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Once, you may have remembered a time before you were dead. You may have worn obnoxious lime green all over, stained with the blood of a few sacrificial woolbeasts to start failed revolutions, a few fools who thought they could kill you, and your own. You could not die. Until… sometime, maybe now. It is hard to say.
Now, as then, you may have observed a group of low blooded trolls peacefully assemble, minding their own business, trading, selling, buying, talking, laughing. Until perhaps you may have shot a bolt of arcane majyyks at a cobalt blood. The blue blood may have died horribly as everyone may have gasped and watched. The other blue blood may have yelled accusingly at a gold blood in the group and the gold blood may have then pointed accusingly at a lime blood, whose face may have turned to a light ash, perhaps foreseeing what her fate would be. She may have pleaded no again and again before all the other trolls descended upon her in hemophobic rage. After which, the angry mob may have slaughtered every lime blood within an especially large radius. When they all dispersed, a few hours to nights later, you may have bathed yourself in the hideous green blood to restain your working clothes to their vomit inducing color, instead of looking like a subjuggulator’s magnum opus. You then warped to another place in time. You don’t remember when. You felt nothing. You feel nothing. You are nothing. A feeling of void returns to you. You remember you are dead. You fly, you leave. Somewhere, a bubble pops.
Again, you may have awoken, this time a young troll six sweeps old. The walls and floor may have been green, they may have loomed large, they may have made you feel claustrophobic and small. The shadow of an inescapable host may have towered over you, a circle atop a rectangle with a shadow of a broom in hand. Heart stricken with fear, you may have wondered whether to turn around or continue to stare at the wall and shadow. You may have swiftly took out the pins in your bun and pivoted. Your majyyks may have cracked and snapped in the still air as you may have scowled and jabbed them in his general direction. But your host did not do nothing, you believe, as he does now. You may have the feeling this is not how it went. And, indeed, the caster of the shadow, whom you may have believed to be a little walking puppet in green suspenders, may have transformed to a tall troll with far more hair than you have ever dreamt possible. His eyes may remind you of blank moons, beaming empty at you, or perhaps no one. He smiles with no teeth. You do not like him. Before he does anything, you fly away, either to the past or future, or neither at all.
Then, you may have seen someone else’s waking memories. She may look almost like you, the one perhaps dreaming the memory. She may have looked exactly like you: the curve and angle of her horns, the thickness and wave of her hair, the fangs in her mouth, the dimples in her cheeks, and the sign on her chest. Now, or then, she may have looked angry or perturbed, ready to use her psychics. You can feel their soft pulsing.
You may have heard her say “Neither he nor I should have had anything to do with those hateful snobs!” You believe she may be typing on her husktop, which resembles an alien species you believe to have never seen before. She may have continued: “It was all a mistake!” She may have paused for either emphasis or her own clarity of thought. “No offense.”
You may have heard yourself say: ”That’s OK. I’m a little too teal for their tastes.” The words may have spilled out of your mouth without you meaning to. In front of you, you may have found a husktop far more normal than the other girl’s, magenta with a green insignia, connected to the wall, on top of a standard gray desk.
The other girl may have begun again. “I don’t see why they’d lift a finger to help him. They hate us both so much.” She may have slouched farther down, her black shirt catching on her chair. “I’m so mad!” Then she may have stood a little straighter, may have cocked her head a little. “This isn’t how it went at all.”
The world around you may have dissolved a little, the wall dividing you may have disappeared, and the girl who wore black and your sign may have changed into a red outfit with a hood, a symbol you have never seen before, and large red wings. You may have seen another trolls with wings once. You don’t remember the name.
“Hi!” the winged troll may have said. “I’m Aradia! Who are you-“ She may have looked at you and realized something. “Wow! You look just like me! Do you think we’re related?”
You may have given her a blank stare before flying away towards the edge of the memory. She may have followed you, flying too, yelling, “Please, wait don’t go! I want to talk with you! About… anything!” You felt a pang of guilt, of regret, but ignored her anyway, and left the memory. You did not wish to be conscious of your purgatorial state, so much like the life you led: reliving the past and knowing the the cold truth of the future. You popped the memory. You felt nothing again.
