#sanguine tensor | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

anewalternia · 7 years ago

Text

it knows its seasons. the waiting. the sudden.

Word Count: 6706 Rating: M/hard R/moderate nsfw. Warnings: loss of bodily autonomy, street sex work, offscreen blackrom gone wrong (physical abuse), slavery, mass murder, undiagnosed PTSD, substance use, and other Alternia-typical shit. Characters: psiioniic, a fantroll (arccos thaeta/whatever she’s calling herself this sweep), a few more fantrolls alluded to. Pairings: psii/fantroll(s), fantrolls/fantrolls Summary: Your name is Alcyon Tensor and you are a bounty hunter. You are rather surprised when you bump into Mituna in District 10, the pleasure district, especially since last Arcsin told you, Mituna was running around with that would-be group of revolutionaries. But that’s just as well. He can help you fulfill your objective. You promise to give him half your bounty if he does. But neither you nor he can anticpate what will happen next.

@psychopyro813 stop encouraging my bad ideas

“This is a perfect fluid, having no age nor hours, surviving scarless, unaltered, loving rest, willing to run forever to find its peace in equal seas in currents of still glass.” - Muriel Rukeyser, The Book of The Dead

Your name is Alcyon Tensor. Or it is, now, at least.

You’re known to most as The Sanguine, anyway.

You get out of your recuperacoon - the slime has been cut down by a third with some kind of shitty, cheaper substitute - and consequently, you haven’t been sleeping as well as you could have been. You devour two energy grubs and contemplate what you must do today.

Another fucking assignment, this one in District 10: the pleasure district.

You wish you were going there to get your bulge serviced, but nope. Not today.

You dress somewhat hemoanonymously - black leggings, black top with the bronze sign of a dead troll on the breast, a slate gray overcoat that covers the sign, and a scarf tied so high around your neck that it conceals your ears. Thankfully.

The only thing that might hint at your hemospectral caste, aside from the sign on your shirt, are your worn, dependable brown boots, which come up to mid-calf. The soles and heel are thin enough that you can operate with a certain degree of stealth.

And then there’s your brown irises, the deadest giveaway. But those are from contact lenses. Ten thousand caegar contact lenses.

You’re still paying for them, much to your chagrin. Fucking interest. Fuck interest with a massive bulge. Only thing you’re interested in at the moment is maybe culling the troll who made the loan in the first place, then you might not have to pay them back.

You make your way to a food vendor in this lowblood district to get your first meal of the night. Tonight it’s some kind of overly salty fish, stewed with tomatoes, rice, some vegetables cut too fine for you to identify, and probably grubloaf. There’s always grubloaf.

Grubloaf is a universal constant, sort of like death, and the Condesce. And just about as palatable as either.

“That’ll be three caegars, Tensor,” the rustblood, Tiaang, says.

You give him five, and once you finish your first portion, he ladles a second into the bowl.

“It’s good to see a troll that eats,” he says. “So many are too skinny.”

He then proceeds to press a sweet into your hand.

There’re no quadrant overtones in it; he’s just looking out for you because you look quite a few sweeps younger than you are. You’re seventeen, but you look a little less than half that. This is exceedingly annoying.

Were it a peppermint, you might have thrown up. But no, it’s just a chocolate truffle, wrapped in paper.

Not exactly your style.

You briefly think of Pinyix, who would have inhaled it in a second. You wonder how they’re doing. If they’re steadier on their feet now.

No matter. Your assignment waits for no one and nothing. You review what you know about the troll at the center of your objective: Terbel Rukbat, known to most as the the Unstable Thespian.

He performs for highbloods, and on his off-hours, he enjoys violent one-off black flings with lowblood prostitutes. Now you’re not here to judge how a troll gets their bulges wet, or their freak on, but this troll owes your leader money, and the price on his head is about the same as the price he owes.

Your assignment is simple. Either get the money off Terbel, or cull him.

Either way, his debt will be satisfied.

You wonder whether you should use the garrote or the daggers. The garrote will kill him faster, but the daggers will spill more blood, and amuse you to a greater degree.

Maybe both.

You have both.

Both is fine.

You get on a communal mass transit vehicle, and really hope none of the trolls on it decide to make any advances on you. Yes, you’re small. Yes, you are obviously female. Yes, most of the people in this vehicle are headed to fucking bucketland.

That does not mean they need to touch you. Or leer at you.

