If you were to ask a troll to choose several words to describe the Grand Highblood, calm would have been nowhere remotely near the list. Calm would have fled out the door with the rest of the armed guard ten minutes ago, and then locked itself in a chest somewhere deep within the blood-soaked halls. Instead, the frightened troll might have squeaked something about rage and pure, pants-shitting terror before having their ribcage ripped from their chest and not saying much of anything ever again.
There is a war on, if one could call it that, and the Grand Highblood feels any number of things. Rage. Joy. Revulsion. When he stops in a clearing to gather his thoughts before charging back into the thick of the battle that rages just over the hill, he feels ecstatic, as though there is still gore slipping between his fingers and blood running down the back of his throat. His breath is hot and his pulse is racing, and somewhere in the back of his mind is a small voice urging him to kill and kill and kill. He has his plans laid out as carefully as one of his sort might: he will find an unworthy troll, and he will kill it. Rinse and repeat.
But even the best-laid plans have a habit of falling curiously short of their intended goal, for one reason or another.
There is a rustle in the bushes behind him and he turns to see
Her.
And that is when he feels the calm.
It is the wrong sort of calm, he thinks. Not the sort that accompanies the soft paps of a moirallegiance, which he has never had. He cannot picture her hand approaching his face in such a manner - but nor does he imagine her claws raking down its side, spilling indigo blood across his uniform to join the countless other stains like a badge of honor. The second image comes from areas nowhere near the line of black romance. It simply happens to be the average reaction to his presence, one usually followed by the separation of one thing from another; a head from a pair of shoulders, perhaps, or eyes from their sockets, which make such a delightful crunching sound when he pops them between his teeth.
He does not swallow them. He is not a monster, after all, and the church of the Mirthful Messiahs disapproves of cannibalism and its practitioners.
He wonders what this troll thinks of him, and seconds later he wonders why it matters. She will be screaming along with the rest of them when the time comes. Maybe he will even draw her torture out a little longer, just to prove to himself that he has moved beyond the creation of something so inferior as emotional connection. He mates twice every few sweeps when the drones come by for collection, once red, and once black. His partners mean nothing to him, serving only as a means of survival. He has never felt that flicker of hatred stir deep within his chest, or, Messiahs forbid, pity.
Pity, he tells his followers, is nothing but a weakness. "Our enemies have pity, and they think it will help them win," he tells them. "The snivelling, cowardly masses have pity, and they think if they go along and pity one another enough then we'll all drop our fucking weapons and start weeping along with the rest of them. Well," he says, his voice awash with the force of the chucklevoodoos he wields so well, "this is what their pity has gone and fucking bought them."
He remembers the cheers, half eagerness and half fear. He remembers hoisting the head of his newest kill aloft, fresh blood staining his fingers. He does not remember the color of the blood, as if it matters. All that does is that it was lower than his own, and therefore meaningless. Even those higher hold little power in his eyes. He has killed seadwellers before. They died just the same as those with piss and mud running through their veins.
In that manner, at least, he does not discriminate.
It makes him proud.
His mind curls itself into a confused tangle of thoughts, because to sneak up on him, to even approach him, is to court death in all forms. He is the Grand Highblood, loyal servant of Her Imperious Condescension, harbinger of destruction, sower of fear and discord. Where he walks, the world bleeds. And there, not five feet from him, stands this woman, crouched in the bushes with fangs bared and claws out and eyes wide with fear and - curiosity?
He is a mountain and she is a small pebble on the edge of a cliffside. He could kill her with a blow.
But he does not, and he does not know what it is that stays his hand, because it could not be pity. Not pity, never pity. He has seen countless trolls in her position, standing prone before him and shaking with terror and apprehension. Why should she be any different?
"Run, little squeakbeast," he growls, baring his fangs. "Run, like the rest of your cowardly brethren, and maybe you'll live to see another sunset."
She does not run.
Instead, she moves closer, rising from the bushes with leaves caught in her hair and blades dangling from her hands. Her weapons are far from quality, the Grand Highblood notes, their edges blunted and streaked with rust. More than likely a member of the resistance. No doubt she has friends hiding somewhere, the makings of an attempted ambush that will undoubtedly fail as all the ones before it have. They always do. He remembers with some amusement the group who thought it prudent to attack him long-distance, firing poorly-made arrows with blunted tips towards his skull as though they thought with enough persistence they might drill through it. He remembers with even more amusement the screams from the bushes as his guards dispatched the would-be assassins, so caught up in their pursuit of him that they failed to wonder whether someone else might be pursuing them.
