"Wwhat," Eridan stuttered, staring at the image in disbelief. Jade was flying over the streets of Prospit with an enormous gun in hand. The streets themselves however, were what held the three brothers' interests; their countrymen and the Prospitians were fighting. "Wwhy are they fightin'?" he asked, more confused than anything. Tensions had always been high, especially with the war, but the royal siblings had been very young when it had happened, and it was barely a memory at all for them.
"Should we…" Equius began. "Help?"
"You're the king now," said Dave leisurely from his spot on the chair. He seemed perfectly calm, but his foster brothers knew that he was brooding. "You tell me."
Equius choked. Dave sat up from a reclined position to a slouch. "I didn't know how to break it to you guys so I'm just going to say it. Derse is gone. I still don't know what happened but the machine broke and it succumbed to the cold." A chill ran down the two trolls' spines and Calliope covered her mouth in dread. The devil's machine it was sometimes called, the great furnace in Derse's undercity that kept it warm against the chill of the world's end. Cold does not radiate, or at least it's not supposed to. That black abyss however, did many things that should not have been possible. Criminals were executed by exposure, tied to the very edge of the city and left for the abyss to vampirically suck their warmth and life, but no queen had ever been so degenerate as to actually have someone thrown into it. And now, it had consumed their home.
Dave held up the war-hammer and aimed it at Equius. "But with the king and queen gone that makes you king. So do we go in and help our people beat up their people or do you do the smart thing and save your people a whole lot of grief and call off the fighting?"
The mountain of a troll was not merely sweating now but trembling visibly. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. "Our people…will need a new homeland," he began.
"Cool," said Dave, nodding emphatically as if something had been decided, "I'll march my trolls into Prospit and take the city as our new capital."
"No!" shouted Equius. "I still…we don't even know why they are fighting—"
The little white homunculus cleared his throat, or rather made a sound like clearing its throat through whatever process it created speech, lacking a mouth and all. "I can explain that—"
"Silence Minion!" Equius boomed, making the metal balcony vibrate. He then blushed a deep blue. The short hand of the city-clock leapt forward in the distance. The fireworks by the lakeshore started up. "By which I mean…go ahead."
The homunculus tossed his scarf dramatically. "Very well," he said, head transforming into another vision. A howling madman running through the streets, clubbing people to death with an iron scepter, ugly grey blotches covering his once shiny black shell. At first they thought it was Jack Noir, but upon closer inspection it must have been the Dignitary. The Prospitian and Dersite soldiers gave him a wide berth or else he struck at them, and more often than not, killed the ones he struck as if possessed by some hideous strength. But the ones he sought out and fought were commoners, armed with Prospitian weapons. There was a recurring theme; they all wore royal blue about their person.
"They're workin' together," said Eridan, pointing. "There must be a riot or somethin' goin' on, and DD's just—"
"The Dersite Dictator," corrected the Minion, "or so he has declared himself." The vision changed. It showed a strange man with one arm, robed all in blue, with a shining golden breastplate. He was riding on the back of a jackalope, the milky white color of a lusus, laying about himself with a golden pipe.
"Hell no," said Dave, leaning forward, at last displaying some interest as his eyes peered over his sunglasses. "That can't actually be Crocker?"
"Of course not," Eridan snapped. "They look nothing alike—"
"The true king of Prospit," intoned the Minion, hands piously held behind his back. "He is fighting for his throne against the dreaded invaders." The homunculus seemed more amused than anything.
"Did you just say that the Dignitary has declared himself king?" Equius rumbled, attempting to steel his resolve.
"Indeed," Minion nodded. "Or rather, Absolute Dictator of the People of Derse and Prospit, by grace of the Four Heroes, the Nobles, the Sufferer and every other deity you could care to name." The creature yawned somehow and examined his nonexistent fingernails.
"He's usurping your authority," said Dave, gesturing sharply with the hammer. "And the queen's."
"Who's the queen?" Equius shouted.
"I dunno," said Dave. "Jade when you marry her, I guess."
"I don't want to marry Jade!" said Equius.
"You know," said Eridan, scratching his chin. "He's also expanding our territory."
"By stealing it from Prospit," Dave noted.
"So who do we help?" asked Eridan, looking confusedly at Equius.
Equius froze up, the torrent of flop sweat stopping altogether, so nervous was he. Equius, king of Derse, stood in quiet contemplation for a full five minutes as his foster brothers, minion, and Calliope stared at him expectantly. "My first act as king," he announced, voice echoing across the city. "Is to name my foster brother David Strider as my sole heir."
"Fine," Eridan muttered, lip quivering. "I didn't want to be king anyway." Calliope patted his shoulder and kissed his cheek.
"My second act," Equius boomed emphatically, ignoring Eridan, "is to abdicate my throne."
"Like we always knew you would," said Dave, standing up. "I mean come on. The king can't marry a maid." The king of Derse patted Equius on the elbow. "Aradia's got a room two floors down. Nepeta's there too. Go see them before we move out."
