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Ullane Wistim | 9.3 sweeps | Greater Southern Desert Cavern
Your phone was grabbed from your hands by a jade girl who hurried over to who you can only assume is the mother superior, or however they rank jades. You wish now you’d asked Nanako more about her cavern.
The children peer at you through the glass wall of your room like they’ve never seen a girl who wears yellow before. Maybe they haven’t. You stare back at them evenly until they drop their gaze and shuffle away. You haven’t spoken to anyone since you asked them to contact Queenpin to verify your claims.
No words when they forced your gun from your hands and clamped the nullifier to your arm, the tick-like construct sucking at your blood and continuously injecting the agent that blocks your thinkpan from accessing your psi. No words as they interrogated you about what work you’d been doing in the cavern. No words as they tried to bribe you, then resorted to threats, and noticed your phone use despite you trying to hide it with your body.
Silence is your remaining weapon. Your pain is not theirs to enjoy.
At least they haven’t searched you yet, found your tail. Would they dock you? Cull you outright? You refuse to dwell on possibilities. You have lived every night of your life knowing you could die with a word, with a blow, and you’ve never let it stop you from aiming above your station.
A knock at the door, as if not answering was ever an option.
Ten more seconds of silence and it gets pushed open by the same troll who took you here, Tescin. Their name was written on the forms you saw the secretaries scribbling, along with your own, before you were rushed off by the nervously chattering acolytes.
“It’s always her dragging in the rubbish, huh?” one of the jades who escorted you to your room had said. One of the others laughed, and one had sighed, shaking her head.
“What can you expect, Zsuska? She thinks she’s not a girl, her thinkpan’s all funny. Poor Rivali! I don’t know why the cavern stopped sending her to a paid pale. It would do her so much good.”
The others laughed more, then you’d been shoved into your cell, unable to hear any more commentary through the glass and cavern stone.
Now they look at you with a face trying so hard to be flat that the strain is evident in the set of their ears and the stiffness they exude in their posture, in the way they hold their arms together, palms cupping their elbows, as if clutching each one for support.
They’re dressed in white, while everyone else you’ve seen has been in black, jade, or dark gray.
You wonder that they want any more reasons to stand out.
“Please come with me, miss Wistim.”
The only sound in the glowbug-lit passageway is the drip of water somewhere and the soft tap of walkpods as you follow them. They’re slightly shorter than you, Orpheo’s height, though nothing like his friendly broad face and stature.
They’re slim and pointy, with horns set at the back of their head, immaculately groomed the way jades all supposedly are. More so than most of the others who handled you.
Physically, you’re sure you could take them, even if they’re stronger; two castes isn’t so much, and you’re high for a yellow.
Still, they must have a weapon. The jades only need your thinkpan and your psi; they’d have no objections to hurting you in any non-lethal way.
They pause before the metal door to what can only be the room where this project is that you’re supposed to work on.
“Your associate contacted me.” They comment, with a trace of dryness that your ears flick at. It’s the first hint of emotion you’ve heard in their voice. “Do you know a Mr. Irrigo?”
You sigh and press your fingers to your forehead. You can only imagine what ID has done or said to them.
At least he talked to them. You half expected he wouldn’t.
Rivali snorts softly, their ears flicking slightly. Not as expressive as yours, but enough to show emotion.
“He seems quite invested in your safe return. Your phone will be returned to you later so you may assure him that you are well.”
You nod, not really trusting the promise.
“In the meantime…you may not speak or write of what you see in here. A psychic will place a binding on you after to ensure it, but I am warning you in advance.”
You push open the door and chained to the table is a troll.
You narrow your eyes.
The click of it behind you is only a minor note of concern when their face is studying you with bright amusement in what must be illegally colored pupils. Do they want you to work on a mutant?
What mutant is so valuable that a jade cavern would keep them alive?
“I’d offer you drinks, but there aren’t any in here.” They comment amicably. Is it they? She? The weary-sounding voice could be female, and they are dressed in cavern wear.
“Why am I working on you? What do they want me to do?” You ask, blunt as you clasp your hands behind your back. They told you nothing, only that they needed your psi.
“Nobody told you? I’m sorry for that, mustardseed! I hope you’ve seen an undead before, or this will be even worse for you. In fact - why don’t you turn around for a moment? I’m chained here, so I can’t, and this way you’ll be less likely to lose your lunch.”
Dubious, you stare them, and they shrug.
“Mustardseed, I can’t play any tricks on you even if I wanted to, and I think I’m a sight too old to be trying to mess with young husks’ heads.”
You turn around and hear a faint sucking sound. Your ears pin back, anxious, and you whirl around to see them holding a small white worm between two dark fingers.
“You’re to be studying these little buggers! D’you believe in drinkers, mustardseed? Well - I’m sure I wouldn’t, if I were you, I spend most of my time wishing they weren’t real! If they weren’t, you wouldn’t have been dragged here by that huffy lot of mossballs.”
She tilts her head to look at you, wavy hair moving, and then seems to take your lack of response as a cue to go on.
“This isn’t the standard parasite, though I’ve got one of those too. It’s a modified form brewed up by my abhorrent ancestor, and it replaces most of my inner workings. I can use it to make constructs, or slip it into the minds of any jade who’s not resistant enough to the strain to reject it!”
You manage to get words past your dry mouth, the sudden weakness of your body.
“How?”
