I gotta admit, I had entirely too much fun coming up with the morbid details for this one. I'm not sure if it'll be well received in the end but at least I personally like how it came out.

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Chapter 1.5 – D-ENIAL

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Living in the ship could get quite boring. She didn't even have her cuttlefish to keep her company there. She did have other trolls but most avoided her out of fear of angering one of the heiresses. Strangely most of the population on board were lowbloods so they feared that she would sic her lusus on them, which she would never do but they didn't know that.

Though she had nothing against lowbloods she couldn't help but think their presence there was odd. As far as she knew that ship was meant for the sea dwellers and Gl'bgolyb. Unfortunately none of her online friends was there aside from Eridan, though he was more than an online friend, really. He still had a lot of hatred towards land dwellers but the ship still had a limited amount of them and his tantrums were more manageable.

Honestly, she was starting to wonder if she should break the news to him or not. Before their home planet was torn apart she was already feeling weary of her duty as his moirail. Sometimes it seemed pretty one sided. She was glad that most of the time she didn't need much support from him, as she was already calm optimistic person, because most of the time she had to help him out. It came to the point she felt she couldn't afford to fill her other quadrants because he took so much of her time.

She couldn't help but wonder if perhaps she simply wasn't fitted for the task of being his moirail. He deserved a better moirail, really. Not someone who grew weary of his problems. But since coming to the ship things had calmed down. Perhaps there was hope? He still took most of her time, though, but that was just because most other trolls seemed to avoid her, even the Violets. The lowbloods she could understand the reasoning of, but the Violets?

Well at least there were other heiresses there, she just needed to find them. But considering how their instincts could press her to attack them and vice versa perhaps that wasn't advisable either. But she wasn't one to be easily swayed by instinct. And if they were, then she knew how to protect herself just fine.

She eventually met each and every one of her competitors for the title. With Eridan helping her out with feeding Gl'bgolyb she had some free time to roam the ship. Trizza didn't really give her any chance to get along but Kataji and Amelia were another story all together.

Not only were those two oddly old, perhaps too old even to be considered as part of the young trolls that would inhabit the new planet, clearly above nine sweeps, but they also were strangely calm. Even more so than Feferi herself. And even odder: the two of them were close. As in platonically close. Somehow like moirails but platonically. They called each other sister.

Feferi tried several times to get the truth about their ages out of them but they dodged her subtle attempts easily and she didn't want to scare them off by being more obvious. They eventually told her they weren't even slightly interested in the crown and just wanted to live their lives peacefully which she guessed was the reason why they lied about their age, considering that they would be forced into the fight even if they didn't want to.

They had been born at the same time so sometimes they called each other twin instead of sister. Feferi liked them a lot. Kataji wanted to be free of responsibility and explore the universe around her. She wanted to visit all the colonies and see as much as she could. Amelia wanted to fly someday, but not in a machine. A jet pack was as far as she was willing to go as far as technology assisted flying went. She wanted the least amount of outside help as possible.

For a while Feferi was happy. She had friends to talk to in that ship and Eridan had less and less of his tantrums against lowbloods so their moirailegiance might still survive.

For a while Gl'bgolyb was happy. Eridan took care of cutting up the meals for Gl'bgolyb before he handed the meat to Feferi. She thought it was nice of him to do so. Gl'bgolyb always complained about the bones of the lusus she was fed with but Feferi never could bring herself to cut them up and up until then Eridan never had the time to do it either.

For a while Eridan was happy. His mood was better than ever and he laughed more and complained less. Feferi liked to see and hear him laugh.

For a while her new sisters were happy. They now had a new sister to dote upon and tell stories to.

For a while…

But then it all changed. It wasn't sudden like their relocation had been. It was more like slowly waking up from a nice dream to a harsh reality.

It started when a bronze blood Kataji was particularly friendly with stopped showing up all of a sudden.

Neither of them gave it much importance at first. He wouldn't have been the first that needed some space for himself for a couple of days. But then a few days turned into a week. And a week turned into a month. By the time they had noticed the month was up and still no sign of him. Had he not been someone Kataji was particularly friendly with it would have been fine. They probably wouldn't even have noticed. But when they were so close already it was odd for the friendship to suddenly stop dead in its tracks just like that.

