A young troll looks out from the mouth of the caverns on purple grassed plains below them, stars spinning about at millions of miles per hours, moons spiraling just as fast. It is cold, and the breeze rustles their skirts as it collides with the warm air that bellows within Alternia. There are no winds within the caverns, only stale and stagnation, and the great shuttering breaths of the mother grub one could mistake for breeze if one got too close. This troll is not close. They are looking at the surface world, longing, missing like they have been since they were forced away.

Though it was ten sweeps ago this troll was given life, only today will they be given a title.

Enter title.

SST Laboratories Automaton E54.

Don't fuck with me now.

Bastion.

That's better. Let's get a move on then, shall we?

My name is BASTION. As previously mentioned, I have been drafted and reassigned to the GLORIOUS COLLECTIVE AUXILIATRICES, the primary role for my thinly populated bloodcaste. Here, I and my fellow jades hold the FUTURE OF THE EMPIRE in our hands, where it is our duty to care for the creature that facilitates the mixing of genetic DNA from less than willing volunteers in order to produce new trolls for THE EVER MARCH FORWARD IN TIME. It falls to us to cull weak or abnormal grubs before they reach the age that they can add to the slurry themselves, and thus, this is not a job for the faint hearted.

Not that the faint hearted aren't dragged here anyway. Jades do not belong on the surface. They are raised in the caverns, or torn away from the lusii that have selected them as soon as they can walk.

I am different from the others. I was out there too long before the drones caught me, to the point where I still spends nights at the mouth of the cave staring longingly out at the plains brimming with danger. The others whisper at among themselves that I've gone sun mad, that I'll never make it to adulthood.

But here I am. Despite the odds I have ASCENDED, and from this night forward I shall have greater duties, maybe even young jades of my own to be responsible for. Yet, I still yearn. I think to myself, one last time. One last time to go see her, let her know I am alright, that I've made it to ascension day and I'll be safer from now on. No one ever told her that I survived. I don't think she even knew what was going on when the drones took me.

So, just for one night. I still know where my hive is. I put one foot forward into the swaying grass.

Be the other one.

What? I can only ever be myself.

Fine, be you in the future.

I am myself in the future, distant temporally, close physically as I stand once again at the exit to the caverns, escape feet away. This time the full weight of my disobedience weighs down upon me, for now I am not just some delinquent newly ascended whose greatest crime is a little truancy. The terror of what I am about to do has my strutpod locked, my chug column swallowing over and over again as my mouth remains frustratingly dry.

The grub tucked in my arm squirms. I freeze.

I pray, I pray to the Minstrels, to the Dolorosa, to anyone who might be out there listening that she doesn't cry out. If she cries then we are both dead because I am harboring a disease, a newly declared blight, the words painted candy red across every screen.

The Summoner has caused more fear, cracked more foundations than none but the Sufferer before him. A sweep dead and still his shadow hangs over the empire, spurs the Empress into violence, to impulsivity. No one would say it aloud, few would dare to think it even in their own heads, but many see She is afraid. The propaganda spins it into a crushing defeat over a heretical degenerate, but anyone who hasn't replaced their memories of the revolution with empire schoolfeeds realizes how close the Summoner came. Some say one of his beasts left a scar across her chest.

So the purging of the bronzes feels sloppy, hasty, like it might be rolled back any day. The highbloods have gone paranoid; what they once thought was a little parlor trick, a version of psionics for traipsing about the wilds and playing with barkbeasts, has turned into something far more threatening than the could have ever imagined. The Cavalreapers were all but decimated, the proximity of the troll population to so many lusii called into question. All around me, whispers of reforms threaten what it means to be a troll.

It could be over speculation on their part, it matters to me not. Nor toward the waves and waves of bronzes culled in the caverns below me, the number only growing as fear of empathetic psionics increases.

I had been shaking. That's all I can remember now, the shaking. I'd culled before, of course I had it was—is, was—my job yet there was so many and the floor was stained and the copper color was all over me. There is—was, is—a tiny window. The smallest gap between when the mandate goes from an unofficial decree to an official one, when every bronze on the planet will be killed, where the line might be wiped out all together. And it shouldn't have made a difference. One more little wiggler body to add to the pile. But the drones weren't looking and my superiors were arguing and there was this tiny little grub, just on the floor, helpless as she mewled for something to eat.

I grabbed her and ran.

It doesn't make a difference, I've only made it so we'll both be culled. It does nothing when all I grabbed was this one, this one, singular little body when her hatchmates are painting the walls. I could have grabbed others, but I could only really carry the one, and it makes no difference now anyway. They're long dead.

So it's just me, and her, snuggled in the crook of my frond rotator. I am a fugitive, and I'll have to take my first steps out there, into the world that hurt me so badly the last time I ventured out. On the run from the empire, something I couldn't escape from before, and I doubt I can now, but I have nothing to do but attempt.

I have no prospects, but I do have a plan. There are people I can take her to, my little grubling. Can I say that? Is she mine? No, she is no ones. Neither of us belong to anyone. I am simply her vessel, her ship that might take her to a place where she can have hope.

I put one foot forward into the swaying grass.

Be you in the past.

I cannot open my eyes. They are too…sticky.