Some other time, you may have found yourself talking to another troll. She may have been your blood color, that is to say, completely worthless, or more worthless than trolls are in general (Were in general?). You may have talked with her about the possibility of you not killing her. Not culling her, you may have told her, because that would imply killing for the betterment of troll society, which you may have believed you were most definitely not doing. She may have said to you: “Oh yes, what I always dreamed of! But before that, would you touch my breasts?” You are fairly certain this is not how it went and you were in a memory. The memory may have faded the troll you are talking to into someone you don’t remember.
She may have been you. She is you, from horn to toe. The other doppelganger you may have seen was only an imperfect imposter. The troll that stands before you now looks as you may have been once, but her clothes in rust and burgundy instead of lime. Needles stick out of her bun, like yours. She may have pulled out a rolled up cigarette and may have lit it with one of the needles in her hair. Puffing, she may have looked at you, smirked, and asked something in a language you might have once known. You may have stood there for a few moments before you realized you were probably eons old and had memories to escape from, like perhaps this one. She may have bid you adieu with a one fingered salute on one hand and a two fingered one just under her mouth that was perhaps making a licking motion. You did not care and continued to not care as you left.
Later, probably, you may have been subject to another’s memory again. The troll who was not you but in your kind of clothes may have knelt over you, fists raised. As the memory went on, it was probable that she was angry, with how she kept saying strange foreign words like they were perhaps expletives. It was also probable because she was currently punching you in the face repeatedly.
You have felt old for a long time. You were old. You have felt exasperated with people’s shit for a long time. You were too old for this sort of shit anymore. On the next punch, you caught not-you’s fist in midair. Not-you may have come to the realization that this was not how her memory happened in reality. Instantly, the area around you may have changed from tyrian bloodstained to rust bloodstained. She stayed on top of you however, perhaps until you pushed her off.
Another troll may have caught your eye, sitting on top of a large shard of quartz. “Oh hello, you two!” It may have been other not-you, the one who looked less like you than not-you alpha, and wore strange clothes and had wings. “I’m so glad we could finally meet up! I found out that we’re all Megidos, and I thought, why not all meet up and discuss our past histories? It could be a lot of fun! So I engineered our bubbles to meet up. It may have taken a lot of time- I don’t know, time doesn’t really exist in the Farthest Ring- but I did it. After all, I am made of time!” She may have winked at you while laughing at her own joke. “Unfortunately, I haven’t found the Beforan version of me yet, so I we’ll have to make do with just ourselves. But don’t worry! I brought party favors, like a piñata, ceremonial head cones, and lots of orange creamsicles!” She may have proudly displayed the hats in one hand and the paper-mache beast in the other. You did not know where she was keeping the orange creamsicles.
After putting them both down, she may have clapped her hands together. “Well, I’ll go first!” You may have sat down, and glanced over at the other troll. She may have looked bored but slightly bemused. The winged troll may have said, “My name is Aradia Megido and I lived on Alternia. When I was there, I liked archeology, FLARPing, and talking to my friends. But I also had enemies too and after I was compelled by the voices in my head to send the dead spirits that my enemy killed after her, she mind controlled my then boyfriend to eat mind honey and kill me with a super psychic blast. So then I died and became a spirit. As a spirit, I listened to the voices even more, to the point where I had no free will of my own. I made my ex-boyfriend code sGrub, so everyone could enter the medium without telling him that the game was going to kill everything he loved dear, including the troll race. But that was way out of my control because of stable time loop shenanigans!
