After a month had passed, the vivid colors of the sand faded to a bright but uninteresting golden-brown. The mornings were cool and grey with fog rolling off the sea. When Vriska first heard its dull roaring call, she was instantly filled with longing and wondered why anyone would want to live anywhere but near that sound. She contained herself however; she was well-traveled now, and did not gawk like a tourist.

So Vriska only cried a little when she actually saw the ocean for the first time three days later. "No fucking way," Karkat said, slightly in awe. Not at the majestic spread of water that stretched beyond the horizon, where the boundaries between the earth and sky melded into one glorious eternal plane of purest azure, or at the roar of the foam capped waves crashing on the rocks, or the mournful cry of a single lost seagull, but at the sight of Vriska staining their last clean handkerchief with cobalt streaks.

"Shut up," Vriska sniffled, "it's just…some sand got in my eyes."

"We've been getting sand in our eyes nearly every day for a whole month now," Karkat deadpanned. "Is this last sand-in-eye-getting the straw that broke the hump-beast's back, or are you just so moved by the beauty of Psiidon's kingdom that you have no choice but to weep?"

Vriska punched him but her heart wasn't in it. "And you're always getting on me about my books and here you are crying over a fucking puddle."

This time her heart was in it. "Your books are so fucking stupid and sappy and fake! The sea is real and beautiful and not full of cheesy-ass lines like—" with one fluid motion she snapped open Karkat's saddlebags and pulled out a book. She steered Maplehoof away from Karkat as he tried to snatch it back—Vriska was a fast learner and had mastered riding in their month on the road—and started to read, beginning in a saccharine falsetto. "'Make a wish', she said, once all the candles had been lit," Karkat overextended himself and fell off his brindled riding-beast, getting a mouthful of sand. Vriska continued in a highly exaggerated male voice, "'It already came true,' I said, and kissed her long and passionately. The cake went uneaten all night long." Karkat got up and ran after her on foot, but she kept just out of reach, reading off some more select passages before reaching the edge of the sea. "Wait, hold on, if I'm reading this correctly they didn't even fuck that night! What, did they just hold hands and fall asleep next to each other? Such laaaaaaaameness doesn't deserve to exist—"

She snapped her arm back and then hurled the book like a discus into the distance. Karkat gaped at the ocean in horror. "That was a limited edition—"

"Whoa," said Vriska, shielding her eyes, "It looked so blue from far away but from here it's green!"

"Signed by the author—"

Vriska closed her eyes and inhaled deeply and loudly. Karkat growled. "You always take things too far Vriska!" he snapped. "You couldn't just tease me, you had to fucking ruin my book!"

With a self satisfied look, she deigned to look down at him. "Would you hate me if I didn't go that little extra mile?"

Karkat made a frustrated sound, one that was part groan and part sigh and was terribly hard on his throat. "Probably not," he admitted. Vriska smirked, then clicked her tongue at Maplehoof and left him in her dust.


Later in the day, the two of them rode along, arguing about Karkat's hat. It was fairly thoroughly ruined after its soak in the stream and subsequent exposure to the elements. The hat was falling apart and had faded to a hideous grey spattered here and there with Technicolor stains. "Your hat looks like a clown used it for a wank-rag!" Vriska announced.

Karkat choked. "You're disgusting!"

"Give it here, I'm throwing it away—" She snatched the horrid thing off his head, releasing a cascade of tattered aluminum shreds. "Wow," she said, in a dull monotone. "Really Karkat? After all this time?" She gave him a look that would not have been out of place on a kicked puppy. "You still don't trust me?" Little pools of cobalt gathered in the corners of her eyes.

Karkat felt like absolute shit. "Goddammit, Vriska I'm sorry. I just—"

She started laughing. "Oh God, I can't keep up the 'hurt-feelings' shit anymore! That was too good! I did not live until I made someone feel bad about protecting themselves. Karkat, you are such a fucking bleeding heart loser!" She rode away again.

Karkat glowered at the girl while he picked up the aluminum scraps. That stuff was expensive. "The fuck's her problem today," he muttered, scowling as he watched Vriska recede into the distance, and then suddenly disappear with a yelp. Maplehoof began screaming, a sound that was disconcertingly human. "Shit," he muttered, drawing his war-sickle and running after her on foot, completely ignoring his perfectly good riding-beast. It was heavy, but the design lent itself to both one-handed and two-handed fighting.

