Work Text:
To the uninitiated and ignorant, it may seem that the Church of Mirth runs on clowning and miracles, narrowly skating from disaster to disaster but that would be only a shallow view of the institution as a whole. There is actually a lot of paperwork that goes towards making it run. A lot of paperwork.
Pressing your fingers into your temples, elbows propped on the wood of your desk, you wonder how most of it winds up on your administrativeplane. At least it certainly feels that way to you right now, you're always willing to put your strength foally into the traces and pull the load that's been given to you - but - surely this is just a little. Excessive.
You have the most tense and tender pan-ache. It's stuck right between your eyes, behind the bridge of your nose and you wish - you wish deerly that you had something to distract you. Something that would mean you didn't need to attend to these piles of paperwork. So much administrative nonsense...execution orders and writs, subpoenas and legal nonsense, page after page of Imperial edicts. All with the most terrible fish puns. You don't class your hoofbeast puns in the same class, of horse. Hoofbeasts are beautiful noble creatures, overflowing with purity of spirit - the ocean is just wet and full of terrible, dangerous things.
Terrible things like your Empress (may Her name be blessed).
You're bound to more landward-bound considerations at the marement, no matter the oceanic origin of some of your looming stack of paperwork. For once, it's less pressing than other issues that have landed on your nutritional plateau. There's something to be said for squashing an attempt at some sort of rebellious movement from the gutterbloods, mm hmm mm, all hail the Empire, but Flicka preserve you and grace your mane with ribbons but it does mean a lot of paperwork. Executions need to be scheduled, lowblooded scum sent hither and yon to places where their public demise will be a cause for local hilarity (and a certain sort of lesson, to those that need it), and before they die - they must be kept and fed and watered, which is a different course of logistics altogether. Gosh forfend that a single one should die before they meet their duly appointed, legal ending.
This is a society, there are a few rules that all should do their best to follow. The possibility that perhoofs there might be another way for things to work rises in your mind for a moment before you blink it away without another moment's notice. Nonsense. Just nonsense. Besides, you have a certain amount of regard for your own health; far too much to consider the idea of being kind to those who justly deserve their lower stations in life.
Your name is Horuss Zahhak, but you haven't been known to trolls by that name in a long time. You are most likely now to be called by your title, Executor Darkleer. The first part is your duty that you are honoured to perform for the Empire, and the second part is...well. Outside of your personal administrativeblock, you are most likely to be seen wearing a set of goggles with darkly smoked lenses. Your own manefacture, of horse. They may seem unassuming but they are really something mare than just what they appear to be. After all, a pair of light-protective ocularwear is one thing, but it's herdly the only thing you need to be able to do. And they correct a very small defect in your vision that you'd really rather not make known widely.
You're unlikely to be culled for it, considering your blood, the skills you've gained through an average length sort of life (so far). But you have also seen trolls culled for less. Best to just not make an issue of it, and turn the goggles into an affectation and minor point of pecheronality rather than something that was hiding a less than usefoal mutation.
You're fine. No one knows. It's not a thing. It doesn't impact on your ability to serve your betters or the Empire at large; you herdly think you need to disclose it.
Picking up one of the supply requisition forms from the top of the stack dispiritedly, you almost launch it into the air as you jolt in your seat from shock as the door to your administrativeblock SLAMS open. Flying wide to the point where it hits the wall behind the arc of its swing, and propelled there by - a truly large, muscular clown arm. Oh no. No, no no no.
Oh, why tonight, of all nights? Didn't he have something to do? He certainly should; this amount of paperwork meant that at least some of it should have ended up on his administrativeplane as well...unless. Unless.
That dirty, painted, cheating wastrel -
"My BEST and MOST MOTHERFUCKING pony-lovin' rrrrryda!" The voice of the Grand Highblood makes just as shocking and loud an entrance as the rest of him, the towering subjugglator bending down to fit his horns through the entryportal as he finangles his way inside your office. Oh, bother. Not now, not this. You flinch slightly at his roar of greeting, not exactly meaning to, but His Mirthfoalness has something of an overwhelming presence. Even now. Even after these many sweeps you’ve spent working in sometimes quite close contact with him. And after everything else he’s done. He’s a threat, and your lurking hindbrain knows it. “BOY, do I have a motherfucking job for you, Executor.”
