Chapter Text
The distant crunch of boots beating against snow grew louder as the soldiers closed in on the Shamanic temple. Within, a still silence erupted among the last of the survivors - the weeping squeaks of their children drowning in one sustained, horrified gasp. The Op'Mahun were not the kind to design locks on their doors, to turn away a brother in need of shelter. Today, that virtue would kill the last of their species. Stealing one last look at the oncoming army through a sliver of light, Darevan pushed the sliding door back into place and rounded on the Head Shaman.
"Tigde'nai," he whispered breathlessly, "We need to go. If we make a break for it into the woods, they might not shoot all of us."
He may as well have been talking to stone. Though dozens of red, multifaceted eyes stared at him, not one of them looked to him in agreement. He had no choice but to try again, fists balled tightly to prevent himself from shaking.
This was a different, more desperate tack, knowing they were rapidly running out of time. "Father. I am begging you." He had not called out to the man so hopelessly in two decades, not since he was a sickly child burying himself in his wings for comfort. Darevan started forward and tugged the fur around his father's thorax now, using all of his meager human strength to try and drag him to the rear of the tent. The Head Shaman, in his enormity, did not move.
The sole human Op'Mahun was at a complete loss. Surely, his father must love him - he had raised him since birth, since his human parents' fatal marooning on their planet. How, then, was he not convinced? Why would he put him through the humiliation of begging to save their lives? He could not understand it.
Finally Tigde'nai began to stir, raising a thin, feathery appendage to the skull rosary around his neck - and scratching a long, horizontal groove into the next blank bead in the sequence. Darevan's heart hammered in his chest, pumping ice-cold blood through his body. This was the glyph that meant "dead end," the mark that made their abandonment of this universe final.
Then Tigde'nai lifted the rosary from around his neck and lowered it carefully down around his son's. In the next motion, his father wrapped his arms around Darevan, pulling him tightly to his thorax.
"Darevan," His father's voice was impossibly calm in the face of death, "you are human. They will spare you if we do not run. I have seen it."
Darevan was already shaking his head before his father had finished the sentence, writhing from his grasp as though the refusal to bid him goodbye would change the inevitable.
Once again, his father was not moved. "Listen to me. I will be with you in a million million other lives-" the Shaman promises him, but that promise is so empty, because it doesn't manage to matter at all to him in this one, "but I can not come back to you here, my son."
Head pressed to the feathery fur on his chest, Darevan shook his head wildly, as though struggling to break free, though his hands clutched dearly at whatever they could grasp. "Don't. Please. Please-" Begging does not suit a man his age and status, but he cannot stop himself. His human body prevented him from traversing through time like the rest of his kind, and every passing second spent down his last moment with his family. "I can't. I'd rather die here. With you-"
His father pushed him away and he stared at him with unblinking eyes, taking in his son for the last time in this doomed rhizome of the universe. "You cannot do that," he stated plainly. "Even this life will matter, Darevan. Especially this life." His father's gentle touch lifted his chin, smoothed back his hair the way he'd once done to soothe him to sleep as a boy. "Dunahrai, my son. So many depend on you, even if you cannot see it now. You must do everything to live."
Darevan wanted to scream, to fight him, to make him take everything back. But in the next instant, the door to the temple was thrown open.
"On your knees!"
Aliens who did not submit to enslavement did not get second chances. The Op'mahun had been given theirs and now the soldiers were talking to him. The soldiers were talking only to him.
Tigde'nai beheld the invaders as though they were his guests, his ancient but ageless wings glittering as he turned his back on his son with finality. The muzzle of a gun was pressed against the elder's throat; Darevan watched the soldier's finger tense - and suddenly there was a cauterized hole through his father's neck, cutting the air from his brain, dropping him to his knees. Darevan screamed, in the grip of white hot hatred only a human was capable of knowing-
Then the butt of a soldier's gun hit him so hard he could no longer resist his arrest.
It was against Federation law to keep a human slave, but the law was purposefully ambiguous for half-breeds. Though Darevan was a full-blooded human, the soldiers did not look charitably upon his Op'Mahun heritage. Too human to die, but too alien to live free, Darevan lost track of how many hands he changed before arriving at M83-001.
M83-001 was what Darevan would later hear referred to as a 'techno-hive' of a planet; a filthy, man-made world without a hint of organic life, save for the humans who colonized it. These humans interfaced with their artificial environment via neural implants, their brains equal parts biomatter and tech. There was not a thing in the Hive that did not cost money, from clean air intake to the right to exist in its spaces. Each sector was ruled by the company whose products sold best, and the world had been split into maps fought over by ruthless corporations who routinely decided which essential-for-life product to upcharge to maintain their iron grip.