I am hurt, hurt, hurt everywhere and oh so very stiff. I can barely tell what is a part of me and what is not, if the horizontal plane I am lying is soft or hard or somewhere in between. There is light, I am sure of that, but only after minutes—hours?—of agonized searching. Color should be next I tell myself, and think I am probably right. Then shapes. Please let there be shapes.

There is sound too. The shapes, they're a troll, horns poking through a blue hood, distinct when all the world around me is white and grey.

"Now, that can't be right." The voice speaks. The voice should belong to the troll, and I think it does. She comes closer to me. "I need you to stay down, child. You won't heal like this."

I think I already am down. I role on my side to tell her so, only to have her face so close to mine that I can see all the shapes I was looking for and more.

Her right ganderbulb is warped. She has four pupils, three elongated, stretched to form a triangle, and one in the center. As soon as I look at them, I can feel them digging straight through my mucus membranes and into my soul.

"Sleep."

Sleep.

To think, I had spent nearly my whole life on the planet's surface, fighting for my life, small and rare blooded with a lusus not strong enough to protect me. I'd learned how to steal, and more importantly to hide, but the greatest lesson of all was that much could be avoided if I was simply unnoticeable. Yet, despite all that, of maybe because of, I had grown confident in my assessment of the outside world. Memories had faded from learning experiences to facts, safely tucked away in the back of my mind where I would never have to take them out and reexamine them again.

Maybe it was because I was now too large or too confident or some combination, but I could not slip by unnoticed as I once had.

A group of adults found a lone jade so so far from their caverns, and thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen. It must have been funny, with how much they'd laughed, and kept laughing, and maybe my eyes had filled in and my second molt had come upon me but I'd never see adults as anything but an other. Far more powerful. Inescapable.

When they'd had their fun with me, I was gone and did not sleep, for not every dark pass into unconsciousness is sleep. When I awoke (for one can still awake even when not asleep) everything was crusted and sticky, broken, bruised. I tried to look, to see if it was still night, but to my rising panic I could see nothing, no light, no dark, no moons. They'd blinded me, they'd blinded me and I squirmed about on the ground like a newly hatched grub, desperately trying to see anything, anything at all.

I wanted to go home. I wanted to go home now, and tears couldn't come but I tried to haul myself forward, panic burning my blood pusher cavity and I began to crawl. There was no way to know if it was the right direction. I could not see. I only knew that home was not here.

Looking back, I am not sure if I was even trying to get to the caverns, or my hive.

The third time I awaken, there is no cerulean here to great me. Instead, there is a different troll, rusted, short, humming to himself nearby as I try to blink myself to consciousness. I can see, I was not blinded after all, but something is still not right. My vision is…distorted. Wrong. Like things have been all been narrowed to look down a long tunnel. Reaching up, I feel where my right eye should be, and my point stumps only come across lumpy flesh, a scarred over sore.

"Hey," the rustblood barks, and I jump so hard I knock something around inside I and the pain blooms fresh. "Don't mess with that!"

I tell him I am sorry. It's over several gasps of pain as I try to right myself, but my balance is gone too, and suddenly a horrid memory of that night surfaces. They ripped at me as I screamed. One had torn my arm off, blood dripping from her jaws, jade mixing with her facepaint as she'd taken a bite out of it and chewed.

I don't want to look. I don't want to look but I do, and see that my right arm is gone, some sort of splint in its place, white metal fused in my skin. There's just synthetics, poking out of my flesh, and my bloodpusher is beating too fast for me to breathe. I scrape at it, like I might be able to dig it out, my digits making gashes in my flesh.

"Minstrels," the rust swears. "Ana, get in here! Your patient is having a meltdown."

"Your patient," and suddenly the cerulean is here, the one with the psionics, sweeping in with her cloak trailing behind her. She takes on look at me and says, "oh now lets not do that, child. Why don't you sleep for a bit?"

No! No I don't want to sleep. I want to be OK. I want to back.

I start crying. It hurts more than it used to, as tears bubble in my left eye until they're forced to fall, stinging as they race down my cheeks. I stop clawing at my arm and put my head in my hand, weeping like a wiggler, emerald tears leaking out of me.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Ana and the other troll exchange a hesitant look. She comes close, putting an arm around my shoulder and saying, "it is alright, habibti. You are going to heal up nice, and you are going to be alright. Okay?"

I sniffle. Despite not wanting to sleep, I do feel tired already. I want to lie down.

"That's fine," she says. "Go right ahead."

There are pillows on the back of the lounge plank that let me lie sort of horizontal while still looking at the trolls around me, the burgundy now fussing with some tool bench. No wonder I feel so sick, who knows how long I've been lying here without sopor?

Even as I think it, I see a tube tied tight into my missing arm feeding a stream of green slime into my body. Oh, okay, that's not so bad. I am okay, I am not going to die. Maybe these people are just fixing I up because they're going to eat me too, but that doesn't seem as likely as it did before with all the trouble they're going through.

I want to know what happened, how I got here.

"Well, Torbjörn found you a little ways outside of Gutterclaw," Ana says as she indicates the troll behind her, still pretending to look busy. "He thought you wouldn't make it, so he brought you back here to fix you with some spare parts. Though it's a good thing I was visiting, otherwise he probably couldn't have gotten them to take. Might have just killed by infection."

