John had gotten a job at a metal working factory, a low building, newly built, which is to say that it was nearly a hundred years old. It was made of irregular river stones, dozens of shades of yellow and tawny brown, and looked a bit like a church without spires from the outside. Inside it was cramped and ugly, or at least the working floor was. The offices upstairs were very nice and well appointed with art and fine furniture. The higher ups had watched him look around when he first arrived for the interview and probably felt very self-satisfied at seeing this rube gawk at their riches. He was laughing inside, of course.

John's employers were dubious at first because of his lack of an arm, but he'd always been unusually strong, and augmented by his newly ascended Breath powers, there was little reason not to take him. His exact job was not smelting or smithing or anything glamorously dangerous and physical, however. He ran a machine that pressed things into sheets of metal. For now it was the Dersite banner being stamped onto tin plates, to later be painted purple and riveted to buildings. It made him angry. However, the machine was literally called a cliché, so that almost made it worth it.

He was not working the machine at this exact moment however. He was being glared at by a very surly co-worker. "Uh, first of all, you're awful and I hate you. I just want to get that out of the way right now—um, why are you laughing at me?" John was not in fact, laughing at the big Taurus, whose name was, appropriately enough, Tavros (of course, Tavros was boyishly slim compared to Equius, but then so were most trumpet-beasts). He was a full head taller than John, and quite a bit wider, though not necessarily more muscular. Tavros had a rack of horns so big John wondered how he could move around at all, but he wasn't laughing at that. He had a heavy iron nose-ring, presumably to make him look tough, but John wasn't laughing at that either (well, not anymore). He certainly wasn't laughing at that incredibly unfitting voice, high, quiet, and cracked like a young teenager's, starting and stopping without rhyme or reason. Certainly not that.

No, John was laughing at the way that all the metal dust in the factory reflected and refracted the blue spectrum into a goddamn psychedelic light-show the likes of which have not been seen by mortal eyes until now. His senses were heightening with every passing day, particularly his perception of the color blue, as if the crippling of his body had expanded his spirit.

He reached out with his one hand and flicked Tavros's lapel, releasing a cascade of the stuff that swirled and floated in a luminescent—

John returned to lucidity when the air currents informed him a trollish fist flying straight for his face, and shoved himself back with a burst of blue just in time. The troll took another swing, and John curled the Breath around his fist, catching it in a web of blue only he could see. He put his hand on the fist so as to not give himself away, and shoved hard, knocking the troll to the floor. "You human," he struggled for a word, "motherfucker! I hate you!"

John smiled. "Are you requisitioning me?"

Tavros flushed a deep chocolaty brown that stood out in high contrast to all the ambient blue. John snickered. Tavros pushed himself up, backing away to his machine. "You humans all think that just because a troll doesn't like you," he said, picking up an iron bar he'd been shaping, "it means he's trying to, to, fuck you—"

"So to be clear, that's a no?" John said, rubbing his hand through his newly bleached hair. It felt so odd being blond. Tavros hurled the bar as if it were a spear; John side-stepped and the thing embedded itself into a wooden support beam. Wooden beams in a metal-working factory. John would have to come down hard on this place when he was king. "It's too bad," John said, "I'm finding it kind of emotionally fulfilling to make you angry."

Tavros blushed harder and hurled another bar, which John dodged once again. He became vaguely aware that he was using the Breath to push himself around. Once it had taken all of his effort to do it; now there was a perpetual, Breath-augmented spring in his step. It was becoming increasingly difficult to stay focused, however. Only a few days ago he'd been able to walk in here and work without incident and now he was spazzing out about metal flakes—

Speaking of flaking, another iron bar whizzed past his face on the right side, and he felt a sudden, sobering chill. What the fuck was he doing? He could get killed doing this. John looked all around, at the low stone ceiling barely held up by wooden beams, the dozens of machines, the faces, trollish and human, but mostly Carapacian staring at him, some angry, some eager, some frightened. He felt he'd learned all he could from working here. It was time to move on. Completely unceremoniously, John turned on his heel and left.

