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Grian could remember when they first came. It was a brilliantly sunny day, the planet’s two stars lighting the cloudless sky. He remembered how it all changed so quickly. The ball collided with the side of his head and the peeling orange laughter of his childhood friend. He remembered the phantling’s brown locks shining golden in the sun as his father, an Elytrian, looked on in amusement. He remembered how kind that man was. He missed his friend on days like this.
The young Elytrian grumbled as he snapped back to reality briefly. The glass windows of their blackmetal transport vehicle were clouded by vapor from all of his sighing. From his peripheral he could see his escort looking at him from behind a printed veil. He looked away, quelling the way his stomach churned.
It was the… the organization his escort was from that changed his whole life. They flipped it all over and crushed it in their fists like brittle feathers, letting the filaments go and leaving Grian to desperately piece them back together. He remembered how their ships came so suddenly and with so many. They had later said this invasion was planned for years. Their fleet blocked out the twin suns and sent his friend into shrieking hysterics. It’s a blur after that, his friend’s father scooping the shrieking phantling into his arms and urging Grian to run to his parent’s bungalow. He remembered the confusion and panic and his parent’s faces when they came and-
“Are we THERE yet?” Grian puffed his cherry red neck down out and flipped over to stare down his escort. A Watcher escort sat opposite to him, a green robe accented with white adorning their form. Blond choppy hair reached to their jawline, he noted it was brown at the roots. A veil white veil obscured their face, a design in black ink printed on it. It was two “L” shapes with dots over their ends. One was normally situated, but the right side was flipped vertically. He was unfortunately used to that insignia. The veil hid their expression, but he knew it was one of those plastic smiles they always wore. It seriously creeped him out. Didn’t they know showing teeth was a threat in most places?
“Oh any minute now! We should be arriving at the citadel shortly. Oh, this is such a big day for you, you must be incredibly excited, yes?”
Oh, he was sure he was the picture of enthusiasm. With his ruffled hair and feathers, eyebags betraying how he barely slept the past week, and the way his talons clicked against the cold metal floor.
He mustered up the most enthusiastic smile he could, making sure to display his fangs in the process, “I am absolutely thrilled.”
The Watcher escort clapped their hands together in delight, tilting their head ever so slightly, “Well that is lovely to hear! Especially since we’re now arriving! Please be ready to depart.”
Grian’s heart flung to his throat as he whipped around to look at the window. Sure enough, there it was. The Watcher Citadel was the capital now, built over where the old government building used to lie. It wasn’t a government more as a meeting hall for the elders of their area to talk about new rules and occurrences. He wasn’t there for the demolition, but he saw how many wailed over its destruction. His heart panged with grief and then rage seeing the structure tower over his homeland.
White stone reflected the sun’s light blindingly, making him hiss in annoyance. Terraces, grand doorways, windows, pathways, all lined with gold swooped up and down every which way. To an oblivious eye, it would look like a masterpiece. To Grian and the Elytrians, it was an open wound.
While he scrutinized the building, he noticed a small spaceship coming in for landing close to the citadel. He craned his neck to get a better look at it, but his vision was suddenly blocked as his transport entered through a tunnel. He squawked in surprise and rustled his wings, rude! The transport shook as it slowed down, arriving at a station built into the citadel. The doors squealed open with a metallic cry, forcing Grian to slam his hands over his ears until it stopped. He almost wanted to keep them there when he heard his escort speak up again.
“You may now depart from the vehicle! Another escort will be waiting for you outside.”
Grian blinked, lowering his hands to cross over his chest, “Wait, you aren’t coming?”
“No! I am not assigned to you anymore. Please depart the vehicle.” That plastic smile was back, and now he felt that it was meant as a threat. Grian quickly exited the transport and winced as the doors squealed shut again. He still felt the Watcher’s eyes on him from behind their veil even as the transport shuttered to life and whisked away. He shivered and rubbed his arms, keeping his wings tight behind him.
“Grian! Please come here.” The new voice made the Elytrian jump, but it was just his next escort. Horrifying. This one was an Elytrian which immediately brought bile to his throat. When the Watchers came, they were threatened. Obedience or death. Some chose to keep quiet and survive under their rule, some died free. Others joined them. His own blood, joining their invaders, their jailers! He never understood it. It made him want to puke.