"But what are we going to do?" asked Eridan confusedly.
"I'm the most powerful man on earth right now," said Dave with a yawn. "Who cares what I do? You don't judge me. I judge everyone else." He stretched out, popping the kinks out of his back and shoulders.
Sputtering, angry and confused, tired, hungry, and now being told that he was going off to war, Eridan continued arguing. "And does it even matter who we side with? By the time we get a whole army over to Prospit—"
"Eridan, honey," said Calliope, standing on her tiptoes to lay a slightly patronizing kiss on his forehead, "you forget who you are dating."
One of John's subjects had been kind enough to lend him their lusus as a mount once the fighting began. She was a huge hare with elegant, silky fur, more regal than adorable, with a pair of bone-white antlers on her head and a stark, olive-colored eye, contrasting with another of blood-red. Lusii don't have names, so he decided to call her Olivia for now. Olivia was affixed with a crude saddle and he mounted her. For a short while, he regretted the decision as she ambled at an awkward walk as if unaccustomed to doing so. That was until their first battle together.
As John and his group made their way to join the fighting in the main streets, a squad of purple-clothed footmen, a mixture of trolls and humans, came around the corner, approaching slowly in a phalanx. They were equipped with short swords and bucklers, and seemed just as surprised to see John as John was to see them. John's followers formed a line. A few streets over he could already hear gunfire, but here it would be a bloody melee.
John's knights waited for him to give the signal. He gripped the jackalope hard with his knees, anxious, having never ridden without his hands before, much less into battle. John leveled his pipe at the enemy and shouted "Charge!" kicking Olivia in the flanks an instant later. For a second, his troops were ahead of him, but only for a second. Then Olivia sprang forward on her powerful hind legs and they were flying.
It was only for an instant, but John and his mount were airborne thanks to her enormously powerful hind legs; he could hear the stones underneath her crack as they took off. They were two stories up at the height of the jump, and John experienced a feeling of weightlessness and something both intensely uncomfortable as well as exhilarating inside of him. He saw that they would land right in amongst the enemy. Being mostly human and unaccustomed to Lusii, they gaped at Olivia's jump. John set his jaw and raised his pipe, determined to take advantage of the surprise. He split their captain's skull with a single blow, and then disappeared back into the air just as his knights smashed into the formation.
Olivia landed behind the phalanx this time and John killed another soldier. They tried to swarm the jackalope, but the force of her next jump was enough to floor them all. John nearly fell off this time but managed to grip hard with his knees, cursing his lack of a right arm.
They landed on top of a nearby building, three stories up, in the shadow of its spire. The Dersite phalanx had broken, largely due to his knights' use of the Breath. He'd wanted to avoid using it until they joined the main body of the fighting, but this little accident showed him that you can't plan for every eventuality. Up above the sky was churning. The Harmattan would not go away for days now that they'd called it, maybe longer with all the power they'd fed into it. Something black streaked across his vision. "JOHN!" it shouted. "WHERE ARE YOU!?"
His eyes widened. "JADE!" he shouted back, waving his pipe to get her attention. She didn't hear him. "Fuck," he muttered.
Rick Havoc realized that an insurrection is a lot like a party, but without the booze or the music. It was still mildly entertaining though. He'd gotten lost in the crowd that he and Fang had armed and ended up somewhere near the front as they surged through the streets. It was like a river, swallowing up everything in its path, be it new recruits armed with kitchen knives and antique guns or the enemy, trampled underneath. Not a way Rick Havoc would like to go, which is why he didn't let up his speed in the slightest. Where the hell was Fang?
"Yip yip motherfuckers!" she shouted as she flew overhead, propelled by a whirling blue sphere of Breath, surrounded by a cloud of fairy-bulls. The crowd cheered at her passing, having quickly associated the Breath aspect with their new king and therefore liberation.
He was slightly envious of her control over the Breath. It was like an extension of her body whereas almost all the other knights needed all their concentration to conjure a breeze. And then Rick himself was different. Well, all of the knights had their own quirks as to how the power actually manifested within them, but it took far too much effort for Rick to do what they could do easily. Of course, there was one thing he could do perfectly. He hoped he'd get to show it off, in front of Fang ideally.
The narrow street was like a funnel, propelling the crowd faster and faster as the pressure built up around them, but it was going to end soon as it met the White King's boulevard. There was no one there that Rick could see, but that might just indicate an ambush. He wreathed his hand in sapphirine Breath. That much he could do. It was like loading a pistol.
And suddenly they were out on the White King's Boulevard. Fang was streaking ahead, gesturing to the other side. She shouted something at him accompanied by a salute and a wink before accelerating away, blue-grey sari flapping in the breeze. It occurred to Rick that he wanted to hit that. Badly. Never mind that for now though.
He was now at the very front of the charge and Rick realized that he was actually leading it. He'd armed the people and he could visibly control the Breath, and that was as good a reason to follow him as any. There was a group of confused looking people in front of the palace gates and he thought he spotted the viceroy among them, or whatever the hell he was calling himself now. Taking him out might end this war quickly, and then he could go on to a life of luxury and hero worship, and hopefully getting into Fang's pants. Rick felt the thrill of adrenaline suffusing his body.