Would zapping one of them not be a dead giveaway that you are a runaway psion, that is exactly what you would do.

You’re quick to run into a familiar face after you get off the mass transit vehicle, one you haven’t seen in two sweeps.

He stands outside of one of those disreputable buildings, dressed like... you’d expect a concupiscent hooker to dress, his makeup done to the to the nines, wearing a giant pair of round sunglasses, and clad in a long coat that covers whatever the fuck he’s wearing, assuming he’s even wearing anything under it.

“Mituna?” you ask.

He quirks an eyebrow, but his eyes are alight with recognition. He takes one step back.

“You must be mistaken. I am the Luminary.”

Yeah, okay. You’d recognize those stupid horns, that stupid hair, and that even stupid lisp anywhere. But you’re not the only one who needs to maintain your cover. You won’t slip and call him by his hatchling name again.

“Yeah, whatever, Luminary. Come with me,” you reply. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Whatever you say,” he says, with an affected seductive tone. “Whatever you want.”

What you want to do is punch him. That’s not the point.

You drag him to a fried oinkbeast skin on a stick vendor, all while he protests that you’re losing him customers. He needs calories. You sit Mituna down next to you on the curb, and trolls eye the pair of you curiously, but say nothing.

He won’t confess to being Mituna, but he sits with you willingly.

“Sure you want me to hang out with you? You might be mistaken for one of my clients," not-Mituna says, his pupils blown with soporifics.

"I have better taste in trolls than that."

"You suck, you know that?"

"Not as much as you do, apparently," you deadpan.

When he gets the joke, he cackles until he nearly chokes on his food. This fool. Has not changed a bit since you last saw him in the flesh. Once he’s finished eating, he decides to play twenty questions.

“So what brings you to the scenic pleasure district?" he wants to know. “Paying someone to stick it in you?”

“Totally, Luminary.” You take a quick look around, to make sure nobody’s listening, and you continue to do that as you explain. “In no way did I get paid a thousand caegars to cull a troll who frequents these parts.”

Mituna shrugs.

“What does he look like? Maybe I can help you out.”

You’d ask him why he’d even want to help you out, until you remember that unlike you, Mituna is kind.

You take a bite of your food, chew, and swallow, before you say, “He’s an indigoblood. Tall but not muscular. They call him the Unstable Thespian. Think you’ve seen him before?"

The way Mituna’s eyes go round as water crackers informs you that he has.

"I think that's one of my usual customers. Kind of a dipshit."

He gets up to order more fried oinkbeast skin on a stick. You give him the remainder of yours. You need the information he has as quickly as possible.

"Real specific, Tuna. That's all highbloods.”

He rolls his eyes. “Apologies, Ar--”

You interrupt him.

“Call me Vector.”

“Whatever.”

You resist the urge to zap him for being a jackass.

“And while you’re at it, describe this regular of yours, so I can figure out if this is the right troll,” you say.

“Yeah, okay, fuck you,”

Still, he does, in minute detail, giving you his symbol, the width of his horns, their shape, his physique, and his approximate height down to the centimeter.

You weigh this against what you know, and realize that either this is your guy, or he has an identical twin. Sort of like Arcsin and Arctan. And you, before you developed rumblespheres.

Mituna then adds that your target is a taintchafing fuck. And that the only reason why he pails him on the regular is because he does not want to see another troll subjected to his utter fucking nonsense with respect to kismesissitude, and because said target in question has a tiny ass bulge that has never done, and never will do a thing to stimulate anyone.

You stare at Mituna and laugh so hard that your sides hurt.

You thought Mituna might have grown out of being a vulgar fuck, the way Arcsin did, but apparently that isn’t the case. However, thinking of Arcsin makes you recall something he told you the last time you saw him.

“You know, ‘Sin said you'd run off with a bunch of weirdos who go around preaching hemoequality,” you say, as if you haven’t seen these weirdos in action a few times. “What happened with that? You got bored?"

Mituna’s ability to get bored at the drop of a hat knows no bounds, so...

"Nah, i'm still running around with them. Thing is, revolutions cost money. Food costs money. Lodgings cost money. Disguises cost money. So I told my weirdos that I'd be gone for three days and when I came back, I'd have at least twelve hundred caegars," he explains. “Didn’t tell ‘em how I was gonna get it, and they didn’t ask. Pretty sure they think I’m stealing shit and reselling it. But this thing pays a lot faster.”