He stumbled as he reached the outside, seeing a cart driving by. The back of it was covered with a white sheet, but a tiny foot was sticking out the end of it. A plague had hit Prospit just recently. Well, the numbers weren't high enough yet to count as a plague. An illness. People would just waste away to nothing, displaying symptoms like anemia combined with a certain kind of madness. Hallucinations, phantom pains, and hearing things no one else can hear. The disease took people's minds, leaving behind pale, thin corpses.

Even so, once he cart dwindled into nothing in the distance, the streets of Prospit were a comforting sight; there was very little blue anywhere in the city proper, except for those awful, loud Dersite banners that seemed to be trying to have their way with his corneas. But they were few and far between here in the slums, so in general he felt he could breathe properly. He took the long way back to the home he shared with WV, as John had started calling him, not wanting to face the jittery creature after having so suddenly quit the job he'd fought so hard to get.

John had learned something, he thought. He learned that the people viewed the change in regime with displeasure, but not open antagonism. The royal family had been respected, even liked, but not beloved, likely due to its isolation from the people. Excepting a few carriage rides and parades, he had hardly ever left the palace, and he hadn't ever complained, not really, because the palace was a city unto itself. But now he wondered how long the Regent had been in Derse's pocket, and wished he'd left him alive. To interrogate. He wasn't feeling guilty. A king's duty was to execute traitors.

Navigating the maze of streets and alleyways was not the ordeal it had been even a few days ago. Although the towers and buildings were tightly knit here in the slums, rising to the sky and obscuring the sun, it wasn't dark. The buildings reflected gentle golden light wherever he went, and there were no shadows, except in doorways and window frames, crouching in dark alleys and hiding amongst the gothic bulk. Could this city simply have a single, solitary building the emphasized function over form? Everything was a work of art, and only the poor state of the cobbles and the thousand-thousand lines of drying laundry suspended hundreds of feet up like a spider's web gave indication that this was a place where people lived. John found that all the yellow was a trap for his mind as much as the blue was, but a different kind.

Because even with his enhanced senses, he still wound up taking the dark turn into a dead-end alley. When he turned, there was Tavros.

John slapped his forehead. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm…having trouble being myself lately. I had a pretty bad accident, if you couldn't tell, and it messed me up. I hardly even know what I'm saying anymore. Everything is so fucking blue—"

"You used the Breath," Tavros announced, eyes wide. "You, uh, threw me around with it. I could see wisps of blue coming from your feet when you moved. I can, uh, actually, see them right now," John looked down and muttered a curse before dismissing the Breath and falling the half-inch to his feet.

"No I didn't," said John authoritatively. "You're hallucinating. It's all the metal dust in the air, it's bad for you. You should complain to the city. Start a petition. We'll get that place shut down."

"Teach me how to use it," said Tavros, a determined look on his face. "Or I'll expose you. You're the, uh, the prince, aren't you? I'll tell everyone."

"I could just kill you instead," John said, trying his best to look menacing. "It'll be easy." The air all around him shifted and started to rotate, faster and faster until it formed a whirling cyclone, buffeting Tavros with yellow sand and streaks of blue. John, in the center, was unaffected. "Do you even understand all the things I could do to you right now?"

Nervously, Tavros said, "Are you requisitioning me?"

John snorted, and the cyclone dissipated. "Okay that was good. What do you want to know?"


There is a house in Prospit which is older than the city. It is dwarfed by the magnificent spires and domes, nigh on insignificant next to them with its pitiful one story, its construction emphasizing function over form, leaving it ugly and stunted, a tiny blight on the great golden apple, yet it seemed to cast an impossible shadow over them. Every year which passed in the golden city crept, dying, into this little black house, so that over time it became a cemetery, a coffin for the countless centuries long passed since its creation.

The duality amused Sollux. That's why he'd bought it.

