[PRP] Leave it Behind (Muerte & Athera) FIN

[saedusk]

 

[saedusk]

Pale blood beaded on her knees where the child fell, but it meant nothing to her now. The only thing that mattered in the moment was an instinct, deep-rooted and strong, that drove her onward through terrain she couldn't recognize. Avoiding every pitfall was impossible, but despite skinned knees and aching feet and burning lungs, she ran.

A startled sound, nowhere close to spoken language, jolted in her throat as another jut of stone tripped her up. This time she didn't fall. This time she stumbled, but caught her balance beneath flailing arms. To the wall she went, the tired child, her breath a weak, warm pant. While her lungs felt like fire, her nose and toes and fingers were cold. Sniffling, she wiped away a dribble of snot. Even faced with all this, she hadn't yet cried.

crrrack

Her head shot up, her eyes wide and reflecting what little light there was. They were full of a new feeling she'd only started to understand since leaving the safety of the mother grub's nest. Until this moment, she didn't know it was possible to take anything for granted.

shhhhlp

Fear drove her on. The child's eyes were full of it as her bloodpusher worked beyond its means to keep her from growing too lightheaded. On and on, faster and faster, she ran.

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Muerte had been allowed entrance to the caverns on two specific merits: that 1) he would not interfere with the natural progression of the grubs, and 2) that he would not tamper with the delicate set up of the trials in any way. Blessedly, Muerte was actually extraordinarily compliant in these regards. He had no intentions of saving anything, and he had no intentions of messing up the systems they had here. No, he was a firm believer of troll Darwinism; the weak die and the strong live and that was the end of it. Honestly, Alternia was already so full of idiots that he couldn't even fathom how they survived the trials.

Needless to say, he was here for one intent purpose: to study, to learn, to understand. What made a troll strong? What traits were necessary for survival? What did it take to, ultimately, create the "perfect troll"? He wasn't expecting to find any revelations or answers here, but he was hoping to find some sort of insight. He wouldn't tamper with anything, but if he had a better understanding, if he could tweak the system just right that the ones who survived were the pick of the crop... that was part of his vision.

But as it was, he kept his hands to himself every time he came for visits. There were a few subjects that he tracked from grubhood onward, though it was difficult to keep up with when he lacked any sort of tracking. Could he band them the way one did an animal? He'd have to ask Aprife if that was allowed. Minimal interference of course, but it still might be enough to tip the scales and ruin his experiments... another time perhaps.

Naturally though, there had been one particular oddity to his strict rules that made him question his methods. He'd observed the eggs from a far, noted hatchlings he hadn't accounted for before (and god there was a lot), when he actually saw it. Amid all of the desaturated blues and reds and greens and purples was something still purple but not quite normal. Mutantbloods were rare—hell, they were barely spoken for in popular culture—so how rare were they actually? Here was one staring him in the face, er, in the shell still perhaps. A troll like this, no matter the aptitude, was never destined to survive.

Unless they were an odd case, like Byakko, but how long had she spent roaming the caverns until luck gave her a chance?

...That was quite a while ago, now. He had since lost track of the strange lavender colored grub, and he assumed that whatever was inside of it had been long lost to the depths of the caverns. Clipboard in one hand, he hid around the shadows of the stalactites, a silly white cap on his head looking vaguely like a bird (it didn't hurt to look like a lusus in the off chance that a youngling had spotted him). Coming up on the corpse of a tiny orangeblood, he rifled through some papers before making a note for himself. Ideally, it would be nice to have a comprehensive database of all the trolls that made it to freedom—something like the imperialist ledgers—but not quite so... dictatorial.

He mused. He stopped. He paused at the splatter on the ground. It was pale and opalescent and purple in the dim lighting of the cavern. Still fresh too.

"Well s**t." he couldn't help the sarcastic amusement that spread on his face, "Guess it did live a little longer than I thought..."

And probably not much longer. But this was where the trials neared their end—where Lusii started to roam the intricate system in search of young—and this was where that pathetic little mutantblood would meet its end. Ah, the futility of life.

He followed the blood trail regardless. Even if it brought him to the corpse of the child, he could at least use the blood for data. Wasn't every day that he got his chance to examine a mutant anyway.

saedusk

 

[saedusk]

Futility was something the child had yet to learn. There were a lot of things she hadn't experienced, honestly, and each passing second led her closer and closer to losing that chance. No matter how far or fast she ran, the scratching of one monster's spindly legs turned into three or four, five or six, thuds and clatters and scrapes. They echoed through the caverns. They echoed in her ears, drowning out her wild heartbeat.

They were coming and she didn't know what they were, but they frightened her.

Past a jut of harsh stone, the dim light of the caves revealed them to her. There were two that she could see, massive and white, one scaled and one feathered. They both drew back the skin of their lips, showing their teeth, bellowing out cries that shook her to her core.

Something about these monsters wasn't right. They weren't like the mother grub, they didn't speak of warmth or protection, and the child had enough instinct stamped into her to sneak back from them. She used the shadows of the cavern to slip past and escape. The pitter-patter of her bare feet against stone was quiet now, barely there. She wasn't running any longer, not when every corner might open straight into a trap.

Yet despite her fear, the further she traveled, the lighter the air grew. It was less oppressive and fresh like she'd never known before. A coolness calmed the ache of her lungs. She yearned for it. The child had never known a feeling so deep like the one in the pit of her stomach now.

Bruised and battered, her hands left swipes of faint purple blood along the crevices in the stone. Aching, her feet guided her closer to freedom beyond the trials. Though she didn't know it, she likely wouldn't survive without a lusus. Futility. It was something the child had yet to learn, but she'd already learned so much. It was only a matter of time. The world was mere moments from opening up to her.