Well, then.

He sounds like quite he’s become quite the expert at it.

You think for a bit, before deciding to make him an offer.

"You help me potentially cull this troll, just occupy him until I can get into position, and I'll give you half my bounty."

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Mituna nods, takes a flask out of his trenchcoat, has a long drink, and returns it to its proper place. You do not even want to know what is in that flask.

“Can I help you after he pays me, so I get his money and your money?" he asks, grinning.

"Deal, Luminary,” you say, extending your hand. You two shake on it. Since he put his flask away, his trenchcoat has become partially open, to expose some of the getup he has on under it.

Dear Mother. What the fuck?

“Where on Alternia did you get that yellow eyesore of an outfit?" you want to know.

Mituna chuckles.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Thing about ‘Tuna and his shenanigans is, you probably wouldn’t.

Once your objective has been fulfilled, you make sure to sever the highblood’s horns, to present as an indication that you have culled the requisite troll, and therefore qualify for your bounty.

Mituna watches you on the respite platform in this motel in the pleasure district, still covered in bruises and cuts, and looking faintly sick about the whole ordeal.

“Is this how he usually pails you?” you ask the goldblood,

Mituna, you have to remind yourself. His name is Mituna Captor.

The moment you start thinking of him in terms of his hemocaste, and not in terms of his hatchling name, you are no better than the highbloods.

“Well, yes, but he also pays quite well for the whole thing,” Tuna replies. “Or, uh, paid.”

Not enough, you think, watching Mituna’s wary eyes take in the scene of carnage before you. Not nearly enough.

You drag him back to your hive with you, a communal hivestem you share with several dozen bronzebloods. The few who linger in the hallway on the first level stare when they notice Mituna’s condition. You drag him up the steps to the fourth level.

And Auriga, a troll with whom you’ve had a on and off pale dalliance with for the last three sweeps, is particularly curious about Mituna.

“What happened to that guy?” he wants to know.

Your eyes flick over to Auriga, who leans against the door leading into his hive, smoking one of his foul-smelling cigarettes. You know your bronze contact lenses haven’t fallen out, but still, you feel oddly seen by him. Maybe because Mituna is with you.

“The situation in question will bother him no more,” you assure Auriga, letting him catch a glimpse of the Unstable Thespian’s horns in the duffle bag slung around your shoulder.

Auriga raises his eyebrows and gives you a small grin of commiseration.

“So that’s where you been last nineteen hours? And why you needed to borrow a hundred caegars and a bone saw from me last time I saw you?”

“I am allowed to come and go as I please, ‘Riga. I am a grown ass adult,” you answer. You remove your coinpurse from your jacket, and count out the sum of money you owe him, along with the cost of the bone saw. “As for your money, here you go.”

“But--”

“Riga, just drink a tall glass of fuck off, for now, alright?” you ask. “And gimme two of your cigs.”

He snorts.

“That’ll be a caegar, Tensor.”

You flick it at him in the practiced way only a psion would, letting it hang in mid-air for a moment before it sails into his hand.

Mituna looks shocked that you would display your power like that, but Auriga’s the only troll awake on this floor, and he already knows about who you used to be, once upon a time. No need for pretenses with him. He can keep his mouth shut where it counts.

“I’m sending you on a quest, Auriga,” you tell him, once you’ve got a cigarette in your mouth, having used your latent pyrokinesis to light it.

“Yeah, Ten? What’s in it for me?”

You give him a twenty caegar coin.

“Two calabashes of pepperpot from the vendor, and you can keep the change afterwards. Tell Tiaang it’s for Alcyon Tensor, he might give you a discount.”

“I live to serve,” he says, taking an exaggerated bow, and then muttering, “I serve to live, Sanguine.”

“Thanks, ‘Riga. Just leave the bowls at the door and knock later.”

“You’re welcome, Ten.” He makes a diamond shape with his pointer fingers and thumbs. “I want to hear this story later.”

“And so you shall,” you answer, before you turn away from him, and chivvy Mituna up to the front door of your hive.

“Who was that?” Tuna asks.

“A friend, of sorts, Luminary,” you answer, still using the title he’s carved out for himself when he ventures into District 10.

You’ll give a more comprehensive explanation once you’re inside your personal space.

You unlock the door with one hand, while you smoke with the other. It’s always strange having trolls you knew from Sigma Block over at your studio hive.

