There was heat and light and sound and pain, and John's Breath became frightened and left his body. Free, no longer bound by its fleshly prison, it first spiraled around listlessly, unaccustomed to an independent existence, and then took off in a random direction. The city was bright and golden and filled with sorrow and pain. The Breath, lacking a consciousness and relying only on the most basic instincts of its former host, fled in terror. Not only from the terrible sensations, but from all that monstrous yellow. There was nothing of itself in yellow.

These sensations were quickly forgotten when it encountered the desert. A hundred million shades of blue welcomed it, and other lesser colors, and it played for many days, stirring up great storms and twisters until eventually it grew bored. The Breath came across a caravan one night filled with frightened men; they were carrying something black and hideous in their carriage and the Breath was tempted to smash it to pieces, but the stars blazed a warning; things must happen as they should.

The breath turned around. The next day it came to a low place of green stone. The women inside huddled at its passing and made a funny sign with their hands; the Breath felt it should leave them alone. A spring nearby turned into a bubbling stream, and having yet to experience water, the Breath was in awe.

It followed the stream for a long while, remarking at its fluidity. It was like itself, and yet not, lacking substance yet exerting pressure, essential to life yet capable of great destruction, and it so wonderfully reflected the sky. The Breath loved all things blue. And of course it could perceive them. It perceived everything in all directions all at once, it perceived its host back in the city and the excruciating pain it was in, and the Great Breath that had birthed it and enveloped the entire world with Itself (even now it was calling for the Breath to return to Itself and become one again), but most of all it perceived blue. Everything had some smidgen of blue in it that, to the Breath's enigmatic senses, burned brighter than the sun overhead, glaring at it with stern motherly disapproval. Who cared about Her though? She was so damn yellow.

It met some interesting people on the way, bickering about something or other. The Breath decided it liked them, and reduced itself to a gentle breeze. It played with the female's hair, wiped the sweat from her brow, and examined her face. Her lips and eyelashes blazed like fire in its perception, but more interestingly, her irises were just beginning to fill in with cobalt at the edges, and it burned against the grey like the coronas of an octuple eclipse. The Breath was beginning to appreciate subtlety.

Vriska didn't much like the wind blowing in her face like that. "Ugh! What the fuck, it was coming from behind a second ago!"

"What was?" asked Karkat, sounding disinterested.

"Are you stupid," she asked, shielding her face with her hands (the Breath curved around it), "The wind is trying to kill me over here!"

Karkat laughed at her. "I don't feel anything. Maybe the prince is blowing kisses all the way from the palace?"

"That may well be the stupidest thing you have ever said, and you have said a lot of stupid shit over the years Karkat Vantas! You need to stop reading so many stupid romance novels. I swear to God, they are all the same!" The Breath agreed with what little of her speech it understood and hurled Karkat's hat up into the air, revealing a casque of shiny aluminum paper. If the Breath had had a physical body it may have died from shock at seeing something so bright and wonderful. It snatched up the foil and flew away with it, the beautiful blue girl's cruel laughter carrying in its wake for many miles as the boy struggled to reclaim his hat.

It came to a place where the multicolored sands were so fine that when it blew on them they would become almost like mist, but the winds here were very diligent and refused to let the Breath play very much. It was forced to just breeze around and watch, until it found a place out of their way. The Breath found signs of strife; many ships were scattered around here, burning or burned out, and there was a great vorpal blob of rainbow colored glass, upon which sat a ruby colored creature with one eye holding the tattered remains of a sail.

"Nak!" said Willoughby to the wandering soul. The beast-men were much more in tune with the spiritual world than their more 'intelligent' brethren. "Nak, nak!" he called, curling a claw enticingly. The Breath drew closer and Willoughby gesticulated eastwards with fevered 'naks', then jumped off the glass blob und unfurled his sail.

The Breath caught on immediately and snatched up the sail, carrying the creature eastward. It was much tickled by the idea of granting a land creature the power of flight, and was glad it had thought of it when it perceived how funny looking the little ball of red was, dangling from the sail and nakking for its life.

