Chapter Text
Alternia’s capital dominates the landscape from every vantage point. Its turrets and roofs have been intimidating for hours now, a pride of roarbeasts stretched before the hunt. A thatch of droneships patrols above so there’s no entry that way, and the city’s walls are like stone teeth—thickly decorated with skeletons and clown cult holy murals, the spray of blood from bullets or fists or blades—hemmed in with the frantic tick-tock clicking of cameras and heat sensors and guardworm mandibles. The most viscous of the Conqueri’s people do not like surprises.
Impenetrable, trolls say of Sdegr, and so it is. You're the only exception you know of.
You indulge yourself with a measured pull from the waterskin. The slickness goes down your throat like chilled starwine, and you savor it. Sweat has matted all your travelling fabricarmor to you (you smell like a barn), save the cloak Dolorosa wrapped around your shoulders: Signless, you will cover all of yourself up and pin the edges with decent stones; so help me my graven Mothers if you come home cooked. The night sits heavy on you with its heat. Your bones are chanting a dirge of protest. It has been three weeks since you’ve had any roof over your head, since you’ve not passed every waking hour moving your feet in this constant march. You’ve been navigating ancient deserts and toxic marshland, already treacherous even without the marauders and scoundrels roaming their territory, waiting for intruders. Intruders like you. Exhaustion clings to you much heavier than any humid night air.
You’ll keep your word and arrive on time, but you probably should have rested. Your journey was postponed by two nights, given that walking had become something you were genuinely not sure whether swordpoint or salvation could coax you to. You’ve never shared a heat with your matesprit before, after all. Your first had passed long before you met Disciple and the second came while you were fleeing an army and she was leagues away. This, your third, snuck up on you. Memories of sweat and thick curled hair in your fingers, of bitten lips, your mixed laughter spilling, pooling sweetly between your bodies as you moved—they have entrenched themselves firmly in your thoughts, a comfort and a truly effective distraction, more than the ongoing soreness between your legs. Next time, you will not relish Disciple claiming you any less-but you will make time to recover from her affections. Since you set out, you’ve been swilling water at an unwise rate, been dragging your limbs along like lead, been blinking away a feverish sleep you cannot seem to hold out against for more than a few hours. You're embarrassing yourself.
You hang the waterskin back around you, licking your cracked lips, and prepare yourself for a dead sprint.
The way in starts with a series of guardworms who, yes, will feel the vibrations of your footsteps—but you have your humbox for them and you hurl it before you encounter their tunnels. Bulbous, pale shapes large as legless hoofbeasts erupt in geysers of dust. Guardworms are all gut, a hollow filled with multitude rows of teeth and digestive slimes, mandibles grabbing for their prey—but you skitter past. A younger one snaps viciously at your heels, but won’t abandon its tunnel entirely for just one slab of meat.
You crouch low as you move, aware of the wall’s eyes. You are no highblooded mountain, alright; you're small enough to hide in the plumes kicked up by the wind. You must wait for the precise winds though, your feet must follow a specific pattern. Skeletons clatter a warning against the wall. There is a lattice of irregular heat and pressure sensors hidden beneath the blackened earth, and gun turrets glaring down readily for any twitch of disturbance. Sweat blurs your eyes, your bloodpusher writhes in your chest. You cannot rest; you have nowhere to hide. You fling yourself up again, following the steps counted out in your mind’s eye.
One, two—and here you must leap—your weary legs falter. You do not question the miracle that keeps you upright. You are so close you could count the cracks in the wall. The way there is paved in cameras. You give yourself a second to memorize the flashing of their bright yellow lenses. Before your first trip to Sdegr, Psiionic drilled you on these six faulty cameras until you thought you would scream. A boot out of alignment, a falter to your stride, an ear caught on film—his wretched obstacle course was impossible. The lag between shots only gave a millisecond window. How could you possibly move fast enough? He socked you when you complained and made you run it until now? It comes second nature.
You collapse against the wall. You can skirt the stones just like this, back flattened, cloak in your hands to prevent it dancing out into anyone’s view. As you do, you’re panting hard enough that if you didn’t know better, you’d think you were fresh from sprinting several leagues. Great Conqueri—you have only one desire in life, and it is to sit down. You grit your fangs and keep moving anyway. Until the Empire falls, you haven't earned the right to be tired. Your purpose would move you even if you were ash and bones.
