Chapter Text
Your name is Karkat Vantas. The Carapacian known as Spades Slick has just shoved an actual throb stalk between your fangs and told you to bend over. Why in the name of the Mother Grub's aching sphincter has your useless bulge choosen this precise moment to poke its nosy tip out of its sheath? Your shameglobes are throbbing up a storm low in your abdomen. Your nook could not be wetter if you'd just shoved a lubrication grub up there.
This makes no sense. You are not interested in him that way. You neither hate nor pity him. How could you? He's more of a role-model to you than anything else. Ruthless. Stabs first and asks questions never. Surly. Never wastes two words where half of one would suffice. His crew runs an extortion racket out of his palatial office that would make your old neighbourhood's Better Lawnrings and Hives organisation look like a ballpit for stupid wrigglers who still poop into their idiot wriggler diapers. BLAH indeed. Point is, he's so far above you that none of your extensive quadrant knowledge has prepared you to make sense of why the fuck your stupid bulge is choosing right now to shit all over what little dignity you've got left.
Which is jack squat already, since you're currently kneeling in the sawdust of one of the many underground Dersite speakeasies that he's got under his "protection" and he's about to administer what you assume will be the spanking of a lifetime. You barely remember the last time Crabdad had to take you over one chela and administer the other to your tender strutflesh as reprimand. Also, whatever infantile blunder earned you that particular spanking couldn't have been anywhere near the orders of magnitude on the Colossal Fuckup Scale as the one you commited tonight. As the troll poet says: And it had all been going so well...
Operation Regisurp was in full swing. You and Slick were operating like a well-oiled machine, infiltrating through the palace's surprisingly clean and spacious sewer system, dodging traps and roaming guard patrols alike. You'd arrived at the designated spot well ahead of time and had some to kill while waiting for the go-ahead from his right-hand Carapace, the Draconian Dignitary. Once Team Distractebellum—composed of said Draconian Dignitary, Vriska, and fucking Tavros of all people—were in place and gave the go-ahead on the radio, you and Slick would trigger the explosion, at a wall selected to give you a straight shot into the Black Queen's quarters. Key point: Once you got the go-ahead. Which you hadn't, yet. You were wound up so tight that one chirp from the approximate location of Slick's item slot made you slap your idiot fronds on the big red button. Long before Team Distractebellum had had time to draw the guard patrols out of earshot.
And now here you are. Minutes later—you have no idea how many—and you're still out of breath from your desperate flight back through the sewers, kneeling in sawdust with your pants around your ankles and your bulge out, dismay fluid stinging the corners of your ganderbulbs. Slick's radio chirps with what would have been the actual signal, if you hadn't fucked everything to the Moons and back. Why couldn't one of the BLAH inspectors have peeked through your windows at the wrong time and gotten you culled for being a mutant sweeps ago.
You hear Slick acknowledge the hail. When DD asks what the fuck went wrong, those shameful, off-spectrum fluid droplets actually start leaking down your blazing cheeks. How could you be so stupid? Worse, Vriska and Tavros are almost certainly in earshot of the radio. There goes all your leader cred. All of it, as the annoying hag would say. Even Tavros will lose all respect for you, and then where will you be? Right at the bottom of the pecking order, where you belong.
And why the fuck is your bulge still out??
Then Slick responds, says there was a problem with the fuse, probably CD fucked up the explosives, why couldn't DD just get HB on it, and all of a sudden you know why. It all falls into place. Stupid Eridan and his stupid book club.
You had forgotten all about it in the excitement of the game. About half a sweep ago, Eridan kept going on about his superior schoolfeeding in another transparent ploy to find out your blood color. You, still wrongly believing yourself not the biggest idiot ever hatched, ignored the perfectly obvious bait like the champion evader you were. Instead, you got to chatting about his assigned reading. Le Mort d'Artrol. You didn't have it on your reading list and had no qualms about saying so, since that alone wouldn't have given Eridan any hint beyond 'teal or lower'. You'd figured out all of your friends' schoolfeeding plans over the sweeps and knew that you were definitely receiving knowledgeblocks for verdant shades and below. Certainly nothing in the lilacs, but you and Terezi got all the same civiceration lessons, as well as troll algebra for the midblood administraterrorists.
The book sounded intriguing, though. Tales from the fabled court of a pre-)(IC empress and her noble vassaulters, hoofbeast-riding warriors who roamed ancient Alternia and did battle with any that dared stand in the way of her glorious conquest, filling holy pails with their loyal slurry wherever they went. Could be gory and smutty—your favorite combo—and you'd just finished the last book in the "His Furious Pitch-Bait" series anyway. So you told Eridan to send you a copy and its accompanying knowledgeblocks and drew up a reading schedule for you both.
Eridan seemed delighted to finally have someone to discuss the book with, so you got started on the blocks ASAP. You didn't want to embarrass yourself at your first discussion meeting by lacking context that he probably got schoolfed from wrigglerhood. They taught you how Le Mort d'Artrol was an attempt by Sir Troll Thomas Malory at compiling the many different legends about this empress, hatched Artrol Pendryg. She likely was the first to elevate trollkind from a disparate rabble of queendoms to a planet-wide empire under a single empress. Even the word 'empress' turned out to derive from her title, The Revered Commander. Imperatrix Augusta.
All this was fascinating, but what really got you hooked came much later, in the chapter titled "HOW QUEEN ARTROL BEING SHIPPED UNDER THE SEA AND LYING IN HER CABIN HAD A MARVELLOUS DREAM, AND THE EXPOSITION THEREOF."
“And therewith the queen awoke anon, and was sore abashed of this dream, and had her Schellen sent anon for a wise philosopher, commanding to tell her the signification of her dream."
You had to look up what 'Schellen' means. You found nothing on grubpedia, so you used Eridan's schoolfeed login and found a small elective module called 'The Ancient Quadrants and their Current-Day Implications'. Eridan had never taken it. You did.
On reflection it was only SGRUB's complete rearranging of your priorities from 'do not get culled upon imperial conscription' to 'do not get culled by game constructs with your lusus's claws' that had erased it from your thinkpan so completely. Now, it returns with a vengeance. Schellen. The Bells. A vassaulter and their servant—also known as a squicophant, in charge of their master's equipment and hoofbeast care—could find themselves in 'schellen' with each other, an ancient form of pity. The vassaulter would look upon their much younger squicophant with a certain level of indulgence, seeing their potential and nurturing it. Protecting them from the attentions of other vassaulters, punishing them harshly if they fell short of their potential, training them in the art of warfare, making certain introductions to ensure their advancement... All the things Slick has been doing for you. In some ways, your failed attempt at kidnapping the Black Queen even qualifies as a courtly introduction to ensure your advancement!
You don't even know if Carapacians have the glands necessary to experience the full spectrum of troll romance, let alone ancient permutations of it, but you certainly know what bells have been ringing in your bellowsac enclosure. The squicophant's corresponding feelings—and attendant duties—towards his vassaulter would include a strong desire to please, an eager thinksponge towards his learnings, and...
Slick is still on the radio, so he does not see you blush a furious, mutated crimson. A squicophant would serve as a vassaulter's pail. Either before battle, as stress relief, or as an expression of atonement for a misstep. Of course, back in those days it would have been considered deeply inappropriate for someone of a lower social standing to offer his nook. Chagrin tunnel only.
Thinking entirely with your bulge, you decide that this is clearly the best way to make it up to Slick. You will tell him about Le Mort d'Artrol, he will recognize himself as having acted as your vassaulter, and you'll be his squicophant forever.
When he gets off the radio you spit out the throb stalk and start talking.