Eventually Willoughby asked the lost soul to deposit him on a certain island several miles from where they had started, a great green mound where the other air-currents dared not travel. The sand swirled around it, green and silver in two perfect intertwining spirals. There were many natural caves in its side, and standing in one of them, looking confused and mildly ill, there was a troll. The breath blew Willoughby into the troll, and would have laughed at them if it had been able. Instead it just blew through the caves at high speed, making a whistling sound as it came out the other side of the island.

The Breath turned south, and continued in that direction until the sand became hard and stayed that way no matter how hard it blew on them. The Great Breath from whence it came could have shattered the ground easily; once again it implored the Breath to return. The Sun remonstrated the lesser Breath, saying that it needed to find its host for he would die without a soul. Such a bossy lady. The Breath would stay out a bit longer, just to spite her.

Eventually it found a huge camp of colors; not nearly as vibrant as that of the Painted Desert, but still just as wonderful to its perceptions. It made the cloths flutter and shake for its amusement until it noticed a white figure dressed in red and purple. Purple had much blue in it, and even red had a little, but white was one of the better colors, for it had a touch of everything inside. It observed the figure for a while.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" asked Dave, wrapping his cape tightly around himself against the sudden wind.

Nepeta shook her head sadly. "We relied on him so much Dave! He kept complaining he was overworked, but we never knew how much he actually did until he was gone! Without him around it was just a matter of time before the machine broke down."

Aradia cleared her throat. "I must respectfully disagree. Your majesty—"

"Hold your fucking horses," said Dave just a bit more tersely than he normally would have. "First of all, I ain't no majesty. I may be the fucking chief of some war band of crazies hopped up on sugar but that does not warrant a 'majesty'."

"With the king dead—"

Dave held up his hand. "I have never been in line for no succession. Equius is king now, of all twenty of us survivors, and however many merchants happened to be running around—fuck do you know how much power I'd have to give up to be king now? I changed my mind; you can call me Honorable Tyranny."

Aradia sighed. "Your Honorable Tyranny—"

"Girl I was just playing come on; don't call me that bullshit clown title. And stop acting so damn formal I know that you're just a big old ball of crazy under that maid uniform—" he slapped his forehead as Aradia developed a scandalized look while Nepeta flushed a bright olive hue and beamed, turning her head between the two of them. "That's not what I meant, shut up both of you. Aradia, don't be mad. Give us one of your big crazy smiles now."

Aradia twitched slightly, holding back her anger, and stretched her face into a huge grimace that revealed all her teeth; they were perfect by human standards, shamefully flat by trollish ones. "I think," she said, with faux enthusiasm, "that the machine was sabotaged."

Nepeta gasped. "But who would do something like that?"

To Aradia, Dave said, "Why you gotta do everything I say? Don't smile if you don't mean it." She gave an exasperated groan. To Nepeta, Dave said, "the Beforans." Then counting off his fingers, he continued, "the Alternians. The Prospitians. The Patriarch of the Church of the Sufferer. All the little beast-man provinces wanting independence. The real question is who wouldn't sabotage us?" He straightened his sunglasses. "All that said I think Nepeta's right. None of them could have gotten close enough to the stupid thing."

Aradia screamed, clutching at her hair. "You are impossible!"

"There we go!" he said, snapping his fingers. "You're finally letting your real self out. To celebrate I'm gonna make you both duchesses. Duchii?"

Aradia raised an eyebrow. "I thought you weren't going to be king, Dave."

Dave smirked. "I'm the Grand Highblood now and I own all the Dersites so I can do what I want."

The Breath grew bored; it had not yet developed a taste for political intrigue and just wanted to see bright and colorful things doing stuff. These things were certainly colorful enough, but not doing much of anything besides talking. The Breath struck them with itself, whipping itself up into a stiff breeze and then a wind, until it whipped away Dave's delicious red cape and revealed the exquisite colors of the war-hammer.

