Signless ==> See
What limited powers you possess have always manifested in two ways. The first was easy. You had visions. Visions of another life, visions of a strange future, visions from beyond the grave where you saw through the empty sockets of your skull and the blood splattered on church walls. You are, after all, a Seer of Blood.
But the second way... It is harder to explain. Sometimes there is a tug. A thread in your pusher that pulls you toward something. Or... Someone.
The very first you donât even remember, because you had only been a tiny off-color grub. But the tug had pulled you to your Lusus, babbling and cooing with no idea about the thin thread holding the knife at bay above your bright red carapace. But... Then. Then, there was a Connection, and she stole you away rather than let the thread break.
There were little tugs, then. Youâd pull your lusus somewhere, and a kindly troll would have just enough Connection to you to offer a roof for the light, or a hot meal, or a bath. You loved bathtime. Itâs still your favorite, the feeling of grime melting away and the way your hair curled and bounced when it was freshly cleaned. The dangling knife was always there, always present, but so far away that you barely saw the gleam. *** You remember the second big pull, though the details still elude you. The visions had been happening for a while, and your Lusus had always just put you somewhere safe while you stared into nothing and dreamed of a planet so far from your own. But this time, when she turned around to see if you had woken, you were gone. Sheâd found you just outside... Somewhere. You donât remember where youâd been going, but you do remember how forcefully she had told you no. How quickly she had to explain that it was dangerous. That if you went in, you would die. That if you followed the Connection to its end, you would not find shelter or friends. You would find that sword above you again, and this time the thread would snap.
She taught you to kill, after that. She had to. She taught you where the easiest veins were, where the skull was thinnest, and how to do it without pain. You cried yourself to sleep for lights thinking about how easy it was for one troll to hurt another. It scared you so badly you woke up from your terrors screaming, and came out of your visions crying and begging for the brighter place you saw in them. *** The third big pull you remember as clear as night. You had sat bolt upright, and told your Lusus that you had to go. You promised her she could stop you if she needed to, swore that if there was danger that you would fight as hard as you could. This time, she was right behind you as you strode out into the woods.
You found the Connection, this time. A grubby, angry young girl and her giant cat lusus out in the woods because she could not stand to be caged. You found Survivor. The moment you set eyes on hers you knew you couldnât ignore it anymore. The tugs, the strings on your pusher, they were the trolls from the brighter place. They were your friends. You told your lusus this, late in the light, and she had promised to follow you no matter how badly the sword swayed on its hair-fine thread. *** The fourth brought you to a town. Or, rather, to a nearby facility where they trained Helmsmen to become literal cogs in the machine of the Empire. They were raised for war, raised to be maimed and tortured for their capabilities. You shouldnât have asked, but Survivor knew. You had gone to the iron bars of their prison. You saw Mitunaâs face, his bright, stupid smile, and you remember it taking your breath away when it finally came crashing down on you. This world was not your dreams. This world twisted, and destroyed, and killed, and didnât care. It broke every troll that went through it, and that night it broke you and you clung to the bars weeping until you had no more tears to shed.
...And then, in the morning, he was there. The facility was gone, reduced to rubble and ash, because he had seen you. He came to you, eyes shining with determination. Came to you after throwing his own shackles off. Came to you and told Alternia to go fuck itself, because now he had a Connection. You donât know if youâve ever told him how much he inspired you, that night, to throw off your own shackles and stand as tall as you could against the terror of the sword that would never stop hanging above your head. *** ...You remember the last. You needed to go somewhere, and your family understood. You charted your course. You knew the dangers, how close the capital would be and how treacherous the crowd could turn. But you couldnât turn away.
A hundred connections formed, that night. More. Everyone who came to listen, who watched and learned and heard you as you spoke to them of mercy, of love, and of freedom. You told them what you had learned from the Connections youâd made, and you could feel it Connecting to all of their pushers. It was only then that you truly realized how much of a difference youâd made, to all of these trolls.
And it was that final pull that broke the thread. That night, the sword fell and spilled scarlet from your veins.
A thousand Connections that had wound themselves so tightly in your pusher became a web. A massive trap that kept spinning, extended by the words of your family who made sure that your Connections never died. At its center, the empire that had killed you.
The stage was set, as it were, for a spider to come along and pluck the threads until the same sword that cut you down was dangling and spinning over the heads of the empire.