He approached the escort adorned also in green robes. Though this time the white was replaced by a shimmering gold. Maybe it was a ranking thing. The gray-white wings of the Elytrian were outstretched in greeting, a sad attempt at being welcoming. He also was adorned with a veil, though more expensive looking than the last ones. He could barely see his piercing blue eyes through the fabric.
Usually it was customary to touch foreheads in greeting, but neither made the move to initiate it. Better for him. Instead he was quietly ushered into a room with even more Watchers waiting. All of them had the same clothing on, the same awful veil. He spotted another Elytrian as well as a Phantling, two Canites, and weirdly enough, an Apisite. They immediately approached him holding various fabrics and other odds and ends. On instinct Grian leapt back, turning towards the gray feathered Elytrian for any sort of explanation. He only laughed.
“Oh, did you forget so quickly? Young Grian, today is your initiation. You can’t be wearing just any old thing."
Right. What he was here for. That. For some reason the Watchers had it in their twisted little minds that he was the perfect candidate to join their ranks. Stubborn little Grian who destroyed a newly erected statue of a Temple Watcher, leaving the stone eyes scratched out. Outspoken Grian who never listened, who ended up in detainment more times than he could count. Grian, who never ever accepted them, who should have been dead, who is apparently being added to their ranks in less than an hour.
Grian was silent for a second before sighing, lowering his wings in permission. He hated this, but the sooner it began the sooner it ended. They swarmed on him, yanking arms and wings as they threw a robe onto him. He felt them clip jewelry onto his ear feathers and shove necklaces and bracelets all over him. When they were finally done, he opened his eyes to observe their work. The first thing he noticed was the robe. It was colored blue and lined in white, with the watcher insignia in ink black right above his heart. The second thing he noticed was how incredibly itchy it was. He grimaced and flapped his wings, thankful they didn’t torture him further by tying them up. He saw some Watcher Elytrians like that, their wings bound and dirty. It pained him to see it.
He looked on to the rings and bracelets they shoved onto him. He could tell immediately with his trained eye that nothing it was made of was actually real. The gold and silver painted bands rattled sadly together and the gems barely glistened in the light. Overall he was very unsatisfied by this experience. Even more so when a veil was suddenly placed in front of his eyes. He went to remove it but his arms were caught. He could barely recognize him but the gray feathered Elytrian had caught his hands and firmly shoved them back down. He could feel the threat-smile crawl on his neck.
“Oh, don’t be such a pin feather! Come on, it's your time to shine.”
All of the sudden a chorus of bells flooded through the citadel, shaking the floor with each toll. They shoved him out of the room into a huge cathedral, millions of shielded eyes watching him. He had no practice, no protocol. He didn’t even notice that door before! His head spun but he was urged forwards by those bells, each footstep tolling through the Citadel. All of them slowly stood as he passed, grinning veiled faces crawling over his skin.
The isle felt like crossing an ocean, his wings were pent up so tight behind him as his heart beat so violently in his ears. It happened so fast and so slow at the same time, he was there at the podium in a second and a million years. The Temple Watcher approached him at the speed of light and eerily slow. She was grinning at him, and Grian was terrified.
“My eyes!” She whipped around to face the waiting crowd that cheered in deafening shrieks, “Today we welcome a new member to our ranks! Grian Dreamslayer!”
He felt rocked at the sheer force of their cheering. Whoops and hollers and shrieking cries made his head pound. He almost covered his ears, but remembered the feeling of hands on his wrists. Grian looked with panicked eyes across the crowd, who with each passing second resembled moon beasts more and more. Their cries felt hungry.
The Temple Watcher raised her scaled arm, a hush immediately falling over the crowd. Grian realized that she had them trained like dogs. Horror filled his bones, would he be like that one day? Trained and subservient? Obedient?
He barely heard what she was saying, whatever god she was praising or whatever rite she chanted, his head was pounding. He could feel his breathing speed up and his vision cloud and his hands were shaking shaking shaking and his wings trembled he felt sick he felt scared he was scared as he heard the words tumble out of her mouth like acid like tar.
“-divine right of the gods, I now present to you, Grian Dreamslayer the W-”
“NO!” It fell out of him faster than he could think, the simple phrase bouncing off the walls of the citadel and burying itself right back in his chest.
He panted through heavy breaths, but an odd sensation poked at him. He slowly looked up, pulling the veil from his eyes. The Watchers were silent. Staring at him. Not a being moved, not one took their eyes off of him.
“What?”
