When Jack Noir first fell ill he started eating flies. There were many of them in those early days while it was still summer. The ones that were strong enough to escape he let live, but it was a ruse. He had secretly bred an army of spiders to catch the flies, and then the cycle repeated, over and over, feeding the last generation of vermin to the next. He completely forgot about matters of state or his crippling illness. This was important. In his dreams he saw…something. There was a secret. Consuming life could give him life. He could transcend his mortal flesh and become something other.
Now, shell grown almost completely grey, he sat in the middle of his room, coughing under a blanket, trying to catch the angry meow-beast hiding under his bed and bludgeon it with the heavy oil lamp in his grip. He'd only managed a nibble of her tail before she escaped. He raised a trembling, delicately articulated hand and his index finger fell off at the second joint. A spurt of black sludge the consistency of overripe melon fell out and then the wound stopped up. That was unfortunate, but it didn't hurt. So what if…bits of him had started falling off. It didn't—
He heard a scratching at the window. Outside it was nearly nightfall, but the shape in the window was blacker still than that. Oh, she was white, when seen with normal eyes, white as a corpse with the most terrible eyes, but her nightly ministrations had enlightened Jack. He could see what she was, what she truly was, and it was black as pitch.
Jack opened the window as he often had, and he said "come in," breathed it raspily from the bottom of his throat like gargling broken glass and gravel. She drifted in like moonlight, with her terrible eyes and fanged, black mouth. She bared her fangs at him and hissed. He was used to it. Jack raised his chin, showing off where the blotching was worst. There, his shell was pallid as maggotflesh and nearly putrid.
She sniffed angrily, eyes flashing. It seemed Jack could no longer provide her sustenance. She ignored him, released him, and Jack felt his old self bubbling back to the surface as he collapsed to the floor. The pain he was in was agonizing and he knew he would die of that wretched disease. It was all his own fault; he had invited her in.
But maybe…there was no reason to assume that everything in his delirium had been wrong. After all, the bitch was getting stronger off draining his blood. Maybe if he drained hers. Yes. It made perfect sense in his half-rotten brain full of psychopathy and vitriol. He stood, trembling so his shell clacked against itself, and lifted the lamp above his head. Only now did he realize that she had no shadow, and the blackness was not surrounding her, but him. A hundred shadowy hands reached out for the sick Carapacian at once, each with unnaturally long fingers, as if they were the talons of a harpy. They tore him to pieces. She didn't look back even after her shadow rejoined her.
"So basically stop embarrassing yourselves," said Dave, gazing down upon the square. "We're all going to have to live together now and it's going to be so awkward after you've been smashing each other's brains out all afternoon—"
"FUCK CLOWNS!" someone down below shouted. A shot rang out and a hefty Capricorn crouching on the ledge of the tabularium across the street fell screaming to the ground bellow. His fellows, who'd been silent, under Dave's tenuous control for so long, finally snapped and let out a honking to wake the dead. They jumped and climbed down into the square and the battle began anew, being waged on three sides instead of two.
A gurgling sigh escaped Kurloz's lips, the first sound Dave had heard from the man. He made a series of resigned passes that Meulin translated for him, loudly. "That was excellent!" she exclaimed without a hint of irony. "You should write a book on statesmanship and—"
"Okay I get it," said Dave, holding up his hand. He then slapped himself in the face with it. "I am such a terrible king. What the fuck was I thinking?" He snapped his fingers. "Eridan, c'mere."
"No," said Eridan, standing on top of a crocodilian gargoyle's snout, nervously trying to pick a shot with his rifle, which was currently uncranked. Calliope was rubbing his shoulders.
"Hey come on," said Dave, "a king needs a lackey and you're gonna be off making love to a Cherub for the rest of your life after this," Calliope flushed violently green, "so you should just do a thing for me for the last time ever," Dave finished, ignoring the indignant flustering he had caused. Eridan sighed and strode over to Dave, cranking his rifle as he went.