Karkat reached the place where she had disappeared and saw a gaping hole in the sand filled with a pearlescent white substance as thick as pudding. Vriska was stuck in it, trying not to gag. Maplehoof was bellowing, trying unsuccessfully to climb out of the hole, her hard footpads gaining no purchase on the slick white walls of the pit. "What the fuck am I even looking at here?" Karkat muttered. Vriska said nothing.

"Hey, how about the magic rope?" Karkat asked. Vriska said nothing. It occurred to him that the substance might be poisonous. Vriska vomited a grotesque steam of blue stomach acid that settled on the surface of the goop like oil on water, and then screamed. She produced the rope and hurled it at Karkat. It wrapped itself around his arms and he was forced to drag her out bodily like a burden-beast.

As soon as she was on dry land, she yanked the rope so hard it knocked Karkat over and then rushed into the sea to wash the substance off. "Bring me some new clothes and a brush!" she shouted, sounding panicked. "I'm never wearing these again!" She threw the rope back at him and it coiled at his feet like a loyal pet. "Hurry or I'm going to just cut my hair off! Nobody wants that!"

Karkat giggled slightly at the idea of a bald Vriska, and pulled Maplehoof out of the pit. No sooner had he gotten her out than she ran off screaming into the desert, biting through her harnesses and leaving her saddlebags on the sand. He almost ran after her but, "leave her and throw me the brush!" shouted Vriska, now a ways away from shore, up to her neck in water. Karkat noted with a blush that her clothes had washed up on shore. She caught the brush easily and Karkat turned his back.

He decided to get her a change of clothes and prepared to rummage through her bags, but saw that they were almost coated in the stuff. How was he supposed to get it out, if it was in fact poisonous? Then he realized with a start that he was already coated in it. The magic rope had left streaks of white all along his chest and midsection, and Maplehoof had splashed both his legs to the knee when she emerged. What was Vriska's problem then, he thought as he opened the bags. Luckily, they were water-proofed drawstring bags and nothing had gotten inside. He laid out a comfortable looking yellow outfit with wide trousers and an orange cowl. And she'd been complaining about the lack of a hat all this time!

Vriska took about an hour. In that time, Karkat found his own grey riding-beast, looked for Maplehoof (and failed to find her), noticed it was getting late, and began to set up camp somewhere above the tidal line. Vriska finally came up, looking angry and shaken. "It was dead Karkat," she spat, "but it didn't die immediately! It took years to die and it melted itself down to its constituent parts and the others heard it and they cried and cried but they couldn't help it because they were all just babies—"

"Vriska calm down," he said, "you're scaring me. What are you talking about?"

Vriska growled and pushed him to the ground, then pointed over to the beach. "That thing was an egg Karkat! An angel egg!"

Karkat raised himself up to a sitting position, anger bubbling. "Angels lay eggs? What the fuck are you babbling about?"

Vriska continued talking, more muttering to herself than answering Karkat's questions. She was pacing back and forth, looking around in random directions, and scratching her face, keeping her extremities close. With her hair a wet mess and her skin beginning to dry out, leaving a salty residue, she looked like a madwoman. "All that stuff all over me, I could see. Angels aren't matter they're something else, mind spirit whatever the fuck who cares, it got on me and I saw everything it saw and they see fucking everything, it's like being a god with the mind of a child and it died anyway what the fuuuuuuuuck—"

Karkat made the mistake of interrupting her. Jumping to his feet, he snapped in a deliberate and authoritative tone, "Vriska I got that stuff all over me too and I didn't see anything."

Vriska clutched at her hair so hard her knuckles turned white and howled in frustration. "Well you aren't even a real troll Vantas so who cares—"

Karkat punched her in the face. She was sturdier than he realized and only barely staggered from the blow. Vriska spat out a glob of cobalt blood and glared at him with bloodshot eyes as a vein in her temple suddenly bulged and throbbed. "Go the fuck away Karkat." He mounted his riding-beast and galloped away.

It took her a moment to realize what she'd done. "Shit," she said, running after him. "Come back!" But he was too far away to hear her, and she was so unaccustomed to touching Karkat's mind that she was unable to contact him from a distance. He would keep going for as long as it took to wear off. Would he come back then? "Who cares," she said out loud to herself. "He hit me. So what if I was acting like a crazy person? And mean to him all day. All month really. And I'm always taunting him about his blood color."

