THE EDITED PHERES LOG POST

[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

[forgottensebayt]

This is what you had pictured: two kids, frolicking through the streets of Capitol City.

It's a nice image, and you hold it firm in your mind, keeping the edges tightly wound and the picture firm. 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 you clings to it. Maybe if you picture it for long enough, it'll become real.

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

But you've never thought about it much, something that you're sincerely regretting now. When your thoughts did stray towards the waste management transportation system, it was only fleeting, never really serious. Perhaps the sewers were metal! Perhaps all of the city's 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 you were concerned, and as it turns out, it was all completely, entirely wrong.

Every new thing you've encountered down here has come as an unpleasant surprise. It took you awhile to realise that you needed to keep your skirt hiked up around your knees, so the bottom is all soggy and wet, and you hadn't thought at all to dress down, so of course it's one of your nicer skirts, too.

At least you had the wisdom, when Hinnom first led you down to the sewer grate, to immediately hide your sash away in your sylladex. Proctor Sungazer is lenient in some ways, but coming in with a sash stinking of waste is not one of the things he would tolerate. Unfortunately, there's still damp all across your shoes, and things keep dripping in your hair: your sash might not smell of waste, but it hasn't even been an hour and you already stink of it.

Everything is terrible. When you see Sipara, you're going to give her some very stern words on maintaining contact with her own moirail, if she's so desperately concerned.

(You won't. Sipara is your friend, for all that she is prone to take advantage, and you wouldn't want to upset her any further than this day already has.)

The air reeks of chemicals strong enough to make your eyes water, but it's not as if it matters much: you can't see a damn thing down here anyway. Trolls are hatched 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, jadebloods are the exception. Some low or high jades can see well in the dark and in the daytime, well enough to be at constant ease, but you're solidly in the middle. Your eyes are built to handle the bright light of the daytime sun, and you can barely see in your own respiteblock if the lightgrub is hibernating. Down here in the sewers, with no lights at all, you might as well be blind.

If it weren't for the hand you're keeping clamped on Hinnom's shoulder, you'd have already fallen into the water and died. The sound of rushing of water to your left is the only way you know it's even there: there's nothing to reflect off of the water, and no way to tell when the floor changes from the rough stonework to the sheer drop of water without light to guide you.

If you did die down here, you reflects glumly, would Hinnom even remember to go tell your lusus?

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

[postalprestidigitation]

Staying awake all day really isn't an issue for you. It's not like you really follow a schedule: the sun can't hurt you down in the skeleton's hives, and it's not like you've got any sort of fancy timekeeping thingies down there, to tell you when you ought to be up and when you ought to be done.

(Mardie gave you a clamshell to keep track of the time, but you don't see the point: only time you ever use it is when she messages you, anyway.)

The only time you need to pay attention to like, hours is when you're out delivering, 'cause sometimes you need shit you can't harvest from the dead, like glue and pencils and sparkledust for your projects, and you know an olive who'll trade you that shit in exchange for work. You keep a suncloak you found for times like that, but you hate doing it, on account of the fact the stuff she wants you to do is always boring as fuck.

It's not even like you're the one doing anything. All you ever do is stand there, with your suncloak up and the mailbag strapped onto your back, and wait while the ghosts you keep leashed take all the little packages to the right spots. Occasionally, you gotta whack a lusus or two that gets snooty with you, but otherwise, it's just standing around for an hour or two, and then bringing the empty bag back to the olive lady. She bitches whenever you show up, about shit like responsibility and reliability, but she still trades: she's boring and slow, and the route that only takes you an hour or two can last her the entire night.

You were supposed to be doing that today, and you know skipping means you're gonna get an earful the next time you do show up. But Mardie asked you for a favor, and that never, ever happens: usually, she's the one giving you things, and then hemming and hawwing when you try to give her anything else back. Helping her is way more important than getting new pencils.

And, like, it's already turning out to be way more fucking fun.

"Hinnom," Mardie says, her voice funny, "I don't ask as a discourtesy, but -- are we there yet?"

"Almost, boo," you call, sing-song, over your shoulder. "Chillax!"