For a penniless man like Darevan, to be dumped in the deep of M83-001 and offered a job with no alternative was not different than being sold into slavery.
More curious than its ruthless capitalism was its government; tied to each company was a family of businesswomen and men who served their sector as leaders and figureheads. The oligarchal system had done away with all pretense of meritocracy, and referred to their leaders as aristocrats - as in other capitalist worlds, princes and princesses tended to inherit their families' businesses, and became Kings and Queens of their sector to distinguish them from leaders of other successful, but not ruling, companies.
Historically, though not exclusively, the young men of such families married into other royal families and exerted their influence laterally, while their sisters sat the throne of their home sector and commanded from there. The Queen of the wealthiest company was often referred to as the Hive Queen, and held special power and influence over the the world, such as the authority over relations with other planets. But the Hive Queen herself never left the comfort of her palace - primarily for her protection against fifteen billion of her miserable subjects that would riot at the sight of her.
This background became the toxic radiation around which Darevan lived his life after being forced into the Hive Queen's employ.
A guard tells him he is allowed to keep whatever belongings he has in his pockets, though he makes him strip inside an interrogation room, inspecting each of his possessions in turn.
Ultimately, his canister of white clay, his rosary, and his patterned shirt and pants are returned to him through a slot in a window - in addition to a simple cream-coloured uniform to wear during work hours. His fruit knife, jewelry, embroidered cloak, belt, and scented oils disappear into a black bag on the other side of the glass. He knows at once he will not see them again.
The guard turns his Eyes over in his hands with a blank expression. "You can keep this in your quarters," he decides, "but Her Majesty does not allow eyeglasses in her court. Do not show up to her summons with them."
Darevan does not speak, but stares hard into the guard's steely expression, waiting for elaboration. It does not come.
Darevan had expected the ruler of all such a gargantuan sector to be a wise old matron, and was shocked to discover that Queen Maeve could not have been much older than him, if at all. Approaching the clean, titanium-white throne, raised high on a series of tall steps, the Hive Queen barely acknowledged his presence, looking down at him through the corner of computer-screen-blue eyes. Her hair was naturally the colour of gold as though engineered to be so, and her wealth had kept her olive-toned skin extraordinarily young for a mother of nine. She wore an empire-waisted white dress, undoubtedly that colour to emphasize the cleanliness of her Palace. Though Darevan could see that she must be pregnant, the King-consort of the Hive was nowhere to be seen; he would eventually prove to be such a non-presence that Darevan would never meet him.
Maeve's hand lifted to barely conceal her disgusted expression, the Hive Queen's laughter was equal parts amused and bewildered. "My. What in the Gods' name is it you have on your face?" Her voice relayed cruelty with such precision that Darevan knew she had been taught to speak that way since birth.
Darevan bit down against every instinct that urged him to bark back at her, diverting his gaze to her feet to stop himself from lunging at her smug face.
"Is it that your alien upbringing has made you too stupid to speak," she continued, speaking as she might have observed the weather, if her planet had had a climate to begin with, "or are you just stubborn?" The scowl that spreads across Darevan's face answered for him, and the Queen smirked, triumphant. "I see. So you do understand me. Certainly, you must realize your situation?"
Darevan looked away.
"Ah. So you don't care." The Queen lowered her arm from her face, rested one hand on her slightly swollen belly. "Well, I assure you that you will find it quite difficult to kill yourself. You are in my service, and I make a habit of ensuring that my Palace keeps everyone in it quite safe." The Queen smirked, having managed to make even a statement of security sound like a threat.
Darevan wanted nothing more than to die, but the only thing he had left of his father was a promise to him that he hadn't even had the time to swear. He had no choice but to live. "That isn't going to happen," he answered plainly.
"It talks!" The Queen laughed with renewed wickedness. "Alright, then state your name,"
Darevan hesitated. Op'Mahun did not greet eachother by name; that was, they did not greet eachother by name so casually. Names gave one power over the other, left their meaning malleable in their hands, and were not surrendered to strangers. Instead, one might address an acquaintance by a formality, or a title.
"I was the Apprentice Shaman to the head of my clan among the Op'Mahun," Darevan offered instead.
"Okay?" Maeve was unimpressed.
"So you may call me Shaman," he made clear.
Maeve rolled her eyes, but ultimately complied. "Well, Shaman, I'm in need of a servant, for myself and my daughter - and you are in need of a job, I'm told." She had begun to grow tired of this distraction, and averted her gaze to make this plain. "You'll start serving my daughter tomorrow. Make even the slightest move to touch her and the guards will shoot you where you stand. If you do well enough, you'll move to my personal service and enjoy all the freedoms and privileges that comes with. I think that is more than generous of me to offer an alien refugee," she hummed, satisfied with herself.
