#stabdad

Ironically, Kankri never saw it coming when he died.

He had followed his Dersite companion, Jack Noir, far, far out into the further reaches of his planet. The Carapacian had told him that he knew of a way to make him stronger, to help him in their session. It was the only way he could help him achieve it, since Kankri was neither a Derse Dreamer nor had awakened his Dream Self.

When they came to the site, Kankri had honestly expected a bit more than just a dark maroon slab with a bright red slash of blood (like his own) stamped dead in the middle of it.

“... Are you certain this is it, Jack?” The Crarapacian sighed in his gravelly tones and pointed sharply at the slab (sharply in more than one way, considering his knife).

“Yes, kid. This here's it. This is what'll get you closer to overthrowing the Black Queen.”

“That's all I have to do, then? Just... crawl on that and fall asleep? And I'll just wake up with powers just like that?”

“Easy as you please, kid.” Kankri stared at the stone with some trepidation, but eventually climbed on top of it. He laid himself rather uncomfortably on his back, considering the surface of the thing. To his benefit, he was dead tired. Besides the long trek to get out here, back with the others, people weren't listening to him as he tried to lead, and Meenah and so many others were causing havoc. It just wasn't working how he hoped it would.

He glanced to the side, seeing Jack standing there. Watching him expectantly. Jack seemed to realize he was being stared at, because he looked down at the troll suddenly.

“What? You got stage fright or something? Look kid, if it bothers you that much, I can look away if you don't want me watching you sleep, if you need it, you pansy.”

“No, it's not that,” Kankri replied quickly. “It's just... Are you going to stay here? While I sleep, I mean.” They hadn't seen any monsters for a while, but despite the other's coarseness (and his few attempts at stabbing him) he felt that he and Jack... got along in a way. He felt comfortable around the man.

“... Yeah, sure kid. I'll stay here.” Kankri gave him a tired smile, and closed his eyes as he shifted again.

“Thank you... I appreciate it.” It took a while longer for him to actually fall asleep on the uncomfortable surface, but he ended up dead asleep on his back. Drifted off into whatsoever his dreams held for him. The next time he knew of anything, he would be standing above a land in a haze of luminous red with new life coursing through him.

He would never even felt it when Jack's knife was plunged into his heart.

–

Kankri stood breathless as he stared down at his hands. Trembling even though he felt so strong. It was... an overwhelming sense of power. Something he felt he knew but couldn't describe.

Jack walked up to him, the knife he'd used to kill the young god now standing before him already sheathed and hidden in his coat.

“How ya feelin, kid?”

“It feels... incredible,” Kankri breathed, still hardly believing it. “It just feels... I don't feel like I'm not me, but it feels like I'm me but better. I don't...” For once, he could find no words. He, the troll his friends called a walking thesaurus when he got going. Who had a quip or anything to suit any situation. He was smiling, though. He felt so giddy it was dizzying. “I don't know what to say. This feels amazing, Jack. I feel like I could do anything! Like I could... like I could...”

He trailed off, his expression turning to one of confusion rather than excitement. Jack narrowed his eyes, unsure of what to make of his change in expression.

“Hey kid, you okay?”

Before he could continue his query, Kankri's face shifted from confusion to complete, utter fear.

“No... No no no! This can't- No! No, this can't-! This isn't happening! This isn't happening!” His breathing kicked up to hyperventilating now, all of his being shaking with panic. “Latula! Mituna! Peixes! No! It can't- please no don't let them! No no no!”

“Kid! Snap out of it for god's sakes!” Jack took hold of the boy by both shoulders, trying to shake sense back into him. But the way Kankri's eyes were so blown out, he looked as though he couldn't even see him. Let alone feel him. “Kid!” Jack was just considering stabbing him once, to get him back into focus on... whatever was happening to him. When suddenly, it just stopped.

His face fell from fear to shock, and he just stood there, silent. Still breathing heavily as red-tinted tears dripped down his gray skin. Jack stared at him uncertainly, moving one hand over his knife pocket just in case.

“Uh, kid. You in there? Mind tellin me what the hell just happened?”

“... We're not going to make it,” Kankri whispered softly. “There's not enough time, we're not going to be able to do everything. We're going to lose unless-!... Unless...” Jack took his other hand off of the young troll, watching him still.

“... Unless what?” He finally asked impatiently. Kankri's face suddenly hardened, and he clenched his hands at his sides.

“... Unless I can buy more time.”

–

A Parcel Mistress wandered her usual route, delivering packages and letters across the lands and kingdoms for the sake of her hallowed duties towards the mail. She was determined to do her job and do it properly for goodness' sakes. The mail is the cornerstone of modern society.

It was on one such run, across one of the many planets which made up  the ring of the twelve, that she came across the Seer.

