fleetlogs | => PHERES: Abscond.

=> PHERES: Abscond.

=> PHERES: Abscond.

=> FLEETBOUND POST. [refiningSpacetime - FIN]
=> MARDUK: Call your guide. [FIN]
=> RICCIN: Retrieve the damsel in distress. [FIN]
=> HINNOM: Lead him home. [FIN]
=> FLEETBOUND POST. [activatingAggro- FIN]
=> SIPARA: Fetch your dumb moirail. [FIN]
=> PHERES: Wake up. [FIN]

SUMMARY: Taking drinks from strangers is generally a bad idea. Pheres needs to be picked up from a party, but life is hard when your moirail is out of town and all of your friends are terrible. Luckily, there's always Fleetbound!

WARNINGS: None! Except for Pheres being thoroughly depressing in Lead him home.

THIS HAS BEEN FINALLY EDITED. For like the third time. Due to POV-switching shenanigans, you may occasionally encounter weird shifts / incorrect verb pluralisation at points that I missed in switching from 3rd person to 2nd person POV. Sorry! :c

For the most part, though, typoes should be fixed and continuity is now more accurate!

ALSO: Follow the story through the links above to ensure you're reading the correct, edited threads, please and thank youu

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Finally, his digestion sack completely empty, and no matter how much his foodchute constricts with distress, there's simply nothing else to up-end. Straightening up is finally a possibility, and he does so, swiping at his face with the back of a hand in the process. The resulting mess is disgusting.

He feels disgusting. His mouth tastes repulsive, his snout is bleeding, his orbs are leaking, and with the way his pan is aching, he wouldn't be surprised if it was dripping straight out of his soundclots. The dim lights of the sewer feel entirely too bright and too dim, all at once, and he is never going to drink again.

Or jump again. Or ever come into a city: he never gets into these sort of situations, when he just sticks to the countryside, and the trolls are much nicer out there, anyway. A country troll has never threatened to pluck out his eyes.

Oh. Wait. Wasn't he with someone?

"Hinnom," he calls, and opening his mouth was a mistake, because he can practically taste the odor in the air. He gags, pinching his nose, and gingerly starts to walk. He just saw the little troll. He couldn't have gone far.

Castor isn't responding, and Hinnom's starting to worry. Pheres was able to jump both of them, but they're flesh. What if he left Castor?

Ze isn't even sure how far the leash stretches. What if it broke? What if --

The leash tugs back. Castor's too far to hear, too far to see, but he tugged back, and Hinnom can sense the direction. Up.

Oh! He's at the hive already.

The walls are stone, and damp with residue. Somewhere off in the distance, Pheres can hear the sound of water roaring, but it's hard to tell exactly where it's coming from: every surface, save the walkway he is on, is rounded.

He feels like he's walking through some vast, stone creature's intestine. Pheres suspects he's walking in a fucking sewer, but no, no, he's not going to think about that. Sewers are a vestige of disease, and misfortune, and feral trolls who'll slit your throat and wear your skin.

(Don't think about that. He didn't survive drones just to get eaten by some frothing lunatic.)

"Hinnom," he calls out again, rounding the corner, and the sound of his voice echoing back sets his teeth on edge. Everything here is setting off that reaction, to be honest. What he'd thought were lights from above are actually just lightgrubs nestled into the high dome of the ceiling, their flourescent bodies flickering as they feed on whatever is up there.

Algae? Mold?

How fucking far underground are they?

Now that ze's noticed it, Hinnom can feel the gentle tug of the leash even as ze turns away. Ze's still got to go retrieve Pheres, and then they'll go.

How they'll avoid the dead, without Castor there to guide them - and why Castor isn't there, with them - ze's not sure. But they'll figure it out. Pheres got them here, right?

Backstepping is easy as anything. Hinnom knows the sewers like the back of zir hand, and it's not like ze went far: into a wall-niche, across the bridge and down the hall. Not even a five minute walk!

