations and debilitating injuries--they aren't tolerated. You get culled. I--I think Signless remembered that. Beforus. At least a little. He called them dreams and visions but..."

Culling meant the exact opposite in modern times, but Aradia still recognized its older use, at least. It was tragic. How many millions of lives must have been lost to the Condesce and her tyranny?

"... Signless," Aradia repeated. "Didn't you mention him before? Who is that?" She'd only known a couple of trolls who were never granted signs. One she counted among her best friends, and the other... had been friends with Meulin Leijon.

"Signless is...well his hatch name is Kankri Vantas. And when I say my title is the Disciple, it's because I followed him. His Disciple."

She reached out to the bed and put a hand on the blanket, like mere proximity to Psiioniic might be comforting. Perhaps it is.

"He, the Dolorosa, Psiionic and I traveled together. I guess you could say he was my matesprit. Or my moirail. Or my kismesis. Or--well it's complicated. You could say most of those things about Psiionic as well. Except the hate part. He couldn't really do romantic hate with us."

It's been a long time since she'd had to explain their clusterfuck and longer still since anyone from said clusterfuck was around.

Kankri Vantas - that confirmed what she'd thought. The title Dolorosa was new, but she had a strong feeling it would turn out to be another of the twelve wigglers.

But hey, Disciple, at least you're getting to explain it to somebody familiar with troll romance. She'd had a handful of "it's complicateds" over the sweeps herself, though maybe not as complicated.

"But you think the Signless remembered Beforus," she inferred. It seemed phenomenally unlikely, since the Scratch was supposed to wipe everything clean, but... what about the twenty-four of them wasn't phenomenally unlikely?

Her hand curled in the sheet. She shrugged. It was difficult to put together her thoughts, harder still to string them into sentences. With new information, things became clearer and muddier all at once.

"I think so. Maybe? He had visions. Of a place like Beforus. Or at least how you talk of it. Where things were easier and kinder and simpler. More equal or at least less ridiculously favored to the high bloods. And--I don't know. Somehow it felt like he knew us already, before we really met him."

She looked up, aware this seemed crazy. But then again most of this was.

"He never named the place he dreamed of. But it sounds too similar to be coincidence. I never thought it was real, I thought--it was a dream, simply a dream, but a pure and kind one. Visions was just a word we used."

Curiouser and curiouser. "Well, he was a Seer," she said, placing a hand on her chin. She'd done plenty of exploring on Kankri's planet, just as she had with the other eleven of them, so she knew as much as anybody about the Seer of Blood's personal mythos. "So it's not all that farfetched, actually."

"I suppose," She hedged, "But it seems so strange to me that we were trying to get things back to the way--they were? Like it was all real and we were trying to copy it. I don't think anyone would have believed that.Us."

She shakes her head, "Well even less than the idea that there was another way to live. They would have really called him crazy then."

Day 248, Night ♈ Open

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