She had just finished picking up a letter from one of the red planet's many inhabitants when she was given a fright. Before her, standing next to an outcropping of jagged, black stone, stood a figure draped in attire which matched the land. She started and jumped back, uncertain of what he wanted. However, all he did was turn his head, and pointed to his right. Down a long, jagged, black stone path. The Parcel Mistress stared down the way he pointed, then looked back to him. But, to her surprise, he was already gone.

She was incredibly spooked by what had just happened, but somehow, felt a strange sense of compelling to follow the silent instructions. So, even with the packages that needed delivering in her sling, she went along that path that he pointed out. Avoiding the cracks and the flowing blood that made great rivers, lakes, and oceans across the planet.

She knew right away when she reached where she was meant to be going.

Before her, a Wounded Voltigeur lay. Too injured and exhausted to even tend to his own injuries. After receiving grievous injury on the Battlefield, he was made to flee to have his wounds tended to. However, due to a horrible mix-up, he was deposited far, far from where he was meant to be. And had been left to his own devices.

Of course, the Parcel Mistress had no way of being able to know that all this had transpired (not until later at any rate). For now, she was simply faced with a wounded soldier from the enemy kingdom; who was helpless, wounded, and alone.

Even as an enemy, however, she couldn't bring herself to leave him. He was wounded and alone. So, with this determination in mind, she hauled him up over herself, and set out to find this stranger help.

It is in this way that this Parcel Mistress would come to meet an Authority Regulator. Who would be so inclined to doff his hat feverishly toward her had he not been immediately occupied with the matter of the Wounded Voltigeur she had found. As a Carapacian in service to the law, he could not stand by and let a citizen be so wounded. And thus he would set to work on him.

It is this meeting that would allow coming to pass that a Wounded Voltigeur would become a Warmhearted Valiant, a Parcel Mistress would become a Preeminent Militant, and an Authority Regulator would become an Armed Reconciler.

And how they would be the first in line to follow the many words of the red-cloaked seer.

–

The Draconian Dignitary would not know how to react when the player he tried to kill didn't stay dead. It was said that such things could happen, of course, but he wasn't accustomed to it actually happening right before him. He was far more accustomed to the things he killed staying dead. Not rising up from where they lay at his feet moments before.

This was not at all what he expected, after he'd been sent by the Black Queen to take care of the player who was seeming to mess with the movements of the troops. He did things with finesse, class, style. Clean and efficient and smooth.

None of these things happen when someone you kill stands right back up and looks you in the eye.

He was admittedly unnerved, but didn't show it, of course. He just stared right back into the face of the one who should be dead. Until the one he knew as fellow agent, Jack Noir, stepped in.

The situation was explained, and the one he came to know to be the Seer spoke to him.

There were too many words for his liking, but an agreement would come to be found. He and his former and soon once again co-worker would shake hands, and he would shake with the Seer. No apologies would be said for his attempt to assassinate him, but it would be paid no mind.

And in this way he and his friend would be guided by the Seer to bring into their fold a Courtyard Droll and a Hegemonic Brute.

And they would become a Crew.

–

A Parcel Mistress, not yet a Preeminent Militant, holds in her grasp a letter. A correspondence from her own queen to the queen of the enemy. Though she was far less inclined to call them such since meeting her two close compatriots.

In the envelope, as she was well aware, was a letter whose message was one of peace and parley. Her queen, under the guidance of a Seer, had written it to her Dersite counterpart with assurances it would be received. Though how it would be received was still unclear. Things tipped favorably for them.

The two queens were close once. Inseparable. But duty and country allowed for no friends. Not when the machinations of fate turned them against one another. It has been so long, though. The White Queen would recall no true reason for why their warring began. Simply that it was.

Though, with this new guidance, perhaps it did not have to be?

She wrote her letter in good faith that her old friend would take it and consider its' contents. And indeed, after dismissing the Parcel Mistress from her sight, the Black Queen would think over the letter long and hard. Considering her kingdom and her people and her husband. And her old friend who she had not seen in so long.

--

It was in this way that the Seer of Blood sought to lengthen the time he and his fellows had to complete their game. He went between the two kingdoms of light and darkness. Building bridges where he could, encouraging those who followed him to take in the defectors and those weary of the war, forging friendships which may never have come to pass without the circumstances that occurred.

In his attempts to unite the kingdoms, he found great success. In perigrees and months, the rage on the Battlefield grew quieter by the day. Until it became little more than a dull murmur of violence and stalemate. His followers among the Carapacians grew, and even those most opposed seemed to be taking it all in a different light.

However, in all of his machinations and his plans, the Seer forgot one important thing.

The players he was meant to be working alongside.

He was not present for their fights. Absent from their struggles and woes aside from his attending to memos and such in between his movements to rally the Dersite and Prospitian forces into unification.

And worst of all, in his success, he would let himself be blinded to the real truth.

His attempts could not last forever.

And it would be all to come to naught, when he would realize only too late that the future when meteors rained upon the Battlefield had come to pass.