"I'm an engineer," Torbjörn grumbles. "Not some docterror, or whatever it is you're sunlighting as these days."

Spare parts?

Ana nods. "Your new arm there."

When I look down at the splint jammed in my stump and just stare at it, Torbjörn sighs and comes over. "It's a prosthesis, repurposed drone parts. I would've given you something more dexterous, but I design military grade, so that's what I got. Didn't want to slap you with one of the big guns, that's a culling offense for anyone lower than cerulean."

With more care than I would have guessed from his brusque attitude, he gently takes my—new—arm in his hands. And…I can feel him as he does it. No, feel isn't quite the right word, it isn't what I would sense if he was doing the same thing on my skin. This is more that I can detect, detect his fingers and where they are in relation to this stick of metal. It's downright terrifying.

"Try extending it," he offers.

I don't know how to do that. I can sense from it sure, but it doesn't feel like me, not in the normal sense. But both my rescuers are looking at me now, so I know I have to at least try. In the end, I think, I want to flex my elbow.

To my surprise, it's as easy as that. The arm extends, dangerously thin now that it's not folded up. Before, it went about to where my elbow used to be, and it's proportioned that when at full length it ends at the approximation of a hand. The drone arm appears to be some sort of medical needle, or perhaps a prong for fine electronic work.

"It should be a few more days before all the nerve endings are set, but it's the better of the adjustments," Torbjörn admits. "We could only save the one eye."

I swallow. Right, the eye. I wonder if I could have a mirror.

Ana brings me one and I spend the next twenty minutes staring at my reflection, seeing the new face looking back at me. My right ganderbulb is completely gone, shredded to bits, skin healed over what Ana says is a prop to keep the socket from collapsing. The left, however, isn't even recognizable as a troll's—it's verticle, a long yellow pupil surrounded by white and grey metal, stitched into my face like a patchwork doll. I touch it lightly.

"So, that's how you got here," Ana says when I set down the mirror. "Now that you know a bit about us, mind telling us my name?"

Share title.

"I see. You are a long way from the caverns, child. Ah," she says suddenly. "That reminds me. I think someone has been trying to see you."

With that, she goes to the window and opens it. A tiny white lusus flies through, and my bloodpusher flips right over itself as she hurls herself at my head. I start crying again, tear ducts patched over smooth metal wetting it once more as Ganymede flies circles all the while, tweeting wildly, darting away as I try to catch her. Finally, she lets me nab her in both hands and pull her close to my face.

"She showed up a few days ago, absolutely twittering mad," Ana says fondly. "I figured that being right after we got ourselves a stray was too much of a coincidence."

It's been a very rough night. I sob as I pat her little head with a finger, trying to communicate how much I've missed her in as few words. I thank my hosts. I hope its enough, when I don't have caegars for repayment.

Torbjörn scoffs. "You can repay us by staying out of trouble in the near future."

"Torbjörn, that's no way to talk to them after they were nearly culled," Ana scolds.

"I'll talk to them however please," he shoots back. "My hive, my rules, and that goes for you too Anaana."

"I remember things a bit different when you were practically begging for help last week."

"I did not beg-"

It's not good for them to argue on my account. I promise to stay out of trouble.

Ana smiles at me, a sweet but condescending smile as she smirks at my sick bed. "Oh child, that's adorable for you to try, but really, it's not like that at all."

I blush suddenly. That's what I was doing, I honestly wasn't trying to mediate, not at all.

Ana laughs, and I flush harder. After a moment, my curiosity overcomes my embarrassment, and I ask that if they're not together, what is going on between the two of them?

"I'm her matesprit's kismesis, whatever that makes me," Torbjörn huffs.

"What it makes you is a pest," Ana declares. "Now, go play with your robots somewhere else. Our guest needs a breather."

Rest up.

The next wipe is cotton balls in my acid tract and stitching ribs. I spend my nights horizontal, cuddling Ganymede and thinking about what will happen when I go back to the caverns. I will be reprimanded most assuredly, but they will not cull me. They will take one look at my half-stitched body and realize someone has done the work for them.

I quietly entertain the idea of staying. Just staying here. The time I am brave enough to say it aloud, the stony silence I get is all the answer I need. They have their own duties to keep after all, Torbjörn makes weapons for the empire's war machine, and his matesprit takes credit since an indigo's creations will always attract more eyes than a burgundy's. I don't blame her though. She's nice, she brings me glasses of water and puts the back of her hand against my nugbone while asking how I am. It's always the same, how are you tonight, how are you tonight, but the pattern becomes almost soothing, a routine to fall into. She also makes me grubcakes. I have no idea how long it's been since I've last had grubcakes.

Ana…well I don't know what Ana does. I think she is some sort of elite operative within the nanonbiters. Ana's matesprit doesn't come by at all, even though he has more reason to visit Torbjörn then Ana does. I don't ask. It's probably some sort of wrap-around passive-aggressive pitch battle they have going on, the hormonal jades get into those sorts of things sometimes.

So I stroke Ganymede on the top of her head and explain to her that I won't be coming back this time. My bones knit and they stick me with mediculizers, and finally I limp back to the caverns. Halfway there, it strikes I that I didn't look back. That I was there and then I left and I didn't realize how profound it was that I had felt safe for the first time in my life until I am standing waist deep in the plains. And it stabs me so hard I cry, alone and pathetic in the middle of the wastes.