Vriska bit down on her tongue to stop its traitorous babbling, but her mind continued churning out traitorous thoughts like an unlicensed Beforan printing press. She'd said he wasn't a real troll. Why the fuck would she even say that? Black was the hardest and most dangerous quadrant because it was so easy to tip over into platonic hate, and a troll's platonic hate could be fatal. And now Karkat had left her alone in the desert with nothing but some saddle-bags she couldn't touch without going insane and a near infinite amount of water that she couldn't drink, next to the rotting corpse of a minor deity. "Knights are supposed to be gentlemen," she sniffed. But what she thought was "you're going to die, and it's all your own fault."

She crept into the tent and let the sound of the ocean lull her to sleep. Vriska dreamed of dead angels screaming in pain. Angels have no mouths, so they screamed in silence.


The mind-thing had finally worn off, but Vriska had made it very clear that his company was no longer wanted. It was so easy to slip up and you should never take a kismesis for granted, Karkat thought. Knights are supposed to be gentlemen, dammit. Karkat could feel the disapproving glares of everyone who had ever had a modicum of respect for him. John was probably going to flip the fuck out if he found out and smash Karkat's head like an overripe melon, as he deserved. How dense did he have to be to not see that Vriska was in fucking distress? How many times had he seen shit like this on the job? Not people who'd been psychically molested by angel corpses of course, but still, he should have been able to tell trauma from standard bitchiness and backed the fuck off, acknowledged that people could say things they don't mean under circumstances.

She…hadn't meant it right?

She was always mocking him about his blood color.

These were the multifarious self-pitying thoughts Karkat thought all night, resting against the flank of his riding-beast. It didn't have a name. He'd just never gotten around to it. The custom was to join two nouns, like Maplehoof or his old mount Iceheart, the fickle bitch that had thrown Vriska into a tree and was never seen again. "Fuckslayer," he muttered at the creature.

Karkat did not sleep. He had immense willpower and could go for days without. The only reason he didn't keep traveling through the night is because trolls and –beasts did have to sleep. It was kind of annoying. Now they'd reached the coast, it was only a few days to the City of Wrath, but it had taken a month to get this far. How long would it take to search a city? One full of—what, angel eggs? They called it their spawning ground. The idea was not comforting. He'd never be able to get back to Jade.

Fuck, did he even deserve Jade? He was a terrible woman-punching piece of shit. He shouldn't force his presence on polite company. No, he couldn't go to her now. But what else was there to do but trudge on? Maybe he could give the treasure to Vriska if she allowed him near her again. Bluh.

A few hours later, the sun rose, and Karkat nudged Fuckslayer awake. He saw a stony crag off in the distance, at least another day's ride away. He checked the map; Vriska had made him an exact copy because he'd kept bitching about it. Yes, that was the hill next to the City. It was much closer to the Prospit side of the desert than the Derse one, not the exact middle, but the notes Vriska had scrawled on the back of the thing indicated that it was the only such formation on the Bright Coast, and that the mapmaker's coordinates placed it at one-third the distance between the two cities. He mounted Fuckslayer and rode off.

A few hours later, Karkat was getting slightly sunburnt from lack of a hat. This irritated him. Trolls had apparently been nocturnal once and many of them suffered sun-damage, but it usually manifested itself as dryness and disorientation. Humans burned. "Fuck you, Vriska," he muttered, then tried to take his mind off things. He could just barely make out shapes in the distance, white against the blueness of the crag. It was too low on the hill for it to be snow, so it must be the city.

As time went on, he could make out distinct shapes and impressions. Tall gothic towers, flying buttresses, pointed arches, gargoyles and monsters and meaningless spikes and knobs. It reminded him of Prospit, but it seemed to him a poor imitation.

There was a legend. When humanity first emerged, they felt envious of the beauty of the twin cities, which had yet to open and would not do so for another 1500 years. They built their own cities in the style of Prospit and Derse, huge and grand, from shining white stone all along the coast, and it became a mighty kingdom. For all of ten years, until the coming of the angels. A punishment for their hubris, so the trolls say. The only thing left of that kingdom was the one city, where the angels now spent their formative years and no sentient being dared to tread.