The fragile piece of paper you hold in your hand crumples in your suddenly clenched fist at his gleefoal tone, and you just know you’ve put your fingers through it. Darn. He always manages to get to you.
Sometimes he doesn’t need to say a gosh fiddlesticking thing at all.
He grins jaggedly at you, tongue almost lolling from the corner of his mouth and you know that he knows what you’re thinking. And that he thinks it’s amusing. He enjoys the fact that you had such high ideals for those higher in blood than you when you joined the Archeradictators and how they didn’t quite survive actually meeting highbloods in reality. You still grimly dedicate yourself to the idea of the hemospectrum hoofever. What else can you do? If people don’t follow the rules, the laws both social and actually written that you all abide by, then there would be only chaos. And while you dislike the ongoing japery and buffoonery that characterizes the Subjugglator corps, you dislike the idea of the kind of social breakdown that would come of not respecting the way things are even mare.
Besides. As much as you are loathe to admit it and would neighver say so out loud, the clowns are actually...ugh...good at doing what the Empress needs them to do. It’s better than working directly for seadwellers, you suppose. You’re never quite at ease with anyone with fins; it’s the fact that you and they both know in the darkness of ancestral hindbrains, exactly how many of your type were drowned to appease the appetites of theirs.
“Respectfully, your mirthfulness -” you start to say and he makes an ugly disparaging noise from the back of his throat. Uncharitably, you think he sounds like he’s swallowed some of that disgusting mane he called hair and is now trying to cough it up. If he licks himself clean, you wouldn’t be surprised. He really is harnesstly, just that disgusting.
“Oh, here we motherfucking go-”
“I think I have quite enough work to do,” you grind on through your clenched teeth, looking back down at your desk. Maybe if you ignore him, he’ll simply give up and go away? Perhoofs find someone else to nag. You can, of horse, only hope. “Thank you, your jocularity, but I believe I will pass on this generous...offer.”
“C’mon, it’s gonna be fun.”
You don’t actually have the chance to object much mare, since he grabs hold of your wrist and is pulling you out of your chair. He really does take the most outrageous liberties with your person. It’s not out of the realm of reason that you could pull back, sit down and take your work back up but you’re intrigued despite yourself. Also you’d probably pull his arm out of socket if you tried to physically object to the way he’s troll-handling you about. It wouldn’t be a very good look for someone of your caste, to bodily disable a subjugglator like that - let alone the Grand Highblood himself.
“I don’t see how - watch out - this is going to be fun,” you grumble as he drags you behind himself like a lusus with an errant wiggler who won’t come to the meditorturer and get their recommended vaccinations and medicine. He barely manages to dodge the two subjugglators who for some mirthful known reason are carefoally carrying a plane of glass down the corridor, your warning coming just in time so he doesn’t walk straight into the middle of the pair. Why do they even have something like that here. You will neighver understand clowns, no maretter how long you live among them. Golly, how nice would it be to be released from this onerous obligation of your current courser of employment. No matter; you know your duty and as primary Executor for the Mirthful Court, it is better that you live where your superiors can make the most of your particular skill set.
One night, perhoofs...you might even get to retire. Or at least consider a change of career. It would be nice to have mare time for your hobbies, the robots and little mechanical marvels you relax with in your hiveblock at night. Simply just to be somewhere away from clowns; what luxury! What rare maneficence to consider!
You are very far away from having those kind of beneficent gods smiling on you, and you know it. If you believed in gods at all. Which you don’t. You suppose that means you’ll just have to deal with what is in front of you, for as long as it is there. And hopefilly, maybe...there will be another sort of life dumped in your manger at a later date.