So ze're a little baffled to find Pheres has followed them.

He's walking across the bridge, his hands braced on the railing and his body curled up like he's about to drop down and die. Maybe he is! There's bile all over his face, but there's maroon, too, dripping from his snout and all the way down his shirt front.

It's blood. There's blood on his face and his shirt, and his eyes are white as the dead roaming the sewers around them, and everything in Hinnom's pan screams that being seen by him is a terribad idea.

Ze never did make sure he wasn't dead, did they? Zir lusus can't see anything more than light, but she knows there's only one source of light that bright down in the sewers, and she's chittering her mouthpiece together in a quiet demand.

Hinnom can't refuse it. Ze backs up, quiet as a mouse, and presses zimself tight against the stone wall, until ze's squashed flat up against a pipe.

Maybe he'll look less scary when he's closer. But just in case, they yank the leash again: not a request, like the previous times, but a demand that Castor get down here.

(Ze should've kept more ghosts leashed, and not just him. Stupid. So stupid.)

Where is he?

Dying down here is starting to look like an actual possibility. His snout won't stop drizzling blood, and walking is starting to get difficult: the fear of being lost here drove him at first, but exhaustion is starting to set in past that.

He keeps a tight grip on the rail. If he's going to collapse, it won't be in the river he's sure must be running far below. It's flat determination that carries him to the end of the walkway, and back to the safety of the concrete.

He's one foot off of the walkway when the room lurches as his walking struts decide to fold under him. Pheres hits the concrete knees first, his palms only just managing to hit the ground before his face does. It takes all of his concentration to stay like that, face inches above the ground: it should be so easy to just push back up and keep walking, but he can't muster the energy.

From here, he can't see anything but the rough texture of the stone under his palm, and the steady drip of blood from his snout as each rosewood drop hits the ground and splatters.

Pheres makes it as far as the end of the walkway before he staggers, and falls. The room is silent save for the rushing of the river and the sound of his ragged breathes, high and desperate in the empty air.

Hinnom's pityglands are working overtime now, and there's an unfamiliar crawling feeling deep in their gut as they listen to Pheres gasp, but breathing doesn't mean anything: even Castor does it, when he's not thinking. Habit is a hard thing to break, even after you're dead.

It's horrible to listen to, though!

Maybe instead of waiting for Castor, they'll just... go?

Here's the thing about ghosts:

They can move as quickly as a thought, in theory. There's no flesh weighing them down, no breath to make them slow, and while it takes them awhile to forget the rules and just do it, older ghosts can pour through physical matter like walls and dirt and stone like water through a crack.

In reality, most ghosts simply can't. There's no gizzards left to stop them, but they remember there should be, and forgetting is an art that takes practice. Even Castor drags his feet, sometimes, when he's feeling especially corporeal, and on days like that, Hinnom has to dawdle, zir steps until they match a blueblood's heavy stride.

Perhaps the fear has made him remember he's dead, though. The walk from the hive to the sewers is a fifteen minute walk, but it only must be five minutes before the room lights with Castor's familiar off-blue as he slips and slides down through the ceiling, heels first.

He's barely corporeal: somewhere between an imprint and a real troll, his features worn away to the impression of eyes, a nasal hole, the gaping mouth. But ze can't doubt it's Castor, not when the leash is tied around his waist so firmly, the doubled strand of zir maroon psionic aura stretching from him to zim.

And ze'd recognise Castor's voice anywhere.

"Putain - enfin fini!" he growls. "Vous disparutes! Et j'retourne chez moi, et -" He flings up his hands. "Vous absentâtes! Que? Tu es un gosse à la con: à cause de ça, vous devez être prudent, tu dois rester près de moi!"

Even when he goes off on his crazy gibberish.

"I don't understand you," ze snaps, keeping zir voice low. Ze knows a few words, enough pidgin to keep track when Castor goes off in one of his fits - but not when he's spitting words like acid, one after another until the pronunciation is slurred. "J.. j'ne parle! Shhh."

