#faithfulintellect

[whimsilica]

Secret Santa for @reallyssa 

Kezria Maalme @faithfulintellect , in her hive

[insidioushuldra]

Iglora: Respond to poem of rebellion

Relevant original post

From the time you wake up, it’s one of those days.

You say this like it’s never not one of those days, so you don’t know why you’re taking exception this time around. You go downstairs to find your lusus staring at the coffeemaker like it’s a foreign device meant to trick him. “Iglōra, cūr tu hanc es mihi fēcistine? Cur hoc fēcitne?”

Of course, the only way to reply to that is with, “Dare tibi dolōrem; non aliam causam est.” Which leads to a breakfast of snarky banter back and forth across the kitchen in old Alternian while you make coffee and eggs. It’s unashamedly the best part of your day, whenever this happens; this is the best version of your pater, when he’s not playing with his thralls or trying to search out new ones, when he’s well charged on the sexual energy he’s pulled from them and is therefore more like a troll than an incubus. The illusion is quickly broken, however, when his thrall this time stomps up the stairs from your basement.

It’s an oliveblood this time around, with pointy horns and an equally pointy sign you know your moirail doesn’t have in her book yet. He hasn’t been here for long, as he still has a decent amount of personality, but if the dark rings forming around his eyes are any indication, he isn’t going to last much longer, either. It’s pathetic, for a greenblood.

Also, did you mention that he was in your basement?

You count to ten. Then you count to fifty, just to make sure you’re in control of your temper.“Pater! Cur pater servi in carpisculone erasne? Loquore! Nunc!” Well. Relatively in control.

It doesn’t seem to matter; Incubusdad just shrugs, winks, and wanders into his room. The oliveblood stares, dazed, at him while he leaves the room.

“Shut your mouth before my knife accidentally flies into it,” you mutter, brushing past him to throw your dishes in the sink.

Or, at least, you tried to. The greenblood grabs your arm and tries to pull you back towards him. You freeze, instead, and remind yourself that actually ripping his head off at this juncture would be massively inconvenient.

“Look, you understand hihim, rihight? When he talks lihike that? You can teach me, rihight?” You don’t really turn to face at him, just watch his wide-eyed desperation out of the corner of your eye and focus on not acting on your more violent impulses.

“Yes, yes, and no. Let go of me.” You think some of your teeth are showing and you don’t even care. Your whole mind is snarling. It’s the same sound Incubusdad makes when there’s danger, and it won’t be coming out of your mouth anytime soon. Not for this bastard.

That was apparently the wrong thing to say. “No! You WIHILL-“ is about as far as he gets. He tries to grab the back of your neck and shove you down. Instead, you duck, grab the arm now waving in the open air above you, and use his momentum to flip him over your back. Your strife specibus flashes at the edge of your vision and a solid weight lands in your hands. Unthinking, you jump up and slam the butt of your staff into his chest. There’s a very loud cracking noise and you aren’t sure if it came from his ribs or the tiles beneath him but you don’t even care at the moment.

The next thing you know, you’re stumbling downstairs to your basement.

The basement doesn’t look like it would be a big deal to a stranger, and that’s just the way you like it. It’s small. Along one wall is a set of shelves with boxes of your things from wigglerhood and some tools. Against the opposite wall there’s a spare refrigerating unit and the door to a spare pantry. In the middle, there’s a couch covered in blankets, a large screen, and a basic gaming system. You’re going to have to burn the couch, and the blankets, now, but that’s fine. You can actually afford to replace them. The thing that concerns you most is the wall of shelves.

A sigh escapes your lips. They look like they’ve been left alone.

You reach up to the very, very top and pull a thin metal rod off the shelf. Then, with great care, you insert it into a tiny crevice between two wooden slats on the bottom shelf, six from the end, identical to all the others. There’s a hollow thumping noise behind the wall, the sound of well-oiled gears spinning, and the wall to your right shifts backwards and slides up. You step through, cool air hitting your face, and the door slides smoothly shut behind you.

Your basement doesn’t look like a big deal; however, to the naked eye, it’s only about a quarter of the length of your house.

You inhale and sigh, content. The room smells like old paper and knowledge, your favorite perfume. No one, not even Kezria, knows this chamber exists, and you’re probably going to keep it that way. After all, if the Imperial anything got even a whiff of this, you wouldn’t live until dawn. Enough of the books in this particular library talk about the way the Empire deals with rebels that you can know this in your bones.

You stalk through the shelves, running your fingers along the spines of your treasures. You aren’t even a rebel, really, just a troll who can’t stand to see good knowledge go to waste. Like your collection of 23 different copies of the Approved and Historically Accurate Histories of Her Imperious Condescension’s Glorious Empire. The current edition, upstairs in your more public library, claims that it had only just been published for the first time about twenty sweeps ago. You know this is false; you have editions going back hundreds of sweeps, and each new edition contains information that directly contradicts the last. Of course, all of those books are banned – or rather, don’t exist, never existed, and if they suddenly did that would be a terrible shame for your ability to breathe – which is why they are here, hidden in your safe chamber.