“Why are we down here?” you demand to know with obvious contempt as the Grand Highblood leads you past the usual blocks and corridors that you habituate, down a long series of stairs to somewhere much...danker. Darker. Bloodier smelling. You can’t help yourself, your nose twitches with disgust at the rank smells that soon rise to greet you as he pulls you in deeper and deeper to what are colloquially known as the suffering courts - the inquistormentor blocks. You come afterwards, once a guilt and a verdict have been established. You don’t need to be here. You’ve never felt a need to even visit before this. There is a process -
“Hush, you big blue motherfucker,” the Grand Highblood says with distraction evident in his tone of voice, but he still doesn’t let go of your wrist. He shows quite an admirable show of STRENGTH, if you must be frank. You sweat uneasily into your jumpsuit and let him drag you deeper. Ugh. There are quite a few lowbloods crammed into the cells here. It’s one thing to see the numbers on administrative cellulose planes, it’s another to confront the nasally challenging reality of what it means to have this many trolls crammed into this kind of space.
“Highblood-”
“I said motherfucking hush, so fucking shut it,” he snarls out, and you obediently button your lip and just try to breathe shallowly. Ugh. This is disgusting. You suppose this area isn’t well visited by the janiterrorist crew; what if they became mistaken for occupants of the cells that are going by on either side of you. Or perhoofs, if a cell occupant was mistaken for one of the cleaning crew. It could happen, you suppose. You know by bitter experience that subjuggulators are not much for carefoal paperwork keeping or even the most desultory amount of administrative practice. Despite your best efforts otherwise.
This isn’t where you’re meant to be.
Silently now and without protest, you follow behind the hulking body of the subjugglator in front of you as you let him continue to drag you along by the grip on your wrist. You think, haphazardly, that this is the longest he’s touched you in one single encounter since you met. Usually it’s more of a, distracted thing. Moment to moment. And not prolonged. It’s so unseemly, and against both of your dignity. You’ll just have to continue to suffer, because it’s not as though the Grand Highblood seems to feel as though he has any dignity worth considering in his night to night life. As you well know.
“Are you going - hhk - to explain yet, what we are doing down here...sir,” you pant through clenched teeth as he seems to be coming to something of a more thoughtful walk, than the headlong rush of before. These cells have their doors further apart, and they are much less crowded. The glowvurms are much further apart as well. You blink, waiting for your ocular-pieces to catch up with the new dimness. You are...quite a few floors underground at this point; some part of you had counted every spiralling staircase so you could figure out roughly just how many tons of earth and stonework are pressing down onto you from overhead. It’s. Not helpfoal, you wish you could ignore that inner counting and minor rising hysteria. You don’t enjoy being this deep. You don’t want to say you’re a creature of wide open spaces like the hoofbeasts you so admire, but it is most ashoedly your preference.
“Here we are,” the Grand Highblood says with satisfaction as you reach a metallic sliding door set incongruously into corridor walls of rough stone, and he pushes his hand flat, palm-first against the silvery grasp-reader to the side of it. Every so often, clowns surprise you with what type of technology they deign to incorporate into their structures. “Let’s talk to this heretic who’s chilling his bitch ass out where a motherfucker can finally keep a sightorb on him, huh.”
It’s a small cell, not large. But by the lock on the door, you assume whoever is in there is important in some way, someone that the Church greatly desires to keep closely locked up and with very few trolls able to access them at all. The prisoner certainly doesn’t look like much, square and dark, his hands fastened in front of him in chains and more chains anchoring his feet to the floor by iron manacles around his ankles. There’s a bench of sorts, and straw. No sopor, you notice, flicking your eyes around - a drain in the corner, a tap that slowly oozed a slow trickle of water over it. Truly, a disgusting cell where you put someone to be forgotten.
Except the Grand Highblood hadn’t forgotten this prisoner.