Then she looked back again, her cold gaze staring through him. "You can handle a twelve year old girl, certainly?"
Darevan made a sort of noncommittal shrug in response. He did not have much of a choice but to.
Maeve tilted her head as though coming to a decision. Eventually, she nodded. "Your facepaint amuses me. You may wear it," Maeve declared with a dismissive flick of her wrist, "But the next time I see you wear those glasses, I will crush them beneath my heel. Am I understood?" Darevan did not answer, and the guard pulled him away.
Darevan was not a good listener. As it turned out, he could not bring himself to go outside without his Eyes, make direct eye contact with other men as though they were the same species. The semi-reflective surface of the glasses were a great comfort to him, and while he reluctantly wore his wingless uniform, he showed up to Princess Caoimhe's chambers with his Eyes firmly on his face.
There were a couple of important details that Darevan would later come to learn about the one called Princess Caoimhe, heir apparent to the throne of the Hive Queen. The first was that his gender was male. The second was that his violent streak preceded him, and that the Queen might have been trying to intervene for Darevan's protection, had she been more transparent about the reason for her rules.
When Darevan crossed through the door with the guards and set eyes upon the Princess, his first impulse was to think that he was the Queen's sister, for there was no way that Maeve was old enough to have an adult child. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that the youth was merely painted up like a woman: his eyeline was darkened with traces of smudged makeup; young features contoured into sharp angles with bronzer, foundation and rouge; his lips were stained an inappropriate shade of red. Darevan caught him just as he was scrubbing his lips with a white cloth, almost in the way a woman might remove excess lipstick, if the makeup had shown any sign of coming off. As the Princess turned, he may have caught Darevan's eye through his glasses for all of one instant. In what Darevan had time to observe, it was like looking at a clone of Queen Maeve. His yellow-gold hair was pulled back into a high fall, and a chunky circlet of contrasting titanium sat like laurels on his temples and ran 'round the back of his head, LEDs encased in domes of clear rubies, marking the luxury of his neuroimplant.
Then the boy shot up to stand on his bare feet and dove towards him, shifting with practised haste through layers of long fabric.
A guard yanked Darevan back as he registered the attack, but Caoimhe's reflexes were faster; he reached up to pluck his Eyes from Darevan's face, the red glass unhooking from his ears and coming away in one fluid motion. As Caoimhe leapt back, his fists closed tightly around them and Darevan heard a crunch - then both guards crashed down upon the Princess, bringing him to the floor faster than falling. Caoimhe hit the ground back-first with a winded grunt, and one guard pressed one knee against his throat and settled the rest of his weight upon the child's chest.
"Open your hand!" one of them screamed. Caoimhe did not comply, even as he struggled to draw breath, so the other forcefully peeled his small white-knuckled hand open. Blood streamed from the centre of his palm, the bright color exactly the same as the glittering, shattered facets of Darevan's Eyes. The guard began to scrub the fragments of embedded glass from his skin, and one of the last souvenirs of Darevan's identity fell in pieces to the floor. One particularly large and jagged shard slipped from Caoimhe's grip - the guard crushed it to dust with the butt of his pistol, and then released his prisoner, who heaved and coughed like he'd been pulled from water.
The guard could not leave a mark upon the Princess' face, so he redirected his rage upon Darevan, backhand catching him hard on the chin. He could not brace in time to stop himself from biting his tongue, and blood trickled readily down the left side of his mouth.
"You're lucky I don't shoot you," he roared, pushing Darevan up against the wall. "Didn't the Queen tell you not to wear those?"
Darevan knew better than to admit to the fact that she had.
"This never happened," the guard bellowed, gesturing at Caoimhe's wound, and those were terms that Darevan felt were agreeable. "Do you understand?" The servant nodded.
Caoimhe did not speak to Darevan that day, but sat across the room glaring miserably at him, eyes dark with bitter disappointment. Darevan thought that the spoiled brat had wounded him far worse than the short sting of disappointment from some foiled plot, though he could not say so.
That night, upon returning to his spartan dwelling in the bowels of the Palace, Darevan separated out one third of his clay. Upon rising, he washed the old paint from his face, bit down hard against his thumb, and pressed it against a portion of the separated white pigment. Blood mixed with bone-white clay quickly faded to brown, creating far too dull a substitute for his crimson, glittering Eyes - but he gathered it up in his fingertips and slid the pigment along the skin below his brow bone until he had painted the shape of them on his eyelids. It was better than nothing.
He stared hard into the mirror at his almost naked face and wondered what he could possibly find in this universe that his father would have wanted him to live for.