Well, not the only reason. How could he dare call himself a Gemini if he didn't have at least two? What most people didn't know was that the city extended as far downward as it did upward, and the little black tomb of a house was the only way in.

Sollux took his staff in hand. The sleek black rod was topped with the sign of his aspect, that monstrous alien skull with the dead, empty eyes. It thrummed with the steady, inexorable power of itself. Then he straightened his black cowl, taking care to hide the iron collar around his neck. It had been welded shut, and could never be broken. But he was free now. The lights all dimmed and a trapdoor opened. He descended, leaving the house in darkness.

The light of his eyes glinted off the ugly orange stones of the stairway. The electric charge that he built up when using his powers spread to his clothes, and his cloak, a green so dark it was almost black, cut like the wings of some enormous insect, spread out behind him as if ready to take flight. He could if he wanted to. But it would be best to keep her waiting.


Jade sat on a stone plinth. The room was ancient and thick with dust and the cobwebs of long dead spiders. Her little green flame was the only source of light, and the effect it had on the orange stone all around was quite hideous. She wondered what time it was. There was no way to tell down here with no sun and no clocks. She'd always been terrible with keeping time however. Perhaps she was early? She tried to expand the flame, but she could never muster up the same level of power that she'd exhibited on that first day when she left the palace.

Silver mounting glinting in the emerald light, her father's blunderbuss seemed like some ghostly instrument. Jade had not been able to fire it once. She'd hoped that with it, she'd be able to get the people on her side. But it hadn't been enough, not without the ability to use it. The people had seen her holding the gun she couldn't use, her crudely chopped hair, and general disheveledness, and thought the kingdom lost. They needed a true leader, not a scraggly aspiring witch.

But he could teach her. Sollux, the former palace mage. No one had known where he'd run off to after the fall of the palace, but after nearly a month of searching, he'd come to her. And now, here she was. Waiting.

Jade might have fallen asleep before he showed up, because her green light was entirely replaced with purple. She stiffened, having associated the color with her enemies for so long, but then noticed red and blue at the edges of her vision, and realized the color was a blending of the two coming from the same source. Jade leapt out of her seat. "Sollux!" she shouted, running to her old acquaintance, arms outstretched.

"No," he said, just before the hug made contact. She stopped, looking vaguely disappointed. "I'm sorry," she said, "it's just nice to see a friendly face after all this time."

"I guess," he muttered. "Let's cut the small-talk though. What can you do?"

Jade cupped her hands and concentrated. Her hair built up a charge and began standing up, coiling and twisting into a black halo. Finally, a ball of sparks exploded into being, and another green flame grew into shape between her palms. "I was able to do so much more on the first day," she muttered. "It was much bigger and there was lightning and stuff. Now all I can do is this sick looking thing."

"No it's good," said Sollux. "Green fire's actually much hotter than other colors."

"I know that," Jade snapped. "I'm not stupid! But I want to be stronger."

"Okay," said Sollux. "The first thing you need to do is sit the fuck down because you are way too close to me right now."

Jade realized that she was holding her flame only a few inches from Sollux's face, and she giggled nervously and sat back down. "So, teach me to control fire!"

Sollux groaned. "Your aspect isn't fire," he snapped. "You're Space. It's actually one of the most versatile aspects, and way better than a lesser power like fire."

Jade raised an eyebrow. "How can you tell?"

"I'm Doom," Sollux explained. At Jade's blank expression, he swore under his breath and said, "Doom means destiny."

"I thought Light meant Destiny," said Jade.

"It does," he acknowledged, "in a slightly different way. All of the Aspects interact with each other on a fundamental level, and overlap in mysterious ways." With the end of his rod he drew a twelve pointed star in the dust. At each point, there were some vague squiggles.

"What are those?" asked Jade. "Is it trollish?'

"Are you stupid? It's the symbols of the aspects!"

Jade stuck her tongue out at him. "It's not my fault you can't draw!"

