Coming Out Hard

Part 1

Karkat could not fucking believe his luck. Well, actually, he could, everything seems to be going the same way it always does for him, but gods be damned if he wasn't going to complain about this shit all the same, even if he has to do it in his head for fear of coughing out pieces of his throat.

He and that Thorolund bitch, Kanya or whatever her name was, somehow ended up being placed in what was as far as Karkat could tell was the only intact cell in the whole damn asylum. At least if he'd been placed in one of the shit cells with holes in the wall or bars rusted off he could've spent his eternity going insane with a little breathing room. Instead he's stuck with some nosy wench in a small stone room with intact walls and bars just strong enough that his emaciated arms can't break them down.

It's only been a few hours since the soldiers left and the atmosphere's gone from awkwardly silent to soul crushingly depressing. At least she was someone to talk to and, though he'd never say this out loud, she really didn't seem like all that bad a girl. But now all she's doing is sitting against the wall and staring at the floor which, to be fair, is about the same thing that he's doing. There's something about sitting in the room your likely to spend the rest of your coherent life in that just kills your motivation to do anything but breathe and blink occasionally.

It was far from quiet, the sounds of mice shuffling around combined with the flickering of the torches the soldiers lit and the faint moaning of the hollows throughout the building, along with a strange breathing sound reminiscent of snoring, became surprisingly loud due to the lack of anything else. And the surprise Karkat felt when he heard the grating on the ceiling above them break open and drop down a fucking corpse is the only reason why Karkat shot up off the ground and screamed. He was not frightened damnit! He was just startled!

He holds his not at all girly scream for about two seconds before he's doubled over in pain, coughing out dry clops of black, dry blood and beating his fist against the wall in anger and frustration. By the time he recovers he sees that his cellmate is staring at him with an incredulous look. "Did you just…"

"No damnit, I just sat here calmly…while fucking corpses rained…down from the heavens. And by rained from the heavens I mean…shit out the ass of whatever diety actually lives up there…because apparently shitting on me is…all they have to do these days.

"No need to get so worked up. Fear is after all probably…a good thing given our current state…of being."

"I was not scared fuck you and die!"

Karkat proceeded to give her the most withering stare he could manage, which wasn't much considering that his decomposed face wasn't capable of many expressions. Kanaya however ignored her cellmate's oblivious wrath in favor of rummaging around the pockets of the grey shift the corpse was wearing.

Karkat looked up to observe the grate it fell through, which he could immediately tell was too high up to climb out. "okay, so now we've got a hole in the…roof that we can't use to…get out but every flesh hungry hollow here can use to…get in. Great. Okay Kanya, from now on we sleep, or space out,or…starve or whatever it is we keep doing, in shifts. Soneone has eyes on the hole at all times."

"I do not believe…that will be necessary."

Karkat looks back down towards her to tell her that yes, it is very fucking necessary unless she would like to go ahead and cut her own head off with a sharp stone, but is stopped when he sees her kneeling down next to the corpse holding up a key and smiling.

"No way. There is no way in hell…that of all the hollows here…the one that falls through the roof is the one…with the fucking key to our cell."

"Well there is only one way…to find out."

Kanaya got up and slid the key into the lock. She hesitated for a moment, nervous, and then slowly turned the key until there was a loud click and the gate slid forward.

"…No"

Kanaya turned to him, her relieved smile shifting into a look of confusion. "What do you mean no?"

"…I mean no. As in no...the universe is not kind…enough to do anything other than…fuck with us and that if we…leave this room we're just asking…for it to make us suffer more. And besides that changes nothing, we're still…trapped on the peak of a mountain in the middle of a…fucking frozen wasteland."

"Well at the very least I intend on familiarizing myself with my new home. Perhaps we will find something more comfortable than stone floors to sit on. And no matter what happens I am certain that staying here will only lead us to lose our minds sooner. And my name Is Kanaya, not Kanya."

And with that she walked out into the corridor, confident that Karkat was going to be right on her heels in ten seconds.

~)

Karkat was right on her heels in five seconds, in full gripe mode but happy to be moving his legs.

He walked quickly to catch up to Kanaya, who'd stopped to look through a set of bars a few feet down the corridor. As he got closer he realized that she was looking out into a sort of underground courtyard below and between their corridor and another along the opposite end, and that she had the weirdest, dumbfuck expression on her face. "The fuck are you…"

The holds up her hand to shut him up, then slowly points down into the courtyard towards what Karkat had initially overlooked as a large pile of stones. "…Holy shit."

So that's what that snoring sound was.

"I would like to put forth the motion that we avoid any descending staircases and that we never return to this hallway which as far as I can tell is ninety percent rusted iron bars."

"Yeah, that sounds good to me."

~)~)

Dave Strider was seriously regretting his decision to steal a shield rather than a sword. Now don't get him wrong, the Crest Shield was, in addition to being completely badass, heavily enchanted and had saved his ass from axe-wielding bandits more than once on the way up north. It's just that once he reached the asylum itself he'd had to resort to using it as his primary weapon.