Once was odd enough but perigees later another one of Kataji's many friends went missing. And then another. That's when Feferi started noticing it wasn't just Kataji's friends that were going missing. Several other lowbloods she remembered seeing before had disappeared too. Not just that, the lowbloods that were left were acting frightened and cautious and always moved in groups.

Feferi began noticing which lowbloods went missing. And then she realized why they were missing… So she confronted Eridan about it.

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He didn't deny it.

In fact, he admitted all of it. The whole reason why the lowbloods had even been brought into the ship on the first place. Lusi were too big to carry a lot of them in the ship and somehow trolls had more calories than lusi despite being smaller. Something about their physical composition being denser than lusi.

Eridan had already been in charge of helping out with the feeding before. He knew Feferi, who already hated having to kill lusi to feed Gl'bgolyb, would refuse to feed her trolls. He did what he had to, or so he said. But she knew he had enjoyed it. To finally kill land dwellers like he had always wanted to. That had been why he was so happy ever since the beginning of the trip. He had cut the bodies so that she wouldn't recognize what exactly she had been using to feed her lusus.

Feferi hadn't known how to deal with all that. She had touched the flesh of trolls, people that had been not too different from her, and hadn't even recognized it. She felt truly disgusted and horrified. Her mind buzzed with chaos as she tried to process it. She couldn't even say that she would forbid such kind of feeding, knowing fully that all that would accomplish was having Gl'bgolyb raise her voice killing all lowbloods on board anyway. Perhaps even the ones on the other ships too, if she got loud enough.

So, she did the one thing she still could. She pretended, even to herself, that she didn't know anything, that that conversation with Eridan had never happened. And every time Kataji or Amelia brought it up again, forcing her to remember all that she knew, she felt her sins crawling on her back, guilt stabbing at her. She couldn't tell them. The only friends she still had. They would despise her if they knew.

And Eridan? She hadn't broken things off with him officially. She could barely even so much as look at him anymore. In title, they were still recognized as moirails but their relationship had grown ice cold since he had admitted to his doings. She knew that, if he hadn't told her, it had been to protect her. But the mere fact that he had enjoyed the killings… no, she couldn't get past that. But she tried to convince herself that it was because he was caring that he did what he did.

The time she spent in the ship up until they landed on the new planet was more of those feelings of guilt as more and more lowbloods went missing, some times whole groups at the same time, and she pretended not to notice.

They landed without incident. The ship's crew hid the ship so that the humans wouldn't find it, even if by mistake. The other passengers were directed to the landing spot of the other ships to install a communication center as the crew took care of transporting her lusus into the water as she oversaw. As her moirail, Eridan was there too.

And then a sudden bright light from where Gl'bgolyb was. Seconds later a loud 'boom' was heard as she was tossed back by the impact from the blast.

Her ears were ringing and her eyes still hurt from the flash. She got up from the floor, stumbling a bit are she tried to regain balance. By her side Eridan did the same.

"Come on, Fef! Wwe havve to leavve!" He said but it had been too late. The humans were there, armed to the teeth. "Go! Swwim awway!"

He pushed at her and started shooting at the humans and they began shooting back. Feferi was still confused from the explosion and could barely comprehend what was going on. The ringing from the bullets didn't help her either. She had been in direct trajectory of one of those projectiles when she had finally managed to snap out of the trance. Eridan jumped in front of her and took the bullet.

"-ERIDAN!"

"Go, Fef! Go noww!" The injury was bad, he was bleeding way too fast. If she didn't stop the blood he would die. "FEF!" She looked up at him. "Go!" He said in his most serious tone.

So, she jumped down the cliff and dived into the water. She swam and swam until she was tired of swimming, but there was no place to hide in. And then an island! But no underwater caves… She tried to walk to the tree line but exhaustion overtook her and she collapsed in the blistering sand.

Last thing she remembered was hearing. "Jade! Jade! I require your assistance."

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ENDNOTES:

So, when I said some people might not like it it's mostly because of Eridan's character in this and the fact that he dies right away. I'm gonna be honest here. One of the reasons why I offed him in here is both because I never intended for all of the trolls be alive by the time the story starts but I picked him out of all of them because I never really liked him much. However, there are people that do so I gave him a heroic death, protecting his intended Matesprit, though the feelings were never reciprocated. I'm quite happy with how it turned out, all things considered. I'm not sure I would be able to write his character properly even if I kept him alive. :/

this is it for now. I really just want opinions on what I already have and I'm already starting to justify the Mature rating, I think.