“Oh, don’t ask me; I’m no scienstiff, I destroyed as much of his work as I could. What sane troll wants to hand caverns the power to get in people’s heads that way?”
“If I can slip a worm in someone, they’re…well, puppet’s such a nasty word, isn’t it? I nudge them a bit, if I need to. Make them forget me, make them not notice things…that kind of thing. It’s not so sophisticated as what the blues and indigos do.”
You narrow your eyes. Even if it’s limited to jades, it’s mind control, a type that can’t be removed by a nullifier or anything short of pan surgery.
“You destroyed his work.” You say slowly. “Yet you use it. What do they want me to do with it?”
She looks vaguely offended, and twirls a claw through some strands of hair, chains clinking softly.
“Do you think no one’s ever wanted to cull me, mustardseed? Or that I never had inspectors come to call, back when I wasn’t caged in this miserable cave? They were hardly hurt. I try to avoid leaving bodies, for my sake and everyone else’s.”
“What do they want me to do with it?” You repeat. You’re not interested in a monster’s excuses. If you could do anything about it still talking, you would, but every tool you have is gone, the nullifier still steadily pumping its agent through your veins.
You point at it.
“Will need this removed to work.”
She laughs, and the sound fills the small stone room, grating through your head. Monsters shouldn’t laugh.
“Soon! What they want, my dear judgmental mustardseed, is for you to figure out how these things reproduce outside of a host. Inspire them to go at it like a pack of hopbeasts on Eater Bunny night! Did I mention that’s a horrible idea? But I imagine you’re a bit more concerned with getting out of here, so I guess I can’t blame you if you try.”
“If you try to drink from me, will cull you.” You warn.
“My stars above, do I look like a feral to you? Just chomp on a vein with not so much as a how-d’you-do? Goodness, I’m sorry for any bad impressions any other drinkers have made on you, but I don’t endorse them.”
You’d love to rip her open, figure out how to cut off her chatter permanently, and take the worm.
“Call the jades. Need to start.”
She puts the worm aside on the operating table and puts a hand under her chin.
“Not so fast, mustardseed, I’ve got some questions for your close-lipped self. You’re very unsurprised by my existence, so unsurprised I have to ask where you have met other drinkers, since I can’t believe I’m your first.”
“Not your business.” You reply roughly, forgetting to pitch your voice higher, letting it drop to its usual lower tones.
“See, that’s not wrong - but I have to wonder if you really know what you’re doing here, what your credentials are, if you’re not just some poor sap they plucked up wherever they could find! Pretend I’m a crechematron! Not hard, I’m sure, though they rarely show as much shoulder as me.”
She grins, and you feel nauseated.
You can’t summon the jades, and the door is locked. They won’t let you leave until you work on the drinker, and the tools you see are all shut behind their cases, no doubt requiring the right chrome to bypass.
“Grew up in town with many undead.” You say after a minute. “Study them sometimes. Mediculler for Queenpin, belong there when not dragged off.”
“Ahhhh…useful for their purposes, but working for someone the Empire will ignore any injustice done to.”
You must fail to stop yourself from baring your fangs, because the drinker laughs softly.
“Jades, mustardseed! They’ll use and abuse anyone for a little glory, a little extra prestige on the sweeply report. My ancestor exclusively used his own line for this little project, breeding us until he got the mothergrub to churn me out. The perfect host! But he was still never quite satisfied with my limitations, had to keep modifying and tweaking and splitting me open until it was the end of him.”
Your tail would be lashing, propriety a distant memory, and you don’t realize how much it’s moving under your coat until the drinker leans over a bit and squints.
“What’s going in your waist area? Do you have some kind of snake there?”
A few steps isn’t enough; you back up further, though the lab’s not that big. Anything to keep them from looking too closely.
“Why…is that a tail? My! I haven’t seen one of your kind in a while! I hope it’s the cute tufted kind.”
You snarl at the beast, feeling the orange hue bleed into your oculars as you let your tail rip free and it writhes back and forth, fur tip bushing like a meowbeast’s.
Shame should fill you, but there’s no room.
You’d rip them open with your bare claws if you didn’t want to heave at what was inside.
“Have cut open the talking dead before, would do it again.” You hiss. “Don’t speak to me, monster, mutant, whatever you are. Do not deserve to.”
“So high and mighty for someone many trolls would consider an animal! You’re lucky I’m not a blabbermouth, mustardseed; calm yourself down and put that away before I call them in. Incidentally - my eyes are an aesthetic quirk, not a sign of defect. It’s a shame you can’t say the same for yourself, isn’t it? Is that why you spit all that anger at something you see as lesser?”
You’re stunned in place by rage.
“It’s too bad, given you could get that cut off, have all those little issues done with! I’m stuck the way I am.” They say idly, examining their claws.
They hardly look surprised when you walk up and grab their throat, cold and slightly undulating under your warm hands.
“You can’t choke me to death, though by all means try. Does it make you feel better?” They say, soft, as their awful bright irises gaze into yours.
You let them go, anger numbed if not gone. You breathe in and out, in and out, as you turn and pace back and forth. You take out one of your old iron charms, the kind you clipped to your hair as a child to ward off spirits and monsters, and rub it gently.
Tail in hand, you put it back in place under your clothes.
“Call the jades.” You say, nestling the charm in place at the base of your bun.
One way or another, you’re leaving this cavern.
One way or another, you’re taking one of these worms, and figuring how to kill them and their wretched host.