The humans of course, blamed the trolls, but most ancient trollish sites feature the prefix 'Lo' whereas the only name for the city is in Modern Trollish, so who—

Karkat was so caught up in speculation that he didn't notice the freshly spawned angel sunning itself on a rock, awaiting its first molt. It had a hideous white body shaped vaguely like a very slim human, but its waist narrowed into a long, wormy tail. It had arms surprisingly, but they were misshapen and stretched out with two awful, long fingers covered in fine little scales. Karkat surmised that these would grow into feathers soon. The whole thing was covered some sort of pearlescent goop, much thinner than the stuff Vriska had fallen into though. Its face had no features. No ears, no mouth, no nose or eyes, barely a chin. It looked more like an egg than a head. And yet, it turned to him sharply and began to scream. Fuckslayer grew scared and bucked Karkat onto the sand and bolted.

The sound was all in Karkat's head, and it sounded like murder and pain and nails on a chalk-board. But it wasn't actually all that bad. They said an angel's voice could drive men insane or outright kill them. Karkat stood up, dusted himself off, and drew his war-sickle. "You think you're tough shit, huh?" It started flopping backwards, like a fish. The scream became one of alarm. It was calling for help. Karkat struck its head off, and got a faceful of pearly blood for his trouble. The body deflated and began to melt. Fuckslayer came back, curious. "It's because I'm just such a fucking badass, -beast," Karkat explained as he patted Fuckslayer's snout, feeling just a bit proud of his mutant blood for the second time in his life.

And then two more angels dove in out of the sun and attacked him, screeching obscenities in Old High Trollish directly into Karkat's brain while firing off bursts of blue-fringed white light. Their attacks warped the sand in front of Karkat into glass, but seemed to radiate cold instead of heat. Karkat mounted up Fuckslayer and galloped away, the newly-spooked riding-beast more than eager to comply. Angels however, are very fast. One of them dove in low, and he could feel its presence, like an electric charge making his hair stand up. Thinking quickly, he unclasped his cape and the creature's wings tangled in it. It fell to the sand and began to flail around.

He saw the other just above him, flying between Karkat and the sun, which only made it seem brighter, preparing to fire another beam from its chest. Its shrieking seemed more curious than angry though, probably wondering why Karkat wasn't a gibbering wreck by now. Karkat smirked. "I bet you nook-sniffing bird-shit blooded fuckers have never had to work for your food a day in your lives, eh?" He stood up on the saddle, feeling suddenly reckless, and hurled his sickle over-handed, landing a direct hit in the creature's face. Gobbets of luminescent gore and white blood rained down as the beam sputtered and puffed away in bright smoke, and Karkat waited for the thing to come crashing down.

It didn't. It kept on flying. More erratically than before sure, but the bastard was still airborne. Its mental shouts were much more erratic as well, as if damaging the angel's head had at least hurt its mind somehow. What had Vriska said? They were made of pure thought or spirit or whatever. Did that mean that they were basically giant brains? Maybe destroying the head was the equivalent of stubbing a toe for these things, since any other part of the body could perform the same function. Would he have to destroy them utterly in order to kill them? And there was a whole city of the bastards. Suddenly, Karkat's mutation didn't seem like leveling the playing field so much as equipping the rabbit with a knife against the dogs.

A wave of psychic anger surged up from behind, hitting Karkat's brain like a sledge-hammer. He turned, and saw the second angel loping along the ground, using its wings like huge feet as it hopped and slithered across the sand; the bend in its wings seemed to conceal three sharp little fingers. It was covered in shreds of red cloth burning with cold blue fire. Damn, Karkat had liked that cape.

The flying angel recovered its bearings and fired off another blast, and Karkat pulled Fuckslayer over to the right, into the path of the other angel. Its tail arced over its head like a scorpion's and loosed a salvo of cold white light. It scorched off the end of Karkat's right horn and he screamed. The stupid-looking things were packed full of nerve-endings and helped trolls keep balance; he barely held onto the saddle with one hand and foot as he choked back scarlet tears.

