RJstuck 3: Coronation of the Blood

    His crowning was in pure silence like the lacy breath of a child standing in the first snow of the crisp winter morn. Like the first kiss with death and the virgin breath you take thereafter. John could feel his eyes weighted in shame as he closed his eyes and knelt before the man concealed in his veil. Rose bowed as did the rest of the vast court. This included Sir English, Lady Jane, Miss R. LaLonde, sobriety included for the severity of the situation, and many others that the young prince, soon to be heir, had interacted with. Each one of them, even with the slightest mentions, were acting as witnesses.
    John could feel the almost physically touchable silence in the air as the weight of the solid silver crown came down against his head with a royal bloodline bearing the weight. He sighed silently as the king rose his arms out and spoke to the court, purely dimly lit stars in the presence of two royal bloods of Prospit. "And so it has been done, cast in the ways of the witness, foreboding the coming of the bloods, the bringer of the light, and the weighted heir to the grand and glorious Prospit throne. I present to thee, my court as well as his own, the next king of Prospit."
    The room erupted in a calamity known only as applause but sounded nothing like cheering but rather sad clapping. Like a prisoner of great deeds for the people stepping to the gallows. By the time that John had stood, however, the applause had stopped and the King had exited back to his veiled hidings. John only bowed and walked from the hall with his dignity.
    But those glamorous bearings would not last. John set his crown down on his bed the second he managed to escape to his room and lock his door. He exchanged his bright cobalt garb for his more simple night wear of a white t-shirt and black pants. This time he wouldn't be able to use the convenience of flight to meet his... Well, somewhat partner in crime.  

    As if he heard the boy's determination Karkat tilted his head towards the window of the small hut where he'd been hiding out after escaping the near crumbling walls of the Dersian castle. A rather thin and concerned looking girl with white eyes loomed over him, sweeping messes of her hair from her face. "You won't get much from waiting for him," she spoke softly as she nodded and handed him his hot tea and soup. "But he's coming."
    Those words piqued the young prince's attention.
    "Is he?" Karkat asked, his memory flickering back to the passionate kiss the two shared on the most forbidden of terms.
    "He is. Though... the borders are on higher ends now," she narrowed her eyes as if she could see anything.
    "Why's that?" Karkat tilted his head as if to infer her response though she kept her blinded eyes focused on the door with sure intent.
    "The spirits... they're always watching," she relaxed a bit with a craning of her head in the direction of the pair of wandering young ones. She turned a bit, ragged clothes turning with her, only to face the young client she'd been dealing with for years upon years. "They say he's chosen crowning," she nodded with a dim sigh.
    "Crowning?!" Karkat nearly jumped as the young psychic lowered him with a raised palm.
    "In favor of your safety, nonetheless, Vantas," she shot him a dirty look with her pursed lips and narrowed lids. "Nevertheless, your family is still not happy about your recent... excursions," she put it gently as her hands shuffled a deck of tarot cards.
    "What I do in the Median is completely neutral grounded. They aren't legally permitted to give half a fuck!" The young lowblood prince growled as he ate his food. Not like that pig's wife is very perfect. Sleeping with the double-crosser... or was it yours," Karkat shot the girl a look as her hand raised and the hot tea spilled all over his lap, a cry of pain reaching the rooftops far above her own. "Son of a bitch!!" He gasped.
    "Sollux isn't a double-crosser, he's a spy," she corrected him sharply. "And she's sleeping with no one... rather, she's busy warding off the eager assistant that's fallen for her wild beauty," she snickered a bit as Karkat couldn't help but agree with an eye roll.
    "Can't agree more," Karkat muttered a bit as he finished his soup. "So... what do the spirits speak of the other sides, Aradia?"
    "They don't," she sighed, dealing half of the deck of cards and positioning herself to read them, again, as if she could see them at all. "The other side is peculiarly silent. Not even the others are speaking. Almost... as if they're reserving their voice for something bigger," she whispered as a breeze blew through her home-place.
    Garnet eyes raising to Aradia's pale white ones as they focused on the card in her hand, he spoke, "By bigger things, do you mean--..." But he was cut off by the rattling of shrubbery yards off from the door that faced an alley that also faced the Median.
    "And so the young King arrives," the girl with the rouge lips smirked, placing the card of the lovers on her table draped in oracle cloth.