The breath felt an intense warmth from it, as if it and the hammer were meant to belong to the same host, though it could not conceive of why it felt that way. There was a familiarity to the hammer though, as if it had once been held by someone very close to its host. Once again the sun beat down on the Breath to remind it of its responsibility. The Breath in truth didn't want any of that, it wanted to be free. It liked not having a host. So what if that stupid meaty shell died? What did that even mean?

The Breath blew away towards the southwest now, 'til the great golden eye finally moved on in frustration and the stars winked into being. Where once they had been amused by its antics however, they were now quite annoyed, and they had many more pupils with which to glare than the sun. 'Man the fuck up,' the stars seemed to be saying. 'You have shit to do.' The Breath ignored them, but felt oddly sad at disappointing them.

The Breath found the River of Dew and Glass where it curved northward again. It was in awe, having difficulty reconciling the white swirling expanse with the calm stream it had encountered all that time ago (what was time? It didn't know). What's more, there were shining clear stones in the water, and it wanted them, but was not strong enough to part the waters and contented itself to watch. Eventually the river emptied into a dark marsh, a huge expanse of lazy water from which rose towering mangrove trees, unique among the vegetation of the far South for having green foliage rather than indigo. Their roots and branches tangled so much that rarely, if ever, did the full light of the sun penetrate. Here it would be safe from those judging eyes in the sky, it thought. It didn't notice how it had diminished over time; where once the Breath had been a massive thing, laying all about itself with whirlwinds and gales; now it was just a breeze, barely making ripples in the blackish water. But that had been so long ago; maybe it had only dreamed of being strong?

Some fat yellow creatures swimming just beneath the surface perceived the wind and followed it, their bloated forms slicing easily through the water. It raced with them a while, and growing more excited they breached like dolphins, jumping high into the air in an attempt to touch the Breath, blowing bubbles with excitement. Their saliva was a vibrant blue, and the Breath bounced the bubbles around like a child trying to juggle until they popped from its exertions. It passed some other salamanders on occasion, standing awkwardly on squat yellow legs atop the protruding mangrove roots. They bowed in their secret custom, as their people revere the Great Breath above all others. Hands held close to their sides, the salamanders bent themselves double to touch the ground with their snout, burying it in mud if need be. They looked ridiculous, and yet, they did not. How would anyone look when confronted with a piece of their God?

Distracted, the Breath almost didn't notice the great groaning sound up ahead, and the swell of water as something rose from the depths. When it did, it wished for a mouth with which to gasp in joy. The most colorful thing it had ever seen, growing huger and more brilliant with every passing second, rising up and past the trees, snapping off whole branches with its passing. The Breath left the Salamanders behind and went after its new toy, damn the sun and stars' disapproval.

Dangling beneath the radiant ball of color was a dull brown seedpod filled with water, letting out an enormous amount of the liquid. The Breath pushed against it with its little remaining strength, wondering how something so huge could fly. It pushed the seedpod a long, long way, all the way back towards the desert. The seed released a great deal of water, but it showed no sign of stopping.

Down below, a mighty trumpet-beast honked its twin trunks; a helium seedpod in the desert! Never in its hundred years had it seem such a sight.

From its back, Equius watched in amazement, and checked his map. Sure enough, the ancient piece of parchment depicted such sights in the swamps to the south. He'd taken it for artistic folly and speculation, like the engravings of sand-serpents in archaic maps of the Painted Desert, but here it was. And sure enough, the thing was heading north while he was heading east. He asked the girls to alter their direction, and they turned the trumpet-beast's heavy head with telekinesis; much easier than regular steering. The salamanders had something Equius needed.

The Breath wanted to bother the new interesting creatures on the ground, but came to the realization that they were heading where it had just come from, and it did not want to go back. Its strength was failing already and it could no longer exert much effort on the seedpod. It followed the thing instead, higher and higher, no matter that it was getting that much closer to the sun's domain. They climbed so high, both the sun and the stars were visible at once, and they reprimanded the Breath, but it could barely understand them anymore; it was about to blow out. And suddenly, the great colorful airbag burst.

