=> PHERES: Abscond.

[refiningspacetime]

=> 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

Comments

=> MARDUK: Do a favor for AA.

[forgottensebayt]

Picture this: two kids, frolicking through the streets of Capitol City.

It's a nice image. Hold it in your mind. The streets are clean, the sun high in the sky: one of the children is swathed in ratty oiled cotton that must be older than they are, but the other is bare-skinned, her gray skin flushed with a healthy green. Their lusii are playing behind them. They're probably laughing.

Unfortunately, that's not what's actually happening. But it's a wonderful thought, and Marduk clings to it. Maybe if she pictures it for long enough, it'll become real.

The reality, of course, is that she's currently sludging through the sewers. If she had ever contemplated going through the underground waste transportation system before, then perhaps this wouldn't be so terrible: she would've had expectations that would've been flouted and surpassed in turn.

But she's never thought about it much. Perhaps the sewers were metal! Perhaps all their waste was carried away by trolly, or by drones, or by the fervent wishes of those involved: it was all equally likely, as far as she was concerned, and so every new thing has come as an unpleasant surprise. It took her awhile to realise that she needed to keep her skirt hiked up around her knees, although at least she had the wisdom to immediately hide her sash in her sylladex, but there's damp on her shoes, and things keep dripping in her hair. She tries not to think about what they are.

The walls reek of mold and sewage and fluids, and her eyes are watering as she progresses. Not that it matters much: she can't see a damn thing, anyway. Trolls are built to see in all levels of the dark, and so there's no lights built into the walls, no light at all but the occasional streamers from the sewer grates far above. Unfortunately, jades are the exception. Everything around her is black and smelly and damp, and if it weren't for the hand she keeps clamped on Hinnom's shoulder, she'd have already fallen into the water and died. The rushing of water to her left is the only way she can tell it's even there.

If she did, she reflects glumly, Hinnom would probably be delighted to have another ghost for zir collection.

"Hinnom," she says, trying her best not to breathe between words, "I don't ask as a discourtesy, but -- are we there yet?"

[postalprestidigitation]

Normally, at this time of day, Hinnom would be trawling the neighborhoods, letting zir spectre and ghouls stretch their leashes as far as they needed. Each one would take a letter, and off they'd go, depositing them into the little niches and holes of each hiveblock apartment, and the occasional single or duplex.

It was boring. The ghosts did all the work, really: all ze ever did was stand there with their light-deflecting device open and the mailbag cocked on a hip, and wait. Sometimes a ghost would tug too far on the leash and ze'd have to wind them back in, and sometimes a lusus would come huffing over to investigate, and ze would have to pull zir specibus... but that happened so rarely, and most beasts only needed a solid thwack across the snout to send them packing.

But this was different. Marduk had asked zir for a favor, and that never happened. Hopefully it'd start happening more, though. Hinnom was going to prove how great ze was for favors, and then people would stop treating zim as such a wriggler, and ask zim to do things for them all the time.

It was going to be great!

"Almost, boo," ze calls, sing-song, over zir shoulder. "Chillax!"

It'd been such a hassle to convince Marduk to enter the sewers, but she hadn't known how to get to the coordinates she'd been given, and ze had refused outright to take her over the roads. The streets were built for lusii and transportation engines, not trolls: they were filled with all sorts of roadblocks that made travel difficult, whether they were fences or hives.

Underground, so long as you stayed in the outer districts, there wasn't any of that: just the clean lines of the sewer system, running in seamless parallel to the streets above.

(If you ventured too far into the inner city, of course, then you started hitting the old ruins, where the city had been built on top of itself for centuries and centuries, and the dead still roamed freely. Ze had ended up heading down there, once or twice, trying to figure out why the air was thick with ghosts and the smell of decay, but that'd been on purpose, just to explore. It'd be shorter to just cut straight through there, but ze wasn't about to lead Marduk down there.

She'd probably cry.)

The coordinates hadn't been too from Marduk's academy, but it had taken forever to walk, with Marduk's hand on zir shoulder. The numbers along the wall were steadily shifting higher, though, and there was an ancient climbing device up ahead, mounted to the stone wall with rusted old screws.

