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Xefros Tritoh had known Dammek – Dammek of the lofty antlers and the knowing smirk, Dammek of the sweet drumming skills and the lusus who didn’t mind carrying them around like some mighty steed in an old-timey adventure movie – almost as long as he’d known himself. In some ways, maybe knowing Dammek had helped Xefros even be himself. Helped him be the kind of rustblood troll that didn’t shit himself when the Imperial Drones came buzzing along. Helped him be part of a kickass band that really stuck it to the fish – to the Queen Fish, that is. Xefros kept pictures of them together snug in a book like some trolls pressed flowers. Not that Xefros did that. Pressing flowers wasn’t very revolutionary punk rock, he didn’t think.
There they were dangling from play equipment in a park, for example, Xefros’s face all raw joy, painfully loose with his warmth, his excitement… It was kinda embarrassing, now. But Dammek was behind him, keeping his cool. Just like always, really. Dammek was doing his flips, and he barely even seemed to notice the camera at all.
There they were eating a flavor discus ("pizza" to a highblood, maybe) together – the crickets mashed inside had had just the right crunch. Dammek was smiling, in that one. It was kind of special, to capture a Genuine Dammek Smile on camera. Not a smirk, not a show put on for some kind of audience, but the way Dammek smiled when there wasn't a camera in sight. Maybe it was like what catching a Subjugglator without murder-circus face paint on must’ve been, or catching the Heiress Trizza when she wasn’t being a smug bag of hoofbeast shit. Yeah, Xefros had said it. The Heiress was a bag of hoofbeast shit, and he wasn’t taking that back, not on your life.
He was pretty sure that would get him some enemies, if he posted it online. Some “anemones” on Prongle, because it was a seadweller’s world. And it was Dammek who would back Xefros up, if those “anemones” came for him. Maybe being moirails was different, if you were a highblood and likely to get swept up in the rage of your inheritance. Likely to tip over into a pain-bringing you honestly didn’t mean. But some things had to be the same. Dammek could get Xefros laughing with raised eyebrows and a few snarky words, for instance. Dammek had taken pictures of Xefros all ready to play Arena Stickball even though he claimed he didn’t really get the game, and he’d brought along appropriately sports-themed beverages for the occasion.
Xefros would always remember that, because he’d put it down in his book. A book of moirallegiance. Xefros thought of that book, full of moments and band fliers and sweeps upon sweeps of feeling steadier with Dammek behind him, when he saw his best friend… His moirail, his bandmate, his partner in revolutionary musical crime… Lifted into the sky.
It was a vein of light that did it, a vein of cherry red light wound together through space with another all in sour apple green. Xefros had always understood that Dammek could be taken away from him, from an Alternia that needed them both to help bring in the change. He’d understood it, because how he could not? Didn’t mean he was okay with it. Perhaps Dammek would’ve failed to laugh at one of Heiress Trizza’s memes on an especially bad day, though, and the little gold-studded witch would order a bunch of Subjugglators-in-training to spell new jokes for her out of his organs. Maybe their band the Grubbles/Grubbels would get world-shaking-ly famous, and the Empress herself would turn her vast ship around to come beat them into the bloody grey earth personally. They might’ve become legends, then, like the Summoner before them, like the Signless. Stranger things had happened, after all. The “#LOLSHRIMP” tag was still going strong on Prongle even!
Maybe a whole ton of things could have happened, is really the long and short of it. Marauding pirates who decided they’d kill for band equipment could’ve happened. A rampaging lusus charged up with too much mind honey, knocking over everything in its path could’ve happened. One thing Alternia definitely had enough of was danger. It was all good in the danger department, thank you very much. But Xefros had definitely not expected that Dammek would be taken away from him, away from Alternia, by a freaking mysterious space light. That wasn’t anywhere in their plans for band-based revolution, their plans for future cool hangouts… Their plans for making these few sweeps they got really mean something, even in the world of near-immortal Empresses.
And yet, that was what happened – Xefros hadn’t even managed to make his way to Dammek’s hive to help him investigate the space light when – whoosh! It swooped him right up, like into a vacuum cleaner. An especially mystical and threatening vacuum cleaner. Xefros’s eyes burned, and he felt his stomach twist up like a Subjugglator’s balloon animal. The very sky had betrayed them, now. In a world of drones and murder and preteen Heiress rampages, now even the sky had betrayed them.
There was nothing he could do but run faster, then, run through other trolls’ lawn rings, leap up on their balconies, throw himself not-so-gracefully over their gates. He had to get to the lights, he reasoned. Maybe then he could follow Dammek up and up, follow him and… He didn’t know what, then. Follow him and drag him back home. They had a concert that weekend. It was in another friend’s yard, yeah. But… They’d gotten a few light yes-es on Prongle. People were going to be there. They had a concert that weekend, and whole lives to live as two sides balancing a diamond.
Xefros was not naturally a runner – his lusus was a sloth, of all things. He was a panting mess by the time he froze on the purple blood’s porch. He caught his breath, there, and watched an Imperial Drone snatch someone off the street beneath him. It was a bad sign, probably, that he didn’t even scream. Too many people had thrown themselves all furious and desperate down the street beneath him, by that point; too many people had been lifted away by the Heiress’s minions. It was beginning to feel like a slap to the face when it happened, honestly, rather than a snap of the neck. Maybe his head was far away, of course. Maybe his head was with Dammek, dragged up into the void. But still. Xefros needed his fire.
And so he saw the stranger running through a street all bruised dark and lit with blue bright veins, and he saw the stranger taken away to who knew what kind of painful death, and he stumbled forward a little. There was nothing he could do. Once, he might have burned more, inside. Now, he just turned his eyes back to the smears of light in the sky, still candy red, still sour apple green. Still seeming so, so far away. They had changed everything, though not in the way Dammek and Xefros had fought for change. Not in the way they had sang for it, the way they painted change in their songs. The impossible lights crisscrossed and swirled together through the smog-choked stars, and now –
– And now there was a shadow falling through one of them, a shadow shaped a little like a troll.
Dammek? Dammek curled into himself, his horns clipped? Xefros raised a hand to his mouth. He’d just have to get there, now, he reasoned. He’d just have to get there, and then learn how completely his and Dammek’s world had changed.