rampantrecs

Title: Regnant
Author: stclairvoyant
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: T
Story Links: AO3
Author Links: AO3
Summary:Bargaining with the Beasts beyond the reaches of furthest space for the opportunity of a new life, this time without the albatross of Sburb hanging over their heads, does indeed grant Rose Lalonde and her friends freedom from the game—at the price of their humanity. The new universe forged by the Noble Circle is a vivid, indistinguishable replica of the Alternia thought destroyed by all involved. With an oppressive caste system and the grim reality of new lives as trolls, and all that implies, Rose and her fifteen comrades resolve to instigate revolution and overthrow the oppressive regime of Her Imperious Condescension. But they number only sixteen, having barely scraped the surface of adulthood, and they are not the gods they once thought they were, and the Empress is an ancient thing—almost more institution than living, breathing being—with the power of an uncountable horde of trolls under her grasp.

Rose figures that makes them about even.

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It is difficult for Dave, master of time—if but for a brief stint within the confines of a game—that he was, to return to a world where time operates in a linear fashion. In fact, that, if anything, is what unsettles him the most, more than the unwieldy horns on top of his head, or the suspiciously pasty mystery meat and unnerving oil-slick coffee lining his refrigerator, or the fact that an enormous crow whose personality is a dead ringer for his older brother's is supposed to be his guardian. A week into this brave new world he's been thrust into without much choice in the matter, he's finding it's the little things that are getting to him the most. He's five minutes late and the convenience store is already closed. He stays out too late, until the sun's first rays threaten to peek over the horizon, and gets a nasty, peeling sunburn. He spends hours debating whether to brave actually getting into the recuperacoon and then realizes he's run out of time to actually sleep.>
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