Be you in the future again.

I am now a fugitive once more, another three sweeps older, which I will remain for the rest of our story. The bronze has awakened now, mewling for food, ravenous in the hours since her last meal. I set her down and dig around in the dirt for grubs.

Insect grubs that is. I'd have to dig a lot deeper to find more grubs like her.

A claw manages to bring up a few fat ones over the course of a half hour. The wiggler slurps them up and bawls for more.

I drape myself on a nearby rock, exhausted and disappointed. I'd been hoping that I could scrounge a few bugs for myself when she was full, but I've already wasted so much time it can't be worth the effort. My think pan buzzes with an Auxiliatrice's training, running over how long a grub can survivor without food, how many days until their first molt. It's all so much to carry around in my head when fatigue also weights down my slowing limbs.

It's difficult with only one arm. Most times I spend with her nestled securely in it, my needle there for simple tasks but not much else beside electronic manipulation. There had been a close call with a drone a day back, and my delirious thinkpan had entertained the idea of trying to hack it with my needle it in some daring escapade. Stupid. I don't know the first thing about hacking, or drone work, no matter my cyborgization. Instead, I'd tucked me and my charge into a narrow burrow and waited for the danger to pass, just like I'd manage every previous time.

More than anything I require water. I find my thinkpan hurts more than it doesn't, dizzy spells and mind plunges. More than once I've shaken it out to realize I've been going the wrong direction for hours, losing more than half a day's progress all counted.

I need to find somewhere to lay low for a while. I have day cloaks for both the wriggler and I, but they prevent shriveling under the sun not protection from the heat itself. My insistence to push on through Alternia's radioactive day cycles leaves me staggering, sweltering under the coat of leather. My grub needs food, and I need some sopor slime—I haven't slept since leaving the underground and it's only a matter of time until my foggy state leads to a fatal slipup. There must be somewhere I can hide from the drones, at least for a night.

On my journey I've seen remote hives dotting the land, but I've always taken care to avoid them. Even with my cloak to hide my replete eyes, the strange bundle at my side would jog anyone's suspicion. Or appetite.

But I am running out of options. Water, slime, shelter, food. Just to recharge. To restock.

So the next time I come to a towering building out on the savannah, alone, not even a road to lead anyone here, I approach rather than shy away. My hopes are high: there is no skuttlebuggy in the drive, and the windows are dark.

The door is locked, but thankfully there is at least one thing my prosthetic arm is good for. After more jamming than picking, it pops open, and I make my way inside.

The relief is immediate. The most important part of a hive is shelter from the day, and cool air caresses me as if the sun had already set. Quietly, I shrug off my cloak and set the grub on the meal plane. She gurgles in complaint to be out of the comfort of my arm, but I shoosh her as I make my way to the thermal hull. Tubs of churned dairy product, vermillion spheres…there. Milk. Actually, an unreasonable amount of milk, but I am not going to look a hoofbeast in the aural receptors.

I pour some milk into a bowl and place it on the meal plane. The grub scuttles over immediately, and I wait a minute to make sure she won't fall in and drown herself before going to find something for my own person. I settle on a can of fart nibblets, and sit down to eat.

If the air's relief was welcome, this is a blessing. But having a full digestion bladder only reminds me how exhausted I am, and a few times I almost nod off in my chair and land face first in my nibblets. Should I risk sleeping here? The denizen could be home any minute, technically, and I'd be at a great disadvantage if they caught I unawares. But, as I nearly fall asleep for the fourth time, I realize I won't be able to put up much of a fight anyway. I promised myself I'd get some sopor, and damn well I am going to get it.

Ignore your better judgment and explore the dark creepy hive.

The halls are gloomy and narrow. There are scuff marks in the carpet, one that's green and thin, like it's been worn down to its barest fibers over many sweeps. As I withdraw from the out walls, the hive only grows blacker and blacker, and unease coils deep in my gastric evacuation gland.

I am alone in my disquiet. Full and happy, the grub has dozed off. I am trying keep her rocking gently when I hear something behind me, scraping on the threadbare floor. I whip around.

It's a lusus. I freeze in fear, clutching my grub close to my chest as the creature takes another step toward me. It's a centaur, its white coat glistening even in the half-light, and the spheres in the fridge jump to my mind. Of course there's no scuttlebuggy: this place belongs to a child.

A child and their custodian.

The centaur snorts, scraping its hoof on the carpet at it takes in us both, tilting its head and deciding whether to charge. There is no escape except backwards, and I know I cannot outrun this sort of lusus. They are famously strong, and no doubt just as fast. My only hope is to stay here, and hope I don't appear threatening.

The lusus looks at me. I look at it. The two of I stay locked in visual combat while the grub sleeps on.

"Adawe? Where did you go to?"

An exhausted looking troll child appears at the centaur's side. It immediately loses interest in me, and snorts in her general direction.

Somehow, this does not relax me. When the troll—an olive, only discernable by the rectangular sign on her headpiece—notices me, she says, "oh, did Adawe let you in?"

Cautiously, I consider options. Then, very slowly, I say yes, yes she did.

"Okay, that's alright then." The girl tilts her head, her vaguely sleepy eyes blinking at me. "I'm sorry, I can't have guests right now. I have a big experiment I'm almost finished with, but I can talk later."