"While in the medium, I prototyped myself to my frogsprite, then put my sprite self inside a robot of me built by a blue blooded snob, whom I had a flipping red-black relationship with because I had uncontrollable rages caused by the voices in my head that compelled me to destroy EVERYTHING! Including the girl who killed me. She later died and became God Tier because of it, but that’s neither here nor there. I kept dying a lot in the Medium because of how much I had to go back in time to prevent things from happening, or cause to happen. When we finally fought the Black King, there were hundreds of doomed timeline me’s helping out in the final battle. After we defeated him though, a demon by the name of Jack Noir came in and destroyed all the me’s except one, which escaped with the other trolls. There I waited, spending all my time on the internet and observing our new universe, wishing to destroy things. Then Jack destroyed Prospit and Derse, killing my dreamself on my quest cocoon, whereupon my robot body exploded, my soul and dreamself became one, and I ascended to the God Tier as Maid of Time. I then froze Jack Noir and went through him to the Green Sun! I waited there for the surviving trolls to arrive on the meteor, after which I stayed in the Furthest Ring, acting as a host to all arriving dead souls. And here I am now! Any questions?”
Your mouth gaped and you glanced again towards the other troll. She may have begun slow clapping. Whether it was sincere or not, you could not tell. After thinking over Aradia’s story, you wondered if you maybe had something to do with the voices. You couldn’t remember.
“Ah, yes, thank you!” Aradia may have smiled. “Why don’t you tell us about yourself, Damara?”
Damara propped herself up on her elbows and may have begun speaking in her tongue again. She may have said that she lived on a planet named Beforus, which existed as alternate universe of Alternia, the original in fact. She may have been friends with a young foreign boy who liked the same entertainment as her and then decided to follow him into a crazy game called sGrub. Inside the medium however, she may have discovered the boy was in love with another boy behind her back and she was very sad. Then, she may have been taunted by a Tyrian blood, the only one of her age, that she was weak, pathetic, useless. Before the incident, she may have been extremely shy and quiet. But the incident made her snap. She may have no longer cared about any of her friends, least of all her princess bully. She may have killed her with a psychic blast through the chest then punched the body, laughing all the way until the princess’ only friend pulled her off and flew her to safety, and eventually revived her through helping the princess become God Tier. Not that it mattered. For the next two sweeps they were in the game, Damara may have used everything in her arsenal as the Witch of Time to hinder and halt any process in the game from being made. Only when they asked her to perform The Scratch did she help them with anything. She may have laughed all the while, as her needles scratched the music boxes to begin the universe anew. But before she disappeared, the princess blew them all up and here she was now. At least, that is what you believe you roughly translated, exempting all the sexual gestures and comments interspersed between. Damara grinned wickedly, while she may have said that she now awaited the Lord to destroy all of existence and remove her from her miserable purgatory of an existence.
Aradia may have nodded serenely at this brazen display of universe destroying loyalty. You may have wanted to clock Damara in the face but you just didn’t care about much of anything anymore. Then Aradia and Damara may have both looked to you.
You may have told them how you had been under the care of an excellent yet horrendous host instead of a lusus. You may have told them how you helped end Alternia through your time warping abilities. You may have told them about your employer and how the terms of your death called for a succession. You may have told them about the Empress who inherited your curse. You may have even told them your true name. Or you may have told them how you don’t remember much and only remember hating your life. You don’t really care to remember what you said.
Either way, they smiled at your story. Aradia may have remembered she forgot to give everyone their hat and doled them out accordingly. They were all rust colored with lighter red polka dots and little fuzzy balls on top. You all gamely strapped them on, even though you all looked stupid. Aradia may have set up the piñata while Damara may have tried to put a blindfold on you. You may have let her. Afterwards, someone may have handed you a club and told you to swing for the piñata, that you managed to get in one hit. You may have heard the sound of slush hitting the ground, lifted the blindfold to find little white packs lying on the ground, leaking orange. You may have discovered where the creamsicles were. You may have looked over at Aradia who may have shrugged sheepishly in response. Later, after being roped into dancing, karaoke, and truth-or-dare, you may have said you needed to go. Aradia may have smiled graciously and said she needed to meet other souls too and it was so nice meeting both of you and spending time (something all of you knew a lot about) together and Damara may have puffed another ring of smoke off her cigarette while smirking at you and wishing you something along the lines of hoping you would “get laid” many times in the next century. You believe she wished you well too.
You may have waved at them before the memory popped and came away at the seams. You thought to yourself, that maybe you felt something closer to happiness than you had in the waking world.
Then, you embraced the curtain of void yet again.