#theking below

At her best, with Karkat doting over her, even Adhafera has had to take a break. It had to happen sometime, and that sometime was now. Still, she had refused to leave, and now there was this strange clown here, following her like a shadow, albeit a really extra shadow.

Aiden had to stop following you around, too. Or maybe he just forgot why he was hanging around you so much when you weren’t really feeling talkative. You don’t think that’s right, but he’s forgotten more pertinent things; he’s really old.

Things are slowly going back to normal, and now your biggest challenge, besides the funeral, is feeding those who are left; the devastation wiped the dry storage, and though many things in the deep freezers and the box refrigerators are salvageable, those will dwindle quickly the longer this takes, the longer those devices are without power. All the grain and rice is completely gone. You’ve gone down to help with the moving and clearing, as you can lift things that others need tools and vehicles to move, and now there is quite a bit of banging and crashing during the night as you heave rubble up over the side of the pit. You sweat alongside these demolition workers, and they look on your serious face with frightened and awed eyes. You have to be here. You have to be sure.

Nothing’s coming, you tell yourself. He’s dead. You wish you could believe yourself.

You’ve been isolating yourself and praying every light since it happened. This is not a test of your faith by your Lords, but one of resolve by your world. Still, you fear you are falling short. You wish Tyfora was here. You wish you could reach out to Grand. Arlequin’s got all these new kids, he doesn’t have time to be your guiding hand. Kurloz would end your actual miserable life for real if he found out you were still practicing after he banished you. Bull knows a different Highblood, but he doesn’t feel like he could help with this.

You were not made a priest for nothing. You will make your own way.

You are just wiping fresh tears from your face when a knock comes to the door. One of the team leads is being allowed into your personal chamber, and for what!? Your hackles rise, and you face him with a stern glare, about to move menacingly toward him, but he hides behind his tablet, and you realize what you’ve done, what you were about to do.

But why, pray, is he here?

You can hear the blueblood’s heart pounding as he tells you that their seismographs are picking something up. They have been the whole time, but it’s getting stronger, like part of the lower levels are collapsing, and your blood turns to ice.

You have to get Delphine. She has to evacuate, just in case, and take their family with her. There’s a place by the coast; she’ll be more comfortable there! It’s fine, but she has to go.

Something’s coming.

The Beginning

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You wouldn’t ever harm her. She’s family. You couldn’t sic the guard on her if you wanted; after all, she was going to be your daughter soon, and you didn’t want to spoil that relationship with her or Karkat, not to mention that bullying her and threatening her was supposed to drive her to leave so that she didn’t get hurt. So why didn’t she leave?

You don’t get it, but it doesn’t matter now. It’s too late. Generously, the foreman had allowed you to keep the instrument that was measuring the tiny seismic tremors below the foundations of the palace, and they were only growing. He was coming. He was coming, and if Adhafera, Karkat’s beloved and someone precious to you, was going to be here when he came up, she needed to know what she was in for.

“Look who decided to come do something about it. It only took you three nights,” she derides you when you let yourself into Karkat’s room - a risky move normally, but Adhafera is a professional, and you know that she’s on guard. You sigh through your nose and take your mocking. Yeah, you get it; she called your bluff.

You sit down heavily on the ottoman at Karkat’s vanity, facing his bed, and she sits on the bench at the the foot of it, facing you. She knows you have something to say in the way you carry yourself, or don’t, so much. You’re slumped forward onto your knees, and about ready to start crying into your hands again, eyes puffy and hot.

Karkat is there - it is his room - and he sits at the foot of his bed and rests his feet on the cushions.

Neither of them interrupt your silence. You look up at them sometimes from under your fluffy hair while Karkat drums his fingers near-silently on the bed and Adhafera sits stock still. She is at attention while you are held up only by your forearms, hands laced together, leg jogging. She’s half out of her armor, you notice. Or half into it. She must be feeling better - she looked like death a few nights ago.

“....You can’t put yourself in a danger you don’t understand,” you finally say, so softly. “Kannus isn’t dead. I’d hoped you’d see everything was fine and finally leave, but he’s coming. For me.”

She doesn’t even reply to you - when she says “I’m going,” and grabs her crossbow, it’s more thrown over her shoulder to Karkat than it is to you, you feel, and you surge to your feet to grab for her as she grabs for the fastens of her Orphaner armor with a practiced hand to secure it on the move.