Is she really not threatened by me? Perhaps she is very sheltered, living so far away from any civilization, but even then she should be at least a little put off. When I was her age, I'd been terrified of adults, and the idea of finding one in my hive would have sent me running to the nearest green trash receptacle for shelter. Then again, maybe if I had a lusus like that, I wouldn't have been nearly so intimidated. I tell her none of this, and only that it's quite alright that she doesn't have time to talk.

The olive nods. "Okay. Adawe can get anything for you, if you like. I'll be in the subterranean block." And with that she was gone, and I had tactfully refrained from saying I had already raided her storage cubes.

At first, I was still nervous about the strange troll and her lusus. What if this was some sort trick to lull I into a false sense of security? Sure she thought I was playing along with the whole "guest" thing, but if this olive was some sort of serial murderer who kidnapped anyone who wandered to this corner of the plains?

Well alright, that probably wouldn't have been very lucrative. Sill, I was on edge, and I had to remind myself that the best opportunity the centaur had to run me down would have been in that hallway.

I cautiously ask Adawe if there is a spare recuperacoon around, and she leads me to a room on the second floor with a melting window. When I am sure she's gone, I scoop out a bit of sopor slime for the grub and put it in a little bowl, also provided by Adawe. Still, it takes my last bits of courage to disrobe and submerse myself in the liquid. When I do, I am out before my toes touch the bottom.

Figure out what to do with yourself.

Once again, I've found myself a guest. Perhaps that is not an unusual thing to be, but jades aren't usual trolls, and I am not experienced with being in places where I do not belong. When I wake I find myself not dead, my grub not eaten, and my cloths where I left them. By the setting sun, it's been almost a full twenty-four hours.

I set off exploring. At first, I keep my route looping back to the grub every few minutes, making sure she's eating her elongated water vegetable, exploring only a room at a time. But eventually I grow bolder, and find myself lost in pleasant way. I think it's the walls with their winding nature and not quite level floors, awakening some distant memory of the caverns like a comforting hand on the back of my neck. Slowly, I regain my strength in the strange house on the plains. I hadn't realized how weak I'd become, too busy trying not to die to notice that I would have expired of exposure no more than a day past this place. The sun madness will do that to you. But now I am much better, and after half a wipe, I still haven't seen the olive girl again. She spends all her time subterranean block, where I hear strange noises emanating from at all hours. Perhaps she has a touch of the madness as well. It would certainly explain her lack of concern for me.

At first, it is haunting. Strange bangs and clangs of machinery are the orchestra that sounds during dinner, are what send me to sleep at daybreak. But, as time goes on, apprehension turns into wonder, and then to the dangerous virtue of curiosity.

When does she sleep? What is she doing? Does she subsist only on the meals her custodian brings to her and nothing more?

It is only a few days more to reach Torbjörn and Ingrid's hive. I could have reached it in an afternoon, bought an omniscuttlebus ticket and wandered barefoot to the station as I had when I was younger, but all main thoroughfares are inaccessible with cullbait tucked in my arm. Now it's a long journey by foot, and it scares me how close I came to failure without realizing it. The scare has put the doubt back in my bones, and now I am loathed to leave this place of safety and set out alone again.

My decision is made for me when I wake my respiteblock one morning to find a small cocoon has been stitched into the ceiling, slathered with hardened mucus and pulsating with a faint orange light. I sigh. The delays have now cost my charge's grubhood, easily the most manageable stage of a troll's life cycle. When she emerges from her molt she'll have fangs and claws and legs with bones, and be that much harder to manage. Additionally, I am now stuck here until she's out—I did not sit through the Abbess's thousand speeches to move a grub while it's cocooning.

I drop into the swaychair across from the cocoon. For long minutes, I stare, and stare, trying to summon some feeling within me that isn't overwhelming defeat.

And, all the while, the banging from belowincline gets louder. I do not know if I am going crazy or if the last of my nerves has finally eroded, but over the past day the cacophony has only seemed to grow more and more frantic. I stare at the glowing glob of spit. It beats in time to my blood pusher, filling my aural receptors, my very hate glands, combining with the awful racket below. I stand and send the swaychair flopping. I am going to go find out what the hell is going on down there whether my host wants me to or not.

Adawe is nowhere to be seen. When I push open the door I see why: she's standing by the olive, who's bow-bent deep in some sort of massive machine that's crouching in the center of the block. The lusus looks up, briefly snorts, and then goes back to watching her charge wield a blowtorch inside the monstrosity.

As my feet creak down the wooden zigzag, the eyesore comes into focus. I don't even care if my host notices me anymore, so in awe of this thing am I. It looks positively alien, with its odd blend of insectoid based technology and more primitive electronics that seem to be at its center. Upon closer inspection, I realize that the more familiar grubnology that I've grown up with is actually some sort of addition to its natural state, one that the girl is using as scaffolding to dig into the massive lotus closed at its center.

She finally notices me as I stand in front of the nyctinasty in awe. "Hello," she says cheerily, all of the exhaustion from her voice wiped away, though the bags under her eyes are not. Minstrels, she really could only be five or six sweeps old, far too young to be looking like that. "I forgot you were still here. You have good timing! I'm almost finished."