"What?" Eridan asked, fighting hard to keep his stutter under control. He emphatically flipped the switch on his rifle that caused the bayonet to snap out like a switchblade.
"You don't scare me with that baby knife and you never did," said Dave with a smirk. He handed Eridan the hammer. With his highblood strength he could hold it easily in one hand, but Eridan still felt its weight. It would take a great man to wield it in battle. "Take that to John Crocker as a peace offering," said Dave. "We need to take care of these assholes, get rid of DD, and get my throne back."
"But what happens after?" Eridan asked. "There's not really any way to settle, this man—"
"We have to try," Dave said, as earnestly as he had ever said anything, which is to say that it if it was not dripping with sarcasm, it was at least slightly damp.
Eridan groaned. "How the fuck do I get down there?"
"You forgot who you're dating already?" Dave asked.
Vriska kicked the Dersite buckler up off the ground, caught it in her left hand, and smashed the Capricorn in the face with it so hard that the purple enamel chipped. People didn't understand that these tiny little shields were basically iron boxing gloves. John stabbed him in the neck with the sharp end of his pipe, and Vriska deflected a gaudily colored throwing club from his right side. John spotted the thrower and hurled him across the plaza with a gust of Breath. "I always thought we'd make one competent person together," he said, before clambering back onto Olivia.
He reared the jackalope up onto her hind legs and blew into the pipe, emitting a hard, flat, mournful sound. "Attend your King, Prospit! Repel the invaders!" A cheer rose up from the crowd, but it was mingled with derisive, braying laughter.
Some of it was very close. Vriska turned and slashed her sword in a neat crescent, opening up another Capricorn and spilling his velvety purple blood onto the rich yellow flags. She turned back to John as she heard the heavy tud of Olivia returning to all fours—
And found herself staring into the barrel of a fine, purple-enameled crank-rifle. Vriska immediately pulled her sword back for a vicious thrust that would have torn right through the gunman's midsection if she hadn't realized that it was not aimed at her but leaning on his shoulder. The gunman was a troll in a pretentious high-collared cape, looking up at John with disdain. "The Prince Eridan of Derse comes with a message from her King," he announced. Vriska scrambled over to John's side and leveled her cutlass in the prince's direction. He scowled at her with all his shark-like teeth. Vriska winced in confusion; the Prince was clearly terrified but he looked so angry.
"Tell the Dictator," John said warningly, bringing Olivia around so he could glare at the prince from between her antlers, "That this war won't end until his head is on a pike in front of the palace."
Eridan spat on the floor and Vriska almost sliced him in half, but he spoke again. "The Dignitary is a usurper! The real king has conquered the Capricorn clan like a good king should and brought them here to liberate your city from him!"
"Then why are they killing everybody?" Vriska snarled.
"Conquered doesn't mean tamed!" Eridan snapped. "We're working on getting them back under control."
"What do you mean as a good king should?" John asked scowling.
"The king of Derse is and has always been a warrior," Eridan said through clenched teeth as if he were tired of explaining some particularly boring bit of common sense. "Leading the charge and commanding the troops is the only thing our King can do. The queen of Derse is always the one who holds executive power. Derse is currently queenless."
Eridan sighed deeply. "He is willing to submit himself as your vassal and grant queenship of Derse to any lady you see fit, making you emperor of our three nations, so long as the king is named Grand Marshal of your armed forces, the usurper is executed, and the people of Derse allowed to dwell within Prospit."
"That is so obviously a trap," said John, red-faced with anger, "That I should kill you right now—"
"He's telling the truth," said Vriska, lowering her sword just slightly. She sounded as if she didn't quite believe it either, but the truth was plain to see on Eridan's mind. "But why would you want to live here?"
Eridan growled. "Our whole city is gone."
The thief and the king blinked simultaneously. "What?"