Still, though. A chair. A chair, and another sip of water.
Finally, your fingertips recognize the cracks in the stone. You shuck your boots and slip your claws into the holds you carved as a younger troll.
…Of course, you might just have a slight ulterior motive for being here. You have plenty of meetings to attend and plots to supervise and faithful to comfort—undeniably, this will further your cause—but you are still a troll and so you may as well also add that it has been whole perigees without seeing your kismesis. The Condescension has had him sailing the Blacknest and fighting the natives along the coast, all the way on the other side of the planet. You are used to long stretches with his absence—you relish them for he is the very definition of a pompous dumbass—but seven perigees is apparently your limit and here you are, in his city.
By the time you turn up at Hospicte’s door, she just raises an eyebrow at you. “Took you long enough,” she drawls, opening the door wider for you to come in. “It’s nearly dawn. What were you doing?” You stumble through the door, wishing you had a better explanation—you almost passed out in the streets twice. There’s a sour pulse behind your eyes. You’re probably sick, but acknowledging it just makes you stubborn.
“But I know you live for the anticipation,” you say instead, letting warmth drive the fatigue from your voice. “Hello, Hospicte. It has been too long.” She grins the minute she closes the door and—oh, damn. You can outright see her working up to a bow. You move to preempt this. She's given plenty of time to evade the hug of a sweaty, dust-caked traveler, but Hospicte still latches onto you like a fruit press. You’re a little surprised that there’s no knife. It’s nice. Also, you’re about to fall asleep in her hair.
“Welcome back to my hive, Starvent,” Hospicte says as you separate, just brightly to make you sigh. You hear a click and don’t wait to figure out what it is—just duck away. Not a moment too soon either. A plume of fire spits itself out after you from the ceiling, venting the smell of kerosene and stinging your nose before it splutters out. Hospicte has her eyes scrunched in concern when you finish coughing. “That was sloppier than usual. Are you not feeling well?”
Admittedly, flinging yourself directly to your ass was not particularly graceful. Neither are the greeting rituals of Empire trolls, though. “Don’t get any ideas,” you croak. “You may simply consider this chemical warfare. I’m afraid I’m not at my best.”
“Oh no, really? I have medicinal tea—the good kind, straight off the black market. I’ll get you some, yeah?”
You have exactly zero desire for Hospicte’s obviously poisoned tea. “Thank you,” you tell her politely. What you’d really like is to sit and chat, continue to learn from this remarkable troll, but your vision is already blurring again. Without anything to sprint at, you can’t resist it. “…Actually, forgive me—can we put off catching up until tomorrow? I think I might still be able to sleep this off.”
“Of course!” Hospicte escorts you with shooing hands to the closet that has become your residence these trips to Sdegr. Houseguests hide better when the extra respiteblocks are all empty (besides, it’s cozy). “And when you wake up—should we talk about scripture, some? Maybe?”
Her hands are clasped and everything and for a minute you are the leader of the revolution again—you are the Salvation, the Christ-figure Signless, this is your flock, your Hospicte, so greedy to fill her claws with change and magic and mercy. You smile a little. “It would be an honor,” you say.
Once you’ve closed the door after you, though, you are back to being Signless the troll who is sick as a barkbeast and could probably keep time with the relentless pounding in his head—now joined by a churning stomachache. Your eyes are dancing with lights you doubt are really there. This is probably Kulkenar flu. You are probably stuck on your ass for the foreseeable future. Your family will be worried, your contacts will have to put up with you sniffling, and you yourself are annoyed—the only possible avenue for all that annoyance is your kismesis. He is not here.
There is a mug of warm tea waiting for you outside the door when you peek outside. You smile a little more. After you drain it, you drink the rest of your second-to-last water skin. You then flop into your washtub of sopor. Slap some slime onto your face and neck halfheartedly in an effort to stave off nightmares, and you don’t fall asleep—you get dragged abruptly into unconsciousness.
xx-tgc-xx
You wake up with pain wrenching up your sides and your body nearly paralyzed, except for the frantic shivering. Steam is rising from your fever-baked sopor. As you wake, the pain sharpens into knife-slits. You are pretty sure your guts are bursting out of your abdomen.