Arctan said you needed to clean the small place that apparently reeked of sweat, cigarettes, and soporifics. He even started cleaning until you stated that you’d have none of that. You quite liked your things where they were, thank you very much.

You make sure to disinfect the clothing and tools you regularly utilize in the makeshift autoclave and portable garment cleaner that Pleaid - a troll who lives below you - happens to own. She asks very few questions about why you need these services so frequently.

Arcsin said your hive looked awesome, definitely less square feet than your respiteblock at Sigma, but then again, you weren’t sharing it with four other trolls. Pinyix surreptitiously availed themself of all the sweets in your nutritionblock, idly using their telekinesis to retrieve them.

You were shocked when you heard that they tested under the cutoff for conscription, but then again, that whole fiasco with Elder Irvaan and corporal punishment had weakened them to the point where most of their psionics were limited to approximating sensation in the lower half of their body, walking like a troll without disability, defensive tactics, and parlor tricks like opening your cabinets and devouring your chocolate.

Velyor didn’t comment on your place except to say that it made a nice place to hide out. Always practical, that troll. During his last visit, you’d sent him to the vendor for a bowl of fish stew, providing two calabashes of your own. When the vendor recognized him as a psion, and figured he was one of your old friends, he gave two bowls of food to him gratis.

Still, Velyor paid the man, and complimented him on his cooking once he tasted it.

You maintain that Tiaang could make even grubloaf palatable. Whatever talent he works in his small kitchen is nothing short of alchemy.

Your ever quiet food vendor, Tiaang, you think to yourself, who even pointed you in the direction of a troll who could provide you with brown contact lenses and remove your psion compound tags when you first reached District 23.

Your ever faithful surrogate ‘rail, Auriga, you think to yourself. The only ‘rail you’ll probably know anymore, given Arctan’s situation.

They know what you are, and choose not to turn you in to subsequently collect the sizable bounty on your head. You’re not sure why.

You will never be sure as to why. Particularly in Tiaang’s case, where, were he to turn you in, he’d have enough caegars to retire on. Never have to sell a bowl of anything ever again.

You’re a runaway from Imperial forces.

Your boss informed you of this when you started working for him, as if you were unaware, stating that you’d have to accomplish a great deal of culling to keep him from reporting you.

So far, as a bounty hunter, you have.

You’re not even a bounty hunter anymore. You’re an assassin, stuck in service to this oliveblood fucker. Highly proficient not only in telekinesis, but in wielding a garrote, and daggers twofold.

Your daggers even have names. The one you use to make your first strike is called Arctan, and the one you use to make the killing strikes is called Arcsin.

You told both trolls about this once, before Arctan left Alternia bedecked in biowires. Arcsin was amused, Arctan concerned.

As for Auriga, well, you know he’s pale for you - you don’t have the energy for a full time moiraillegiance, not after Arctan - and since ‘Riga also specializes in your line of work, he respects your ability.

You take the more difficult cases so he doesn’t have to, because you can use your psionics to stun trolls before you make your kill, and he cannot.

Fuck, given all the highbloods the two of you have eliminated, most of whom were involved with illegal shit, you both deserve Juris Docterrorist designations from the Imperial Academy of Law. Not that you’d ever ask, den of highblood scum that the Academy is.

You prefer to think of yourself as a reverse subjugglator, all things being equal. You terrorize highbloods and hold them in check, keep them afraid that if they step a toe out of line, they may have to reckon with the troll known as either Vector, or the Sanguine.

You wouldn’t let your second name, alias that it might be, touch your line of work. You’ve grown comfortable in that hatchling name.

Alcyon Tensor: a night laborer when she feels like subjecting herself to such indignity, and perhaps something slightly less legal when she actually wants to make more than a double digit of caegars a day.

So, things being what they are, Auriga wouldn’t dare turn you in, unless you’ve either under or overestimated him. Still, even if he did, he’d implicate himself, and you’d ensure that he went down with you in a second.

You’d never drag Tiaang into anything even if you got caught.

He felt sorry for your ten-sweeps old self, and got you started in a profession that would turn you a profit. You will never forget his loyalty, so long as you live, whether it be five more sweeps, or fifty.

However, as you indulge your odd habit for introspection, Mituna seats himself on your couch. You sigh, and make your way over to him.

“I can patch you up,” you tell him. “As for the injuries Terbel inflicted that cannot be healed easily, I know an auxiliatrix. She’s on our side.”