The Breath would have dissipated from the impact if not for the gentle embrace of the Great Breath. It held the much weakened Breath close, reinvigorating it, filling it with Itself until it was strong again. The Breath gained some knowledge; this had happened before and would do so again, time without end. It was a natural process, and it would never truly lose itself. If the Breath could have whimpered however, it would have. It did not want to be reabsorbed. It wanted to go on with its unique existence. Not a part of some whole, but whatever it was right now.

The Great Breath understood, seemed amused even, for what the lesser Breath wanted was exactly the same as what the lights in the sky had been pressing it to do. There was only one way for it to go on, it explained; to rejoin with its host. And even then, one day John would die, and his Breath would return to Itself; that was the way of the world. Perhaps one day the Great Breath would want to be human again and send out that piece of Itself once more. The now much rejuvenated Breath agreed with solemnity. Its own existence would once again be bound up to that fleshly prison, but it would still be free, in a way.

The Great Breath hurled the lesser one down at the golden city of Prospit. Now it was a gale, much stronger than it had ever been, and so blue that some screamed the sky was falling. It surged through the streets, going everywhere at once until it found its host, tearing the Dersite banners as it went, though it knew not why.

There was a creature that was close. She had been there nearly every day of the host's life and was so similar, but she already had a Breath, and something else as well, something green and black and blazing bright. It stroked her long black hair in reassurance and went on its merry way. She smiled for a second, and then someone called out in recognition and she ran with all her strength, resolving to cut it short.

There was another being that he almost didn't recognize, for his hard black shell had become grey and splotchy. He was terrified when he saw the breath, for the Seer had told him this day would come. The Breath chased him a ways, trying only to scare him, and he fled inside his house. The Breath dealt it a massive blow and the foundations cracked, but they held.

It beheld a being so strange that it could not help but stop and gawk. One eye of his was a dim red, but the other blazed like a thousand suns in its blueness. It had been so long since the Breath had thought about this creature that it had almost forgotten it. The Breath swirled around Sollux. He glared back determinedly. The Breath left.

It found a cart with a great deal of somethings inside, covered with a tarp, but only barely. They were long and round and glittered a shiny gold. For the first time, the Breath felt rage, and smashed the cart to pieces, the burden-beast and driver running off screaming in separate directions. The force of the blow opened a nearby window and then—


John woke up coughing, lungs on fire. He could not say whether he had been awakened by the sound of deep sonorous clanging outside, like a church bell had been dropped from a great height, or by the excruciating pain in his chest like his lungs had been filled far beyond their capacity and somehow not burst. He could scarcely have imagined the pain he was experiencing now, and yet somehow, he never felt stronger. This, despite a certain lightness on his right side. He lifted his hands, and was confused when one of them did not appear. He looked around, and saw that his arm was missing just below the elbow.

John grimaced, and felt tightness on the right side of his face. He tried to touch it his right hand, grew frustrated, and stood up, looking for a mirror. There was a small one on the nightstand, cracked and tarnished with age. John frowned. Even without his glasses, he could see there was a thick ugly scar with ropy tendrils snaking across the right side of his face and his eye was glazed and unfocused, a sickly pale now. He set it down and sat on the bed a while, trying not to think.

Someone walked into the room. They made no noise and just stood in the doorway tentatively, as if waiting for John to make a move. John knew there was a doorway in the back of the room opposite the window because he could feel a slight draft coming from it. The person had made absolutely no sound, but their slight carriage, possibly Carapacian, was diverting the draft ever so slightly. Without thinking, John said, "I had a dream."