"Shut the fuck up, I drew it fast," he snapped. "Look, it doesn't matter. Each line symbolizes all the ways the aspects interact with each other. Which ones are opposed, which ones cooperate, and which ones ignore each other completely, which is slightly different from not having a line at all."

"I don't see fire," said Jade. "There's only twelve Aspects?" She raised her eyebrow.

"Fuck. Nobody cares about fire okay! I mean, technically there's 108 Aspects and that's a number of major cosmic significance across all possible realities in existence, but only twelve Aspects actually matter in the grand scheme of things. They're the primary forces binding the universe in place, turning the wheels of the mechanism of existence. Everything is made out of these twelve. You can't make things out of fire. Fire only does one thing, burn." Jade nodded as if she understood. Sollux knew he had only confused her further and damned himself for a terrible teacher.

"But what about Breath?" she asked. "Isn't it just air? I mean we need it to live but other things don't need it to exist. And rocks and stuff aren't alive, are they?"

"That's a good question," said Sollux. "They all have non-indicative names, because otherwise each one would just be a long list and it would be confusing as hell because so much stuff overlaps. Breath is air, but not just air. It's the act of breathing, life-giving motion. Life is simply the state of being alive, but Breath is the part of a thing that experiences it. Life is probably the vaguest and most nebulous aspect, so it's good that neither of us has it." Sollux scuffed out the illustration with his foot. "It doesn't matter though. This is all mage stuff. I showed your brother a little bit and it helped him for sure, but he's not like me, and you're way different than either of us. You're a witch."

Jade nodded, hand on her chin. "I was beginning to suspect."

"That's what witches do, they suspect. They have power without understanding. Your brother had inherent understanding. Me, I had to work my ass off to get where I am, but now I'm stronger than either of you." Jade giggled. Damn, he'd been trying to piss her off. "No," he snapped, "you're supposed to feel angry. Mages know. Witches feel."

"How—?"

"What the fuck did I just say?" he snapped, eyes beginning to flash alternating colors.

Jade stood up and stamped her foot. "It's not my fault you're such a shitty teacher!"

"Not my fault you're such a shitty witch!" Sollux countered, beginning to crackle.

"Fuck off! I'll go save the kingdom myself!" Jade was starting to crackle as well, but gold and green rather than red and blue. A stray bolt struck the ground and set off another green flame. The walls and floor of the room seemed to be moving, distorting. Sollux grinned. This would be fun.


"Who the fuck are these people?" John muttered under a friendly smile. WV chittered nervously next to him, head twitching left and right in a panic. The small back room of their shared home was now stuffed with fifteen or so people in addition to John, the Carapacian, and Tavros.

The troll, looking a bit browner than was the usual, muttered. "Other people, with our, uh, affinity. They would also um, like to learn."

"I figured," John said, still smiling, examining the eager face of a young muskox-horned troll, floating on inch off the ground. A human girl in the back saw him looking in her direction and began juggling marbles with her Breath. "Why did you invite them is the question?"

"I want to blow things down with my mind," said a lanky, blank-eyed boy near the back.

"I want to kill Dersites," said a pretty yellowblood with a broken horn and a twitchy eye, "like the man who killed the Regent!"

"We're patriots," said the muskox-horns, firing off a stiff salute.

"Glub," explained a burly Salamander in black robes.

"Wait," said John, "what was that last one?"

"Glub?" the Salamander raised its staff.

"No," he snapped, "the one before!"

"At your service, Majesty!" the troll said.

"Sweet Merciful Sufferer you told these people I'm the Heir!?" John shouted at Tavros, poking him in the chest with the sharp end of his pipe, drawing a pinprick of chocolaty blood.

"No!" Tavros shouted, just as the other troll said "yes Majesty!"

"I didn't know!" said the girl with the marbles.

"Fuckin' killer," said the blank-eyed boy.

The Salamander popped a spit-bubble.

The yellowblood let out a happy giggle that became a cruel snort. "Next he'll tell us he's the one who killed the regent!" She grinned, lolling her head. "…did you?"