It'd be so much easier if ze didn't have to speak aloud.

"Merde," he snaps. "Vous parlez français, pourquoi tu mens?

"Shhh!"

"Que? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a -- ahh."

Castor follows zir gaze to Pheres: at the sound of zir piping voice, he's started to stir, and pressing zimself flat against the pipe, Hinnom tries not to breathe.

Edited 2014-12-05 17:25 (UTC)

Each passing moment leaves Pheres more and more tired. He thought that if he stayed still long enough, perhaps the world would stop spinning: but it hasn't, and worse yet, there's just black draping the edges of his vision, the familiar precursor of a collapse.

There's a reason he doesn't use his psionics for recreation. Even the effects of small jumps are annoying: a nosebleed and the resulting nausea are easily managed, but they're only worth it if it saves him a long walk with heavy books, or if they keep a customer from culling him.

Big jumps like this.. well. He was lucky he was awake when he landed. He's lucky he's awake right now, because the ringing in his pan and the darkness crowding his vision are hinting it won't be the cause for long.

Fuck.

There's a sound nearby, and Pheres can't tell the source. It might be the river, it might be voices.. or it might be the feet of some hideous sewer-beast, come to eat him alive.

Or it might be Hinnom. They have to be around here somewhere, don't they?

"Over here," he rasps, dragging his head up to peer into the gloom. The light off of his psionics is more a hindrance than it is a help: it illuminates a few feet ahead of him, like a cone, and the light only makes the gloom of the room seem deeper.

He can't see what made the noise. If it's something come to kill him, well.. fine. He'd prefer to die when he was still awake.

"Hinnom?"

Edited 2014-12-05 17:50 (UTC)

Castor stares.

The way that Pheres's eyes are lit up was less noticeable up above, where the light of the day and the glare of the sun had washed it out to the point of near invisibility. Down here, with only the dimmergrubs high above, it's glaring. He looks like a ghoul.

He sounds like one, too.

"He's not dead," Castor says, slowly, like he's questioning it. He's lapsed back into standard, thank fuck. "So..."

Hinnom waits. Sometimes it takes him a moment to think up a plan. But he always comes up with good ones.

"We have to take him back to the hive."

He usually comes up with good ones. Ze shakes zir head furiously, and hisses, as low as they can: "No!"

"If he's not dead already," ze continues, all in a rush, "then he's gonna die, and then he'll turn, and it'll be awful, 'cause not like shit we can do 'gainst a revenant --"

"My god. You're a little angel." Hinnom doesn't know jack about religion, though Castor's tried to teach them, but ze knows that isn't a compliment just by the way he says it. "He saved you from the drones. We can't just leave him to die."

Ze doesn't see why not. Their mom clacks her mandibles, unsure: she can't see Castor, ze doesn't think, but she really doesn't like when they argue, so ze zips it.

(And.. okay, because he does have a point. When someone does something for you, you gotta pay it back: good or bad, that's just a rule!)

(No one ever said it had to be a good pay-back. Leaving someone to be eaten by ghouls is still a reward, 'cause they're more likely to end up as a ghost that way, instead of just fading. But. It's a pretty shitty one.)

When ze doesn't say anything else, just huffs, Castor takes it as agreement, and pulls himself together. As he spoke, he materialised more: rattlereeds and a speechwaddle for sound and lips to form them, but now he forces the rest, until he's less of a blur and more of a person, with clothes and horn-stubs and a body all between them.

And, wrapping zir telekinesis around him like a shroud, he approaches Pheres.

Edited 2014-12-05 18:12 (UTC)

That's it, he's decided: he's going to die down here. The thought should be more depressing, but when he turns it over in his head, there's only a sense of grudging acceptance.

This is what he deserves, probably.