A menagerie of the Knights of Prospit formed a ring around the crowd and Dersite soldiers swarmed in from two alleyways towards the east. This whole damn thing was a mass of confusion, he thought, as the crackle of gunfire began to fill the air. Two of Rick's followers fell to either side of him and a bullet scraped his cheek. Some idiot pulled a pistol and fired it right next to his ear. Rick stumbled and almost fell, but caught himself just in time. There would be no getting back up if he fell now.
Leading the column of Dersites was a massive Carapacian wielding a black iron poleaxe, armor enameled with red hearts. He gave Rick a villainous grin.
Rick had trouble commanding the Breath. But he had the greatest ease in breaking it. The swirl of royal blue around his hands collapsed, torn apart into its constituent elements for a brief moment before crashing back into itself with the sound of a thunderclap. For an instant, a jagged bolt of cobalt lightning connected Rick's hand to the Carapacian's head. The instant passed and the Carapacian was headless. The mob cheered and the enemy was dumbstruck. Rick grinned to himself and readied another thunderbolt, spreading it out into a wide fan of metallic-sapphire and striking a dozen different soldiers, sending them into fits of convulsions as they caught fire. The enemy broke ranks and started to run.
The unruly shouting that had followed Rick slowly took shape into something else. A chant. A name. The people accepted John Crocker as their king, but the cry was for the Prince of Thunder. Rick smiled, sincerely for the first time in his life—
"Damara does not appreciate being stirred from her beauty rest," said Damara, glaring into a Carapacian man's shining black eyes. She rubbed the skin under her iron collar. Her years of servitude powering the machine along with many of her low-blooded brethren had left it tough and calloused, but her aptitude for Time had liberated her, or rather brought her into a different kind of servitude. She wore a low-cut dress, showing off the collar as a sign of her ascendancy unlike some others in her position. The court Witch of Derse was feared throughout both kingdoms and even into the Empire. Of course, the angry mob would have taken on the Black King himself and torn the flesh from his titanic bones if they had the opportunity. Good thing she had stopped time.
Damara plucked the glowing, barbed quills from the bun on her head (the wooly locks cascaded down to the floor with an audible *whoosh*) and pressed it into the little bug-man's heart. She went to work on the rest of the rabble. In and out the needles flashed, bringing with them little sluices of blood from Damara's victims throats like thread in some gruesome crocheting project. Her prey would not bleed properly until time resumed its course; these spots and splatters suspended in the air like colored thread had been pulled free by the yanking motion. In and out the needles flashed, left and right the blood sprang forth. She hummed as she worked.
She only managed about a third of the mob before her spell ran out. A shocked Carapacian screamed in her face at the sight of her and ran clear across the street, nerve turned to rust. A fantastical rainbow of blood was running down her dress, spattered across her face, embedded in her hair, smeared all the way up to her elbows (the quills were clean and immaculate as snow, their gentle glow serving only to highlight the blood-besmottered witch). Not to mention of the course, the stunning sight of a hundred or so people spontaneously falling to ground and hemorrhaging simultaneously, the sound something like a sudden rainstorm, ending just as suddenly. The mob leader, the one they were proclaiming prince just an instant ago, raised a hand to her, crackling with electricity.
"You are very handsome," Damara said, embracing him. The human was stunned and tried to tear himself away but could not match even a lowblood troll's strength. "And such lovely eyes," she added, caressing his face, the barb of a quill cutting a fine, fine line along his forehead. "Damara will take them," and with that she kissed the man, and he fell limp with pleasure for a second or two before she pressed the needle into his eye until it came out the other end. Panicking, writhing in pain, he tried to summon up his little Breath magics but all she had to do was lift his arm into the air with her trollish strength and the lightning fired impotently into the storm. Her lips served to stifle his screams as she twisted the needle until he was quite dead.
With the sudden and violent death of half their number and the appearance of this grisly apparition, the mob ceased to be a mob. Each person regained their individual will and sense of self preservation and ran as fast as their legs could carry them for home. Damara dropped the alleged prince, spitting out a globule of candy-red blood. She raised her quills, hue going from steady white to violently flickering and flashing every color of the rainbow, plus several new ones that assaulted the eyes. With a flick of her wrist a wave of people collapsed into piles of sand as a hundred ages came crashing down on them all at once.
Sometimes she thought the Four, or the Sufferer, or God, whoever, had given her entirely the wrong aspect. Sure, she loved Time, the heartbeat of the universe, the comforting rhythm and pulse of all things everywhere. But her love for Time was a schoolgirl crush compared to the all encompassing lust she felt for her true master; death.
Karkat, Vriska, Maplehoof and Fuckslayer found themselves in the middle of Prospit's slums. They had always been eerily quiet, but today the silence was deafening. "Where is everyone?" Vriska muttered.
Karkat was trying to keep his lower lip from quivering. "Holy shit Vriska, why the fuck are you such a sob story?"