    John had once again, without fail, slammed right into the oak tree and fallen into the bramble just below where the hanging flower lights and lusus wart weed hung about the trees. He quickly straightened himself as he brushed the dirt and the dried flora from his clothes. Looking around it seemed like the Median was in a pleasant fall the entire years and always caked in dried leaves and a good harvest. Basically, a peaceful invention between the two warring nations. Those that could get by living inside the gates would gladly take a lesson in living right from those dwellers of the Between.
    Aradia, the lowblood, psychic troll, was one of the Median dwellers and got around just fine. Now take into consideration that she's blind and a little off her rocker, all combined with her wandering spirits, and she lives amongst the ripe patches and sights for sore eyes. Anyone could do it, they just chose not to. Safety and security always came first and it cost people easy living, surprisingly.
    But none of that mattered because the only thing that was focused in John's blurry line of site was the hand that was coming over his mouth. He tried to let out a scream but was smothered by the sounds of a, "Sssshhhh." John, frightened terribly, looked up and found Karkat smiling and wrapping his other arm around John's waist to find his hand. They palms touched and the lights from both signs lit like small beacons.
    The vibrantly electric feeling spread from both their arms up into their chests where their hearts released excess amounts of love-fueled dopamine. Well, neither were really sure what it was at the time besides an unearthly attraction to touch each other. At the time the boys, and all their developing hormones, presumed it to be puberty and thus did nothing to cease it.
    However, that particular evening was for another event. "Come," Karkat tilted his head in the direction of the farther and darker ends of the Median. John, being intoxicated by the hormone of pure joy, made no visible attempt at rebellion. "Where are we going?" He asked quietly as they walked along side the creek that slid between Prospit and ran straight through to the Median's distance.
    "A friend's. An oracle, really. She's sighted," he nodded, looking back a bit as they hopped over where the creek split the path. "She's fully psychic and has a a perfect reputation. She even knew you were coming."
    "Huh?"
    "I mean, after I told her about you. She said the spirits spoke about you. Something or others, but either way, it matters not. Hell, she's never been wrong yet," she smiled to himself as they walked faster than they realized. Maybe it was all the dopamine, maybe it was just all the glue mixed between the pages of their story, maybe it was just a dream, but it felt all too real.

    By the time the two actually did get to the hut that had one blindly happy Aradia, no pun intended, leaning in the doorway. Her long dark hair flowed down her back like the silky darkness that enveloped all things behind her well lit hut. Light past the hanging lantern flowers? Yes. Karkat, irritated to hell and back of stubbing his toes and tripping over thing around her home place strung a series of lanterns together with some wire he found in the black market.
    John looked all around but only found that his vision was blurring with time. He furiously rubbed his eyes and grunted a bit as he tried to focus anything. Sadly he could not seem to clarify much. "You okay?" Karkat asked, John nodding.
    "Blindness, you know, that incapacitating shit," he laughed a bit as Aradia straightened with piqued interest.
    "He's blind?"
    "Well, getting there," John said through a laugh as Aradia rose her hand to pause them.
    "A friend made these a while back. He calls them Spectacles," she said as she came back with a string of leather and two carved pieces of crystal. One was blue and one was red, but it was better than nothing. What had John to lose?
    "Are those Sollux's?" Karkat asked as Aradia nodded.
    "Yes, but he's learned to keep his eyes sharp," she smiled as John took them. "You slide them over your eyes. Your head may hurt at first, but you'll adjust."
    John squinted to force that adjusting and the instant that the blue and red lenses slid over his eyes everything became vivid and grand. The lights strung up overhead, clinked together in the wind, bright and beautiful, the fluttery crimson lashes on Aradia's eyes, white like snow, and the expectant look on Karkat's face were all clear as day. "So?" Karkat asked, waiting patiently for John's response.
    "I can see," John smiled. Aradia smiled and nodded as she led the two into her den.
    "Better for you to see your fate, don't you think?"
    "Fate?" John prodded as he took a seat across from Aradia's table that looks much like a display of a ram's skull, black candles, a deck of tarot cards, some burning incense, and a few dollars held under a rock. This looks like the work of a dark magician, but he knows that can't be the case. After all, this blind mistress is a friend of Karkat's.