Pheres lives like all the feeds say that redbloods should: he keeps himself in his cart, with his books and his taxidermy, and he works. When he deals with others, he's well-dressed, docile, and helpful to the higher castes: in short, he's respectable.

In short, he acts as he ought to, and for the most part, it works out. When things go wrong - when a customer tries to cull him, or a deal goes badly - well, it's because he slipped, made a comment he shouldn't have. Wore the wrong clothes. When he behaves properly, it works.

It doesn't earn him much respect, no matter how polite he is. It doesn't get him many friends. But he's never died, and it's only when he decides to go out, live a little, and act like everyone else - immoral, disrespectful, churlish - that he ever seems to come close.

(Even now, he knows that's not precisely right. Most of the time, he's gone out and come hive the next evening or by midnight at the latest: embarrassed, maybe, but perfectly fine.)

(But he's bleeding on a sewer floor, in the one place that his moirail would never think to look to retrieve him, and that means he's going to die here alone, where his body will be eaten by squeakbeasts and grubs. Right now, the gloomy thoughts feel right, and that's all that matters.)

He gives up on staying upright, and curls up on the ground, his horn scraping against the concrete. His eyes are so heavy, and all he wants to do is sleep, and Hinnom is gone, and he can't walk any further.

So he closes them, and he lets the darkness settle in.

Edited 2014-12-05 18:32 (UTC)

Pheres has curled into a ball, like a grub ready to die. By the time Castor gets to him, his breathing has slowed, but he's not dead. Just asleep, on the concrete floor splattered with his fluids.

Ze tries not to gag as Castor bends down next to him and picks him up, careful as he sometimes carries Hinnom. Ze can feel the rasp and slide of Pheres's weight against his telekinesis as Castor returns, but thankfully, not too well: it's Castor controlling it with the ease of sweeps of practice, and the sensation is like touching bone through flesh.

"You'll have to play look-out today," Castor warns zim. "But we won't go deep, just to the pipe."

Hinnom bobs their head in a nod, but they can't help the dubious look they shoot towards Pheres's horns. He might be able to fit, even with his dumbo shoulders, but his rack is kinda huge.

Oh, well. If they won't fit, Castor can always snap one off.

Edited 2014-12-05 18:40 (UTC)

In the end, Pheres gets to keep his horns. Going up the pipe takes the velvet off the sides of his bottom set, leaving maroon streaks on the metal behind, but Hinnom goes up first, and between zir pulling and Castor's pushing, they manage to get him into the hive proper.

Hinnom's hive is the old catacomb where they first found Castor, back when ze'd been nameless and small and fresh from the caverns. They'd thought it safe, because his presence had kept away ghost and the walking dead alike, and ze'd never expected to find the source.

His presence still keeps the dead away, and sweeps and sweeps of work have replaced doors, set locks, and made it thoroughly impenetrable to the living, as well. The walls are padded with fabric, and anything and everything ze's salvaged from the catacombs over the years: a few things from the culling pits, where the bodies used to be dumped and burned, but mostly gifts left behind for the ghosts in the sweeps after.

Recently, ze's set up a ruperacoon that Castor found above-ground, and helped zim haul down. Hinnom doesn't like to use it, after sweeps of sleeping dry, but the slime helps when ze's injured or sick, and so it only makes sense to dump Pheres in.

Ze curls up around the outside. Castor's use of zir telekinesis always makes zim tired, and now that ze's in the safety of zir hive, it's turned into outright exhaustion.

"Gonna sleep," Hinnom tells Castor, and ze doesn't even have to ask: he drapes them with one of the shrouds off of the wall, a nice, thick one they stole from a seadweller's bonerest, and that tiny use of telekinesis uses what feels like zir last drop of energy.

Ze sleeps.

> PHERES: WAKE UP.

Edited 2015-03-31 01:43 (UTC)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

=> PHERES: Abscond.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

2/2

no subject

no subject

[pheres is drunk and sad and full of issues] [but he's still got energy to judge] [:(]

no subject

no subject