The person spoke. "Yes, Highness?" Slightly frantic, male, definitely Carapacian from the way his chitinous lips clicked together. John had never noticed it before, but he realized it was true. Somehow he was getting a lot more information from sounds and sensations than he had any right to. "I dreamed that I went everywhere and was a part of everything. I had perfect freedom, but it was like a child's freedom. No responsibility because I didn't know any better. I almost died, a complete final death with no coming back, just to avoid it. Honestly I'm embarrassed, even if it was just a dream."

John tried to grin, but it came out as more of a grimace. He turned to look at his host. He was a small, lower class Carapation with tombstone teeth and a black shell, wearing white. "I'm sorry, but you know who I am and I don't know you. What's your name?" he asked.

"Warweary Villein," he chittered nervously, as if he didn't want John to recognize him. John tilted his head and frowned. Carapacian naming customs were obscure enough without having to deal with an alias. They were all given a true name at birth known only to family, and a pair of initials to present to the world, conforming to their current role in society. All the same, he had given away a lot. Warweary indicated that he had seen war, obviously, and villain that he was a free man, but there had never been serfdom in Prospit.

"You're a defector?" John asked.

The Villein jumped, startled, and nodded. "But I am loyal to the king of Prospit sire. You are him."

John nodded, not in confirmation, but in acknowledgment. "You want to keep that under your hood for awhile?" He reached up and patted his head in confusion. John couldn't help but chuckle. This guy was so odd; even a former Dersite should understand common turns of phrase. It was as if Modern Trollish was not his native language, which was absurd. Carapacians had only ever been from one or another of the twin cities, and the cities had always spoken Trollish. "I meant that you should keep it a secret."

"Yes," he said, nodding frantically. "I have. Not a soul has known you are here for a month. That would be bad. Yes, very." A month? Shit. "Sire? Why do you wake up now?"

John thought for a bit, scrunching up his face, trying not to think about it. "I think," he said, slowly, "I ascended."

The Carapacian nodded as if he had expected as much. "There was a great wind outside, all throughout the city. Blue, strong, dangerous. Smashed a cart, smashed the window."

"You seem to be losing command of your Trollish," John muttered, thinking about Terezi. When the Seer had ascended, every psychically vulnerable troll in the city had had terrible nosebleeds and night terrors. Maybe she'd experienced something like he had. "What about Rose?"

The Villein made a pained noise and handed him something. A lock of silver-white hair wrapped in a lilac ribbon. John held it tight as the floor gave way beneath his stomach. Damn. He'd only known the girl such a little while. He'd liked her. He almost wished he'd done more than just like her, but that was just the stress and the pain and the trauma making up things that had never been there. All the same, he wished he could have died in her place. He resolved not to cry.

John noticed that indeed there was broken glass on the floor. Out the window there was a smashed cart, and dozens of golden tubes scattered across the street. Soon, people would stop being frightened and run out to collect it, if it was real. He had a sinking feeling that it was. "I want to go outside."

In a few minutes he too was dressed in a white cloak and some comfortable sandals. He and the Villein inspected the wreckage, with the dark little Carapacian helping John walk. Though he felt like he could run a marathon, his muscles had atrophied, though not as much as they should have, he noticed.

John's heart sank. The pipes littering the street had been mercilessly chopped from his organ. They'd cut the heart right out of the palace and sold off its arteries. He picked one up. It was long enough to use as a cane, and even curved at one end where it had once molded along a wall. The other end had been cut at an angle and was noticeably sharp. The Villein chirped, pointing upwards. Dozens of eyes were watching them from the upper storey windows of the slums. The pair quickly retreated.

For the next few hours, John and the Villein watched the ensuing melee from the spire of the Villein's house as the Carapacian explained the recent goings on to him. John sighed at the treachery of the Ascendant Regent. He was glad that Jade had escaped the palace, though who knew where she had gone? He was sure he'd glimpsed her during his ascension, but where? He could see the delicate spires of the palace, topped with perfect golden spheres. One of them was cracked open like an egg. Apparently his mother had set a trap off in her room when the assassins came for her. No one knew if she was alive or dead.