WV nodded vigorously. John slapped his forehead, forgetting that he was still holding the pipe and giving himself a vicious smack with the knob of his improvised weapon. "Okay fine! I'm the prince! I killed the Regent! Are you happy now?"

"No," said the marble girl cheerfully.

"Not until we've reclaimed our city and seen you safely restored to the throne," said muskox-horns, just as the yellowblood said "fuck that, I just wanna have your wigglers!"

"Don't you want to be king, sire?" asked the overly patriotic troll, sounding dubious for the first time since he'd spoken. "Don't you want to restore Prospit?"

John opened his mouth to speak and hesitated. He sat down and thought for a while, ignoring the confused stares of the gathered Breath enabled.

Finally, John spoke. "No," he said. "I don't want to be king of Prospit if it's the same Prospit that it was before. We're not just going to take back this city, we're going to improve it."


"So let's not be one of those overly affectionate moirallegiances that are like, hugging all the time and papping each other in public and shit like that," said Karkat.

Vriska made a noise and stuck her tongue out. "Gross. Some people have noooooooo shame, I swear! If you start causing a scene in public I'ma just take you aside to some alley or something and pap your brains out in private."

"Hey," Karkat snapped, "what makes you think you'll be doing the papping all of the sudden? Ten minutes ago you were practically begging me to pap you. Besides, you need it more! I scream and shout and stuff to get my aggression out, you do it because you're a mentally damaged sociopath."

Vriska tossed her hair into his face. "Please Karkat, you are no emotional rock. Besides, what century are we even living in? Who says that just one partner has to pap and one has to be papped? Times are changing. Carapacians can own land, and two humans of the same gender can get married. We can pap each other if the situation requires!"

Karkat's eyelid twitched. "Like…simultaneously?"

Vriska paled. "Do you…want to try?"

With an awkward half-smile, Karkat said, "okay?" and raised his hand to her face. Trembling slightly, she did likewise.

Then she stopped. "By the Sufferer, aren't you gonna shoosh me first? Be a gentleman!" Karkat blushed and muttered an apology, then began to hum the soothing noise. Eventually, the two made simultaneous contact. It was awesome.


The pair trekked down the broken tunnel, taking care to make as little noise as possible. The giddiness of a new moirallegience and simulface-pap passes quickly when deep inside a nest of horrors beneath the crumbling corpse of a city. They did not encounter angels again for quite a while, thought once a bright white light filled a side corridor and the pair had to hide among the jagged rocks again. Karkat cut his palm open and swore. Vriska bit down on her upper lip, breathing hard. Her cap started sparking again.

Karkat could hear singing in his head and tried not to think about anything too loudly. The voice in his head was somehow deep and bestial. He retreated deeper into the rocks, and placed a comforting hand on Vriska's cheek. She leaned into it unconsciously as they watched the creature emerge.

This angel was once again different, and Karkat surmised that it must be a more mature version of the ones he'd fought at the beach. In addition to being easily two stories long, it had a long, animalistic head with a frill spikes across the back of it, a bit like a dragon, though like all the other angels they'd met its exact features were indeterminate. It did seem to have a mouth, with a long blue tongue inside. The wormy tail had thickened into a muscular limb like a crocodile's, that dragged behind it for balance, and it had developed crude two-clawed legs to pull itself through the tunnels. It extended itself as it entered their tunnel, and had to stoop for the comparatively low ceiling. Its wings were not only much larger than its younger kinsmen, but there were six of them, which it used to cover its middle area almost like clothing. For some reason, Karkat felt that he would be much happier if he never had to see what was underneath. Sure, it might just have been to protect its body, but angels didn't follow real biological rules. They were just angry minds with no real substance to them. A protective covering for a real animal, he was certain, was just a sheath for something horrible.

The angel stomped its way in the direction the trolls had come from and paid them no mind. After ten minutes, its light had completely disappeared and their eyes had readjusted to the darkness. Vriska gave Karkat a very quick hug and ran out into the tunnel.