"I don't know either!" the prince shouted, stomping his foot. "But it's all gone now and this is the only place we can go! None of the other nations would accept us with our damn reputation, but you're the only ones nice enough to show Derse mercy after everything that's happened!" He plopped down to his knees and reached inside his cape. Out came a beautiful war-hammer covered in dozens of multicolored tiles, shining like glass. It reflected only the angry light of a dozen fires; the light of day, or what little of it could be seen through the Harmattan haze, was almost completely gone.
He laid it on both palms like an offering of surrender. "Your brother, King Daniel's war-hammer. The king sends it with his apologies."
John stared at it for what seemed to be a very long time. Then the pipe clattered to the floor and he dropped to the ground from Olivia's back. "I accept your terms," he said, picking up the hammer. It seemed to hum like a wine glass as he did so. John gave an experiment swing and it made a rainbow-like blur in the air.
Eridan disappeared in a flash of yellow-green light.
An instant later Fang dropped down from the sky and saluted with her violent looking tessen, an iron fan. Her blue sari was a little bloodstained and there was a fresh cut on her cheek, but otherwise the girl was unharmed. "Rick Havoc is dead," she reported sadly. Her once cheerful face was now marred with despair. "White King's Boulevard is currently exploding—" the ground shook as if to punctuate her statement. "All of our forces are now concentrated here, while the Dictator has retreated back into the palace with a small group of soldiers."
"We'll have to route them here," said John. Vriska peeked into his mind; he didn't think they could even with the Capricorns.
"What if we just kill the Dictator?" Vriska asked, face becoming hard with determination. "I'll do it," she replied. "I've broken in there before; I can do it again—"
"We need you here," said John, trying to touch her arm and bumping her with the hammer instead. He looked frustrated for a second before his earnest expression returned. "We need your dice."
Vriska shook her head. "My luck's run out; I don't think I can get them to do what I want anymore. Maybe if you gave them to someone else?" Vriska took them out again and snatched the hammer out of John's hands. "Here!" she said, pushing them towards John's chest.
John rolled the dice. They flashed blue and something fell to the ground in front of them with a hint of anticlimax. A neatly coiled rope.
Vriska squealed with glee. "YES! Oh God I missed you!" She picked up the rope and kissed it while John stared in confusion.
Damara had tried to simply stop time and kill Jade but she had proved far too clever for that. The other witch moved around their battlefield with wanton abandon, leaving behind cheap replicas and Damara could never find the right one. Her energy was running low; Damara's injuries were mounting up and leeching her life from her, especially the migraine that that hideous gun was giving her. Very quickly, she resorted to stopping time only for a few moments to get out of the way of the ever-larger plumes of fire that erupted at her feet, the unholy blasts from that goddamn hand-canon, the rains of debris. It seemed the girl was fueled by anger.
Regardless, the little chit had merely adopted anger; Damara was bred from anger, hatched in it. She hated this girl, and wanted nothing more than to kill her slowly and painfully. No flickering out like a light, not even knowing Damara had done it, like all the victims in that mob.
Jade would have killed her if she hadn't managed to slip away at some point, running and hiding among the debris and then coming out, wands blazing, obliterating another section of Jade's beautiful city. It was only the troll's bloody-mindedness that would lead to her downfall.
While she was preoccupied with one of Jade's replicas, Jade crouched in the shade of the first tower's remains and sighted down the rifle. She'd been careful to only fire it from above so as to avoid damaging the buildings; several parts of the street were now craters filled with molten glass. But that had been done to lull Damara into a false sense of security with a fake pattern. Now, from here, the shot was a straight line towards the city gate, and the collateral damage would be at a minimum, and best of all, Damara would not see it coming. Jade pulled the trigger.
Damara appeared next her, covered in horrific burns, exposed bones and melted flesh all along the left side of her body and smacked the gun out of Jade's hands. The shot went wide and the other Damara disappeared; she had stopped time for herself again and run away. Jade gaped.
This Damara flashed and Jade realized that she'd never been hurt, never been a horrific, scorched living corpse. Damara had made it so that she hadn't. The trollop lunged with her needles.
