Chapter Text
Though, to be honest, it wasn’t much fury any more as it was an achingly, numbing sorrow that had filled your limbs. Your heart was heavy and your wings weary… Perhaps it was time for a change of scenery.
Still, the boiling rage that had driven you to murdering the troll back there lingers; it’s both directed at yourself and the world in general. Reliving that was not something you’d really wanted to do. You can feel it numbing your limbs, burning the remaining husk of a heart to nothing more than ashes and embers. You needed something for release— something for revenge.
But, well. You’d already killed the intruder.
Vaguely, you realise you had started all of this with an actual objective in mind.
Oh, right. You were supposed to be remembering just how you’d died.
A moment of fear strikes you; you’d almost forgotten that fact, too swept up in the moment of such a horrific memory to remember the fact that it was just that, a memory. You couldn’t lose yourself to these things, could you?
The sudden looming fear that you might be perpetually lost in these things is enough to set you straight.
Still, the anger, the fury, how it lingers, burning you into a husk of a man and leaving nothing in its wake but the hollow shell of a troll who’s lost something so dear, so near to his heart, that one could even say it had become his heart itself…
Revenge. You remind yourself of that thought, and you toss it around for a moment or two. Revenge against who? Did it even matter? You wonder who you would pick a fight against if given the chance.
Oh yeah. Duh.
The waves beneath cease their churning. Onwards you fly with no discretion, letting the wind carry you wheresoever it willed. With mild, empty fascination, you watch the water level itself, choppy waves forming angular blocks. The bricks and cobblestones form before they change colour, but soon, that shift happens as well, a rippling tan and grey filling their grainy surfaces. The ocean on all sides begins to vanish, swallowed whole by this swiftly expanding plane of cobblestone.
The sky fades to a pale pink, meaning it’s almost day time; the sun is behind you, however, much to your quiet appreciation.
The storm clouds this time are not gusted away, but rather, vanish behind you as you advance at a breakneck speed. The sky is clear now, and the pink moon dangles over head. A faint scattering of stars is buried in the sky, but the sheer brilliance of the sun has nearly swallowed them up.
As you fly, the stones begin to ripple, as though invisible fingers are pushing at them from underneath the blanket of stone. Suddenly, buildings spring up from them, cascading showers of stones as they fly from the earth. They shoot up from the ground in a cascade of violent rumblings, the earth visibly trembling; you can feel the vibrations in the air as you fly, sending your wings into a bit of a tizzy. The speed of the buildings surpasses your flying, and you watch as a city rises from the earth before you, rolling forth in a massive wave of rising stone.
As loosed cobblestones shower on the ones still very much attached to the earth, they flush with colour; from each stone spring something else. They churn, morphing from their hard, rocky exterior into a fluid ball of colour; the ball the stretches, grows, forming any number of things. Booths, vendors, blankets, door ways, windows, awnings, street lamps, even trolls morph from these strange little balls of energy born from cold stone.
You hardly take notice.
The buildings grow in size, height, frequency; you find yourself dipping and swerving more than you would like at your current speed, so, reluctantly, you slow down. You’re heading into the heart of the city. You aren’t really sure how you know this, but you do, and right now, you aren’t really one to question it.
Suddenly it strikes you that you don’t remember what you were doing before this. Something to do with… Mindfang? No, that couldn’t be it. She was dead. She’d been dead for almost a sweep now, you knew that.
Yet an endless rage burns at you, urges you to fly faster despite the sharp turns and angular alleys you have to navigate.
Your lance is in your hand. You aren’t really sure when it got there, but you aren’t going to question it.
You can feel it, you’re getting closer, there’s something tugging at you, drawing you forth—
In the center of the town square stands a troll, upon a crude stage built for temporary purposes. His hair is an unruly mass of tangles and knots. It sticks out at all odd angles, defying any sort of logical gravity, but then again, troll hair had a habit of doing that. He’s massive, at least a foot and a half taller than you. His clothes are ragged, dark grey where black has faded from years of wear and tear. The faint stains of every imaginable colour paint his chest and knees mostly. His horns are ridiculously large, almost as ridiculous as the Condesce herself; the trade mark paint marks his face, but even that cannot hide the malicious sneer that is in his features.
At his feet is a kneeling brownblood, one of your own caste. You feel a pang of terror before the fury engulfs you, swallowing you whole and shaking you to your very core. You cannot fly fast enough. You know this.
A head tumbles away, a fountain of burnt sienna springing from their neck. Their expression remains that of a ghost of horror.
The Grand Highblood laughs.
With a fierce roar you launch yourself at him, and he whirls around, greeting you with a grin that could make death himself stop in his tracks.
Sweeps of loathing crashes down upon you, coursing through your veins, rushing alongside adrenaline and the ever present fear. You’d long since grown accustomed to Chucklevoodoos and they did little to addle you, but his eyes could stare a man to oblivion, cold and vicious as they were.
As you charge, he raises a hand. In the brief moment that you’re close enough to deal damage, he swipes at you, and you do what you can to brace yourself.