It certainly sounds like it. Down here, what was once drowned out now becomes a dull roar, the horrid buzz of something groaning to life. What…is this thing?

"I don't know!" she says with delight. "I've been trying to figure that out for ages now. But I know it's very old, likely pre-ascendancy."

It takes me a moment to realize she is not referring to personal ascendancy, but special ascendancy. That would be…I can't even wrap my mind around how long ago that would have to be. Trolls have been a spacefaring civilization for eons.

She hops down off the lotus's organic frame. The flower's base is made of carved stone, painted with must have been green thousands of years ago, but now only survives in cracked smears. She equips a crowbar from her specibus, and begins pulling at a panel of stone until it pops, landing with two of its edges still hanging from the machine.

"Hmm," she says to me or maybe to no one. Then she's gone again, scuttling up the framework around the machine to pick up her blowtorch again. "Almost there…"

The honkbeastflesh on my arms can't stop me from wandering closer. Nothing can stop this strange thing's pull, even as dread wells inside me. I look at the corner of "stone" the olive has pulled apart. There's a screen underneath.

The girl keeps firing. I try to tell her about the numbers on the screen but she waves me away with a, "I've almost got it!"

I read the numbers again. They're changing. With my blood pusher dunked into icewater, I realize that it's a countdown. I raise my voice again.

"Aha! Look!"

There are seconds left. She brings her crowbar down on the tip of the blossom and the resounding clang drowns me out.

The countdown hits zero. The lotus cracks open.

With the loss of the structure supporting it, the whole outer carapace of the machine goes crumbling, the olive girl falling with a shriek. I do not see where she lands, too busy throwing myself backwards in order to avoid the splash of falling bug juice, scrambling toward the corner furthest from the bloom.

By the time I right myself, the lotus has fully opened. Each petal lays delicately on the base, as though they're as dainty as a true flower and not larger enough to crush a troll flat.

In the center, where each successive sepal had once been wrapped around it, floats a glowing ball, bright white, hanging like an ornament from a kringlefrond. But its exposition is still not over. There are shapes within the orb of white, tessellating, and the movements only grow faster. Wide, curved arrays blur right before my ganderbulb, and suddenly it grows nearly twice its original size, forming into an abnormal shape.

At this point, it becomes too bright to look. When the flares of white have faded from the subterranean block's walls, I turn and gaze back to the petals.

Back upon a troll standing in the middle of the flower.

There is a clattering. Adawe has finally pulled her charge from the remains of construction, but the troll girl doesn't seem to care. She wriggles free from Adawe's grasp, and runs right up to the troll that did not exist a moment before but now does. "Hello! I am Efiola!"

The adult—for she is an adult, tall as she is, muscles as thick around as my waist, horns jutting forward menacing like a rhinoceros beetle—turns to Efiola. "Greetings! I am OR15A, and it is very nice to meet you!"

I scramble further backwards, trying to make myself as unnoticeable as possible.

OR15A takes a knee, and the whole ground shutters. She asks Efiola, "are you the one who awakened me?"

"I am, I am!" Efiola is practically bouncing. "I knew something amazing was inside, didn't I say? Look, look didn't I say?"

The last she addresses to me, and to my horror the apparition turns her attention in my direction. I try to shrink away even though there is no more space left because the troll before me is very, very wrong. What I thought at first were olive eyes don't quite catch the light right, nearly iridescent, yet they are not gold either. My brain snaps between trying to put them in either category but fails every time, and slowly I am forced into a conclusion I desperately do not want.

This person is a mutant. She is a mutant and I am an Auxiliatrice and she must know what that means about her and I.

She waves. "Hello! And who might I be?"

Share your title.

I keep my lips pressed tight and shake my rattlenogin.

She squints sadly, her brow going furrowed around her strange mutant eyes. So she goes back to Efiola, "I cannot share my appreciation enough for activating my capsule. Now that I have, you must surely have a prerogative here to uphold. Please tell me: when am I?"

Efiola tells her as she rocks on her heels.

"Forward then!" OR15A says, pleased. "Delightful! Thank you again for opening it on such a fine date."

That doesn't seem right. There countdown. Efiola didn't open it, there was a countdown.

Efiola and the mutant both look over to where I've apparently found my voice, a decision I regret immediately. But everything is just so topsy turvy that I have to say something, like how the pod was going to open anyway with or without all the hammering.

OR15A chuckles. "Of course it was! But that timer was only set because the pod would be opened, and thus it was set to the time it would be. We didn't know one before the other, and thus we had to know them both simultaneously."

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Who's we? Other mutants?

"Mutants?" She tilts her head. "What an odd thing to say."

"Not to be rude," Efiola says, dashing around ever inch of OR15A and examining her dimensions, "but your eyes are very abnormally deviated from natural hues."

As she says that, the mutants lookstubs go sad again. "…I see. So they truly have done as they promised. I feared as much when I said goodbye, but I had always hoped…are there truly no limebloods left in the genosphere?"

When both of usgive her looks of confusion, she sighs, and casts her ganderbulbs to the water stained ceiling.

This is making my thinkpan hurt with all this talk of expected causality and gene slurries. I've found a little strength to wobble to my feet, still unsure whether this "limeblood" might yet become a threat. But I am also curious again, that damned instigator once more, and it's slowly tamping down my urge to flee.