Jade teleported up to the sky again and suddenly a dozen bursts of flashing light screamed through the air at her from all directions and she only barely managed to escape. They—the newly spawned legion of Damaras—swept the area with their beams, wiping away half the block in search of her, hurling insults in some dialect Jade could barely understand as they went.
Seeking once again to break her pattern, Jade teleported into the basement of an adjacent building. It was only a matter of time though, before those rage-crazed broads decided to just destroy the entire city looking for her. What to do?
What had Sollux said about her fire? Jade couldn't control fire. That much was true; she could start it but not shape it. She did something to the air, or the ground, or whatever she wanted to burn. He power was Space, but not just empty space. She could move things in it, alter them. It might be more accurate to say that her power was Matter. When she made fire, she was just vibrating a thing so fast it broke apart and ignited.
Jade strode over to one of the supporting pillars. From the screams of Time she could tell that a good number of Damaras were in this building. She placed her hands on the pillar and tried to break it apart. Normally, trying to 'make fire' with something other than air just made it explode, but she had to keep this controlled, affecting the entire building at once, the Damaras would get away.
Jade's consciousness moved along the pillar, spreading to every brick and stone. It was, like all of Prospit, intensely beautiful. Now, it was humming under her fingers, too subtle a feeling for anyone other than a Space aspect. Humming with exponentially increasing energy; a symphony rising to crescendo. She found the Damaras, a good six of them in and around the building, and concentrated her energy especially where they were, but they couldn't be allowed to get away, so the continued to suffuse the building.
The Jade let it all go and with a hideous roaring sound the building in its entirety was converted into a plume of flame that pierced through the cloud of colored dust up above. When it cleared, Jade could see the stars. The wound in the cloud was already sealing up as more dust filled the gap, but the brief sight was welcome in the terrible storm. Tiny flakes of colored glass began to rain down, like rainbow colored snowflakes glinting in the starlight.
"Shit," Jade hissed, drawing her hood and pulling her shawl over her mouth. Raining glass could not possibly be healthy.
Jade teleported out of the now ceiling-less basement and as an afterthought pushed her glasses as close to her face as she could. A glass snowflake in the eye was an idea that she was not even willing to entertain. She noticed that a great deal of the buildings that had been demolished were no longer in ruins. Jade gasped in happy surprise. Obviously the Damaras had been time travel duplicates, so if she had killed the original, then none of the damage they did had ever happened—
Jade had always had sensitive ears and she heard a footstep right behind her. She turned on her heel and raised the rifle just as Damara raised her right needle—
And Karkat leapt at her from the shadows, swinging his huge sickle overhand. Damara raised her left hand and parried the blow with her other needle. The sickle exploded into a spray of rusted shrapnel. An enormous piece, still glowing with some words in Old High Trollish, went right for his chest.
Then everything happened in an instant. Karkat flashed green as the shrapnel struck him and it disappeared, and then Damara's chest exploded as the rusty piece of metal tried to occupy the same space as her heart.
Karkat and Jade, blood-spattered and shocked, stared at each other. The rain of glass finally touched down, tinkling ominously against the rooftops and the two ran for cover in a building. "Why didn't you stay where I left you!?" Jade growled once they were safe. "You could have been killed—"
It was Karkat's turn to kiss her. "Don't be stupid," he said.
Vriska crouched on the palace walls, looking down on the gardens with a self-satisfied grim. It seemed that just about everything to do with the city had only gotten worse while she got better. Still, there was no need to be petty. But she'd never been a creature of need, really.
Armored feet padded nearer and Vriska rappelled down the walls. She hadn't even really needed Karkat the first time, but she'd underestimated the rope back them. It was the best thing ever.
Vriska scurried over the muddied gardens, easy enough now that night had properly fallen, pausing only to snatch the last golden rose from the fallen rose tree. She inhaled its scent deeply as she scrambled up the wall into a window. The scent of roses was a lot sweeter than she'd imagined. She'd thought it would be something deep and subtle and romantic, but really, it smelled just like candy.