"This guy going around and stirring shit up, preaching like he got a right to do what the fuck he wants. Let a motherfucker tell ya real fucking quick - he ain't no motherfucking Messiah, he's just a very naughty boy." The Grand Highblood's hands come down hard on the shoulders of the chained troll in front of him, and the short-horned lowblood has the nerve to look pained. You hang in the opening of the doorway, looming uneasily. Unsure of your purpose here, and in this noisome cell with this criminal in particular. That the Highblood has a plan, you don’t doubt. You suppose you just have to wait and find out what it is.
"To be fair, I didn't say I was anything important," the criminal says in a rough and tired voice. "I only offered trolls a different way."
“Motherfucker, you know what you fucking did and don’t offer words of denial now you been caught and sentenced to motherfucking REPENTENCE for your crimes,” the Grand Highblood scolds, his rumbling voice carrying out into the small confines of the cell like he has a whole mirthful chapel to project to. You wince as subtly as you know how to; the prisoner just winces. Then again, you suppose that the foal force of that immense voice had been right next to his auricular clot.
“You know, I thought you’d be a lot quieter than you actually are,” the lowblood has the nerve to say, and you hiss through your teeth in a shocked inhale of reproach. How could he speak to someone so many shades above him like that? You don’t...even quite know what shade that is, the bright red stitched into the leggings that come up to his armpits. You assume he’s a rustblood, or something like that. The Grand Highblood would scarcely dare do this to someone higher than him, and what sort of troll wore a colour so warm and bright as that, without being somewhere in the neighbourhood of it? Absolutely depraved, it’s almost imperial scarlet and who would have less of a right to wear it than a traitor. Disgusting. At your hiss, the lowblood criminal has the nerve to look amused. What gives him the right? He even dares to look you in the eye, before obviously directing his next remark straight at you. “But I’m pretty sure you’re exactly what I expected.”
“You casting eyes over my motherfucking Executioner?” the looming subjugglator says to his prisoner (prey) almost jovially, and you can see his fingers flexing. Obviously working his claws into the flesh of the troll he’s leaning down onto in a most threatening marenner. The criminal barely winces. “Signless mutant fuck as you are, cast your motherfucking gaze on my dealer of death and motherfucking despair, for he’s to be the one to bring your right and proper FUCKING end.”
Oh. You guess his blood really is that colour.
“I always endeavour to serve, my lord,” you say into the silence as the reverberations of the Grand Highblood’s exhortations simmer away into the thick walls of the cell. Goodness. He certainly did feel most strongly about this prisoner in particular, over any other prisoner being held in Mirthful power. You don’t remember him having been this...personally involved before. Everything about this feels very. Personal. You don’t want to be here, lingering and observing whatever the heck this is. It can’t be flirtation. It’s something else. It’s something worse. The grin on his face only seems to stretch wider, almost rivalling the arched shape of his sacred paint. “What would you have me do?”
For now, you decide that ignoring the criminal sitting between you would be the proper course of action, for this increasingly intolerable situation. You’ll keep your attention on the Grand Highblood, your mootual superior. As is proper. That should be enough. You shouldn’t have to pay attention to anything the lowblood says. It just won’t be relevant.
“You’re gonna take some motherfucking measurements of this loud ass motherfucker, and get to making me some real cuffs,” the subjugglator dominating the situation purrs, and the smile on his face is sick and satisfied. The criminal only looks resigned, like he knows what is coming in some way. Somehow. How could he possibly know? Maybe the Grand Highblood has been boasting, before he brought you down here. “I want these motherfuckers to be the shit, understand me, Zahhak? Before you bring him down with one of your fucking arrows, I want to see this motherfucker burn.”
“...I believe I can work with that, Your Jocularity,” you say, pushing your goggles uselessly with the tip of your index finger, as though you needed to push them back into place. It is, of horse, to laugh at the mere idea. Your goggles are steadfastly fixed where you require them to be for exemplary vision. It’s mare of a nervous habit, left over from when you were young and you hadn’t been quite as precise as you needed to be. Goodness, what a long time it has been since then. So much road has passed under your hooves from what suddenly seem like simpler, easier nights. A time before clowns, certainly. “When does this need to be completed by?”
“Tomorrow.”