"What are you talking about?" she growled. "I am brave and strong and independent, unlike you, Mr. Runs-off-to-join-the-army!"
"You said take us home," Karkat said, "and we wind up in the middle of a street in the worst part of town. You need to admit to yourself that that isn't normal."
Vriska rolled her eyes. "You are such a cunt Vantas, it's not even funny." She pointed off into the distance, where smoke was rising. "I think something bad is going down here, and we showed up just in time for the fun."
"Fun," Karkat deadpanned.
"Yeah, riots are great for looting!" Vriska said excitedly, pumping a fist. "Someone else does the breaking for you and you just need to do the entering."
"Magic dice that can do anything," Karkat reminded her. "Also we need to go collect our pending knighthood and our royal siblings."
Vriska snorted. "And ride off into the fucking sunset with—" She looked up. "What is up with the sky?"
Karkat looked up too. "Harmattan came early this year I guess." He considered. "Way the fuck early," he decided, and without further ado, he mounted Fuckslayer and drew his sickle. "Let's go."
The streets were empty but the city was still full of people. There was always a feeling of being watched in the slums, but now it was not a calculated gaze, sizing you and your valuables up as targets, but a gaze of fear and apprehension. The city was holding its breath.
Karkat had wanted to go towards the White King's Boulevard of course, but had trusted Vriska to lead them. And so, of course, the pair wound up getting closer and closer to the fire, closer and closer to the sound of fighting, growing louder and louder and more desperate. The labyrinthine streets of Prospit muffled sound and twisted the way it traveled. The buildings were more uniformly high and baroque here, their tops made wakes in the river of colored sand swirling up above, reflecting the fire down below as the darkness thickened. Karkat's sickle, once again, illuminated their path with its burning, constant refrain; "Happiness must be earned."
And then, they turned a corner and suddenly they were on lunar chain street, watching a swarm of blue cloaked individuals fighting the combined forces of yellow and purple. "What the fuck is going on?" asked Karkat, as a frightening looking man leapt down from the back of a majestic jackalope, wielding a length of golden pipe. He clashed weapons with a surly troll whose horns resembled musical notes before glancing their way quite on accident, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Do I know you?" Karkat called. Vriska immediately leapt down from Maplehoof and took off running towards the man and lopped off his opponent's head with her cutlass, before throwing the weapon to the ground.
"John!" she shouted, voice cracking. What the hell had happened to him? She never thought that anything would serve to break her heart, but here was that wonderful boy who'd charmed her with his smile before they'd even met, who'd fed her muffins and offered to help her steal his own jewels, looking battered and gaunt as if he'd been living on the streets, maimed and blinded in one eye, and almost comically, his hair bleached nearly white. Vriska wanted to say comforting words, encouraging words, questions, demands, anguished declarations, all kinds of things, but she couldn't. Instead she threw down her sword, grabbed the poor, broken thing in front of her, and kissed him hard. The battle stopped for a second and then awkwardly resumed a few feet away as she leaned John over and roughly grabbed a handful of his ugly two-toned hair. It took him a moment to realize what was going on before he decided to simply accept it, dropping the pipe with a clang and wrapping his remaining arm around Vriska's neck.
Karkat watched, dumbfounded, shuffling awkwardly.
Vriska let go and John nearly fell down. "Look," she said, "we barely know each other and you're engaged and everything but I've just got to say that I want you baaaaaaaad." She grabbed him by the lapels and gave him a good, hard shake. "Oh God, what happened to you?" She hugged him tight.
John grinned awkwardly. "That's really good to hear and I like you too, and, well, as you can clearly see," he gestured broadly, "the situation has changed. A lot. And as for what happened," John visibly paled. "Maybe we can talk about this later?" he asked hopefully.
Vriska nodded and picked up her sword again. "Your army just doubled in effectiveness, your majesty," she said with an evil grin and an elaborate bow. From a hidden pocket, she produced her dice and John gaped. They fell to the floor and flashed, transforming into eight identical hoofbeasts, cobalt fur peeking out from under dense lead-grey plate, glowing red embers for eyes gazing out across the city. They were nearly a storey tall, pale udders swaying majestically as they neighed with murderous intent. Vriska snickered. "What the hell even is this? Whatever. Attack my minions!" They whinnied in rage and charged; the terrified Dersites fled the street, hoofbeasts thundering after them. One straggler was flung into a wall by an iron-plated hoofpunch and another was caught between an equine monster's teeth before the chase turned a corner and out of sight. She turned back to John. "So do we win the contest or whatever?"
"Wow," said John, rubbing his scalp. "I'd actually almost forgotten about that. Yes!" He picked his pipe back up and raised it triumphantly into the air. "I hereby declare both you and Karkat Knights of Prospit!"
Karkat choked. "Wait so…does that mean that I… and Jade—"
"If she'll take you!" John said anxiously. "But I haven't seen her since they took the palace. She's somewhere out here, flying around the battlefield—"
"Right," said Karkat, whistling Fuckslayer to attention. "I'm going to go find her." He pointed at Vriska. "Are you going to be okay?"