"Hm? What is a limeblood?" she says in response to my question. "I suppose then none would know anymore, not even a revered brooder. Of the twelve castes, our psionics were the strongest, greater than even the gilt. For this, we were deemed a threat, and a purge began of our caste began not long after I hatched. When I left, there were few left, but I still thought…" She trails off into silence.

The words send a sickening wave of déjà vu down my gullet. She had said twelve castes, not the holy and honored eleven. The very structure I have been taught to venerate where every troll has a duty and a status has not always been.

If she is to be believed, her entire hemocaste was cleansed, expunged entirely from history. And now it is happening again.

She shakes herself from her melancholy daze. "Well, that is then and this is now. For since I am here, there must be some duty I am meant to perform. Tell me, is there any great task I am intending to accomplish?"

"You could let me study you!" Efiola pipes up immediately. She runs back into her collapsed piles of junk and withdraws a husktop, sitting cross-legged on a broken beam. "This is probably the greatest find of the millennia. Everyone on the museum forums is going to be so excited!"

OR15A chuckles. "It would be my pleasure to help you, dear awakener. And how about you, my friend?" she suddenly directs to my coward corner. "I do feel bad for startling you earlier."

I flush darkly. Maybe it's her antiquated speech, but 'feel bad for startling I' is only one word away from 'feel bad for you', an expression so blatantly saccharine I can't help the warmth at the back of her neck. I assure them both not to pay me any mind, I was just going to leaving. In fact, if I just go grab my grub, I can go right now.

"A grub?" the lime blinks. "Is such a thing now routine that a jade must transport grubs from one location to another?"

Not exactly. Lets just say none of us should be found by the drones right now, so it will be better if we split up.

"Drones?" As soon as she asks it, Efiola leans up and whispers in her sound dish. "Ah, I see. That is most terrible, but I believe your assessment is incorrect. It would be better if I went with you, we could better protect each other that way."

Expertly, I lie and say its cool and I've been doing just fine on my own.

She must know it, for she smiles warmly. "It is alright, my friend. For if Efiola has no need of me to go anywhere, then this must be the protocol I was sent to fulfill."

"If you are going, I'm coming with!" Efiola declares. "There's no way I'm letting this slip through my fingers, it's been my life's work!"

I'd like to point out that a life's work for someone of her age is a paltry sum, but I'm not feeling thatcallous. I feel the advent of social pressure mounting upon me, just like all the times when the other Auxiliatrices cliqued together to whisper words behind hands and I'd find myself outvoted.

OR15A grins at me. "Go, grab your grub. We will be with you to travel on the morning."

Go grab your grub, simp.

Somehow, the air is even hotter than it was when I first made my break for the surface. I am now travelling with a small group instead of (effectively) on my own, and the feeling of a dozen mechanical eyes that may or may not be watching us from a distance makes me itch.

The newly molted wriggler is fussy, for one thing. Her legs are far too short to keep pace, so I still have to carry her, but now she kicks and spends most of her time either trying to climb my horns, or escape my embrace all together.

Efiola rides Adawe near the back of the party, laden with supplies and constantly asking OR15A—who Efiola has simplified to 'Orisa'—endless questions about the world she came from. Orisa takes them all in stride, willing to talk for the hours it takes to get from one night to the other. She's come from a time with no ships, no ascension, no drones and no husks. I ask how her people were able to build such an elaborate time machine while still pre-technological, and she had laughed. I'd misunderstood, apparently. The lotus was not created, but gifted, and on that she would say no more.

Her world seems untamed, barbaric, but just as dangerous. I and Efiola listen as she tells of the lime's ventures into hiding as the Empress turned them into worse than gutterbloods, where there death was not just prescribed, but demanded. The Empress of her tales may not even be the one who rules today, one who Orisa calls The Imponderable Superciless. It all sounds of fairy stories.

Despite the tales and the provisions, the journey wears on me. I keep walking and walking as grasslands turn into straight up desert, and I hope I am approaching Gutterclaw by now. In the middle of the day when the sun cloaks seem to do nothing, Orisa points out a great structure shimmering in the distance and suggests I stop there for some shade. I disagree, but once again with Efiola's endorsement, I am out voted.

Below the great ruin of metal, I let the wriggler to the ground and watch her toddle about on the sand. Immediately, she begins to dig, and within seconds has found a snake and bitten it clean through the neck.

"A strange tower," Orisa remarks as she approaches me.

I try to hide my discomfort. Despite the fugitive and traitor that I am, her mutantness still triggers a deep-seated unease in me. Instead of focusing on that, I look at the statue that blocks out the worst of the sun. It is of a troll woman holding a torch aloft, and her once beautiful exterior has been turned teal by the desert's rays. Despite its craftsmanship, there is still something undeniably shitty about it.

"Do you wish me to hold the troll-ling for the next part of our journey?" she asks. "It seems as though it is difficult for you."

I look at my feet and try to summon some indignation to muscle out my embarrassment. It's really fine. She doesn't have to do that.

"This is my directive," she insists.

She keeps saying that, but I don't see how helping two cullbait morsels complete their doomed mission can be any sort of great purpose.