The inside of the palace was just as she remembered, an acoustic jumble, a labyrinth of carved faces, vaulted ceilings, in which sounds tended to get lost and shamble around like confused drunks.
Vriska thought she was being cleverer this time, because so much more was counting on her. So imagine her disappointment when she bumped into some random woman entirely on accident, though in Vriska's defense it was almost as if she hadn't been there before. She was an elegant looking troll in a long frock coat with dark green silk-faced lapels and a jade green cravat, clasped with an elaborate silver Cancer. Her hair was short and feathery, framing a delicate face set with big green eyes; one of her horns ended in a sharp barb and her skin was incredibly pale grey, like ashes in the morning light. Vriska scolded herself for thinking of such a lame simile, and also for staring at the girl for far too long.
She drew her sword and pointed it at the pretty troll's neck, pale blue light reflecting off her skin. "Alright toots, you didn't see anything. Scream and I swear we'll know if your blood is as pretty as your eyes."
The other troll brushed the blade aside with two fingers, as if it were not dangerous but merely distasteful. "I'm sorry, I'm merely on my way to visit Princess Rose's tomb. I may not look it but I am in fact a priestess, and the princess was one of my parishioners."
There was a deep melancholy coming from the troll, Vriska thought, though she maintained a stoic façade well. Maybe… "The princess was murdered," Vriska said.
"I am aware of this," said the priestess, almost but not quite snappishly. It was the tone of a parent who was not quite scolding a child but would rather like them to get to the point.
Vriska stumbled a little, not having expected that. As a precaution, she layered on just the tiniest hint of her control. Not enough for the priestess to notice, but enough to make her suggestible. "She was murdered by her own people, you know. The agents here in the city wanted to get rid of all the royal siblings. Aaaaaaaall of them. Don't you see? They planned this from the very beginning." Vriska smiled devilishly. "We need to bring them to justice. Or are you just going to let God sort it out?"
"What do you want?" the priestess asked in the same tone as before, articulating slowly and carefully, without any emotional inflection to make sure Vriska understood.
Vriska growled. "Where is the Dictator!?"
"Ah, see, you merely had to ask," said the priestess. "Life is so much easier when you communicate with people instead of trying to manipulate them." She offered her hand. "I am Mother Kanaya Maryam, of the central Dersite parish."
Vriska shook it. "Vriska Serket," she bit down her tongue to crush any potential 'ums' or 'uhs' that might have followed. "Thief of Prospit," she decided.
"You were supposed to kiss it," said Kanaya, striding on down the hallway, "but I'll forgive you because you've obviously been hurt before."
Vriska sputtered. "What?!"
"You've been hurt before," Kanaya repeated, once again with painful slowness. Her fine shoes made the slightest tapping sound on the golden marble floor; each step seemed to be coming from a different part of the room. Vriska's movements were soundless. "If you want to find the dictator," said Kanaya, rounding a corner, "follow the path of destruction."
Vriska gaped. This hallway was filled with the stink of blood, troll and human and Carapacian, although despite the stench there was very little of it to be seen, mostly smeared here and there, bloody handprints marring the walls and pillars. Someone had tried to jump through a window, one of many elegantly tall pointed arches that were supposed to let in natural light (there was hardly any and Vriska could barely see thanks to her vision eightfold) and impaled themselves on the glass—or been impaled. The hallway was otherwise littered with body parts and scraps of silk and jewelry. The scene was much like at a very disorderly butcher's; parts were strewn without rhyme or reason; there appeared to be a head lodged in a ceiling vault who knew how high above them.
Vriska automatically scooped up a platinum ring set with an emerald the size of her thumbnail and slipped it on. She continued down the hall, occasionally looting another pretty bauble without even breaking her stride.