She rolled her eyes. "Karkat. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? How many times have I saved your life?"
"Slightly less than I've saved yours," he said immediately, sneering. "I counted. Like a smart person." He then clicked his tongue emphatically and rode off before she could respond. Vriska growled. "Thank God for that ass," she muttered.
Sollux had declined to help Jade look for her brother. She bit her lip. That man may well be the most frustrating person on the planet. A crackle of green lightning ran down her body, from the crown of her skull to the tips of her fingers and toes. She didn't care if he riled her up so she could use her powers; it was still annoying and he still sincerely meant it.
Hurtling over White King's Boulevard, the Harmattan raging up above and the battle raging down below, she saw a wave of screaming, panicking people crumble to dust, burning for an instant with rainbow fire before being silenced forever. Jade stared in horror at the scene. It was a massacre.
At the heart of it all was a pretty young troll spattered in blood, with a horrid, black little half-smile, a dark, insinuating expression full of derision and disgust. Jade hated her instantly. The fire came as easily as it ever had, brilliant emerald green wreathing her entire body, wispy tendrils of it forming and flowing like water, swimming in the air as she plunged towards her enemy.
Damara looked up and rolled her eyes. With a wave of a needle-wand, Jade was frozen in place only a few feet from her. She needed to conserve her strength and a blanket time-out would not be feasible right now. Stopping one little chit, however, was more than possible. Damara approached Jade, stepping through the verdant fire as if it didn't mean anything at all and examined her face. Yes, the hatred was there, and the anger, burning passion buried deep under a sweet façade. Jade reminded Damara just a bit of herself. Damara raised the needle in her left hand and prepared to drag it across Jade's throat, a kind of death she herself would prefer to any other, only to be tackled to the ground by a stampeding riding-beast.
Karkat leapt down from Fuckslayer and readied the heavy war-sickle. Usually the hero would say something badass at this point, he thought, but he couldn't actually think of anything, and even then, it would be a perfect opportunity for the witch to get the fuck back up and stab him. So instead, Karkat swung the sickle right at her neck, fully intent on taking her head.
Just as he struck, she was no longer there.
"You are very handsome," a husky voice whispered into his ear. Karkat turned, ready to swing. The witch was just out of his range, and always had been. There was a thin line of deep maroon along her neck, and her lip was split from Fuckslayer's tackle. "Would you like to fuck Damara?" she asked.
"Huh?" said Karkat, eyes bulging with surprise just as she raised both wands like a quick-draw gunslinger.
"Look out!" And Karkat found himself wrenched out of space, feeling as if he had imploded into nothingness and exploded back into being elsewhere. Just where he had been standing, twin beams of eye-wrenching color combinations screamed through the air with a sound like a hoofbeast violating a piano. The warped the air around them, wounding it, before striking the base of a nearby tower. Each individual gold-colored brick transformed into a different state of being in its timeline, from molten rock to powder and everything in between; the ancient spire, a work of art predating sentience, groaned, screamed as it fell, like a murder. Karkat stared in dumbfounded terror as the hideous face of a gargoyle the size of a house hurled towards him through the air.
The entire midsection of the tower flashed yellow-green and disappeared, the two halves falling neatly around him. The broken edges were smooth as if finely cut, and glowing hot.
"Karkat!" a bundle of warmth slammed into him, holding him tight. Jade kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you for saving me, really, and I'm so happy you're safe, and I think I might be in love with you if that's okay—" Karkat felt as if he were falling into an icy river and almost gasped for breath as if drowning; Jade's near-confession was the best news he'd had in a very long time and he wanted to shout with joy—
"But you need to get lost now."
"Huh?" said Karkat. And with that Jade kissed him on the lips, blushing so furiously that he felt the heat radiating off her face, and he disappeared in a yellow-green flash.
A beam of time screamed its way through the air where he had been standing an instant ago, passing within inches of Jade's face, and for an instant she felt incredibly old. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw her hair unfading from translucent white to its normal glossy black. Jade glared at Damara. The other witch was striding through a molten tunnel in the fallen tower, unmolested by the dripping stone; one of her white wands crackling with gaudy lights and sparks.
"Your gallant knight is fairly handsome," said Damara, poking her lower lip with the unlit wand. "Damara will have her way with him when she has killed you."
Jade growled, burning like an emerald beacon. She levitated off the floor and her profile flickered for an instant, as if she were having trouble being in just one place at a time. Damara rolled her eyes. "Are you a dog, to growl like that?" She raised both wands and fired straight into her chest. "Then die like a bitch," she said, when the screaming fire had subsided.