When you lay your hands on her, she swings that same arm out and slaps you, and so you grab her again, harder than you mean to. She says “ow!” and you almost drop her arm out of shock, but suddenly, she twists, and it’s a scuffle as you try and hold her. She bares her fangs in a feral sound, and Karkat springs from the bed to try and get between the two of you, only to be pushed back by her elbow and your hand. You feel like you’re about to gain the advantage when she swings and hits you hard in the ribs with the butt of her beast of a weapon.

“Get the fuck off of me!” she roars as you drop to one knee, gasping for breath and holding your ribs while Karkat shouts “Hey! Fera -- holy shit, what the fuck, Kankri?” like you hurt her just now. “Who said you could touch me?”

And you can’t answer at first, just gasping, so she stomps her big boot - Messiahs, but she’s so much smaller than you, now; you used to be on par - right in your face, and your hand jumps forward on the carpet to grab her ankle. Big or not, she kicks it off with no effort whatsoever and grinds her heel into the backs of your finger, kicking up a flurry of worrying from Karkat again as he pulls her back and quietly, gently, noncommittally scolds her for hurting you.

You can see why he’s marrying her.

“Don’t treat me like a damned wriggler,” she commands. “I told you I’m going to take care of you and yours! I haven’t stuttered. Let me help! I’m. Going.”

You gasp urgently and try to jump back up to your knees, but stagger and catch yourself.

“I’m going to let you!” you finally manage, and she stops, crossbow at the ready and back facing you. She doesn’t look, but you see you have her attention, and you hold it for the time it takes to pull yourself back up onto the ottoman. Karkat comes over and pulls you up, but grunts about you getting fat. You joke with a weak wheeze that you’re just big boned.

“I’m going to let you help,” you repeat. “I just need you to listen to me.” She remains in place for a long minute, and then returns to the bench. Now she mirrors your original position, crossbow across her knees, elbows rested under it, and hands folded together.

“Talk,” she commands, and like she’s the empress and you are her man, you do.

“Kannus is the most powerful being my Alternia has ever know. He silenced--” You cut directly to a language that involves your ears and you opening your mouth and gills to make a distinct bubbling noise “--centuries ago, Millennia! And she hasn’t so much as whispered since. He’ll be coming for me, and I can’t begin to think that I can handle him alone. And--”

You cut yourself off and push your hands into your curls to try and ground yourself. You can’t look at Karkat; he looks like he’s seconds from coming to you for a hug. You think he’s hugged you of his own volition maybe six times in his life. You’re not ready for it.

After a long period of silence during which you get yourself back under control, you explain to her some of his abilities that you know about, not including that he just got eleven floors of rubble dropped on him and he’s apparently unbroken enough that he’s digging toward you. He’s an empath like you, but he has no sympathy or empathy left in him, no emotion, no ability to feel pain because he abused the ability so much. He has the ability, now, to use that empath power to kill others. You’ve seen him do it thousands of times, just destroy peoples’ pans with their own chemicals, eating through the tissues like acid while he sucks away every positive emotion they can produce. He can kill nerves like that, too, and when you have told them both what he can do, you tell them what you have been dreading.

“--I’m scared,” you admit, and your voice cracks like a pubescent bastard, like you’re not half a thousand sweeps and the ruler of this Empire, like you didn’t fight in wars, like your life hasn’t been at risk since you took the throne - more than it was before, at least. She adjusts her arms and takes her crossbow in hand again, so hard it creaks in her grip. Her strength is shocking. You forget other people can hurt you sometimes, it happens so little, and you know she was taking it relatively easy.

“I’m not,” she lies, but you know you’ve shaken her. You don’t call her out. This is what bravery is. You allow her to lie, so that she can stand if she wants to stand with you.

“Good. I’ll need that from you,” you tell her very softly. “I have to oversee evacuating the rest of the staff and their families, and I have to make sure that the surrounding towns know what could happen if we fail here.”

“I’m going,” she says again, and starts to stand, white tail swinging, but you shake your head, and she stops. You see her about to shout at you as her face contorts, but you hold up your hand to stop her, and she does, though now she is violet with barely contained rage - you imagine she’s not used to being the one getting that one, not from people outside her timeline, at least. It’s fun, at least, that even now she recognizes you as an authority, though not one she feels beholden to clearly.

“You don’t have a chance. The best thing that you can do now is rest, protect Karkat here, and deploy when I contact you. Do you understand? I need you at the best you can be.” Not her absolute best, since she’s still recovering from standing for three days.

She lets the rage drain out of her, and Karkat hugs her arm. She looks quite sullen, though determined, when she sits again. Adhafera nods to you, and you nod back.

What a relief.

The Beginning

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