Grian slowly turned to face the Temple Watcher. She was towering over him now, something low and rattling came from underneath the robes.
“What did you say to me?”
Well, in all his years he never backed down. When he made a decision, he put all his all in until he was right, or it backfired horribly. And today was not the day he would back down.
“Well uh, it appears that I said- I said no.”
The Temple Watcher frowned, stepping back a few paces. She could see the fear and utter flaming defiance in his eyes, right?
“So you did. Now-” A quick flick of the wrist and Watchers suddenly appeared in a semicircle around them. Each carried a spear and what looked like a net in their hands.
“Of course we want you here. You have the tenacity we need. Grian, we need you. Your strength and commitment to something, you fought against us so strongly.”
She began to circle him, arms curled behind her back. Grian looked wildly between her and the wall of slowly approaching Watchers, trying to figure out how he would be able to get himself out of this mess.
“-I considered killing you, I did many times. You were such a- Hm… Such a sore, yes? You disrupted everything, halted so much development. But every time I thought about slitting your throat and letting your blood match your pretty little feathers, I stopped myself.”
She paused and turned to him, her face tilted ever so slightly to show her eyes. They were a piercing blue, beyond anything he’d ever seen. Their bottom lid curled upwards as she smiled.
“I said that if I could get you on our side, we would be invincible. Everything, everything would fall into place. But now you stand here on the day of your initiation that you agreed to, that you came here for, and you say no? To me? Do you know what you’ve just done?”
It was true, he did say yes. But only because his messengers had daggers on their hips and he was sure he’d get one to the heart if he said anything less than “of course.” Grian gulped and took one final sweep of the citadel, eyes landing on the glass dome above. He couldn’t- there was no way-
“Grian you have five heartbeats to say yes before I make yours stop. Permanently.”
The Elytrian froze.
“Five.”
This wouldn’t work. He was going to die. This was it.
“Four.”
This had to work, he had to try. There was no way he was becoming a puppet today.
“Three.”
Would it be that bad? To pretend? He didn’t want to die, he really didn’t want to die.
“Two.”
To become a pet of the very person who killed your way of life was to subject yourself to something worse than death. He was going to die a free man.
“On-”
“OK OK OK- Hold it please for a second!”
The arm she held to herald his death slowly fell to her side. The Temple Watcher tilted her head.
“... go on.”
“Ok, so after a second of reviewing my previous answer, it wasn’t reeeeally the best.”
“Oh?”
He relaxed his wings a bit, walking aloofly to the edge of the stage, a sense of ease washed over him as he spread his arms out, “It wasn’t great, yeah. I should have said something different. Something better. Something you would remember.”
“What are you-”
“What I should have said was FLAP you, you all have been pin feathers in my side for years, and I hope your cold nasty heart feels the air of death one day! See ‘ya!”
He felt the pause before the roar of the crowd flowed over him. Instead of fear it fueled him, giving him the power to beat his wings and send him careening into the air. He laughed as nets grazed his talons and spears whizzed past his head. He shredded the robes from his body and sped like an arrow to the glass dome. He ignored their shrieks and distant wing beats and he angled his arms and talons into a point. He saw the suns through the dome and closed his eyes, praying to all the gods at once that he wouldn’t die that day.
And in a second of glory, his talons broke through the glass as he pierced the sun. He opened his eyes to see glittering shards of golden light fly around him, scraping lines down his arms as he flew up and up and up. He felt them in between the feathers of his wings and he laughed like icarus as he fell from the sky. He laughed at the Temple Watcher’s fading screams and the fact he was free, free, free. As the wind whistled in his ears, he angled his wings and flew with speeds he never reached before.
But now that his moment of euphoria was over, he could hear wingbeats closing in and the shouts of thousands swarming from the citadel below. And the glass was really starting to hurt and he was pretty sure both of his arms were VERY broken. But the fire in his blood fueled him as his eyes scanned the world below for any form of savior. And he found it. The starship from earlier was still on its landing pad, unoccupied. He shrieked in victory and snapped his wings shut, plummeting from the sky. Normally this would be crazy, but thankfully he was and he practiced it one too many times to count. Quick as a dart and far quicker than any of the Watchers, he made it to the landing pad.
Grian snapped his wings out at the last second to catch his fall, red, blue, and yellow letting him safely beside the ship. His stars were aligned today as the hatch was open. A careless pilot left it open, and he sent a quick thanks to whatever idiot was responsible.