It was a huge fucking hassle to convince Mardie to get down in the sewers, but she hadn't known how to get to the coordinates she'd been given, and like fuck you're going over the roads. The streets are filled with rumblecarts and giant fucking lusii, and while you're not sure which is more terrifying, you are sure you don't want to fuck with either.

You prefer the sewers. As long as you keep out of the inner city areas, there's no ghouls or walking dead, and it's all straight shoots and narrow paths: none of the clutter or the people or the noise of the streets above, just a grid that'll take you wherever you need to go, and coordinates on the walls to let you know where you were.

The destination Mardie wanted isn't that far from the big old hivestem she lives in, but it's taken forever to walk with Mardie clinging to your shoulder. The numbers on the wall have been steadily climbing higher, though, and there's an ancient climbing device up ahead, mounted to the stone wall. There's spackles of light coming out of the grate way, high above, and.. hmm.

The numbers closest to you declare, in big, white blocks: 612314. It's not quite right, but hell, it's close enough. "We're here," you trill. "Gimme a sec and lemme send one of my ghouls up to scope, 'kay?"

[forgottensebayt]

It's a good thing you're being Hinnom, because you can't quite hide the way your face falls when ze brings up ghosts.

"Okay," you say uneasily. There's no legal precedent for ghosts in any of your books, and privately, you've always suspected they were some kind of an elaborate lowblood joke. The very fact only yellows and below can see them is suspicious: psychic abilities are hardly unknown among higherbloods, so why would this specific one be limited?

But if Hinnom wants to make a joke at your expense, well.. it's not like ze'd be the first. You pat zir shoulder, and then, releasing it, carefully take a step back, away from the ladder and the grate. You've 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?" you ask, bracing a hand on the wall. You resolutely do not think about how damp it is under your skin. "Or, ah.. is this distance sufficient?"

[postalprestidigitation]

Ugh, Marduk is so weird.

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

"Umm.. it's aight," you say, dubious. You have no idea what the fuck she's doing, and the best you can tell is that it's some sort of weird greenblood thing: she does that, sometimes, goes off to do weird shit and claims it's just like, proper behaviour later on. "You gonna have to scoot back on up in a min, though."

Staring at her is pointless, so you shrug, turn your attention back to the ladder and get to work.

As far as you're concerned, any troll could probably see ghosts, if they just tried. It's not like it's hard! It's just a matter of unfocusing your ganderbulbs, and letting them see what they want to see, not what you think they should see.

When you do it, the room blurs to a muddy gray mess, until all that's left is the coloured shapes of trollish forms. Most of them are immaterial, barely more than blood-coloured smudges in the corner of your eyes. Those are the imprints, the results of ghosts rubbing up on each other too much over the course of sweeps: they've forgotten their names and their shapes and even their blood colours, in some cases, until all that's left is a voice and a pan that doesn't know how to use them. The only proper ghost in the sewer right now is a big, hornless blue one, and the leash tying him to your horns shines ember bright in the dark of the room.

You sent most of your ghosts on home when Marduk first sent you that message, but you kept one leashed, just in case. The death rate in the city is super, duper high, which is great, because there's always ghosts around to wrangle if you need it. But it's easier to work with the ones you know, and you've known Castor forever.

"- can't believe you brought a jadeblood into the sewers," he says, as his voice fizzles and sizzles into your hearing range. You can always hear ghosts, if you want to: it's not like looking, where you've gotta focus. It's more like hearing the creak of bones in the floor below, and knowing if it's a ghoul or a revenant. Just a matter of paying attention.

Mostly, it's not worth it. Especially in Castor's case. If he wants your attention, he'll holler, but all he usually does is whine, whine, whine, like he's doing right now.

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

He sighs and gives you a look, the sort that means you'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, you hear his voice call down:

"All clear."

You bounce with delight. "Okay," you chirp, spinning on your heel to snatch hold of Mardie's hand. She's looking at you like you're speaking tongues, but she makes that face a lot, and you pay it no mind as you tug her towards the ladder. You'll climb up first, 'course, but poor Mardie's blind as a bat, and you don't trust her not to go falling into the pipes as soon as you turns your back. "Let's bail!"

=> RICCIN: Rescue the damsel in distress.

[forgottensebayt]

Sunlight has never felt so good.