When Dirk Strider left he'd taken with him fifteen of his favorite curved blades, reportedly obtained from some mysterious expedition he took to another continent to the east, and a shit ton of repair powders. The foreign blades were incredibly sharp but very brittle and required constant maintenance. Dirk had been thoroughly trained with the blades during his time spent east, and he'd passed most of that training on to Dave, which is why Dave brought one too. Just one. And two small bags of repair powder.

When he finally scaled the great mountain and reached the northern undead asylum three fourths of his blade had broken off. He'd still ended several bandits with the broken blade, but he quickly realized that it would be next to useless against the hollows of the asylum.

At first he thought he could do the same thing he did with the bandits, induce several heavily bleeding cuts with what was left of the sword and just circle around them until they succumb to blood-loss. But when you engage a hollow in the asylum you've got about five minutes before you're surrounded by ten of the bastards. And while his stolen armor and shield would protect him from the blunt and broken blades the hollows wielded Dave knew that if he was swarmed by enough hollows they could simply pry the shield and armor off of him.

By the time he'd managed to kill his first hollow he had attracted several dozens of the angry bastards and immediately made a tactical decision to get his ass out of there. He ran up an outdoors staircase onto what seemed to be some sort of ceiling for the lower cells, the upper areas of the asylum forming a wall on one end of the platform. There were several openings which he guessed dropped down into the cells themselves, openings which Dave bet the hollows were too stupid to avoid.

He dashed to the other end of the roof as quickly as the armor would allow and turned to watch his pursuers drop down into the holes. By the time a hollow reached him over half their number had fallen into the cells below.

The hollow jumped at him with more force than he could stop with his broken sword. He knew that though the hollow wouldn't breach his armor the force of it slamming into him would knock him over the edge of the roof. Any other knight would have attempted to roll out of the way, but Dave was a Strider, and Striders stand their ground. He put all his weight into one ferocious back-hand with his shield arm, hitting the hollow mid-air and knocking it to the ground. Other hollows that were lucky enough to avoid falling down one of the openings were closing in though, and the hollow he'd knocked down was trying to get back on its feet.

He kicked the struggling hollow in the head, knocking it back to the ground and caving in a section of its skull. He looked around frantically but couldn't see anyway out that didn't involve getting chewed on or breaking his legs. Luckily, he happened to notice that the sharp tip of his shield had left a fairly deep cut in the face of the hollow he'd just bitch slapped…

~)~)~)

Kanaya wasn't sure what she would find when she and her grumpy companion managed to ascend the staircase and ladders of the lower section of the undead asylum and reach the open skies of an aboveground courtyard. She supposed if she had to venture a guess it would have been a bunch of hollows shifting around aimlessly and whose heads would need to be carefully and swiftly removed with the reasonably sharp piece of broken sword Karkat found and wrapped cloth around. She was surely not expecting to see an Astoran knight stepping back and forth wildly around a small fire, beating down hollows with his shield.

He seemed to be missing a good deal of his armor. One arm was protected by nothing by a leather glove and it appeared he had no cuirass any kind of sizable chestplate, judging by the way his surcoat hugged his frame when he turned. What armor he did have however was absolutley beautiful;the same finely crafted armor one would expect to see on an Astoran knight captain pursuing a roguish pryomancer caught in bed with a noble's wife. His shield was finely crafted as well and was painted in a way reminiscent of one of the famous enchanted blue shields of the Astoran royal family. And his sword was…well…it appeared he didn't have a sword. On closer inspection while the knight was relatively still, trying to angle the pointed tip of the shield to pierce a hollows skull, Kanaya noted that while he didn't have a sword he did seem to have some sort of curved dagger on his belt.

Her analysis of the knight was interrupted by the sound of Karkat's pained, raspy voice filtering in from below as he began making his way up the ladder behind her.

"Holy fuck that bastard…bled a lot. I mean not really a lot for…a normal person but for a walking corpse…with viens full of dry fetid blood that was a lot of…holy fuck whats this asshole's problem?"

"Karkat please show some decorum, this 'asshole' is clearly a high ranked knight of Astora on an Undead Mission of great importance."

"Yeah like a give whatever...shits still in my undead intestines about some...asshole knight or any bullshit mission. I mean really, your fucking shield? And what the hell is up...with that dagger, why does it have such a flat tip? Im from fucking...Carim damn it, I know my fucking daggers and that...is a god awful design for a dagger."

"Karkat...while I would normally like to scold you for...showing such disrespect for such an...honorable and chivalrous figure I'd like to point out...that he's almost done killing those hollows and...dagger or no dagger we should probably make it clear...we have no intention of attacking him."

"Disrespect!? Im a damn knight...too you flighty broad and you...haven't shown me one ounce of respect yet! and you really...Think that asshole is going to give a fuck whether we attack him...first or not? What we ought...to do is turn our asses around…oh. Uh, hey.

"Greetings, sir knight."

"…Sup."

ST: Much appreciation for my mysterious guest reviewer. Glad to know you're enjoying it.