"Ah, I cannot say for certain, I am actually quite new at this. But I can guess." She takes a seat in the sand. "Some time in the far future, as distant to you as you are to me, there will be a game played for the fate of all trollkind. It is important that each shade plays a role in this game, including this one's." She reaches out and brushes sand from the wiggler's hair as she begins to devour her captured prey.

That seems all sort of farfetched. And dumb.

"Oh it is very dumb," Orisa agrees. "Dumb, but true. Even one of my own line will reach this game, though not as directly as this one here. So, that is why I think she must live. Live and reach these trolls I believe will keep her safe."

I drop into the sand next to her and draw my strutnubs to my chest. Even that I am not so sure of anymore. Torbjörn wouldn't even take in me when I'd asked, what makes me think he'd put his crew's life on the line for an illicit wiggler I've dumped on his doorstep? I've been a terrible revolutionary and an even worse custodian. I should have just tried to pawn her off on the nearest lusus as soon as I got free of the caverns.

To my surprise, as I sink my head further on to my knees, I feel a large hand on my back. I blink in surprise as I look up into Orisa's smiling face. "You have been a good custodian. You have risked your life for this wiggler time and time again, and as long as she still draws breath, there is hope for us and our future."

I take a breath, then another, just as the Matrideas taught I to do when the air inside the tight tunnels became too much. I breathe, and watch the young troll spit out squeaky-clean bones into the grit.

"But please," Orisa adds. "Let me carry her for a while."

My own vertebra snake has been aching for the past many kilometers. I cautiously agree.

Get where I am going, for the love of pete.

I am more comfortable walking near Orisa now, and I arrive shoulder to shoulder (well, elbow to shoulder) over the ridge that leads into the Lindholm valley. I'd only seen it once from the outside, but I've never forgotten the site.

Nearly tripping on the way down, I scramble over the hill and slide filthy in front of the little red door. I knock hurriedly, and hear nothing at first. Of course I don't, it's the middle of the day. I knock again.

Finally, movement from inside. The door comes open, and in the frame is Torbjörn, shielding his ganderbulbs from the sun. He takes one look at my forlorn face, then at Orisa, Adawe, and Efiola just coming up behind me. Finally, his gaze falls on the bronze in my arm, grub scars still reflecting with metallic light.

He takes one, large, regretful sigh and says, "alright, alright, come in."

I am so relieved to have finally made it, I fall asleep as soon as my cheek touches the loungeplank cushion. When I awake, it everyone else seems to have sorted themselves into other corners of the hive, Ganymede has made a nest in my hair, and Torbjörn is across from me, reading from his husktop.

I ask him where is everyone. And then I notice that most of his and Ingrid's things are stashed into boxes, some half packed and some not, but everyone in far more of a state of disarray than when I left it. Then I only want to know what is going on.

He shakes his head. "Did you not hear about the decree?"

The bronze genocide? That's why I'd come here.

He shakes it again. "Not that. That never became official. What is official is that starting next sweep, all Ascended will be required to be extraplanetary. Permanently."

I can tell just by the way he says it, gruffly, with just a bit of anger that he's saying what he means. Every adult? Off world?

"Yeah. This time next solar rotation, Alternia will belong to the children." He looks through the kitchen door, where I can just see the edges of Ingrid talking with my travelling companions, and bouncing my grub on her knee. Or, I suppose, now her grub. It burns a sad cigarette hole in the fabric of my heart, but burns warm all the same.

She notices me watching her. With a smile, she lifts the grub into her (two) arms and carries her into the rumpus room. I ask her if she and he are just going to get up and leave.

"Stars no," he scoffs. "We're heading for the most remote part of the planet we can."

Ingrid smiles. "You are welcome to come, if you'd like."

I look at them all gathered there. Efiola seems to have lost all interest in Orisa, now enthralled with Torbjörn's machines. Unconcerned with the whims of the young, Orisa pleasantly says, "I, for one, will not be. I will have another directive to complete, and I must get to my next pod to find where it will send me."

"Aww," Efiola says. "I was hoping I'd come with us to South Sea."

Oh, so she is going too. Things certainly were discussed while I was out. Things needed to get discussed and they went out and discussed them. Great.

I think about South Sea, about being free again. Hunted, yes, but I've always been hunted, it will be nothing new. I could live out my natural life discretely while my companions died one by one until there was only Ingrid to outlive with me. It could be nice.

Yet, despite all odds, I have ASCENDED. Somehow, that must be worth something, broken little sun mad renegade that I am. I once had run my whole life, but in a cage I had still accomplished something.

One last time, I look around the room, but when my gaze finally falls, I ask Orisa if it might be possible to go with her.

"Are you sure, Bastion?" she asks, obviously surprised. "There is no telling where we will end up. Very likely you will not see your friends again."

That's not so new. I tell her I am sure.

She smiles softly. "The capsules can transport much greater volume than their dimensions. It is very possible. And, I think, I will enjoy the company."

A grin stretches all the way to my ears, and Ganymede titters. I assure her that of course she can come along.

Torbjörn scoffs, though I've known him well enough that's he's not truly irritated. "Well. You don't get to come by, drop a smuggled kid on our entryway incline, and not help us pack. Get your ass off that plank."

Obediently I do, and go to help my friends, as content as I think I'll ever be. I put scarves into bags and robots into parcels and think about the future honestly for the first time in a very long while.