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So this was the mutant you've been warring over? You're almost disappointed at the sight of him. Dull horns and duller teeth, even more pathetic than a rust. His captors said he came peacefully after they slaughtered some of his followers.
The social order had no place for his hue but it did have places for those that defy the empire.
His supporters put up more of a fight than he did. The mustardblood was pinned to the ground after he was equipped with a headset of your design to neutralize his psionics. They had to enlist your expertise after he broke free from the standard psychic dampeners. The jade will make a better slave than a corpse. If not for her caste, she might have been the first to receive your arrows just for enabling the mutant's existence. The olive fights her restrainers tooth and nail, it takes almost an entire flaysquad to hold her down. You might have been impressed with her vigor if she hadn't disemboweled a fellow indigo before the infidel turned himself in to prevent more bloodshed.
She'll be next after you've dealt with her agnostic lover. From the perspective of a fellow hunter, you pity her. She held potential beyond that of an acolyte, yet abandoned it in favor of the nonsense that spilled from an off-caste's lips.
You could cull him in an instant. A quick shot to the head or chest, maybe even the throat if you focus your aim. But your peers want a show.
You aim for the stomach and release.
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You turn at the sound of pained screaming that didn't belong to the vulgar infidel. The huntress' retainers were crumpled on the ground in a bloody mess of various hues. She left them to contend with their slit throats and rearranged organs and made a beeline for the flogging jut, armed with claws different from the pair that was confiscated when she was captured. Your only clue to where she had been hiding them was the missing bone necklace no longer decorating her neck. A trick she must have picked up from the rainbowdrinker.
She rushes up to the chained mutant, cupping his face with her hands. He's still alive but too far gone to spare any last words after his profane speech. She uses her strife gloves to remove his leggings, quickly tearing the seams and peeling away the soiled fabric.
You withdraw another arrow from your strife deck as the others surround the feral olive, trapping her in. This time she doesn't have the element of surprise, trying to fight her way out will only put her back to square one and she knows it as well as you do.
She falls to her knees, realizing the futility of her situation. The string of your bow joins the fletching pinched between your fingers as you pull it back. She looks up, clutching the bloody remnants of his attire. You aim for the chest, you need to finish her off quickly before she tries something else. Green tears stream down her face, a pitiable display. Yet it makes you self-conscious of the weapon in your hands and the crowd waiting to see the midblood's demise.
They grow impatient and start calling for her death, yet you still won't shoot. Why won't you shoot? Why can't you shoot? She's no different from the others you've shot down: lowbloods who's pans had been filled with foolish dreams by that gutterblood. Her punishment is to follow him into hell as she has done in this pathetic pursuit of equality.
And yet.
The arrow remains in your grip.
For the first time in your profession, you falter. She takes advantage of your lapse and makes off with the tattered clothes like a bandit.
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The Grand Highblood's chamber darkens as the tall double doors close behind you. You could raise your lenses to see better but you don't dare with his piercing eyes directed at you. His expression was that of restrained anger. You're surprised he didn't club you right on the spot when she escaped or have you switch places with the mutant on the flogging jut.
Part of you wishes he had.
"Kneel."
You obey and drop to one knee.
"How do you think that heretic was able to avoid us for so long? Think it was the bloodsucker guiding him after moonfall? Or the pissblood frying our brothers when they caught up?"
You can tell by his tone that he doesn't want an answer, only for his question to sink in before he speaks again. You look up to meet your superior's gaze but you can no longer see his face, only his facial paint contrasted against a black towering mass of hair and muscles, the sickening mural of blood serving as a backdrop for his silhouette. The blue stains on the walls seem more pronounced now.
"WRONG."
The blood trails down the wall as if it was freshly painted, spanning out when it reaches the floor until it pooled around your feet. You don't realize the blood is rising until you feel something damp around your ankles. Before you realize it, it's up to your knees and only continues to ascend until you're waist-deep in a myriad of colors.
Something grabs you. You turn to see a clammy arm reaching out from the blood to grip your own, You pull away only to find several more latching onto you. Reanimated corpses use you as leverage to hoist themselves from underneath. Mangled bodies suffocate you with the stench of rotting meat as they try to pull you below. No matter how many you yank off, even more grapple onto you. Sunken eyes, missing appendages, gaping holes with entrails hanging out, old weapons jutting out of wounds like blades and arrows. Despite their deteriorated forms, they have the combined strength to drag you down into the motley undertow.