Ze pauses, politely ignoring the way Marduk stomps on zir heel as she comes to a stop, and peers at the numbers nearest to them. 612314. Close enough! "We're here," ze announces. "Gimme a hot sec and lemme send one of my ghouls up to scope this out, 'kay?"

[forgottensebayt]

It's a good thing Marduk is behind zim, because she can't quite hide the way her smile fades as they bring up ghosts.

"Okay," she says uneasily. There's no legal precedent for ghosts, and privately, she's always felt they were some kind of an elaborate lowblood joke at her expense. Perhaps they are real, and it's just life that no one above yellow has ever seen them, but... it seems unlikely.

But if Hinnom wants to make a joke at her expense, well.. it's not like they'd be the first. She pats zir shoulder, and then, releasing it, carefully takes a step back. She's never actually seen someone use psionics before, but the gamegrubs always make it seem like a hectic affair.

"Do I need to move back farther?" she asks, bracing a hand on the wall. She resolutely does not think about how damp it is under her skin. "Or, ah.. is this distance sufficient?"

[postalprestidigitation]

Marduk is so weird!

She pats zir shoulder and steps back, and when ze turns zir head to peer at her, she's braced herself against the wall instead. "Is this distance sufficient?" she asks, and ze blinks.

"Umm.. it's aight," ze says, dubious. What is she doing? It must be a greenblood thing, some sort of manners bullshit: Marduk does that sort of thing, occasionally, getting all stiff and polite over weird shit. "You gonna have to scoot back on up in a min, though."

Ze turns back to the ladder, and gets to work.

As far as Hinnom's concerned, any troll could probably see ghosts, if they just tried. Most already do, as little flickers in the corners of their eye, and making them clear it up past that isn't exactly hard. It's just a matter of unfocusing your ganderbulbs, and letting them see what they want to see.

The room blurs, and what's left is the coloured blurs of trollish forms. Ze sent most of zir ghosts on hive when Marduk first pestered zir, but ze kept one leashed, just in case. The death rate in the city is high, and there's always ghosts around to wrangle if ze needs it, but it's easier to work with the ones ze knows.

Most of them are immaterial, barely more than blood-coloured blurs against the wall. They're barely more than imprints, remnants that've forgotten their names and forgotten their shapes, and the only real ghost is the big, hornless blue one, currently leashed to zim. He's frowning at them, arms folded, big fangy teeth working overtime on his bottom lip. "- can't believe you brought a jadeblood into the sewers," he says, as his voice fizzles and sizzles into zir hearing range.

(Ze can always hear ghosts, if ze wants: it's not like looking, where ze's gotta focus. It's like hearing two trolls muttering on the street corner as ze walks by: it's just a matter of paying attention.)

(For the most part, ze doesn't bother. If the ghosts want to get zir attention, then they'll holler. But for the most part, all they want to do is whine, whine, whine.)

"Cry more," ze jeers. Castor's the first ghost ze ever leashed, and he's just a big whiny grub, always acting like he's trying to be zir moirail -- or, worse yet, zir lusus. He was pleased as punch when ze and Mardie started getting friendly, but if he had things his way, he'd have Hinnom as stiff-laced as one of her academy pals. "Buck up and bounce, dude? I don't wanna get jumped."

He sighs and gives zim a look, the sort that means ze'll be hearing shit later. Whatevs: when Castor's not complaining, that's when there's a problem. He disappears up the ladder, balancing each foot and pulling with his arms like he still needs to do that shit, and a moment later, ze hears his voice call down:

"All clear."

Ze bounces. "Okay," ze chirps, spinning on their heel to snatch Marduk's hand. She's looking at zim like ze's speaking tongues, but she gets that face a lot. Hinnom tugs her towards the ladder: they'll climb up first, of course, but poor Mardie's blind as a bat, and ze doesn't trust she won't go falling into the pipes as soon as ze turns zir back. "Let's bail!"

[CONTINUED HERE]

[forgottensebayt]

Sunlight has never felt so good.