You start to splutter a little, shocked by his casual tone and the sudden project the immense subjugglator has thrown in your lap with no warning. No fanfare. No appreciation of your work, that’s what it is really. Hoofnestly! As though you have nothing else to do then wait around on his whim! As though you weren’t already having to plough through reams of imperial documents to do with all of this, and half of which you are starting to wonder are really your responsibility at all.
The prisoner laughs, a hoarse little chuckle before he wipes at his eyes. Your shoulders go back, head reared back in unconscious mimicry of an outraged specimen of the hoofbeasts you so admire, and you stare down the length of your nose at him.
“Is this somehow funny to you?” you inquire frostily, and you ignore the Grand Highblood. He finds everything funny, in one way or another. Apparently this is one of the benefits of being beloved of the Mirthful Messiahs. You don’t really agree but then again, you’re herdly a subjugglator. You give udderance to the required amount of doctrine since you’re surrounded by the fine upstanding fellows, but you’re a staunch atheist. In your deepest parts of your pusher.
The Grand Highblood laughs uproariously, cutting off whatever comment the prisoner might see fit to make. You’re still bristling and unsettled, but the subjuggulator that controls the fate of you both seems quite pleased with the amount of pandemonium he’s set off in the cell. Mostly it belongs to you, you’re not sure that this heap of rags has enough energy left to rouse any sort of strong emotion at all.
“I’m sure you’ll motherfucking manage, Darkleer.” He gets up from his stance behind the prisoner, and comes around to where you’re still standing at the entryportal. Struckdumb with encroaching horror of possibly missing deadlines, and not giving your uddermost to the Empire in general. What - how can he ask - A heavy hand comes down hard on your shoulder, and if you were a weaker troll, you would have buckled at the knees and gone to the ground. “Don’t disappoint me, motherfucker.”
And with that, he’s gone. Leaving you with this quaint little problem of just how you’re meant to meet his expectations in less than a full cycle of the timepiece. You...oh fiddlesticks.
“I suppose I might as well get started,” you say with ill grace, not needing to hide your dislike for this entire situation in front of the prisoner. What does it matter? From what the Highblood was saying, he’ll be dead before the next night is out. You don’t usually meet those slated to die; it’s more of a fronds-off situation. You appear, you brandish - you shoot. Finis. You don’t approve of this sudden change, but there’s no point making an issue of it. You’ll do your duty, as you always do.
Closing the door behind you, even though the prisoner seems to be well secured, you step closer to the table and look down at him along the length of your nose. You don’t think he really feels the weight of your disapproval as you’d like him to.
“Did you ever think about not becoming a clown goon?” the prisoner says, obviously trying to get under your skin and you ignore him as you creakily get down to your knees so you can study his wrists. You’ve got an idea, and you think you can manage it in one day. You’re going to be trembling on the verge of exhaustion tomorrow; but that will of horse have no effect on your ability to carry out your duties. Nothing does. “You had the choice at some point, didn’t you?”
You ignore him, and reach for one of his hands. He jerks it out of the way and grins at you, displaying rounded teeth. Even rustbloods have more fang than this. This nuisance.
“Did you?” he repeats, as though you have to answer his question now that he’s holding what you want in a way that’s a little inconveniently out of reach.
“Don’t be insufferable,” you snap and for some reason he looks delighted at your choice of words. Why? You don’t know, and you decide with solid determination not to care. You huff a sigh down the length of your nose, and hold your hand. “Give me your hand before I break your wrist. Your choice, criminal scum.”
“Ah, but the clown lord might be a little displeased if you break me before he gets a chance to,” he goads, and you feel a ripple of distaste run down your backbone as he continues to withhold his hands and wrists by placing them up on his shoulders. Only nominally out of reach for you, but you’re cautious of your strength around those lower in blood than you. Looking him in the eye, you can see the burning crimson of his irises. Such a vile colour. So animal. No wonder he’d tried something so foalish as rebellion; his entire existence was a treachery against the Empire.