The tall doors creak as a legislacerator enters. They march across the chamber and untuck the paperwork from under their arm to present to the Grand Highblood. He doesn't appear to have noticed their presence, eyes alternating between blue and purple, until he raises an arm to accept the folder and dismisses them with a hand wave. They bow and leave, passing the blueblood convulsing on the floor.
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You sense her pushing against your thinkpan. Its faint but its there, light prodding searching for a weak spot in the wall of your mind. Nothing like the force that invaded your skull the night you were banished. Still, the familiarity of someone trying to penetrate the refuge of your pan makes your skin crawl.
You tell her to stop, an excuse already forming in your head when you see a smirk start tugging at her lips.
"Forgive my telepathic intrusion." She responds, not even masking the reply with false empathy. "I wasn't expecting a rise from someone of your character."
"If you can't penetrate Ampora's mental fort, you'll have no luck with mine."
Your jab at the Orphaner earns a good laugh from her.
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She's crouched on the floor, her back facing you. Her whole body shakes as she cries. The blood on the leggings she held to her chest was as fresh and vibrant as it was the night of the execution. You move in closer to pap her shoulder. She turns and engulfs you with two gaping maws where her face should have been.
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You turn the book in your hand. You don't see why she has this thing. It has no monetary value, even on the black market, and just having it in possession is a cull-worthy offense. Though you could say that about a lot of her belongings. Its age showed with the dry, cracked leather it was bound in. You run a thumb across the faded symbol. This was how they chose to remember him, with the shackles he died in.
He skimmed through weathered pages written with the blood of slain animals. Mostly olive with the occasional rust or bronze. The scriptures were detailed, too detailed for a random follower to jot down after a speech or two. The one who wrote this describes the mutant in ways more akin to Mindfang's risque novels than a scribe compiling a lectionary.
You tuck it under your arm and head towards a more comfortable reading spot.
Not the first time you borrowed the Marquise's tomes to kill time. Your status in exile limits your access to good reading material.
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After another dayterror, Mindfang gives you a bottle of something that was just as old as you and almost as strong. After another dayterror, you down it in one night.
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She comes to you, down an eye, an arm, and plus a cane. You can't do anything for her damaged vision but you can replace her severed limb. She leans her new trophy against your workstation, the handle stained black with blood, before taking a seat. She regales you of her clash with a legislacerator and the assault on her fleet while you construct the outer shell of the prosthetic. You measure the wires you need and feed them through the arm's framework while she described the Neophyte's demise and the slaying of his Tyranny as if you were there. Once you fitted her with the artificial appendage, she started testing it out. Bending the elbow, clenching her fist, curling every digit.
Satisfied with your work, she looks up to you and reveals her true purpose for coming here: The cueball.
You retrieve the auger from a chest only accessible to you and her. She clutched the orb in her prosthetic grip, leering at its clouded surface. Without her vision 8-fold, it was as useless to her as it was to you. She mentioned the original owner from time to time, the legendary man on the moon, the lunar overseer, the demoness' keeper. You can't say you believe her origin of being under the devil's tutelage, though you wouldn't be surprised, or maybe you just can't bring yourself to accept the truth. Because wouldn't that be the greatest joke? To learn that you, her, even the demoness herself were just game pieces for some otherworldly being's plans. That the church was both right and wrong. That you were just a maneuver in a vain attempt for a chess piece to one-up the game master. A pawn manipulated by a pawn.
The Grand Highblood would wheeze like a wiggler that lost their inhaler.
She finally forfeits her staring contest with the sphere, lowering it onto your desk before materializing her journal from her sylladex. You learned long ago not to disturb her when she writes, so you leave her be. The scratching of pen on paper serving as the only diversion to silence.
Finished with her entry, she returns the oracle to you and orders you to lock it up for the last and final time.
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She caresses your face, hands that could tear out your throat like wet paper are gently papping your cheeks. Olive eyes admire you with a tenderness before looking down to clasp your hands with hers. You follow suit to find your palms caked with bright red blood. The smell of burnt flesh fills your nostrils when you feel the light tapping of someone trying to get your attention. You rear your head to see the charred carcass of a troll standing next to you. "Excuse me, but I think I have something of yours." Rasps the Sufferer as he tugs the arrow from his wound and holds it out to you.
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You connect the last wire to the circuit board and close the flap, screwing it shut. You straightened and size up your latest work now that it was complete. Synthetic hair draped sculpted shoulders, framing the steel mask of the droid's face. The impressive mounds on its chest plate are large enough to showcase your reflection in the right lighting. You admit you might have relied more on your memories than the wanted poster the Marquise provided at your request, as she's quick to point out.