"You're the Grand Highblood," she says. There is the edge of a tremor in her voice, but nothing more. Either she is very brave, or she is very stupid. Perhaps both. The two go hand in hand, these days. Everyone likes to think that they are brave. Everyone wants to die a hero. What they fail to understand is that dying a hero more often than not means having your skull crushed between some highblood's massive hands or floundering about in a pool of your own blood until someone decides to put you out of your misery. Oh yes, he thinks. Very heroic. So inspiring. Almost enough to make you want to join the rebellion yourself. Heroes like those, they'd be remembered for sweeps to come.
"And you're some rebellious scum who should've been culled in the breeding caverns," he spits. "I've told you once. Run, before I decide to remove that option permanently. What sound do you think your legs will make when I remove them from the rest of your body?" He knows the sound well. He knows the color that will spill along with it better. Olive-bloods are not so common in the rebellion as the rest, but they are common enough for him to have slain many.
She doesn't answer.
"What's your name, filth?"
"Why do you care?" she says cooly. "You're going to kill me anyways."
"I like to know whose name I should be spitting out between my teeth when I grind your flesh between them," he growls back. Oops. That sounds almost like a black solicitation, not following his intentions at all. Hell, he hasn't even got solicitations. To look at the vocabularies of some of his brethren, one might think he didn't even know the word.
The woman frowns. "As if I would give you my real name. Your people would track me down in a heartbeat. You may call me..." She pauses, considering. "...the Disciple."
"A lovely title," says the Grand Highblood. "I happen to be something of a disciple myself. Do elaborate for me, what sort of code do you follow? What higher power do you hold your deeds to? What is it that gives you your sense of foolish justice?"
"We speak of justice now, do we?" asks the Disciple, scoffing. "Are you some legislarcerator to bring me before a court of the highest order of death and talk of justice?" A noise crawls from the back of her throat, caught between a laugh and a choke and hovering in that uncomfortable area that sounds like the beginning of tears. The Grand Highblood tells himself that he does not care. Why should he? She will be dead soon. This he promises himself. "I follow the code of one better than myself," the Disciple says, moving slowly around the edge of the clearing. Her muscles are tensed. She is going to run, thinks the Grand Highblood. Good. He enjoys a chase. "One who will bring equality and peace to this war-torn world, yes, and justice, which you and your foul courts have so corrupted."
"What do you know of courts?" snaps the Grand Highblood. "I can't imagine you've seen many. You wouldn't be here now speaking to me if you had."
"I know enough."
He sees it in her eyes - the fear that is not fear, because it does not hide behind a wall of cowardice.
Something comes crashing through the underbrush for a second time and the Disciple hisses and spins on her heel, claws raised and ready. The blueblood is dead before she can set foot in the clearing, her blade deftly evaded and her throat just as deftly cut, cerulean spilling down her chest as she crumples to the ground at the Disciple's feet. The Grand Highblood recognises the dead troll as one of his agents and feels that he should care that she is dead, if only for the report she must have been carrying, but finds that he does not. If anything, it only proves that she was not a worthy soldier, if she was so easily defeated.
"One of yours, I presume?" the Disciple asks, turning back to face him, blood splattered across her face like war paint. A bead of blue drips down across her mouth and she licks it off, fangs flashing bright against the dark shadows across her face.
The Grand Highblood thinks she is beautiful. She is beautiful and he wants her and he does not know why.
"Yes," he growls. "Not like it was any great loss."
"A commander should care more for his soldiers."
"She deserved it, falling so fucking easy. Didn't even have time to scream."
The Disciple nudges the corpse with a foot. "What would the outcome have been," she muses, "if the fight had been fair?"
"War isn't fair," the Grand Highblood spits. "If you motherfuckers weren't always whining about how nothing is fair there wouldn't even be a war. Not that I'm complaining," he adds with relish.
"You like killing things?" asks the Disciple.
"Take a fucking guess." He should kill her now and be done with it. Behind him rages the battle, full of bones to be crushed and throats to be cut; yet he finds that he can think only of the one that has already been, and the one who cut it.
It is, he realises, the fear, or lack thereof. Even his lackeys approach with a tremor in their footsteps, for his temper is wild and unpredictable and he gives no mercy even to his own. He has killed many a worshiper of the Mirthful Messiahs because he found them not pious enough, not devoted, not willing enough to lay down their lives on the line for the glory of Alternia. Pissants and weaklings. They deserved to die. This oliveblood, for all her poor stature, holds more quality than them all.
"Would you enjoy killing me?" the Disciple asks again, softly.
"Wouldn't know until I've gone and fucking tried, would I."