Mituna rolls his eyes.

“If her name is Porrim Maryam, I have no need for her services.”

Yeah. Sure. As if.

“Not the auxiliatrix you and the mutant have been traveling with,” you go on. “This one works in a medical center as an assistant mediculler. Xhezet Arvien. Ring a bell?”

The look on Mituna’s face informs you that it has. The troll who tended all of you wigglers after the pestilence. The only one who lived. How could any of you misremember that troll after everything?

“I don’t need her help.”

You tap your cigarette ashes out in a nearby glass dish and shrug.

“Whatever, Mituna. Still. If you want the assistance, I can contact her.”

Mituna seems to contemplate this for a while.

“And what do you mean, she’s on our side?” he wants to know.

Just great. You hate explaining things, much less to trolls who should be intelligent enough to know what you’re implying.

“You think your signless mutant is the first troll to advocate for reform or abolishment of the hemospectrum?” you ask. “Think again. Xhezet knows the damage the ‘spec can do. So she’s on the side of any troll seeking to even the score, in small ways, or large.”

“Evening the score,” Mituna repeats, with a small laugh. “That’s hardly what Kankri advocates for.”

You’re aware.

And, oh, so the young mutant fuck has a name.

“I know. Much to his detriment. He’d have many more lowbloods on his side if he did.”

“You think so?” Mituna asks.

And even though Tuna’s still clearly injured from his encounter with the Unstable Thespian - an indigoblood who doesn’t deserve the intimacy of a hatchling name - he finds it within his ability to argue with you.

If it’s an argument Tuna wants while you graciously offer him hiveroom and try to bandage his caliginous wounds, it’s an argument he shall receive.

You scowl, remembering the two or three speeches of the signless mutant that you deigned to hear.

"You know him. What does he mean we could all be equal, that there was a world where we were nearly equal?” you ask, unspooling the gauze. “Hoofbeastshit. He's never had moobeast tags put through his earlobes. He's never been forcibly separated from his lusus. He's never seen his friends get executed by firing squad. He's never faced the distinct possibility of having to be mounted in a helmsblock. So what exactly does this signless mutant know about suffering that you follow him like a servile barkbeast, that you debase yourself in his name to earn caegars for his cause with your blackrom escapades?"

Mituna, having ditched the sunglasses of old, rolls his two-toned eyes at you.

"It’s not like he even knows how I bring in money, he’s too young for that. Like I said, none of them know. I’m not telling them,” he says. “And what would you have him advocate for to have you believe in his cause?"

Oh, you could have him advocate for a great many things. You start with the one that makes you the happiest to imagine.

"Revenge. Revenge on all of the highbloods. Reparations made in blood. Cull them arbitrarily and see how they like it."

That would be a start.

Mituna shakes his head, even as you tend to the wounds that you can treat. You demand that he sit still, and he does. But his mouth still works, unfortunately.

"You'd start a cycle of bloodshed that would leave no troll unscathed."

Yeah, and? If everyone, jadeblood and lower, were to wage class war on the highbloods, you’d have psions and auxiliatrices on your side, seemingly cowed as they might be. They’re just waiting for the right moment to free themselves, and once they’re liberated, your side will win.

You know this to be fact. But Mituna? Unlike yours, his mind has been polluted from being away from Sigma Block for so long.

You haven’t forgotten dead Xhifei, dead Polvui, dead Fianye, dead Alzirr, all of whom recovered from the pestilence, all of whom could have gone without being culled, but who were shot at point blank range.

Just to make matters “neat and clean”.

The list of dead goes ever on, between Chi Block, Phi Block, and Psi Block, and now, Sigma Block. Mituna has tucked this truth away.

"So the highbloods should just get away with their crimes? Is that what you and your signless are suggesting?" you ask, your rage naked and unbounded.

"I'm not saying that. I'm saying that at some point we just have to... wipe the slate of offenses. And let the chips fall where they may. Otherwise we’ll inadvertently cull everyone, even ourselves."

You think this over for a while, contempt surging through your veins like your gold blood that damned you the second you were hatched. Hemoequality, the signless mutant speaks. Not hemoliberation. You elect to hit Mituna where it might hurt most.

"You know, ‘Tuna. Alzirr was a troll of great principles, remember?” you ask. “Sometimes I wonder what she'd have to say about all this. And unfortunately I'm nearly sure she'd agree with this signless troll of yours."

