#uhm. yeah!

“I was only trying to keep them safe! I couldn’t see them culled, all of those sweet little faces—“

The protest that she made no effort in swallowing back down bubbled up from somewhere deep within her, but a click of the tongue against the roof of his mouth forced it back down to where it came from.

“I understand. I sympathize, even. The only way to keep them safe, though, is to help me find them.”

There are very few places where mutated trolls are allowed to exist within the Empire, and it looked like all of those places were ones where the only path to follow were fleet-bound. Those sanctuaries, the ones like the Provider’s own Thorezille, seemed more like a prison sentence in that regard.

“Gracious, sir, I think they are plenty safe where they are. What are you going to do? Rip them from their new lives?”

Redivi paused, head cocked to the side. The indignation that she spoke with clearly was not sitting well with him, and for a brief moment he was as still as a statue. 

“They are happy and safe – Please, I will not do it again, but let them be.”

“Who are they with? Who did you hand them off to?”

He said each word slowly, moving to stand from his seated position to loom over her. It was always so easy to forget how tall he was until he was right in someone’s face. She took a half step back for breathing room.

As for who they were handed off to. A rebel that one of the jades of her – now disbanded – cloister recommended. She didn’t get a chance to meet him, he spoke through a delegate that she couldn’t describe if the barrel she was staring down belonged to an actual gun. Any memories she had of their interactions were like the static feeling that prickles through the skin of a limb long asleep.

They made trolls disappear, and then they disappeared themselves. No traces. Even if the want was there, she couldn’t give him anything.

“Darion,” he urged softly, but it was hard not to see what was building up behind his eyes when he stood so close. “Give me a name.”

In an ostentatious blur of gold and fuchsia, the two mutants hatched in the cavern were gone. It was all so fast, neither static nor blur stopped to exchange pleasantries, let alone a name.

“Darion.”

Those rebels were just his crew, and he was just the man recommended. Word of mouth was the shadow they operated under, as hypersurveilled as Alternia was. She shook her head and took another step back.

The patron exhaled before he spoke again, a clear attempt to dispel the vitriol that would no doubt poison the next thing that came out of his mouth.

“Were you in contact with The Ferryman?”

The title came out in a hiss that swept all of the air out of the room. The Ferryman. Anyone that might know what he looks like was either part of his network or someone saved, and thus disappeared, by him.

She felt her face drop in the same second that something vicious and bloodthirsty flashed across Redivi’s. There was a history between Ferryman and Gracious. History that saw the youngest of his children swept out of his home, and she was starting to see why.

“If yes,” he was looming again and in an instant she became that small troll lost in caverns. “Then you’ve made a very dangerous mistake. I will not ask again.”

His words hung between them for a brief second, a coldness wafted between them.

“I didn’t know what else to do–”

A monster broke through his facade in that same instant, a furious monster with fangs bared in a snarl. It was all the warning she had before the floor beneath her feet disappeared and she was falling. Falling forever into nothingness.

— — —

When Darion awoke, it took time for eyes to adjust to the darkness. In the meantime, she lay against the hard surface of somewhere that, though she could not see very well, felt familiar. There was a nausea that clung to her, almost as sticky as whatever substance caked to her skin was.

Something moved in the darkness, something massive that passed with impossible quickness from one stalagmite to the next. She watched as the hulking shadow disappeared through a passageway that led deeper into the cavern. Her skin went aglow immediately, the imminent threat gripping at her throat in a razor sharp grip.

What had she done?

In the same instant, flashes of the different shades a jade blood could come in replaced the darkness, flooding her vision. It covered every inch of the cavern she called home. The cavern that she was responsible for taking care of.

A fresh wave of nausea swept in with the sight, choking her with white hot fury when realized what lay at her feet; slain jades as far as the eye could see. Each of them with a face twisted by horror, betrayal, anger, staring back at Darion with wide, vacant eyes.

Then she was running, skipping over the bodies of her fallen brethren in the direction that the impossible shadow went. Abruptly, there was more variation to the blood that painted the walls. Now there were reds and blues, yellows and… pinks. Fuchsia, to be exact. She didn’t need the confirmation of the source, couldn’t bear to look down at the massacre that no doubt joined the party of her fallen comrades, casting judgement that burned through the failed matron like the pit in her stomach did.

A desperate sprint brought her to the end of the cavern, the slurry pond, where the Mother Grub lived, the heads of the three jades tasked with guarding her stuck to stalagmites as if pikes, mouths agape. She felt their gazes trail after her as she entered.

Darion had no idea what Ferryman looked like. No one did. And yet, there was no doubt in her mind that the hulking figure with a face she couldn’t see was him. The Mother Grub was dead at his feet.

There was something spiked and round in his hand, that he used Darion’s glow to admire better.

“Thank you for the invitation to your home. Your efforts to the cause are appreciated.”

A scream died in her throat. The ground fell away.

– – – 

Darion was standing, rigid, in the same spot in Thorezille, in Redivi’s dining room. The patron, however, was already back in his seat, any trace of the fury that was there, gone. Her heart beat in her ears, almost loud enough to deafen.

There was a cup in front of him and on the side of the table nearest to her. She stared at it.

“Come now, sit. You must be starved, standing there like that for so long.” His smile was softer as he spoke, lifting the cup to his lips.

How much time passed?

“Gracious, I–”

He waved a hand in the air. “Do not worry about it, I am aware of how hard it can be to get a hold of your friend. Trust me, I’ve tried.” There was a glint in his eye that she couldn’t place.

She sat, dropped her gaze to the cup to keep herself from attempting to navigate his feelings. Heart heavy.