"But you haven't," says the Disciple, frowning. "I've heard the stories. Everyone has. They cower at the sound of your name, in the camps: the Grand Highblood, one of the great generals, carrier of the Teachings of Mirth, merciless and unforgiving." She narrows her eyes and looks him dead in his own. "But you don't seem particularly merciless to me."
Kill her now, screams the voice in his head. Do it. End it. Spill her filthy blood across the forest floor and rejoin your comrades in the glory of battle.
But, its softness just as loud, a second voice whispers: I can't.
"Come out to fight and I will show you merciless," says the Grand Highblood, gesturing behind him, dried blood flaking along the back of his hand.
"Show it to me now."
Kill her.
I can't.
Do it.
No.
"No."
"No?" The Disciple looks incredulous. "Am I to return alive to my comrades-in-arms and tell them that the stories are false? That there is in fact a shred of weakness in the Grand Highblood? That he who has slaughtered thousands on the bloody field could not find it in his to kill one troll when he met her alone in the forest?"
He moves faster than she can react, his fingers wrapping around her head and lifting her off the ground until her toes can barely scrape against the dirt. His claws catch in her hair and she whimpers faintly as he brings her face mere inches from his own. She is, he thinks, very small indeed. It is a wonder the war has not swallowed her up already and spat out her bones. "Don't test me," he snarls. "I'll fucking do it."
"But you won't," says the Disciple weakly, and surely it cannot be a smile that tugs at the corners of her mouth, because no one ever smiled at the Grand Highblood who wasn't mad or his own reflection. "I've seen eyes like that before."
"What?"
"You pity me."
"No," snaps the Grand Highblood, his grip tightening. He feels the softness of her skull, how easy it would be to tighten his grip but a little and have it shatter in his grasp, his hands drenched in olive blood. It can't be pity. Not pity. Never pity. Some sick and twisted form of affection, perhaps, but not pity. He does not pity.
"You do," chokes out the Disciple. "I can see it. It's just the way he looks at me sometimes. And it's-"
"It's what?"
"Very strange. Very sad."
"Why the fuck should it be sad?"
"Because I couldn't possibly give it back to you," says the Disciple. "Because you think it makes you weak, to pity someone else, or, heavens forbid, to have someone else pity you. Who could ever pity you?"
"You might," says the Grand Highblood.
"I couldn't. You've killed too many of the ones I love. I might even hate you, though not in any sort of way that would have significance. But not pity. Never pity."
"That's not fucking fair."
"You said so yourself," says the Disciple, and then she laughs, and though he knows it ought to infuriate him he finds himself becoming all the more smitten. "War isn't fair."
He drops her, and she lands in a tangle of unsteady limbs. "Who is deserving of your pity, then?" he demands as she rises slowly to her feet, rubbing uncomfortably at her head. "What pissant fool is so worthy of the great Disciple's fucking pity?
"No one of consequence," she says, squaring her shoulders. "It would not matter if I told you, as all you appear to care about is that the object of my affections is not yourself. It is not pity, at any rate."
"What is it, then?"
"I love him," says the Disciple, her face a mask.
"Love," scoffs the Grand Highblood. "Just pity in another pathetic form."
"I love him," repeats the Disciple, "just as I also loathe and pity him. I would not expect you to understand."
"You'll mutilate the quadrants and crush them together into one form to suit your own whimsical fucking desires, but you can't deign to spare even the slightest bit of pity for another who asks for it?"
"The Grand Highblood, asking for pity. What a story I shall have to tell on my return." She tilts her head, the curiosity that lingered there at the beginning returning once more. Sighs. "I suppose you are pitiable. For all your power, you will only ever be feared. No one who hates you will ever live long enough to pose a challenge, and no one will pity you for all the destruction you have wrought upon the world. You will live out your sweeps alone and unwanted save for when you are called upon for war, and you will die with blood on your hands or spilling from your chest, and no one will mourn you when you are gone. So I suppose, again, if you wish it, I do pity you, twisted as it may be. Because no one else ever will."
The Grand Highblood says nothing, only feels a small sense of satisfaction, that he has gotten what he wanted. He cannot have the Disciple in her entirety - he would be as foolish as his followers to think so - but he holds a part. Emotional control, whispers part of him. Advantageous. She may be useful in the future. He pointedly ignores it.
The Disciple smiles at him, one last time, and he thinks it is an honest smile. It holds pity. He does not know what the Disciple is, but he thinks he knows what she is not - a liar. "I am sorry," she tells him. "For your loss." Then, she turns and vanishes into the forest as though she was never there.
The calm leaves with her.
He misses it.