Mituna nods, a small smile on his face.

"Me too. Alzirr was... merciful,” he finally pronounces. “Always unfailingly kind. Levelheaded. Kind to wigglers. Kind to everyone."

And as ‘Tuna says this, he nearly starts to cry.

You hate the message he and his would-be revolutionaries have been espousing, but nevertheless you find it in you to offer him a handkerchief before you continue.

"But i'll never know for certain, ‘Tuna. No one will know for certain, obviously. Because she got culled before she could even turn six.” The dish in which you were tapping out your ashes shatters, a casualty of your fury. “You ask me why I want revenge? That's one reason, and Alzirr wasn't even from Chi Block."

Mituna shakes his head even more emphatically.

"Vector. Alcyon. Tensor. Whatever they call you now,” he murmurs. “You know revenge isn't the answer."

Hoofbeastshit.

"You used to think it was, Luminary,” you say, using the title he’s adopted. That’s all he deserves from you now. “You jumped on the nutrition platform the night before Alhena left and shouted that we were more powerful than our jailers, that we could fight back. Have you forgotten?”

Mituna’s expression is even more resolute for your question.

"Yes, that we could fight for our freedom. Our freedom and nothing else!"

You know seven sweeps old Mituna would have just as well seen all highbloods die en-masse. But he has forgotten. He has forgotten. He has forgotten. His matesprit, your moirail, has been conscripted as a helmsman and somehow he has forgotten everything his fellow psions have endured.

You no longer know the troll sitting before you, and yet you dress his wounds as if he is a friend.

What hoofbeastshit, you think.

The Sanguine needs no friends like this. You decide to forcibly show him the writing on the wall.

"But if we'd escaped and left those highbloods unscathed, they'd just find new psions to conscript. Which is why we have to cull them when the opportunity arises,” you say. “Once they've suffered losses the way we have, or even an approximation of our losses... then I'll call it even. Then we can start talking hemoequality. Then we can wipe the slate."

“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,” he says.

No doubt a maxim from the mutant. You disinfect the last of his wounds, bandage them, and turn away.

“That’s what the establishment wants you to think. That’s what they want you to think so we never realize our true strength,” you insist. “I’ve seen your signless mutant. He has vestigial gills. What’s to say he’s not an Imperial spy, a seadweller brought into the lowblood liberation movement to destablize it by making his own voice the loudest?”

Mituna scoffs at you, and you want to punch him so hard that it’ll knock out several of his fangs.

“If you think that’s what he is, I have no way to stop you,” he says. “But he’s the real deal. Candy red blood. And he called me by my hatchling name before I could give it to him.”

“Information he could easily gain if he were an Imperial spy.”

Mituna nods.

“You might be right about that. But why would an auxiliatrix follow him, then? Why a self-exiled oliveblood? You know they hold no love for the Empress.”

You consider this.

“Maybe the auxiliatrix was in trouble, and this was her way of squaring away her debt. Raise this spy. Then posit him as the leader of a movement that precedes him by a hundred sweeps, the focus no longer on eliminating highbloods, but making peace with them.”

You have no idea why the mutant’s other advocates take to his message with such zeal, Xhezet Arvien included.

Besides the fact that they’re all deluded as to this troll’s true nature. But you will have them see. Oh, you will have them see, but watch it be too late by the time you do.

“You met Porrim when she needed a recuperacoon for Kankri’s first molt. Did she strike you as being a spy or under Empire influence then?”

She did not, but a good spy covers their tracks.

You put your hands over your ears before you can rethink the gesture.

You’re not sure what to think anymore. You really are not.

“You really believe your signless mutant is legit?” you ask.

“He’s seen a new Alternia,” Mituna replies. “So beautiful that it isn’t called Alternia anymore. Even Pinyix thought so. That’s part of the reason I left Sigma.”

Pinyix Idcaye, the Foreseer of the future, endorsing this mutant? Really? With and despite all they know of what will come to pass?

You really don’t know what to think, should Mituna’s words on that front bear any truth.

“You can’t make me abandon everything I believe in favor of the words of a nine sweeps old upstart in a cloak, Mituna.”

Mituna nods, his expression solemn.

“I can’t make you do anything,” he says. “But I can ask, can’t I? Make a request while I’m here with you? You know Arctan wouldn’t want you to go on any culling spree crusades in his name.”