“You will cooperate, or we will see if His Mirthfulness is pleased to accept a mutant with a broken wrist,” you say frostily and you can see him gauging just how likely you are to do it. You just stare at him, expressionless. You’re aware of the effect you have on trolls. Eventually, he does bring his hands down in reach of yours and you distastefully direct him to lay his hands flat on the table so you can measure his wrists and the lengths of his forearms.
“Didn’t you mean His Mirthfoalness,” the criminal says, and your hands still for a moment despite your stern admonishment to yourself to not let him see how he’s getting to you. A lucky guess, that’s all. You’re scarcely the only blueblood around with a fondness for hoofbeasts; it’s a stereotype. It’s not as though you’re a wiggler anymare, so even if you still think in puns - you rarely say them these days. Sometimes, you miss that.
“Be quiet and allow me to do my work in peace,” you grunt, because you don’t want to hear another fiddlesticking word that will come from that mouth. Despite how worn he looks, and the distinctly odorous smell of nights on the road and so on that are afflicting your sniffnode, he seems to have plenty of energy enough for making himself into a fly nipping at your tender hindquarters. As though having the Grand Highblood doing so wasn’t quite enough for anyone.
He does quiet down, even though you weren’t expecting him to do so and you get your measurements. A series of carefully timed double-blinks and you take pictures of his wrists and hands, up his forearms. You rub your thumb against the inside of his wrist, not thinking much beyond how much work you have to do before dropping his hand like a hot coal when he chuckles softly.
“Don’t be such a stick in the mud, Executor,” he chides, as though he has the right to do so. You look at him through the smoked lenses of your goggles, and silently loathe him. What about him has driven the Grand Highblood into such a frenzy? Why did trolls listen to him? He didn’t seem like that much, now you were seeing this rebel instigator face to face. It had taken you a long moment, beset with indignation as you had been with the Grand Highblood’s pronouncement. “Why don’t you stay and talk for a while? I don’t think I have a lot of time left for conversations.”
“You do not. I am however, not inclined to be your conversational partner.”
“Oh but we’re having such a great time together. Why not?” he chuckles, and your fingers spasm, clenching tight around his wrist. He hisses softly and you recall yourself, withdrawing your grip and pushing yourself away from the table as you rise to your feet. You’ve completed the work you needed to. No need to linger. “Aren’t you curious at all, Horuss?”
That name strikes you like a lightning bolt, and you stand shocked still for a moment in the doorway. How does - when did he learn that name? You look back at him, and the slight curve of a smile makes something utterly loathsome rise up in your thorax for a moment. You throttle it back with weary ease, too used to the buffoonery of clowns to rise to the bait of a freak and a traitor. A provocateur.
“No. Not at all,” you say solidly, and you leave the noisome little room and its lonely occupant with your measurements and your pictures. That should be the end of this; you stay up late in your workshop to create a set of self-heating manacles. The pain should be quite intense. You think the Grand Highblood will be quite pleased with the outcome you’ve managed to engineer in such a short space of time, no matter how unaesthetically pleasing the heavy, cumbersome manacles are. You even manage to get a few hours worth of sleep, before you’re roused to step onto the execution grounds.
Your bow is heavy across your back with your quiver, weighted down with heavy blue-steel pointed arrows. You’re wearing your best uniform. The sand crunches under foot, and you bow briefly to the palanquin of the Empress, then to the stand where the Grand Highblood is standing. Your gaze roves across your work, looking over the mutant tied to the pole, arms above his head before your attention is directed to the group to the left.
A Jade. A Yellow. An Olive.
You meet the tortured gaze of the oliveblood as she screams for the mutant hanging on his flogging jut and something in you. Something.
Breaks.
Everything goes wrong after that.
You lose everything that ever mattered. You gain nothing of value. Yet. After once meeting her tear-filled eyes, you could never have chosen another path.
Your name is Horuss Zahhak, but you haven't been known to trolls by that name in a long time. You were once called Executor Darkleer, and it was a term that came with respect. Now you’re called the Expatriate. And you are alone.
You are so very, very alone.