Ten minutes later; "you are very quick to desecrate these corpses," Kanaya said, startling Vriska. The priestess had gone so quiet that Vriska had forgotten her presence.
"When else am I going to get this opportunity?" Vriska asked with a villainous grin. "Here I am hobnobbing with the elite that wouldn't have even looked at me when they were alive," she said, sneering down at a Carapacian's headless body. "Everyone in Prospit who mattered is right here at my feet," she said, enjoying her pun.
"Do you crave infamy?" Kanaya asked, and Vriska froze. "It's not a healthy habit, you know."
"I…" Vriska paused, thinking of something to say. "No," she said. "It's not that. I just…" She scrambled for anything to say other than 'um'. "My Moirail says I'm a tiding of magpies that God smooshed into troll form," she said hurriedly.
"So it's a simple compulsion?" said Kanaya, not sounding convinced. "Why do you steal? You don't seem to need to, not with that sword and those clothes." Vriska said nothing and continued down the hall. The shadows seemed to lengthen.
A few minutes after they had left the massacre behind (with heavier pockets on Vriska's part, damn whatever the priestess said), Kanaya spoke again. "You were raised by other trolls, yes, and not a lusus?"
Vriska narrowed her eyes at Kanaya and nodded slowly. "Lower class though?" the priestess continued tentatively. "And I do mean that they were working poor, not of a low blood-color?"
"What do you care?" asked Vriska. "Rufioh was a good man and he treated us all very well after Horuss left. He gave us treats when we stole something good and made sure we all got a fair cut—" Vriska stopped herself from saying anything else.
Kanaya let out a sigh of relief. "Excellent," she said. "I was afraid your guardians were of the sort who…don't understand that wigglers are not for quadrants." Vriska wondered how she had ever thought Kanaya was pretty.
"I'm only trying to understand you," the priestess said. "You fascinate me, thief of Prospit." Her tone of voice was slow and deliberate again, but not without inflection, and at a lower timbre than before, with a certain hint of smokiness.
"Priestesses aren't for quadrants either!" Vriska snapped, flushing blue up to the roots of her hair.
"I may have been dishonest with you," Kanaya said, adjusting her cravat and then playing with her hair. "I am no longer a priestess. I broke my vows months ago, vows I'd held for who knows how long."
Huh? She couldn't be that old—
A ghostly figure drifted into view. For a second Vriska thought it was a Dersite human, all pale skin and white hair with violently unnatural eyes. She realized that for accuracy's sake, she should have said that it had been a Dersite human.
Looming in a doorway, the apparition had long, hideous claws, six-inch talons of bone poised like the legs of a spider. Her white gown was splattered with blood, which dribbled down her chin like a child who had not yet mastered drinking. Her face had once been beautiful, Vriska could tell, but it was now a patchwork of stitches like a monster constructed from the flesh of the dead. She—it—opened its red, red mouth and hissed.
"A…drinker?" asked Vriska, trembling.
"Humans have another word for it," said Kanaya, unclasping the cancer from her cravat and holding it aloft. It burst into flames under the creature's lilac gaze and she dropped it. "Vampire. I find it more appropriate in this situation." Her voice cracked just slightly. "Poor, poor princess. You should have been left to the saints, but it's too late now." Kanaya turned to Vriska, face earnest. "You should run."
"I came here to do one thing," Vriska growled, switching into a fighting stance with her sword held high like a stinger, buckler out in front of her like a scorpion's claw. "And that one thing is killing the dictator. And I'll fight and kill any monster that gets in my way."
Without any warning, the vampire—Rose—lunged and Vriska smashed her face with the buckler and promptly let it go. Rose slashed at Vriska's face and nicked her jawline with those wretched talons; the scratch burned like fire.
Vriska slashed at Rose in return but the vampire was unnaturally fast and evaded blow after blow, always lunging in and leaving another nick or cut on Vriska's face until Rose's talons were slick with blue and Vriska felt a spider web of fire all across her body.