Dizzily, as if drunk, he reached for the saddlebags and pulled out his only other weapon. It was a small pistol that they'd only used for hunting. Wanting to throw up, Karkat wound the stupid thing, holding onto Fuckslayer only with his knees. The task was made nearly impossible as Fuckslayer was basically running wherever he wanted. However, he was a well trained riding-beast, and zigged and zagged to dodge the angelic fires, running uphill to elude the grounded monster, but all the movement was murder on the injured Karkat. When he finally managed it, he turned and shot unceremoniously, muttering "fuck your couch," too tired to think of a better line. By some miracle, the angel was much closer than it had been, and the bullet smashed its way directly through the wing-joint and into its side, maiming the creature, now hemorrhaging out pearly fluid. It wasn't dead, but it damn well couldn't move anymore. Karkat smirked—

And the ground under his -beast exploded as the flying angel got off a similarly lucky shot. Head ringing even worse now, he struggled to his feet as Fuckslayer jumped up and abandoned him. "Well I didn't like you anyway!" shouted Karkat with a rude gesture. The flying angel landed nearby. Karkat ran back towards the sea, tripping over nothing on the second step and rolling down hill. The angel loped after him, taking potshots with its tail. One of them scored his arm and a second later Karkat hit the water, face-up.

The angel pounced onto him, the sickle still planted firmly up to the hilt in its face after all this time, and Karkat stuck his legs into the air, kicking the creature over him (it hardly weighed anything at all) into the ocean. The tail, blazing with light, just barely missed Karkat's eye. It gave one final shriek as it hit the water, thrashed violently, and stopped.

Karkat lay there for about fifteen minutes until he regained some semblance of balance, then went to check on the angel. It was floating, gently rocked by the current, looking a like a fallen bird and just as dead. There were scorch marks all around the sickle. He had no idea what had happened. He pulled the weapon out of its face, which did not bleed, having been cauterized by…whatever had happened. The words on the blade, 'happiness must be earned', were now highlighted in pearlescent white. He couldn't scratch it off. Fuckslayer came back. "Some help you were!" Karkat snapped, as he leaned against the animal, leading it back towards the other angel. If it was still alive it was probably screaming for help like the baby earlier, and he had no desire to fight any more of them.

He found it a few yards from where it had been crippled, easily tracking the shiny white blood trail. It gave a cursory struggle upon seeing Karkat, knowing what would come. Its thoughts were tired and frightened. Karkat finally thought of a line. "I guess even angels fear the reaper, huh fuckstick?" he said, and brought the sickle down in a vicious arc.


Vriska woke up and noticed Karkat had yet to come back. She also noticed her lips were incredibly dry and that her skin hurt where the salt had rubbed against her in her sleep. She went outside the tent and saw that she had overslept. Her saddlebags were where she'd left them, and the corpse-goop had dried and turned the color of old milk. A swarm of crabs was picking at it. She grabbed a stick and poked them off, and the stuff came off in big powdery flakes. She then opened the bags with the stick and pulled out a canteen, drinking deeply, then ate some dry biscuit. Then she caught a handful of the crabs and ate them too.

Karkat still didn't come back. "Fine!" Vriska snapped. "I'll just go after him and drag him back here by his ear!" She had no intention of actually dragging him back, of course, because it would be nonsensical and completely delete all of their progress, but it felt good to vocalize. She packed up everything she could reasonably carry, made an obscene gesture in the direction of the angel egg, drew her knife, and set off after the –beast tracks. Obviously she had little experience with tracking, but following such a heavy animal through sand seemed easy enough. What's more, Vriska's vision was beyond perfect; she wore glasses to fool people into thinking otherwise. They didn't even have lenses. It was a credit to Karkat's mount that he'd been able to get out of her line of sight so quickly.

Regardless, even if she hadn't known to go east, she could see the City of Wrath long before the point Karkat did, only one hour after setting out. More importantly, she found Maplehoof rolling in the waves. The animal nickered in recognition and came to Vriska when she whistled as if nothing had happened. "Don't act like this fixes anything you fucking traitor," Vriska warned, as she patted the thing. She took a gentle tone so as not to startle her away again though. Of course, riding-beasts were supposedly much smarter than horses, so she probably knew anyway, and had the decency to look ashamed.

Having assumed that she would never see Maplehoof again, Vriska had left her saddle and harness behind, bringing only the saddlebags. She folded up a blanket on the animal's back and secured herself to her with the magic rope, which seemed to have variable length in addition to its other abilities. She clicked her tongue, and Maplehoof was off like a shot.

Near sundown, she came across a puddle of molten white goop. She stared at awhile, puzzled, and then moved on. A while later she found the corpse of an angel floating in the surf with a sizable hole in its head. "At least he can take care of himself," she muttered, mildly impressed. The tracks here seemed freshest, but rather than continuing east, they went uphill. Vriska followed.