“Don’t presume to tell me what my moirail would desire,” you grind out.

“You’re right. That’s not within my purview,” he agrees. “But it’s within it to tell you what my matesprit might think of all this. Alcyon, you could be so much more than an instrument of death.”

You light yet another cigarette, finding a new glass dish to tap out the ashes in.

You cannot put the old one back together.

That’s always been your problem. You can rend things to shreds, but never fix them afterwards. You never could.

That was Arctan’s thing. He could make a dying seedling come back to life, in a show of power that transcended his telekinesis.

Mituna draws close to you. “Please, Alcyon. If you can’t find it within yourself to believe in Kankri, could you at least believe in me?”

“Fuck you,” you spit, flipping him off, and shoving him away.

And then he kisses you full on, without sparing you the needles of his fangs.

Oh, the blackrom hooker wants yet another black fling? You can give him that and more.

You shove him up against the wall of your recuperacoon, minding his bandages, and return the gesture.

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck…” you murmur, as you tug down the garment covering his lower half, along with yours. His bulges twine around yours and you nearly weep.

“Fuck you!” you shout.

“Arccos,” he says. As if he has any right to remind you of that, of that name. “Arccos, I swear with all that I believe…”

Your bulges find his nook, and he exhales sharply, letting out a high trill of exhilaration. Mituna the masochist. It fucking figures.

“You swear what?”

“I swear that the mutant with the candy red blood is no enemy of yours, or a traitor to the cause,” he replies. “And neither am I, Arccos. I am your friend.”

You let out a sob that you muffle in his clavicle.

“How do you know?”

“I just do, Arccos.”

Each time he calls you by your hatchling name, he breaks your bloodpusher all over again.

Why are you one triplet in a set of three? Why can’t you be your own individual troll without feeling shattered? Why can’t you escape that?

Arcsin.

Arctan.

You three took your first breaths at nearly the same time, you the oldest by mere seconds. You navigated the caverns with them.

Where are they when you need guidance? Where are they when you are a jagged third in search of your missing pieces, pieces that have been scattered to the winds?

In this moment, you are sure of one thing alone.

“I hate you, Mituna.”

He just had to rip away the one thing you had left. Your certainty in your way forward. He had to peel it from you like the skin on a fruit.

He had to leave you vulnerable and trembling, as you sink your bulge into his nook, and he takes every centimeter, willing and laughing, as if this is Sigma Block once more.

“I don’t think you do,” he says, and then, as if he has his own special form of seeing forward, tells you, “But you will, though.”

You bite him hard, right above where the golden post in his earlobe is, where his left tag used to be. Did he get that piece of jewelry from the auxiliatrix known as Porrim?

“Don’t tell me you’re a prescient, too.”

He snorts.

“An unwilling and erratic one, at best. But you’ll see, Arccos.”

You snarl and something else in your hive shatters. Another makeshift ashtray?

“Stop calling me that! I am not that troll anymore!”

You haven’t been Arccos Thaeta in more than five sweeps.

His tone bathed in contempt, he murmurs, “My apologies, Alcyon Tensor, the Sanguine.”

You want to fucking cull him with nothing but claws and teeth - weapons be damned - but you won’t. You won’t.

You couldn’t. Angry as you are, you really couldn’t.

You never would.

Instead, you just stand there and cry, cry the way you haven’t since you were a wiggler, since the highbloods culled most of the trolls in Chi block, and Arctan had to shoosh you, even while he himself was terrified.

Your slurry hits the hardwood floor, your bulge retracts, and you continue to bawl, gasping for air.

Mituna wraps one arm around your shoulders.

“Arccos,” he murmurs.

You ignore him.

“Arccos.”

More forcefully now.

You gaze at Mituna, with your eyes running, snot dribbling down the lower half of your face, and no hope of Arctan or even Arcsin to dab it away.

“Why are you here, Mituna?”

“You invited me. You pretty much insisted that I follow you after that shit with Terbel.”

You shake your head.

“Why are you really here?” you want to know, starting to think that running into him was no accident. “Do you want me to join your suicidal little group? Forget what I’ve believed for as long as I knew how to believe?”

He holds you even more tightly.

“I didn’t intend to see you, but I’m glad that I did,” he says. “I’m not asking you to forget anything. I’m asking you, if it were in your power to help trolls who believe in liberation, whatever the shape of that liberation, would you assist them? Would you assist us?”