Suddenly it hit Rose. For all the power she'd gained, all the ancestral memories and abilities she'd acquired, she'd been sword-fighting less than a day while the vampire had who knew how much experience at being a vampire. Vriska needed to stop thinking like a pirate and start thinking like a thief.
She threw the sword at Rose and ran the fuck away. Rose dodged it, confused. Vriska started scrambling up the palace walls until she found a secure perch atop a statue of King Jake, some fifty feet high. The vampire leapt into the air, just as easily as Olivia could, but her movements were more insectile than graceful. Those awful talons stretched out to tear Vriska's throat from her neck—
And Vriska threw the magic rope at her. It immediately bound the vampire's arms to her body and she slammed stomach first into Jake's marble cowlick. Vriska grabbed Rose's hair and started smashing her face into the statue, then threw her off the statue's head to fall to the ground.
Vriska smirked at the insect, wriggling around, caught in her web, and jumped off the statue's head like an expert diver. She made a perfect three point landing on Rose's stomach, finally succeeding at winding the vampire. "You guys are pretty resilient," said Vriska with a smirk, striding over to her sword. "I should look into becoming a rainbow drinker. It won't turn me into a monster at least." She readied to plunge it into Rose's chest; for a split second, her heart was moved by the pathetic, angry hissing of the creature, its mouth full of stolen blood. Once it had been a living princess, and now some poor idiot who didn't understand the basic difference between human and troll anatomy had tried and failed to bring her back from the dead, leaving her as something that was all hunger, with less will than an animal.
And sharp, piercing pain like nothing she'd ever felt tore through Vriska's neck, worse even than when she had died and ascended. Cobalt blood streamed down her side as Vriska felt a horrible sensation, like someone siphoning the blood right out of her body. After an agonizing minute of eternity, she was allowed to fall, hyperventilating, to the floor. Kanaya loomed over her, lips smeared with cobalt, skin glowing like moonlight, like magnesium; her eyes were like pitch compared to that glow. "I'm not going to kill you," she said. "In fact I'm going to help you."
Kanaya bit down on her own lip until a trickle of sparkling jade blood appeared. "A moment please." She straddled Rose's struggling form and pressed a kiss to her lips. Rose lay still. "Hush now my darling," she said, closing the girl's eyelids. She'd looked like a corpse before while she was moving around and fighting and eating, but now, now she was like any pretty, sleeping girl, cheeks flushed with exhaustion. "They say that a single rose has the power to bind and break a rainbow drinker. I never thought it to be true until we met." She stroked rose's face with an elegant, silver talon. "People do ridiculous things for love," she whispered, kissing Rose's forehead.
Vriska gasped for air, drowning in her own blood. "Oh dear," Kanaya sighed. "I am sorry," she said, rising up and offering an apologetic bow. "I will finish what you started and kill the Dictator. Your little ruse earlier was actually spot on; he'd planned to exile the Dersite princes and kill the Prospitian ones. And I allowed it because I wanted my darling girl back."
Kanaya knelt by Vriska's side and played with a strand of her wavy, blue-soaked hair. "Your face is a mess," she said, clicking her tongue. "When Rose died I had my contacts turn her, but my blood was necessary to complete the transformation." She bit down on her lower lip again and a sparkling green drop fell to the floor, as enticing as wine, mingling with the spreading pile of electric blue. Kanaya brought her lips to the very wound they had torn in Vriska's neck. "You should be careful what you wish for," she whispered, before kissing the torn skin, mingling their blood.
Vriska gasped, feeling as if she'd been hit with a thunderbolt, and fell still.
Author's note: Double feature!
"But Mitty, this feels rushed. You can't just introduce all this stuff at the end!" Well obviously there is going to be a sequel, duh. Besides we still have a chapter left to fix everything.
I hope you enjoyed the references to Dracula, the Bride of Frankenstein, and Nosferatu (as promised). That tag has been there since the beginning yo, this was always the twist. And happy Halloween!