You wonder if she's still alive. If so, she'd look nothing like the faded poster on your workbench or the machine in front of you.
You reach behind to flip the switch curtained by its mane and stand back as the android came to life with a low whir. Fire-red optics light up as it raises its head to make eye contact with its creator. You point to the troll-shaped punching stand on the other side of the room. It turns in the direction of your arm before disappearing in a blur. Within seconds, the stand is reduced to shreds. Its metal claws tear through the thick surface easily, the cushioning slime oozes from the large rips and onto the floor. The robot returns to its neutral position while your lusus starts mopping up the punching stand's innards.
Mindfang approaches the droid after its display, running a metallic finger down its cheek.
"As impressive as it is pathetic."
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A young troll is kneeling over a bludgeoned corpse. Her sobbing-induced hiccups turn to hissing when you advance, the blood of her lusus still dripping off your club. She whips around with claws at the ready, glaring up at her custodian's killer with tear-stained eyes. Familiarity tugs at the back of your thinkpan. The fur she wears conceals a lithe figure yet she's ready to take on a troll twice her size, age, and caste. You halt her lunge through psychic intervention and she drops to the ground, her eyes flashing purple and green.
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She's older and at your service. She will kill for you. Has killed for you. She'll slit her own throat at your command. The huntress warms your coon and dons your sign.
She accepts the wanted poster of the cloaked figure from you. She scans the image for any details that could assist her in finding him. She looks up to you and bows.
She leaves but never returns.
Soon, her own face joins the posters of wanted trolls.
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You understand now why he didn't cull you the night you let her get away. Why end your life with a raised club when he could punish you for eons? Your torture his private show. Sharing in the pain brought on by her absence. He wanted her dead more than the mutant, didn't he? He wanted you to cull her not for her crimes as his acolyte but for abandoning her role as the church's.
For casting aside his heart for the mutant's.
You heard another war is on the rise thanks to a cavelreaper gone AWOL. Not the first time an agent of the empire went rogue, except he's commandeering a beast of destruction.
You wonder if its the same lusus that once served as the Neophyte's steed. You wonder if Mindfang has mentioned her history with the animal he now controls or if he learned of her past atrocities straight from the dragon's mouth, and if so...
Wouldn't you make a good bargaining chip?
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Its been awhile since Mindfang's visited. She's overdue for repairs on her arm. Not that its the first time she came a wipe or two late for a tune up, but she's never been absent this long.
Your question to her whereabouts was answered in the form of someone (literally) dropping in.
"She told me to come find you." His wings fold in with practiced ease to avoid knocking anything over.
It's clear he doesn't want to be here. Knowing Mindfang, she assured him he'd gain an ally if he played his cards right.
"I saw your handiwork with Aranea's arm. We could use a guy like you."
"You want assistance from the very class you seek to dismantle?"
"War results in a lot of casualties. Lots of missing limbs."
"You seem to be under the impression that I want to kelp you."
"As opposed to spending several more centuries cooped up here, feeling sorry for yourself?" His tone's becoming more firm, his antagonism to your caste is starting to leak from his words.
"I would think Mindfang's resources would-"
"She's gone." He cuts off.
You're both silent for what feels like hours. His body language finally relaxes after reining in his temper. He makes eye contact with you again, looking more somber.
"A long time ago, you showed mercy to a midblood, a midblood you were ordered to cull." He walks closer, the click of his boots echoing through the hive. "You spared her, knowing she might regroup with survivors when she got away."
You don't respond, you just let him continue speaking as he recites the same event that's replayed in your mind for centuries.
"Like it or not, you helped keep the Sufferer's message alive. She carried on his teachings and passed them down to younger trolls. Trolls she took in after they lost their lususes too early. Trolls like me."
You think back to one of your more recent day terrors, when you saw a glimpse of her early life.
"The highbloods threw you away like trash, and no doubt would have culled you if not for Spin'. Those chucklefucks would just as gladly paint the walls with your blood as they would with mine." He stops to see if you'll respond and continues when you don't.
"Our medictators can only do so much. It's hard to get back on your feet when your leg's been chopped off."
You don't know if it's his own charisma or if Mindfang rubbed off on him. Maybe she tried to secure a successor in him, knowing she would meet her end at his hands.
Now that he's closer, you can see what she saw in him aesthetically. He's attractive. Bronze, but attractive.
"You're good at building things, fixing things, hiding things."
"Fat load of good that last one does me."
"We can provide protection like Aranea used to-"
"That won't be necessary." You stand and let your winged guest see you at your full height. "I'm not hiding anymore."