    However, there was an absolutely obvious trait of the maroon girl that John could not overlook. With blatant and almost child-like curiosity he asked, "What happened to your eyes?" Karkat jumped a bit, looking at John with wide, dark eyes. Then it struck him rather odd because he himself had not asked her how she became the way she was. Though, knowing he true state, he did not need to ask.
    Aradia smirked and spun on a dirty heel to face the boy with the small crescents in his eyes. Her lips, tinted maroon like her eyelashes and cheeks, curled into an unearthly and satisfied smile. Her hands, drumming against her chin, traveled where she thought they'd do best: right against John's cheek. John froze solid like his body had just been submerged deep into the twilight zones of the arctic oceans. Her hand was without form and like a wispy grey smoke as it ran down to his chin affectionately.
    "When I was alive, young King, I gouged my eyes out in fear of seeing the death of my lusus, the downfall of my kingdom, the murdering of my friends, and the rise and again fall of another great kingdom. Though, I did not stop Seeing. All I was given was pain and regret, young King. However, learn well from my mistakes: take your Sight as a gift, not a weapon."
    John was shaking at the knees to these words as he once saw something very similar as a child when the glimpses were sporadic and uncontrollable. The death of many's guardians and the fall of a great palace. But it was behind him now. The focus of the current time plane was the darkening hollows of the Median and the rustling sounds of the distant Knight and Jail-ess of Derse.
    The party scuttled into Aradia's tent; rather, two scuttled and one phased through the walls. Karkat made sure to cover the windows with two rusted plates of metal and to pull to old drift wood board up to the door to keep wandering vagrants from prying. After a short moment to listen for any footsteps the group turned back to the task at hand.
    "Well, young King, I heard of your coronation. A lowly spirit of the In Betweens."
    "News travels fast," John said, sighing with a troubled look set into his usually aloof looking visage. "Though I wish it didn't."
    "We all have wishes, though, they are seldom heard," she nodded, lighting an array of candles with the flick of her wrist. "Your sister wishes your end so that she may take the throne and the attention of the Bard's son. Our Queen wishes the human race to die away and for her husband to love her truly so that she might not tease the Courtsman and fool around with her lover. So, King of Prospit, what is your wish?" She rose her ghostly hand which held(so to speak) a certain card from a deck of tattered and burnt tarot cards. It was strange looking, but unmistakable. It was the Emperor.
    Karkat simply leaned against the wall of the hut and tried not to eavesdrop on the crucial reading that would likely determine their fates.
    "I don't have one," John cocked a brow, adjusting his bi-pigmented spectacles, though they were more like bottle bottom goggles. "Wishes are selfish," he rolled his eyes a bit, Aradia only tempting his nags.     
    "A desire, then?"
    "A desire... I desire the two kingdoms to stop being so stupid... I want my dad to get over my mother's death and stop ordering cakes to be included in my every meal. I'd also like my sister to stop wishing my demise--."
    "End, not demise."
    "Whatever," John said, "And I desire secrets to be revealed and peace to not be an illusion," John said firmly. Karkat closed his eyes and smiled faintly with an underlying snicker drawing forth from his usually on-guard composure. Aradia also grinned wide and in a matter-of-fact like way.
    "You will be a great King, young John. With such selfless mindsets and pure-hearted desires, it's no wonder your sister wishes reign," she turned the card in her hand and seemed to gaze at it's crumbling surface. "I think this may be the one King that does it right, don't you think, Prince Vantas?" Aradia turned her beaming face to the knight-like vagrant.
    John blinked behind the slightly crooked goggles, face revealing his awe. He was stunned. This wandering... well, jackass, Prince?! Of the nation he was to be warring over?! No. Way. Unironic shock levels rising, as the Bard's son would say. Completely unironically, of course.
    "Don't flatter yourself, King," Vantas gave a sharp toothed sneer. "They stripped me of every reason to claim that title long ago," he closed his eyes and nodded in the flickering gold light of the candle.
    "But you're the prince!"
    "By blood, perhaps not," Karkat sighed and stood upright only to crouch low and meet John's eyes. Again, like a mystic mix of pigments, their eyes created a deep violet blend of colors, even in near darkness. "What's it to you?"
    "If you ally with me we can end the war!" John gasped, grabbing onto Karkat's collar with the brightest and most hopeful of smiles pulling at the edges of his face. "The kingdoms could become one!"