Abruptly it feels as though reality slows to a mind numbing crawl; you cannot move fast enough to block the blow, even though you know it’s coming, you know you have enough time to protect yourself. Still, your arms refuse to agree with you. You catch sight of his hands. They’re filthy, with dirt mostly, but you can see crusty flakes of dried blood under his claw-like fingernails, all colours of the spectrum aside from the Condesce and his own. It disgusts you.
The blow is heavier than you expected, and you’re sent reeling away, crashing into the dirt. This does nothing to deter you. You tuck and roll as best as you can despite being slammed into the earth, folding your wings in the hopes that they would not be too severely damaged; however, this is in vain. One of them is bent beneath you and you cry out, a bright shock of pain searing your spine and blossoming behind your eyes. Your vision wavers as the pain brings tears to your eyes, but you grit your teeth; if nothing else, you were damned determined.
You spring to your feet, abandoning the approach from the air with a damaged wing, and you swing blindly at him with your lance. Lazily, he swats you away again, this time sending you to his left. You sprawl out on the rough, wooden platform that is the makeshift stage. An infuriated growl rumbles in your chest, transforming into a roar as it rises in your throat, until it bursts from your lips as an angered cry. Again you rise to your feet. Again you charge.
The sun climbs ever higher, the pale pink of the sky trying to fade into a pale blue as day time begins to settle around you.
This time, you duck, dodging his massive hand. Your lance is swing around, sharpened tip grazing his chest; with some amount of satisfaction you see indigo spurt from a fresh (yet shallow) wound. Your satisfaction would be short lived.
Both hands reach for you this time. They surround you, corner you, eradicating any chance of escape. His grip his crushing, and you’re sure you feel a rib crack as he squeezes you; summoning all of your will power you bite back the cries of agony, the pain nearly driving you to the point of nausea.
Gruffly you are tosses like a ragdoll through the air; this time, when your figure lands on solid stone, you do not move to rise again. It hurts— it hurts to breathe, fuck, how are you going to get out of this one. Your mind is racing, your fury faltering, survival suddenly becoming that much more important than revenge—
Her shadow approaches you as a slithering shape, her sauntering figure looming over head. You dare not avert your eyes. If this was to be your end, well, so be it, but you were going to face it with a brave face if nothing else.
“Well well, it would seem the rebellion’s li’l pet decided to pay us a fuckin’ visit,” the Condesce coos. She bends over at the waist, hands on her hips, as she leans forward to look you over. Her hair is a roiling mass behind her, flowing in an unnatural way, as though submerged in water. Her horns Rise from her head, ornately decorated with the jewels of the royals;obnoxiously loud bangles don her wrists and irritatingly distracting chains and jewels encircle her neck. The circlet of the queen is upon her forehead, marked with the crest of her bloodline.
You think you hear the Highblood’s laughter behind her, but at the moment you can hear little than your heartbeat filling your ears.
“Shame, that. You would’a made for a fantastic fuckin’ pawn in all’a this.”
With a snap of her fingers, the crest vanishes, replaced with a symbol you know all too well.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fu
You shove yourself to your feet jerkily, limbs acting on a will of their own
ck fuck fuck fuck fuc
You shuffle a little to the right, grabbing your lance from where it had rolled out of your hand
k fuck fuck fuck f
You take it by the hilt, then turn it around, having to hold onto the middle of it
uck fuck fuck fuck
The point is aimed perfectly at your chest, and your arms press it forward just enough to break the fabric, a prick of brown pooling at the tip
fuck fuck fuck fuck fuc
“Toodloo, sweet prince of the forest.” Her smile is sickeningly sweet. “Too bad no one is around to miss you any more.”
The cerulean symbol in her circlet is almost enough to bring tears to your eyes.
Your arms move away from your body, pulling the lance away.
There isn’t much pain. Your end is a little too swift for that.
A final thought crosses your mind, as you watch, rapt, as chocolate waterfalls burst from your chest and come to soak your lance.
Your dear weapon took your love’s life and your own. Ironic, in a sense.
Cracks form, reality crumbles. The ungainly mass of grey and black and fuchsia before you melts away into the background of violent, flying colours. Everything around you is being torn apart at the seams, much more rapidly than things had changed before; already the city as vanished, and all that’s really left are the shadowy images of the Condesce, the Highblood, and the lance currently piercing your chest. In a flurry of movement, those vanish as well, and you’re pitched into darkness.
It’s endless. It’s empty. It’s cold.
You feel as though you’re nowhere and everywhere at once. For a brief moment it registers that you no longer have a body. Just, consciousness, floating in this endlessness. You close your eyes, or at the very least, allow the darkness to swallow your vision as well.
It’s almost soothing. Not existing, that is.
The ground rushes up to you so fast you nearly collapse.
You lurch forward, nearly pitching yourself to the floor. Instantly your hands fly to your chest, searching for the gaping hole you knew… wasn’t there?
You take in your surroundings. Your husktop is still shut down, your couch is where you left it, the chair is still tucked under the desk. Tinkerbull is hovering just near the trap door and he turns around to face you, surprise in his chirps. He acts as though you just left.
Heavy, shaky foot steps guide you to sit down at your husktop as you reboot it slowly.
You had a lot to think about.