The highest point on White King's Boulevard was a soaring mustard-colored minaret as slender as a courtesan's waist, topped by a single room imbedded within an onion dome. There was a little balcony all around, presumably to give whoever was brave enough to venture that height command of the whole street. The only way to enter that room was by ascending a ladder carved into the side of the minaret, turning completely horizontal as it curved with the dome. Each step was carved with wild arabesques, strange and beautiful scrolling patters that you could swear were supposed to look like something. Here, a dragon with a thousand heads, there a thousand creeping, flowering vines; here the thousand tentacles of a cosmic squid, there some horrible, monstrous amalgamation of all three. This assumption would be wrong; each pattern was simply an example of an artistic movement that forbade images. The artists took words and phrases in their beautiful language and distorted and stylized them until they didn't look like words at all, but each step, in truth, was exactly the same. The ladder in the side of the minaret was the sentence 'happiness must be earned' repeated a thousand times.
Karkat was there, somehow put there by Jade. It was just starting to hit him that the girl he'd loved was a witch of some kind. He looked down at the scene of devastation. The tower had fallen across the street and into the next street over, strewing the scene with piles of golden rubble. Dribbles of red were spattered here and there where the stone had liquefied and started fires. Through the spider web of minarets that made Prospit's skyline he could see fire in the distance, and flashes of cobalt blue light where Vriska was fighting. A young lady riding on a ball of blue fluff, or something, flew by, looking panicked, heading back towards the fighting. One of John's scouts maybe? Who knew?
Who cared? He'd just seen Jade get obliterated. "I didn't know you as well as I wanted to," Karkat said, glaring at the blood-spattered witch below. "I want to say that I was in love with you. I think I was. I was willing to cross the desert and fight an army of monsters for you. But what I should have done was stay here."
Karkat spun his war-sickle in his hands, the blade felling heavier than he'd ever felt it. "You said I was a knight if I acted like it, so I should have done what the fuck a knight is supposed to do," he said, "and keep his lady safe." He climbed up onto the railing. "Instead I put my own fucking happiness in front of your safety like a mealy-mouthed, horn-fondling twat-bucket to stupid to count to two when I should have been here at your side, happy to take a nook-sniffing bullet for you like some kind of brainless sycophant. AndI would have been happy to do it." The wind whistled through the forest of spires and shook Karkat. He steadied himself, not quite ready to make the leap. "I would have fucking died for you and that bitch took the chance away from me."
"Don't do it!" someone shouted in his ear, causing him to lose balance and fall headlong from the balcony. Once again he felt like he was being stretched down to the thinnest thinness that anything can be stretched and then snapped back, suddenly somewhere else.
Specifically, he was inside the dome. The walls were covered in even more elaborate patterns, these both carved and painted with pitch and cochineal, an onion-shaped door overlooking the little balcony where he'd been standing a moment before. Jade was standing in the doorway, looking flushed and angry. "You stupid…fuckass!" she snapped, a spray of spit shoot from her mouth. "You were not about to…kill yourself over me were you!? Like an idiot?!" She strode forward and smacked Karkat in the face, leaving a neat red handprint.
Karkat snarled. "NO! I was going to lob my sickle at the bulge-hungry bitch and get revenge for your stupid ass, just standing there while she obliterates you like some kind of—"
Jade kissed Karkat again, much more roughly than before, clacking their teeth together and cutting her lower lip on his fangs. She didn't mind, and held it for several seconds before pulling away. "I love it when you get all passionate," she said, putting a hand on his chest. Karkat shivered. The Jade turned on the stunned troll and floated into the air, right off the balcony.
"I would have said something during your little speech," she said, producing a weapon from thin air. It was a massive blunderbuss of ivory and shining silver, longer than she was tall. "But I was exhausted from making that replica and porting up here and maintain the fire; I just couldn't spare a thought." She giggled. "Plus…what you said was really sweet, and I wanted to hear you finish!"
Jade shouldered her father's rifle and pulled the trigger. The street below was engulfed in a holocaust of silver light that shook the tower like ringing a bell. Karkat shivered as something touched his mind, something not unlike the psychic tendrils of the angels. "I think you just gave every normal troll in the city a migraine," he said.
"Maybe," she said, wrinkling her nose. "I'd never fired the thing. But at least—"
Damara appeared on the railing, bleeding and scorched, breathing hard, eyes flashing strange colors with rage, hair singed to half its length and still smoldering at the ends, and slapped Jade hard across the face with her right hand, cutting open her cheek with the angry fire-spitting wand.
"Is that the best you can do little puppy?!" she snarled. Jade growled and punched her back, and both of them disappeared in a flash of yellow-green. For a split-second they expanded until they filled Karkat's vision, and then they were gone.
Karkat cursed and ran to the balcony, sprinting around its full circumference to find them. He had an impressive view of the city like no one had ever experienced in living memory. But he didn't care.
The building immediately to the left exploded in a ball of multicolored light. Across the street and almost simultaneously, it happened again. Karkat suddenly became cognizant of the fact that his tower had exploded before either of those things happened, and that he had been maimed and bleeding under a pile of rubble until he nearly died. But yet here he was. It occurred to him that when Time and Space fought, the result was not anything that mere mortals could make sense of.