The tunnel did not change, but it seemed to grow larger. The ragged ridges of broken stone seemed to grow taller, and sharper, like shark teeth. Eventually, it got light enough to see without the glow of Karkat's weapon. The light was coming from the very end of the tunnel—who knew how far off—and it was the harsh pearlescent glow of the angels. Vriska called a halt and looked at the map. "We're going the right way," she said.

Karkat nodded. "Is that the Grotto of Despair or whatever?"

Vriska shook her head. "There's a big central hub just before it," she said. "That's what's at the end of the tunnel."

"And it's probably full of angels," Karkat finished.

Vriska rolled her shoulders and popped her neck. "Fuck'em. Let's go."

The central hub was, in fact, a hub. Like a the spokes of a huge wheel, a dozen tunnels led off in all directions. The high vaulted ceiling was shrouded in darkness, despite the blinding light of the sleeping angels.

They lay all around, and though the combined total of their glowing not-flesh erased all shadows in the vicinity, their milky pearl light seemed dimmed in comparison to other angels they'd seen, and their skin greyer. The thoughts and images here were less coherent, muttered whispers in their mental language, strange scenes with no easily defined shapes or events. Is this what all dreams looked like to outsiders, the trolls wondered, or were the dreams of angels just that alien to mortal minds? Probably, Karkat thought, it was both.

Vriska's hat glowed like a halo as it repelled their mental advances, and she was skittish and angry. Karkat put his hand on her shoulder and led her around, taking a long meandering path that kept them far from any angels, or as far as they could get. All the same, she had her knife in hand, and he had his sickle, burning like a torch.

The lack of shadows was odd. It did things to their perception of distance, and dimension. A standard hatchling seemed as big as a mountain and impossibly far, until his perception righted itself and it turned out to have simply been very, very close. "What are you doing!" Vriska hissed under her breath.

"You didn't see it either!" Karkat snapped back. Karkat found himself growing dizzy. His horn started aching again, and it became more difficult to walk. Vriska, with her vision eightfold, did not seem to be having the same problem, at least not to the same extent. He wished his mutant blood had given him more of an advantage, like heat-vision or retractable claws, instead of just resistance to angel telepathy. Of course, if had been a useful trait, they wouldn't have tried to stamp out the bloodline—

He thought that his perspective was screwed up again, but now it seemed that he was right. There was, in fact, a monstrously huge angel right in the center of the room, and it was terrible to behold. Its upper body resembled a man's, but its hands had entirely too many fingers. Its head was elongated and sharp, and seemed to have far more features than a standard angel's. Karkat could make out eyelids, ear-pads like on a bird, nostrils, and a slit along the length of its snout. Or was it a beak? Its skin was mottled all over with growths and patterns that could have been veins on a natural creature, but they were far too thick and numerous, and seemed to have extended past its body. All around the monster in a perfect circle, the veiny tendrils had spread and…taken root. Karkat wondered where its veins were—

There was a hideous tearing sound, and something rose up from the living mountain. A huge thick tentacle—no, a neck. The tendrils, roots, veins, what have you, were hanging limp from the appendage and leaking phosphorescent white blood, huge droplets that splashed to the floor with the sound of a rainstorm. Vriska shied back, feeling stupid as she did so; there was no way they were close enough for it to touch. There was another head on the thing where its legs would be if it were human. Another tearing sound, and a second head followed. They were almost snakelike, but with crocodilian mouths and a mane of long, sharp quills, fading to impossibly thin points, so thin not even Vriska could see where they ended. She wondered what they could cut, and why anyone would need to cut it. Then one of the heads opened its eyes.

The trolls thought they had known the meaning of light. They had been wrong. The searing silvery-gold radiance emanating from the beast's eyes was bright enough to scald their skin and left them dazzled. Vriska immediately pulled down her hood over her eyes, and then tore off a strip of fabric from her shirt and tied it around her head. Even with her eyes closed, even with all of that, she could still see the burning light. But at least she wouldn't go blind.