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Unfortunately for Athera, the brightness of the world would spell the end rather than the beginning. She didn't know that, but Muerte did, and if by some grace she had survived long enough to make it that far—

The blood scrapes grew less and less frequent, as if the bleeding was starting to still. It would only be a matter of time before a lusii caught wind of this, tracked the mutant down, mauled it, destroyed it. He could already feel the breeze of the air outside, that tantalizing breathe of freedom. In his own mind, he could remember his own emergence from the trails, however foggy the memories were. He did remember how frustrating it was being nearly blind. Everything had been a blur, and not from his inability to remember the details. Eranza had been a massive blob of white, but he had been so pleasantly shaped like a friend.

He shook himself of the thoughts.

He knew the systems better than any young troll would, so it was no surprise to him when he heard the frantic footsteps of something coming from deeper within. What would he find, he wondered? An ordinary child? Or perhaps the mutant? Further more: would he intercept them now? Surely, they would die without that, and not from a lack of trying.

He tugged the silly white hat down over his face for good measure before stepping out. His robotic eye remained open while the other one was shut, scanning the darkness for any sort of movement. When he saw it—and the gleam of pale purple—he grinned. "Jackpot."

Try to get past him. He'd like to see that.

saedusk

 

[saedusk]

To the young, impressionable, but uneducated mind of a troll her age, the creature that jumped out was as much a threat as the ones she'd been avoiding all along. Something didn't feel right, didn't smell right, and that same fear from earlier fluttered back to life again, a million butterflies in her stomach. If he thought she'd charge at him, or hell, even try to get past, he was absolutely wrong.

Animalistic, her response to the bird-monster once again wasn't any word of any spoken language a troll of this time might know. She couldn't understand what he'd said and she couldn't say anything understandable in response.

Scraping the bottoms of her feet on the stone, she turned and tried to flee back into the same systems she'd just emerged from. Though her lungs yearned for the fresh, cool air of freedom, her instinct to live flared even stronger.

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

He should have honestly anticipated the tiny troll turning around to go backwards, way to go Perist. "Excuse ME." He shouted after the receding form, thoroughly offended. "Where the hell are you going!" He knew these systems far better than that thing did. He swore under his breath that he now had to chase the thing and get his clothes all sweaty, god forbid.

"I'm trying to help you you piece of s**t." To that end, he should have realized that the tiny troll also probably had no idea what he was even saying, but he was so beside himself that he failed to take that properly into consideration. Baby: 1; Muerte: 0. Thankfully his legs were far longer and his stamina hadn't been pushed and depleted quite like anyone undergoing the trials, because he wasn't physically capable in the first place and then the little troll really would win.

Fumbling with his jacket buttons (ft. more swearing) he managed to tear it off of his form, hands holding either sleeve to make a make-shift sling looking thing. You can't run forever, he thought as he started to gain on her. A little closer, a little more proximity—he lashed out with the coat in an attempt to wrangle the tiny thing into submission.

saedusk

 

[saedusk]

Even with the small miscalculation, there was one thing about this equation that hadn't failed Muerte yet. Despite her youth, the mutant had run and run and run. She'd jumped through emotions like a lion through a flaming hoop. They'd scalded her, weakened her—not her resolve, of course, but her physical state. The more she ran, the more her body ached and the more her own emotions heightened her fatigue.

He was gaining on her and she knew it, she could feel it. There was no time to look back, though, no time to try and discern the garbled nonsense of his calls in her direction or to see how close he was. If she let her guard down, that was it.

Unfortunately, he'd closed the gap even faster than she'd realized.

The coat found her, wrapping her in a new kind of darkness. If he thought she'd go down easy, he'd be wrong once again. With her life in someone else's hands, she kicked and screamed and struggled for survival.

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

How the hell did such a small child have such tremendous energy? The adrenaline that came from being cornered like prey was strong, he supposed. It took considerable strength from the greenblood to slam her into the ground, and even more to try and pin her.

Of course, a stray foot caught the side of his face, sending his glasses clattering away.

"You stupid goddamn—" He was hissing, his organic eye screwing shut as he relied on his robotic one (see Aprife, where would he be without the robotic eye? Nowhere. That's where). He probably should have remembered that this creature wasn't capable of understanding speech yet, but that point had completely flown over his head.

Maybe if he held her down long enough, the adrenaline would wear off. He was determined to win this, determined.

saedusk

 

[saedusk]

The child hit the ground with a pained half-squeal. Beneath the blinder of the coat, her eyes watered and her breathing reached new levels of labored. It was humid, the kind of heat that drained stamina like nothing at all.

Knocking away the glasses was a short-lived victory she couldn't even enjoy.

"Nnnnaaahhhh," she moaned. It almost sounded like no. The struggle was stopping, at least, almost like one limb at a time was running out of batteries. It was impossible to keep this sort of fight up. Muerte might not have been the most physically fit among others his age, but he could certain best a small, pre-winded child.

Occasionally she spasmed, but beyond that she grew still.

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

The spasms, Muerte could deal with. He waited a few moments longer, the weight of his strength still pinning the child down, but when he was sure she'd stilled for a good minute he stopped to tie the coat sleeves around her tiny frame. This was mostly to get a moment to find his glasses. He needed his goddamn glasses, ok.

Glasses secured, all that was left was to haul the mutant over his shoulder like he was some sort of troll Santa. See? He wasn't a heartless b*****d after all. He could be a good, empathetic a*****e. Sometimes. Usually if it benefited him in some way. And this definitely benefited him. Think of the blood samples.

He'd have to make haste before she decided to catch a second wind.

saedusk