Vriska felt powerful for the first time in her life. She thought she had before, but she was wrong. She'd felt strong before yes, and had felt dangerous certainly. But now, she was a force. With a flick of her wrist the dice would fall and clack and spin out waves of destruction, or summon monsters, heal her allies and kill her enemies. A gigantic beast, some tyrannical king of lizards two stories tall with burning eyes and a hide like olive and charcoal chainmail swallowed a whole squad of Dersites before having its head exploded with cannon. A knight of Prospit exploded into a swarm of neon blue and red-gold hornets and stung his companions into surrender. The dice were growing more unpredictable; the things Vriska asked for them to make happen weren't happening anymore, but they hadn't turned against her so she shouldn't complain. Men's weapons turned to snakes and bit them, the ground opened up to swallow them, all of their dead companions rose from the ground as hungry revenants and devoured them.
Besides, John was happy with her. She was riding with John, right on the back of his jackalope lusus, holding tight to his midsection. A small part of Vriska's brain was busy mooning over his musculature, and another part of her was feeling the warmth he felt for her in his mind, basking in it, but mostly she was concentrating on the battle. The lusus was fast and dangerous, once swiping the head off a Dersite so quickly that he probably still didn't know he was dead. All around John's subjects were wreaking havoc. The big lowblood, Tavros, was wielding two spears and riding astride a gigantic pangolin. Whenever he swung or stabbed, men died. But he had the most ridiculous baby-face; it looked so awkward on his huge body. Vriska snickered. He might make an interesting black prospect.
Cackling like a Fury, the female Knight played with her little hand-drill, whipping up the air around her into a swirling blue, horizontal whirlwind and charged a cavalry brigade. With horrific shrieks men and riding-beasts were obliterated, puréed until it was a swirling cone of red, crisscrossed here and there with troll blood. Vriska narrowed her eyes at the wannabe Valkyrie. Alppis Corhai was dangerous, and worse, she thought she was competition. Vriska knew that Alppis most definitely was not, but sheeeeeeee didn't know that she wasn't, and that could be dangerous.
As they cleared the street, a dark form swooped down from the sky. Vriska thought she recognized him. "Hey Sollux!" John said excitedly. "Do you know where Jade is?!"
"Yeah nice to see you too asshole," said Sollux with a bored wave of his hand.
"Don't talk to your king like that," Vriska snapped, fingering the hilt of her sword. She wondered at how quickly that had become a habit.
"What the fuck ever," Sollux scoffed. "I can talk to him however I want. John, your sister's out fighting the good fight on the Boulevard."
"We need to go—" John began to say, turning to shout out the new orders to his people, only to be cut off.
"Dude, sir, Sir Dude, who cares, your sister is fine. I taught her to be a witch and now she can witch like nobody else." Sollux grinned to himself. "Jade is going to be pissed off to know I found you first right after I said I wouldn't help her find you though." John frowned and Sollux ignored it. The troll gestured with his skull-topped staff off into the distance, towards the palace. "You need to keep going that way. Your doom isn't on The White King's Boulevard. It's in Palace Square. That's where the fates of nations are decided."
"Doom?" Vriska snapped, actually drawing her sword. Sollux bared his fangs excitedly. "I don't trust this guy John. He's a fucker, first of all, I mean just loooooook at him!" Sollux snickered and scratched at his neck where that ratty black scarf he wore must chafe.
John smiled at her. "See, Doom means destiny. Or, like, the end of destiny. I'm doomed, he's doomed, we're all doomed, eventually, so really, it's not a threat at all." He turned and beamed at the mage. "Thanks Sollux. You've always been loyal to our family, and you're going to be rewarded exactly how you deserve when this is all over."
Sollux smirked. "In the next few minutes, just remember what the good book says. Whichever one it is I mean, with four Faiths it's hard to keep track. 'Shall not the judge of the earth do right?'" John nodded and kicked Olivia in the flanks and the pair of them sped off, Vriska shooting Sollux a dirty look, and gesturing first that she was watching him, and secondly that he could go fuck himself. Sollux smirked and blew her a kiss, then rose into the air, crackling with red and blue lightning.
Olivia was so fast and strong that John and Vriska were always in the lead, which was great for morale but tended to get them into the thick of fights whenever Olivia turned a corner. Just as Vriska had expected, a squadron of trollish myrmidons, each of them psychically enabled, ambushed then just as they took the next street. John immediately smashed his pipe into the face of an orange-blood, sparking with power as he died. A muddy-yellow conjured up an orb of fire and prepare to throw it, and Vriska readied her dice. However, a beam of purple light surged from behind Vriska, slamming into the fellow, who was suddenly lacking a torso. The rest of the psychics concentrated their fire on Sollux, and for a second the street was a barrage of multicolored energies and dancing objects until not a single one of them was left alive. Vriska blinked, left eye tearing up from all the purple flashes. Whenever she did that, the color split back into blue and red.