Karkat was reeling on the floor, trying not to scream. Vriska wondered if it would really hurt them all that much at this point. She lifted him up to her shoulders and started running.

Sporadically she used her vision eight-fold to see where she was going. She caught flashes of movement. The angels were waking up. Their thoughts, though still muffled by the tinfoil, were clearer, stronger. And they didn't give a shit about her. The angels were crawling, slithering, flying over to their king—what else could the monster be?—and paid the interlopers no mind. The angels were making noise now, not only mental but physical, a strange rhythmic bussing that made her hair stand on end. Their thoughts filled the air, singular and persistent like a crowd of people singing the same song. It was about submission and love, and some other completely alien concept that made Vriska dizzy trying to understand. The ugly tearing sound the king of angels made as it roused itself continued in the background. Vriska was suddenly taken by the urge to turn and look. She knew that if she did, she would go blind in her beautiful, miraculous left eye, and the thought made her panic. Judging by the throbbing pain in it, she could tell it was already damaged, probably irreparably, but, if she could just crane her neck….

"HOLY SHIT!" shouted Karkat. Somehow that strengthened Vriska's resolve. She would not gawk like a tourist like her Moirail was doing right now. Of course, she spent the rest of her days wondering. Karkat refused to ever speak of what he saw.

By some miracle she managed to be heading in the right direction. Up ahead was the only splotch of darkness in the room, a shadowy blob, from which was coming the scent of salt. It was a hole in the stones and bricks that seemed to have fallen open naturally over time. As she approached, she noticed that the stones were covered in mold and lichen, and had started forming stalactites. It looked like a black mouth.

There were no more angels in the immediate vicinity; they'd avoided being so near to saltwater. However, enough of them were awake that she could feel their presence in her head as if she were completely unprotected. Only the scalding heat on Vriska's scalp, burning worse than the angel king's gaze, was a sign of the tinfoil hat's continued existence. The fact that she could still think clearly was a likely only because the angels were so distracted with their profane adorations.

And there was a sound like being inside a thunder cloud as every angel great and small spread its wings and took to the air simultaneously. Vriska's eardrums burst and she might have screamed. She could definitely feel Karkat screaming, but there wasn't any sound anymore, other than a high pitched wine. She jumped the last few feet and hit the water hard. Its coldness was both excruciatingly painful and euphorically soothing on her burnt skin.

She immediately tore off her hood and blindfold; the water was very clear, and the light from the chamber above filtered down to a comforting blue, as long as she didn't look up. The little tinfoil hat finally lost structural integrity and dissolved, the charred flakes of metal floating off in random directions, along with a distressingly large amount of her hair.

Karkat caught her eye, finally able to move under his own power. He looked awful, skin cracked and blistered and mottled with his ugly red blood that still sent black urges through her brain. He pointed emphatically off to the side with a newly mottled hand, and Vriska saw that this cave was in fact a tunnel. They swam.


Author's Note: IT'S BEEN SO LONG. I missed this fic so much :')

Okay guys, I often ask for reader participation in my other fics and for the first and only time ever, I will do so in this one. You can name any of the OCs in John's gathering, just specify which one. There are also about ten other people that did not speak or were not mentioned, so you can submit a Breath Aspected OC for inclusion. You have until the next chapter goes up, which may be any time at all.

Karkat and Vriska's exchange at the beginning of their section: my proudest moment.

Sollux's section; the opening bit was a rewrite of the introduction of a certain character in the silent film Metropolis, which was an inspiration for this fic. Particularly, it gave me the idea for how to write Prospit, as an impossibly huge city with a mysterious past and very deep, dark secrets. Here's a little hint for something in THIS story: there was an identical white house in Derse. Can you believe that I intended for the whole city of Wrath arc to be done in one chapter? I think I mentioned it before but damn I was dumb.

Other notes: this story was intended to be finished the week of May 14th, which was also the week I started it. I was young and foolish.