You wipe your nose.

“That goes without saying, Tuna. Of course I would. I would never turn a lowblood into these inhospitable streets.”

Mituna nods, then.

“That means we’re on the same side, Tensor.”

“Arccos,” you whisper. “You can call me Arccos if you want.”

That name may serve you any longer, but it does not mean you need to entirely forsake it.

“Right, Arccos. I’ll hold you to that promise.”

You don’t even know if you deserve that name anymore. So you continue crying while he holds you close.

Then, he focuses his the red-blue glow from his psionics to play a light show for you.

Mituna Captor, he really is luminary. So luminary that it hurts.

You recognize the outlines of trolls he conjures from flickering luminescence, by their horns, by the unique way they have of gesturing.

Xhifei. Polvui. Fianye. Alzirr. Jishui. Alhena. Vasluk. Zhiozo. Arnhue. Culria. Praime. Dienre. Khifos. Hiongo. And more besides.

And Arctan.

Arctan.

You watch the blurry insubstantial outlines dance, move fluidly, and seem to watch you. Fake-Arctan reaches with an intangible hand for your fingertips, as tears course down Mituna’s face.

“I never forgot them, even if you think I did. Not a single one,” he says, voice thick. “I never have.”

You resist the urge to push him from the frame of your recuperacoon, and, moreover, out of your hive.

“Why do you show me this?” you ask.

Mituna gives you a sad smile.

“Porrim says the auxiliatrices used to grieve when one of their own passed on into the arms of the First Mother,” he says. “I don’t know if I believe in an afterlife, or in the Mother. But I believe that…”

He stops talking for a few moments, trying to calm himself down.

“I believe. I believe. I think we were cheated,” he says.

“Finally, you see things from my point of view,” you tell him.

“I think we were cheated out of the right to grieve for all of our friends,” he goes on. “I know Jishui, Arctan, Khifos, Hiongo, and probably Alhena are alive somewhere, but… existence in the helmsblock is no way to live, is it?”

You shake your head.

“Never was. Never will be.”

You recall your ten sweeps old self asking him to cull you with his power, the day you qualified for helmsblock conscription and got your gold and black jumpsuit. How he hid you away in an alcove in the psion compound, and swore to cull you if he couldn’t find another solution, if there was no way that you could escape.

But he found a solution in the end. He did. And you ran with and for it.

“We’ll remember them all,” he says. “We’ll remember. We don’t let the Empire sweep them under the rug. They were trolls. They are trolls. Right?”

Red-blue Hiongo turns his face to you, also a vision conjured by the Luminary. You touch his nonexistent hand, and watch it dematerialize. Khifos stands and seems to rolls her eyes at him, satisfied to wave at you.

Alzirr, Alzirr looking older than six, picks something out of a small piece of conjured wrapping and sticks it into her equally conjured mouth. Forty caegars says it’s a peppermint. Fucking Alzirr.

She inclines her head toward you and seems to smile.

She disintegrates before you can reach her.

“So this is what you have to bend me to your side, Mituna?” you ask. “A bunch of false visions?”

“I thought we’ve agreed that we were on the same side. And this is what I have of them when I miss them,” he says. “This is all I have, some days. I thought you might like to see. If not, I’m sorry for upsetting you.”

Fine. If that’s how he wants to play it?

You can play, too.

Still, your yearning, your yearning bubbles forth from your mouth before you can swallow it back down.

“Show me Arctan again,” you say. “Please.”

Mituna obliges.

Your bloodpusher hammers in your chest.

“I’m sorry, ‘Tan,” you tell the red-blue light with your moirail’s horns and every bit of his unspoken mannerisms. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you in the end.”

All the projected figures cease then, their existence blown in an instant.

Mituna starts to cry in earnest, like an injured two sweeps old.

This time, you’re the one who ends up holding him. And that’s how you stay for most of the day, until you finally suggest that the two of you squeeze into your recuperacoon.

You open your front door and pick up the calabashes of congealing pepperpot. You borrow some clothes from Auriga so Mituna has something to wear when he returns to his friends. Something aside from his instructor jumpsuit or his blackrom outfit, both of which paint a massive target sign on his back.

You squeeze next to Mituna in the recuperacoon, sighing.

Your name…

Your name is...

Your name is Alcyon Tensor.

But for now, you’ll be Arccos Thaeta once more.

If just for a little while.

#sigma block

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