He quickly jumped into the cockpit and slammed the only button he recognized, the one to close the hatch. It hissed shut and with a thunk, the systems lit up. Grian understood none of this. Buttons and levers and switches taunted him and he realized maybe he wasn’t as lucky as he thought. Especially since he could hear the roar of the Watchers fast approaching.
He grumbled as he realized it was one of those freestanding ships. No chair to sit on, only two stick things on an odd circle around him. His wings were barely able to fit, incredibly uncomfortable in their current position. His arms were really starting to burn, but he had no time to think about that because the first fist collided with the hull of the starship. All thought was out the window, his first mistake. His second was in a desperate state of primal panic, he pressed every single button and pulled every single switch he saw.
This resulted in the starship shooting lasers, unloading its cargo violently onto the underside of the landing pad, edjecting two oxygen cylinders, and catapulting the metal cage into the air. His third mistake was continuing to press everything he could see. This included the warp drive button.
One second, five Elytrians were crowded around mid air trying to pull the hatch open. The next second he was careening upwards into orbit, control sticks pinwheeling wildly as he was violently flung back in the ship. He heard the sharp crack of his skull against metal and the last thing he saw before blacking out was the first blinking of stars.
~~
It was the low oxygen warning that woke him up. The annoying little beeping made his head scream in pain as he clambered up on two legs. He immediately crashed back down again, passing out once more.
~~
The beeping was more urgent the next time he woke up. He didn’t bother standing up, opting to drag himself across the cold metal floor. His arms screamed at him to stop, but he ignored them as he pulled himself up to look at the console. Dim red blinked a life sentence at him. One hour left of oxygen.
Grian sighed and let himself collapse against the floor. His vision faded in and out in the dark of the starship. Grian mused that the reserve power must have gone out. Probably to keep the oxygen flow going. Not much left though as he ejected a whole two canisters upon departure.
He croaked a laugh at that. Of course he would make that mistake. He ran from the people that killed his home, nearly killed himself in the process, and was now less than an hour away from dying alone in space. Go figure.
He stared up at the hull of the spaceship. Stars passed slowly and endlessly before him. He quietly wondered what his parents would think of him now. Would they be proud? Ashamed? … Did they miss him? Well, he’d find out soon.
Grian was never one to admit defeat, but this? This seemed hopeless. So the Elytrian sighed, laughed, and closed his eyes. The beeping of the oxygen supply reminded him of thirty minutes until death, and he fell asleep.
~~
He was not expecting to open his eyes again. And he was VERY much not expecting it to be in a blindly white room. He could see many fuzzy outlines surrounding him, none with any recognizable features.
Immediately his first thought was if he was dead or not. This question was quickly answered by an unfamiliar voice shrieking at him in common. So, he was alive. And it was bright and loud and you know what? Maybe he deserved another hour of sleep.
~~
The next time he woke up, the beeping was back. Was that weird bright room a dream? Was he back on the starship? Grian groaned and opened his eyes, greeted by the same white room he was in before. But this time it felt dimmer, quieter. He looked around. Even though his vision was cloudy, he managed to discover the beeping was from a weird looking heart monitor. He watched his steady pulse blip up and down for a few seconds before closing his eyes. Still alive. He was still alive. The rest he’d worry about later. For now he’d sleep some more.
~~
Several days had passed since he last woke up. Or that's what they told him. Apparently he was lucky enough to have passed a space station on his nowhere flight. So he was on a space station. The captain, uh, Zizuma? Zooma? Zi-ma? Whatever his name was, he told him that he had somehow managed to break both of his arms, fracture his skull, get a concussion, and somehow, SOMEHOW, acquired over a hundred glass cuts. To be frank he had no idea how he was alive.
Now Grian was not about to tell him how that all happened and frankly would probably never do that*. For now he was enjoying the free healthcare and the vague blurry shapes that had introduced themselves as the crew. Too many to count or name, he just nodded and pretended like he was conscious enough to register even one of them.
But he was alive, for some reason Lady Death had smiled upon him that day. He was on the mend, and was probably also on the run now that he thought of it. The Watchers most certainly want him dead. But that's a worry for another day. For now he was bone tired and needed all the rest he could get. The Elytrian closed his eyes and sent a quick thank you to Lady Death. And in the belly of the HSS, safe and sound, Grian Dreamslayer fell asleep.
*he told them all within a week lmao