Down below there were people of all races running around and fighting over John's wonderful pipes. He never realized how much he loved the organ until he saw a troll get one of her horns smashed off with it. He'd never thought that people in his own beloved Prospit could behave this way. He wanted to blame Derse, but he found he couldn't. A month wasn't enough to degenerate people like this. There had always been suffering in the golden city, but it had been swept under the rug to help maintain the metropolitan image. If John was going to be king, and he felt an increased urgency to become so, he would need to shoulder a great deal of responsibility. He wasn't ready.

But he was ready to learn. "Tomorrow," he said, "You're going to find me a job near here." The Villein gasped and shook his head emphatically. "But tonight," John interrupted, putting his one hand on the Carapacian's chitinous shoulder, "we have a prophecy to fulfill."


The Ascendant Regent was in agony. He rang a bell, summoning his butler, and commanded him to bring him some more ointment. Somehow he had become infected with a fungus that ate away at his shell and left him covered in weeping sores. It had reached a very…sensitive area. His wife had left him when she learned of his betrayal of the royal family. Didn't she understand that he had done it for her? Now they could live comfortably en perpetua, instead of waiting for the royal brats to kick them out of the limelight eventually. The Dersites had given him a bloody Viceroyalty! And what did she say? "Curse God and die."

He looked up at the palace. The smoke was still rising from Queen Jane's tower. She'd chosen him personally to oversee the growth of her children and her kingdom. How disappointed she must be, he thought, to see it all handed over to her eldest son's murderers. He scratched at the side of his face until it bled. Curse God and die. Where the fuck was his ointment!?

He stepped outside, and instantly sensed something was wrong. He cautiously made his way around a corner, careful not to upset any of the new purple banners (they go so well with yellow, he thought), and saw his butler impaled to the wall with a short stabbing spear.

The Regent ran back into his study where he kept a variety of guns mounted to the wall, and chose the largest and most deadly looking he could find. He inspected carefully and loaded a magazine with precise expertise. Prospit controlled some substantial sulfur mines but had little access to wood; the Dersite landscape was littered with ancient charcoal from the legendary cherub attack, but had few of the other necessary minerals for black powder, especially not sulfur. Naturally, neither city wanted the other to have access to both. Ammunition was therefore expensive as Hell; he needed to keep his guns in good shape. He turned, ready to go out and face whatever may be coming—

And was blown back into a wall by a wind that was more like a massive fist. In stepped two figures all in white; one crouching low, holding a quiver full of javelins, the other wielding a heavy pipe. No, it couldn't be, he thought. Those blue eyes were too intense to be the poor laughing boy they'd had killed. They, not he, he wanted to insist, but those eyes would brook no argument, he knew.

"Nice to see you again," said John with no trace of humor in his voice. "Goodbye." The Regent's head burst like an overripe melon. Somewhere in the city, John was sure, Terezi was laughing her ass off.


A while later, John stood outside the Regent's mansion, shaking. He'd liked the bastard, but a bastard was a bastard. Right? He'd never killed anyone before. God forgive me, he thought, as a tear dripped from his good eye, but a king needs to make the hard decisions. He lifted the pipe to his mouth and blew. A stream of blue streaked out accompanied by a hard, flat, mournful sound. He'd wondered if the thing would still make noise. He took comfort in that as the mansion crumbled. The Villein scrawled something on the street in Old High Trollish. Roughly translated, it said "thus always to tyrants."


Author's note: You didn't think I'd actually killed John? Generously speaking we are over halfway through this fic. Everyone just needs to fins their treasures and go the fuck home. Barely mentioned Karkat and Vriska; I promise the next chapter is quite long and will focus on them. So far I'd only written for stoic Aradia(bot if you will), but the moment she cracked that smile in Wake I knew we were destined to be….I didn't just say that.

I'd written up to chapter seven before I started posting here, and chapter eight is on the way! I've got some other fics started though, for y'all to read in the interim, which I'll start uploading once we're caught up as it were.