Cutting a swath of destruction through Prospit, John and Vriska bounded into Palace Square. It was more than a block from the palace but the buildings had been arranged so that the view of its great bulk from the enormous circular plaza was near perfect. The northern half was surrounded by massive colonnades, tall as cathedrals and four columns deep, of the ostentatious Corinthian style. Directly across from them was the Domina Nostrum de Fortuna, and the effect was as if the basilica were stretching out her arms to greet Vriska in triumph upon her return.
The crowd roared as if in response. With a flying leap of the jackalope, John had joined the main body of the battle and was finally surrounded by his people. On the enemy side, towards the basilica, the enemy watched in terror and many defected outright, or rather rejoined the side they belonged to in some cases. A few moments later John's Knights caught up with them. "Let's take back our city!" he shouted, raising his pipe. The cheering nearly deafened Vriska—
And then they were off, Olivia running like the wind, going so quickly that it took a moment for everyone to realize what was happening and join the charge. The crowd, the mob, Prospit, surged towards the enemy. The Dersites formed a hasty phalanx. Vriska smiled malefically and tossed her dice.
There was a sound like a wet fart and the stink of sulfur, and suddenly every one of the Prospitians was wearing a ridiculous hat. John's in particular was downright hilarious, like a comic-strip wizard's hat in purple velvet stitched with yellow stars and planets, but shaped like a stretched out fedora and with a pair of completely random donkey ears on the brim.
Everyone was confused. Olivia slowed to the stop and lay on her belly, panting. Everyone in the square looked around confusedly. Some that had seen her throw the dice made the connection and stared at her. A female troll in Prospitian armor smiled at Vriska and gave her the hang-loose sign, mouthing something that might have been 'bad'. John turned to look at Vriska, and the expression on his face was not angry but almost…hurt. "I don't think," he said, slowly, as if struggling with his words, trying not to let his annoyance show, "that this is the time for pranks."
"Um," stuttered that stupid mouth-breather shitblood waddling up on his pangolin, "good try though?" Fuck his sexy blood-stained abs. Vriska opened her mouth to speak and found that she had nothing to say. It was like a bad dream, the kind where you show up to school in your underwear. Or so she assumed, having never been to school.
Something saved her from her misery; a thousand blinding flashes of light yellow-green like an entire fireworks show going off all at once. Vriska's left eye ached like it had been struck with a hammer. "Was it a delayed reaction?" John called.
"I didn't do it on purpose!" she snapped, finally free of her embarassment. "The damn things are broken or something!"
With her sensitive eyes, Vriska was among the last to recover from the flashes. In fact, her vision was still crowded by seven after-images like a burning ring of fire when she registered what happened, what filled everyone in the crowd on both sides with dread, what they were already screaming and weeping about. Spread out across the roofs and colonnades of the square, was a horde of painted Capricorns. The Grand Highblood in his heathen glory was standing on the great glass dome of Domina Nostrum de Fortuna herself, right where Vriska had stood so long ago and a hundred times more brazenly nonchalant about his blasphemous feet. He was raising a shining war-hammer covered in shimmering colors, like a thing of magic, the fevered dream of a sopor-addicted warrior-king with no love for God or man. "Attention everyone," he said, "this is your king."
He looked out over the crowd with eyes redder than rubies, the candy color of human blood. Who or what the hell was he? "Sup?"
Author's note: cliffhanger! Again! Who'd have thunk it!? No, Dave's not the true villain. The real shitty twist is coming next chapter.
I don't think that I'll be able to finish this story by November, unfortunately, but I think I will be able to get the next chapter up much more quickly than I've been doing because I am just so excited you guys! And then after that I will just be wrapping up and tying up loose ends, marrying some people and burying others, even *gasp!* disinterring a few, and hooking you all for the potential sequel. Hehe. So this story will end soon, just not when I said it would :P
Of course, as to why I wanted to finish before November, it's because of NaNoWriMo! If I can write a 50,000 word novel by midnight on the 30th then they publish a few copies of it just for me and possibly help me get it published for realsies too. I'm sure you'd all be interested in my original work, right? Right? *cries*
Damara. Haha, I realized that there weren't enough powerful characters on the villain's side and our group would just tear through them, but we've got some last minute additions that will hopefully allow our climax to have actual tension. That sounded hot… Anyway I like Damara and it's odd how I usually cram her in at the last minute instead of planning for her. Meh. Also, if you're wondering why I never make her speak Japanese it's because 1) she doesn't speak Japanese, she speaks a heavily accented version of the troll language used by the Weeabros, but it's not a different language, and 2) she can actually speak normally but chooses not to so she can get away with saying crazy shit. My Damara has even less shame than in canon, and just lets everyone know what the fuck she means. And the bit where she's killing everyone, I actually took the rhythm of the scene from a Chinese poem because subtlety is the thing I do when I'm not spelling everything out for you.
Also, I think I had some rule about not having the dancestors or something, because in this story everyone had canonical familial relationships, or they're supposed to, but Aranea is clearly the priestess at the basilica so I clearly didn't follow it, if I had it in the first place. That's what I get for waiting so long to finish this and forgetting my plans :p
I thought I would have so many things to say but I don't…le sigh.
