And so they arrived.

[Gamzee Makara]

They walked in silence, for a while. I'll talk when I damn well please, he thought to himself in a rather shouty voice. Though admittedly, the human's eyes were alight with a pointed curiosity, not a murderous or insidious intent. It was something that he wasn't exactly used to, despite dealing with a certain two overly curious human girls many times before this. Something about their eyes was just...unsettling to him. They generally held a glint of something that he couldn't quite distinguish, as if they knew something about him that he himself did not; and Karkat most certainly could not stand being left out of the loop on such matters.

The strange mixture of footfall and peaceful but vaguely ominous sounds of the massive forest around them made for an incredibly unique and eerie chorus for that first hour of silence. He stopped, for a moment, and tilted his head back to raise his eyes to the sunshine speckled canopy above. The leaves and branches and vines came together in a kaleidoscopic patchwork of natural light and shadow that danced at every slight movement. Every time an unseen animal traveled the highway of treetops, every time a luxuriously lazy breeze blew through the wooden ramparts it sent the light bouncing and twirling and pirouetting through the shadows in a wondrous display that Karkat found oddly entrancing, mesmerizing - and that was when the stubby horned troll found his words.

"A lot of us lived underground, on Alternia," he began, "Our planet was way too close to the sun, or the sun was way too hot for us. One or the other, I don't really fuckin' know. We all only really knew what we were told. It was up to us if we believed it or not."

Malon had stopped a short distance ahead, turning around at the sound of his voice. She had been watching him, of course, observing, but only when he wasn't doing the same. She followed his gaze to the light show above. "You've never seen the sun before," she stated softly, before correcting herself, "Or at least, not in this manner."

He nodded, returning his somewhat stoney, brooding gaze to the path ahead. "Staring anywhere even vaguely near it would cause an unhealthy dose of immediate and painful blindness. Some of us could survive in sunlight, but most of us kept to shadowy places, or only ventured out at night. We had moonlight, and stars. Two moons, actually. They were pretty enough, but weren't what anyone would call radiant."

Or warm, said a whispery voice in his head as he passed through an especially large shaft of brilliant sunshine.

"Home wasn't the nicest of places. Like I said there were castes, and relatively most of our lives were dictated by blood color," he states, before Malon cut in with an earnest question, one he kinda had a feeling would pop up if he chose to share anything about life back home.

"What color is your-" she started to ask without much thinking, without ANY way of knowing what a sore, awful, terrible subject that was for Karkat. He shot her a rather vicious glare before she finished that question, that horridly annoying and pervasive question, and it dawned on her that that line of conversation was a poor one indeed. Her heart sank as she realized what a slight it was and profusely began to apologize, but Kar wouldn't have any of it.

His expression noticeably softened, as he chose his next words very carefully: "You couldn't have known. It's okay."

He wasn't sure if it was actually okay with him, but anything to change the subject was enough at that particular moment. Before giving her a chance to respond, he launched into a tirade about the castes, the ruling government and empire and their respective atrocities to his kind.

"It goes like this, from lowest of the low to lordliest of the lords: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Pink. And I mean, that's kinda cut and dry, there's all sorts of different shades and erm, variants, but that's the easiest way to explain it to someone from the outside looking in. For the most part, the lowest are destined to be peasants, except in very rare, very extreme cases," the troll explained.

"What would constitute as a rare or extreme case?" his companion wondered aloud.

"A ah...improvised test of strength, or skill. Something that happens naturally that proves immediate and exponential or limitless potential. There are other ways around it, like concealing your blood type, but those are all incredibly high risk. You'd be put to death immediately if you were found out," he said all of this rather slowly, picking his words carefully. "Though admittedly, if you failed to prove yourself initially, you'd likely be dead anyways."

"Lots of death, huh?" The pointy eared girlfriend said plainly.

"Lots of it."

Karkat continued, going into detail about the strict, tyrannical rule of the Empress and most of Alternia's nobility. "The Empire's drones and soldiers were not the good guys. They weren't keepers of the peace, they were suppressors, conquerors and the like. They enforced the law in such a way that it allowed for no rebellion or peace. I'm not gonna give you a whole hour long lesson on Alternia Law, but that's only because it's ridiculously oppressive and repetitive and likely would take more than an hour. I think you get the picture, though. They encouraged brutality and unrest between the castes, all the while equally keeping the general populace in check, at a disadvantage to those in higher bloodlines."

Silence for a moment. The alien could only assume she was processing. He wasn't sure of her background, but he recalled snippets of a land full of grass and greenery, hoofbeasts roaming the fields and a smaller house of quarried stone. The after effects of Tearan's meddling was something unsettling and different, and that combination was always a hard one to understand or accept; similar to the contrast of her world and his.

"And yes, all trolls have horns," he interjected suddenly, kind of hoping to not give her the chance to ask even more questions, "all different shapes and sizes, but they're all colored this way. As far as sensitive goes, the base can be kinda tingly when touched, but only because of the coalescence of blood vessels required to form healthy bone and marrow and all that junk on the outside of skin. Trolls are technically very similar to many of your Earth insects," Ranty McNubby horns paused to take a deep breath and rethink his decision to go into detail, before hurriedly finishing with a casual deflection. "Look, I'm a scientist, sort of, but not a teacher. I can't really explain troll biology very well, at least not to someone unversed in sciencey crap."

Malon opened her mouth to ask something, but Karkat held a hand up, responding plainly, "Nope, none of that. No questions. Just...hold on for a second. You wanted to know more, and I'm giving you way more than necessary. In fact, I think I'm done shouting about shit for now, for once in my terribly long and terribly drawn out life."

She eyed him somewhat suspiciously, though without the negative connotations that normally come associated with that word. For some reason, Karkat couldn’t manage to detect any sort of negative connotations about this human whatsoever. It was clear, however, that she could tell he was avoiding the topic of Gamzee's 'condition,' as she so eloquently put it. For fear of another faux pas like the question of his blood color, she also avoided the topic. For now, anyways.

"Oh come now, Karkat. Your life can't be all doom and gloom and death, not utterly and totally," she responded with a somewhat coy smile.

The young troll actually seemed to think very hard about it for a moment, before adamantly tossing his hands to the sky in a dramatic sort of shrug. "Nope, I got nothin'."

And at that, she couldn't resist a tiny giggle at his exaggerated expense, and that small bit of laughter was, to Karkat, comparable to the sunlight he secretly enjoyed so very much.