You contort your fingers to your side with unbelievable effort. Your skin isn’t split (yet), but you are feeling your flesh twitching like electrocution, rapid and unnatural—you don’t even know what muscles these are—a fresh bolt of agony crawls through you. Your thinkpan gives up and you pass the fuck out, aghast that this is your end, that it is death by tea. Why did you drink it, why did you take it for a kind gesture?
You swim back to the surface what must only be seconds later—you have clawed through your skin, wonderful, but there’s not enough blood to have been unconscious for more than a minute—and. And the pain is incredible. You heave yourself out of the sopor. What poison does this--? Splatter to the floor and bite back the whimpers of pain that want to come out. How do you treat--? Your sides shiver jerkily. You will crawl. You will, you will think of something to crawl to—
“Starvent?” You hear the knock through the tempest of agony. Hospicte’s voice. “Are you alright in there? I heard you tip the washbasin over.”
She’s not one to gloat, your brain rapidly supplies. She is not cruel, only devious.
This isn’t tea.
A fresh scream of agony claws through your hide. Your claws snap into the flesh again and you can feel the line of muscle writhing there, like it’s trying to tear out of your flesh. You retch.
Hospicte knocks again. “Si—Starvent?”
“Fine!” You choke out. Your voice is dust. You heave yourself upright enough to, you don’t know, not sound like you’re writhing in your death throes. Your arms are shaking so badly you are about to land on your face. Stifled squeals of pain climb onto your tongue. You inject a trace of laughter into your tone and pray that it does not sound hysterical. “I’m fine. Just a dream.”
“Bad one?” She sounds sympathetic. Oh Conqueri, you cannot maintain polite conversation while you die. The wriggler that persists in your thinkpan screams for Dolorosa; your adult mind wants its moirail, the rest of you wants Disciple and to tell her that you love her, just the once more—
You nearly scream as another wrath of agony boils up your side.
“I see you drank the tea, though,” Hospicte sounds pleased. “Good?”
“Very much so,” you manage between gritted fangs. Your arms are giving way. You sink to your elbows, panting. The muscle spasms are constricting your lungs too tight, your head is spinning. There’s a pulse speeding between your legs, heavy as your bloodpusher, your body’s last act of trying to process its death. It is not a comfort. Your vision grows murky.
You do not want her to find you rotting in here. She does not deserve that, but you can’t move anymore, and so at the very least, she should not have to listen to you die. “May I,” you wheeze. “May I have some more tea?” You don’t hear her response, but her footsteps recede. You labor with breaths, your mouth drips with saliva onto the floor, your muscles go slack. You do not know if you are unconscious or not, but it hurts terribly.
And when the pain on your right side abruptly gives way, you gasp in oxygen so hard you have to cough it back out immediately, lungs clenching as they expand. Your palm clutches the sudden lack of pain automatically. Your thinkpan tries valiantly to restart at the unfamiliar sensation it finds. Alarming--this is sweat, and you feel skin, and it doesn’t hurt, but the shape is wrong. The texture is wrong. Hard, ridged. Like fingers, bony and spread over your waist. And, ah, you are the wrong shape, that’s what it is. You have curved out instead of in. You cannot think with your body screaming its distress, your left side is still trying to explode—
And abruptly that gives way too. You pant shallowly, shaking like a hatchling, fingers skating over your reshaped sides. When you push, firm, elastic sensation responds, like stretched cloth. Your muscles flutter tighter in response. You do not think, not for a while; just wallow in the relief of not hurting. Slowly, you register fully that your waist has bowed out like the edges of a fruit, that your sides are striped with hard ridges, that your stomach—which was bloated before you attempted sleep—is cradled suspiciously well by this new shape.
You remain confused for a moment longer, because no, you know this is not the case. You know of trolls like this, but you are not one of them. You would know, wouldn’t you, at almost ten sweeps? You would know. And you’re a mutant, Conqueri—you’re already sewn through with hemochrome anomalies and the vestigial fins Dolorosa had to cut from you when you were young and horns like something filed down. There is no way that out of all the genes that could have survived whatever inauspicious mix of slurry made you, you got ones so rare that the National Census says it’s one in every fifty thousand made the cut, a tiny subspecies of positives? No. There’s a mistake. What your hands are frantically pushing and sliding against is not possible.
You cannot be pregnant.