She passed another angel corpse that had been thoroughly butchered. "Okay, when the fuck did Karkat become such a badass?" She whispered this, fearing that he might be nearby. Something was starting to bother her about the angels though. These angels were big, but would fit fairly comfortably, if a bit tightly, inside the egg she had fallen in yesterday. The damn things were actually bigger than Maplehoof at the shoulder, but still smaller than the egg had been. Which meant they couldn't possibly have laid it. How big did the bastards get? Did they grow in stages like trolls? Were these things basically just wigglers that had yet to metamorphose into proper angels? She crested a sand dune and saw Karkat, huddled against his riding-beast with a glazed look in his eye.

He saw her, and they held each other's gaze for a moment. "Fuck," he said, and elbowed his riding-beast, prompting it to stand. He tried to climb onto its back but just fell flat on his ass instead. Vriska jumped off Maplehoof and ran up to him. "What's wrong? Drunk? I knew it, you were so lonely without me that you drowned your sorrows in medical whiskey. It's a good thing I went looking for you."

At the same time Karkat was saying, "I'm sorry I hit you please don't kill me," with such slurring slowness that for a moment Vriska thought he really was drunk, until he saw the horrid state of his right horn. It was blackened for half its length, the once rounded tip now sheared to a ragged break with a huge split down most of its length that was weeping a sickly pinkish puss.

Vriska growled. "Don't you know how to treat your own wounds?! You're such an ignorant dumbass, I swear, you need me around or you'd…get your horn half burnt off!" She rummaged around in her bags until she found a flask of whiskey. They had brought it for the express purpose of cleaning wounds. She made a point of not mentioning that she'd been carrying all the medical supplies.

Vriska forced a wooden spoon into Karkat's mouth and washed his horn, doing her best to hold him down, until she decided to just give him a mild dose of mind-control when his flailing became too much. Almost half of the burnt area came off with the alcohol; the rest appeared to be just singed. There was still the matter of the crack. She couldn't do anything about that, so she just bound it tightly and hoped it would heal. Plenty of trolls broke their horns; even Vriska had a few cracks here and there; having such a magnificent pair while living on the streets was not conducive to proper horn-care, but she'd never seen anything quite like this. She couldn't let Karkat know of course. "You're going to feel like you've got a toothache in your brain and an ear-infection, but you'll be fine once it closes up," she said with an air of authority.

Karkat spat out the spoon. "That hurt like getting fisted in the brain by a trumpet-beast! You have no bedside manner! Your hands are cold, and I think you damn near broke the thing in half—" He reached up and touched it. "You DID! You broke my horn in half!" He sighed exasperatedly. "And I deserve that and worse. I'm sorry."

Vriska slapped him affectionately. It still left a mark however. "See Karkat, I hit you all the time. Who cares? Besides, I'm not some fragile human girl. I'd probably be able to kill you if I had to."

The look in her eye made him see she meant it. "Okay, threats, cool," he said, nodding.

Vriska slapped her forehead. "Dammiiiiiiiit I'm picking up your habits!" She inhaled sharply. This was getting uncomfortably close to a feelings jam. "Look, it was just an accident."

"You accidentally told me to go away with your brain with such force that I made Fuckslayer gallop for three hours straight," Karkat deadpanned. "I think you might be the one hitting the whiskey."

She slapped him again. Her hand lingered a little bit. 'It's just instinct Karkat. I know that I'm a total badass who's good at everything, but I've lived a hard fucking life since you ran away to join the army, okay? I was barely aware that I was doing it because it's just second nature now. If someone seems hostile and I've got a full stomach I send them packing, no questions asked, even if it's a kismesis." The entire time, she declined to look at him, and instead made a study of the angel blood staining his leg. It seemed to be glowing in the lengthening dark.

Karkat sighed. "Let's just start fresh tomorrow, alright?" Vriska nodded and leaned against the riding-beast.

After a moment she said, "Fuckslayer? Really?"

"Don't judge me, it's fucking badass—"

"Riiiiiiiight?!" she responded excitedly. They chatted into the night.


Author's note: I understand that some people seem to think that troll horns are their…erogenous zones. What is wrong with you people? I just can't accept that because it would mean poor Equius broke half his…no, just no. All the same it will make some bits of this chapter awkward for some. And of course, the damn horns have to do something, biologically speaking, so I made them be for balance and sensory input, like cat whiskers. And Vriska having a magnificent pair was a dirty pun, I'm sorry. And Fuckslayer is an allusion to 30 Hs, the strangest Harry Potter fanfic yet written.