Also contained in this hidden room, at the very far end, is a very, very special husktop. It bounces its signal over half a million different places, the path changing each day and always, always, always, spending a majority of the time tumbling through Fleet IPs, or so you’ve been told. As you’ve been using it to scour subversive websites and discover old books for sweeps now, you’re inclined to believe it.

Once upon a time, when you were much younger and less jaded, you actually managed to free one of your lusus’s thralls from his control. He was a redblood, as far down on the Hemospectrum as one can be, but a brilliant little thing. He built this chamber for you, and the husktop, as a way of saying thanks. Freeing him made him weaker, though, and the second he tried to leave, he crossed paths with Incubusdad again, and that spelled the end of him.

You don’t regret that at all. You really don’t. Really.

In any case, the husktop’s still fast, still untraceable, and exactly what you need right now. A new acquisition is always good for your mood. (And you still make fun of your moirail for her collections. No one ever said you were a good troll, and if they have, you'll rip their throats out.)

So you’re skimming through illicit websites, sighing when you find favorites taken down or replaced with Imperial propaganda by hackterrorists, when you find it. And then you find it again. And again. And again.

It’s a poem, short and full of a cold, rebellious anger. Things like this aren’t uncommon on these sites, but this one is different. It’s well written, clearly by someone higher up on the Hemospectrum than usual, and receiving a ridiculous amount of positive, equally rebellious responses, even on sites it wasn’t posted on originally. It’s being reposted everywhere, even outside of the normal subversive forums, with trolls commenting on it left and right in Hemospectrum color and typing quirk. Only maybe a third of trolls even realizing that the poet is a well-educated highblood. And, honestly? It pisses you off.

Most of these trolls seem to have no idea what they’re getting into, what they’re doing. Most of them are lowbloods who you can trace easily; they aren’t even bothering to hide themselves at all. This is literally the only excuse the Empire needs to raze whole slums and eliminate swaths of lowbloods just because of their blood color. You can practically hear the rustling pages of the books behind you, singing their warnings. It’s happened again, and again, and again. Even if Kezria doesn’t find this, it’s putting her in danger. And Kezria will find this, if she hasn’t already. Of this you have no doubt. And she’ll be excited, it’ll only enflame her dangerous Signlessist tendencies even more.

Like hell are you losing your moirail over something this stupid.

So you type a response, also in poetic form. You copy the original structure and rhyme scheme because that’s how these things gain power and meaning, according to Studies of Imperial Propaganda, Poetic Debates of the Ancient Far East, and a good dozen other books sitting calmly on the shelves behind you, forbidden secrets whispering in your ears with the mouths of the ghosts who dared to write them. It’s the same pattern over and over again, it’s always been, and none of them understand because that knowledge has been kept from them again and again, wrapped up behind fuschia sparkles. It isn’t as if you even disagree with the OP; you just want to make them realize that their fool youth actions have permanent consequences.

You post your reply on the original forums the poem appeared on in much the same way: Hemononymous, quirkless, via proxy accounts that’ll be connected to some poor saps on Imperial vessels:

Child of my blood all alone in your cave

Our ennui befits those who’ve become slaves

you think mere love will beat this maliase

let me tell you what our foolish wars were for

to lead you towards that which your bloods abhor

to blind you if you dare look indoors.

it’s too late; you’re already mother’s cheap whore.

  Child of teeth and claw and steel

You think you’ve found truth but let’s get real

In the end we all come to mother’s heel

she believes she knows best and set down the rules

You run North like you don’t see old Thule

Pitch your fit and and rebel like a fool

Our most darling mother will only take you to school

  Child of fear and doubt question mother not

You’ll make your familiar kin too distraught

Acting on this school of thought

Act if you can stand the blood on your hands

Act if you can stand how grand

Will be our mother’s waiting reprimand.

  When you’re finished, you shoot your moirail a message from your ‘phone, biting hard on your cheek.

IH: Hey, Kez.

IH: Wanna come over and spend some time at my hive??????

IH: I can 6ankroll the whole thing, and I’ll keep Incu6usdad 6usy, I promise.

IH: I just think it would 6e a good idea, is all. Let me know as soon as you’ve dug yourself out of whatever pile of junk you’ve gotten stuck in this time, okay?

[insidioushuldra]

IH: Paging faithfulIntellect! IH: FI come in! IH: ...Hello? IH: Don't tell me you got swallowed up 6y your stacks of junk again. IH: I am not digging you out of another pile of whimsical animal figurines. IH: Kezria! IH: If I have to come 6uy I'm going to 6e very disappointed. IH: Did you even read that 6ook I gave you on collection organization or did you just lose it in a stack of 6ooks? IH: Keeeeeezriiiiiiaaaaaa!