Disclaimer: I do not own Warframe in any shape or form.

HONOUR TO BE TRIUNA
(That's what they all say, isn't it?)

Triuna, they call us – call me and those who precede, and those who will succeed.

Sweet child, my parents used to whisper to me, you are not like any other child. You are Myconia's Triuna, and the Triuna you shall be. It is an honour, remember that.

The sound of rustling sheets become more apparent in the background.

In Myconia— the speaker clears her throat with a raspy cough, they call being selected the Triuna the highest honour.

I suppose it is an honour to bear the immunity to the infestation. It is an honour to be the very presence which protect your people safe from these mutations and allow them to keep their livelihood. Any faction would be blessed to have such an ability.

I know some – empires, royalty, colonies, and corporations who would kill to have it.

History speaks for itself with its incursions, and it also explains the usefulness of being able to contain the infestation.

It is the very same ability that makes Mycanians viable in the solar system: we live and embrace the diseases because we can harvest of infestation parts where others fail, and the inelasticity of supply makes us a fortune.

But we, Truina, we are destined for short lives.

As I speak, I feel this hybrid mutation crawling through my veins like a disease – more rustling, and her voice becomes quieter – The elders would never let me call it that. But that's what it is, isn't it?

Hybrid or not, it still is an infestation. It is like slow poison that we consume at the prick of the needle, allowing the purple and black substance to take root. It creeps into our systems, changes us on the inside, makes us non-human and we let it subsume us.

Turn us into something we're not, something that is less than human.

Something that is mindless with wrath and incoherency, where words are contorted into mumbles, pleas and howling screams. I feel it. I feel it in my mind as something foreign overtakes me, some—some indistinguishable hunger welling, and the voices of the Infested becoming more comprehensible. They speak in a different tongue – ancient, hollowed and haunted – and as they get clearer day by day, and human ones are drowning out.

I see it too.

I see my skin yellow beneath the space suit I wear, fashioned in sliver-whites as if to hide the hue. I see the hair that falls from my head and hidden by the tall hat I wear that discriminates my role in the colony. All these clothes, these honours the Myconians supposedly bestow, do they not hide the truth that the Triuna were meant to fade?

Aren't they just masks and facades for the sacrifice that needs to be made?

Do they forget that when you finally peel off the human husk of Triuna skin, it is merely rot and decay which fills its organs and blood? No—they ignore that each Passing makes a fledging monster for the prosperity of the colony. That they allow this implanted malignant tumour to grow without cutting it out; let this cancer with known origins go without therapy, and let it grow like the creeping grey flesh, with red ballooning beneath.

Perhaps, that is why there are no tombs for the Triuna. Or that we are buried beside the old war relic which gifted us these abilities, our bodies now fertilisers to its continuity and an offering to perpetuate its existence and protection.

I've seen it once during The Passing.

Its parts are flesh and yet not, muscle more akin to vines curled together in a tight bundle to give it frame. The colourations of red twitch as if it was still alive – feeding – on wood-like flesh which undercuts and overlays. It is ghastly even as it lays prostrate on the pedestal we've put it upon, and its hold over my colony is as tight as the talon fingers it clenches into a fist.

And when I look at my successor – sweet, young Neewa who knows nothing of the cruelty that she has to bear on her shoulders – I wonder if she will think the same when she reaches my age.

Will she be filled with the anxious thoughts of death when it comes for her? As bitter as I since we're both helpless to circumstance? Will she embrace the role and come to love it, even when it is so difficult to not hate?

I wish I could know, as much as I know that my time is coming.

Dear Neewa, I wish that I could impart upon you the things I have learnt.

That we Triuna may be the brightest star in the Myconian sky and we are revered and prayed to, but like all bright stars, we burn out. We crash like comets, glorious in our scorching reds, lifespan streaking across the skies so quickly that its over in a blink of an eye. That we are persons meant to fade, our ends predicted light years away, and all that will remain of us are corrupted materials bundled together.

We become classed under a collective noun, thanked for our sacrifices, but we are never known as the individual.

But Neewa, new moon of the sky, the light of Myconians' lives, how we choose to live and die is our own. Treasure every breath you have while you can, embraces the privileges you have, and learn to forgive the voices in the heads you hear. They will be with you at every waking moment and in your sleep, like the white noise of engines, but they do not have to be your enemies.

I wish I had known that earlier, not as the ugly dissonance of sound and personality I am now.

But I can't tell her that, not with the watching eyes of the elders.

"It is an honour to be the Triuna."

Those are the words I'm only allowed to utter to her.

But maybe, when I press my colder hands to hers and look at her through yellowed sclera – maybe she'll understand.

Something I wrote off the whim of imagination about Myconia, their Triuna and the Passing.

Hope you enjoyed it.

EDIT: 3/3/2018