    "Never," Karkat sad rather front-forwardly. "Trolls will never mix with humans."
    "We have trolls in Prospit," John blinked, Aradia seeming to have faded into the room altogether. "My tutor is a troll and so is the messenger."
    "Then they will turn against you," the dark prince sighed, pushing his face up with his palm as he rested his chin there. "No troll allies with a human. It's not... of nature, really."
    "We're allies, are we not?" John corrected him with a hard look of disbelief.
    Karkat was quieted in an instant by this fact. He couldn't deny its truth, but he felt that he was losing his case by the second by not denying it either. Instead he just grunted a bit and rolled his eyes. "If we truly are allies then the war may be ended," John said a little softer that time.
    "Ending the war won't end the conflict or stop the riots. Bringing down the Median won't save the wicked or cease the ignorance, it won't stop the Queen from beheading my allies or your kin wishing your end, or the fact that the tro--," but Karkat was cut off sharply. John had pulled their lips together by yanking him forward by the collar which had toppled them both over into a pile of limbs. Karkat leaned over John as his wide eyes stared at the blushing boy taking hold of his body.
    First thought: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, LET THE FUCK GO OF ME YOU DISTURBED LITTLE FLESH SACK. IS YOUR THINKPAN BROKEN?!
    But when their hands collided and the purple and gold light illuminated together in the purest color white the thoughts blended into something of more mild intent.
    John's hands slid away and the light faded as did their subtle but overly intimate touches for two just bickering like children. Karkat stared into those distinct blue eyes and lost himself as he wrapped his arms around John, nuzzling the curve of his neck. He closed his eyes and breathed in the clean and floral like scent of his "friend".
    In truth, his head was running on the track of hope and his thoughts sounding something like, "Hope... hope sounds good... impossibly good."

    Sadly, the two had to depart. Karkat managed to get John all the way back to the treeline that led straight up to the castle before their heard the familiar and terrified sounds of the six-footed horses of the Jail-ess. Karkat held onto John's unmarked hand for a moment before seeing him off. "Remember to hide the glasses," he whispered amongst the brush as John snuck away to the skyline.
    Back at the palace, unfortunately, things were not going as smoothly as the interesting yet rather innocent love affair of the Median. Lady Jade had been consorting with one of the more unique characters of the kingdom, young Knight of Time, Dave Strider. The girl with the jade pigment eyes with the tiny silver crescents in them was using her rapidly developing charm to win him over. Rather unintentionally, I, the narrator, must admit. You see, Knight Strider from a young age had discovered his flushed feelings for the beautiful girl even before her heart turned to more blackened deeds. Though, her deed were of good intent.
    Jade, the well-intented princess, was speaking to Dave about John's coming and goings from time to time and his return with a lightened heart. "Do you think it could be a girl?" Dave suggested, Jade furiously shaking her head. She puffed her cheeks, "It's not that. What if he's going to the villages? He could see something!"
    "What about the Median?" Dave suggested, Jade's face paling as a ghost's might. "Not good?"
    "If that two-timing twit were to so as ponder the idea of consorting with those filthy blooded demons he would lose the throne! Father would... he would... I mean, we'd fall to absolute ruins! And of you... you would be without purpose once again," Jade fumed, fading as she realized what the young knight had come from, but it was unimportant.
    The knight felt a weight build on his heart as he realized the princess assumed he lived and breathed knighthood; that he never had romantic aspirations. It wasn't like anyone of the young ages of thirteen would care of such matters, but the roses were blooming, if you catch the drift.
    "You do realize the Queen of Derse thinks murderously of any creature with blood lighter than a teal?" Strider sighed as he leaned against the door of the Princess's Star Gazing tower. The sky, a brilliant shade of pink and gold with the dimming day, was the only thing Jade seemed to see of importance though the young man that had devoted his life to her was standing in her midst, open-armed and hoping.
    "That wretched water-breathing demon can smother with the rest of those monsters. The way they slaughtered our armies..." She closed her eyes and clenched a fist.
    "In, er, defense of the, uh... 'monsters', Milady, we did flood their borders with hundreds of men with weapons. You know, there's a fighting tactic floating around in Meadsbrun just south of the castle called peaceful protest and it sounds like a goo--," but before he could finish Jade was just inches from his face, her sun-kissed cheeks pressing against her eyes to made a frustrated face. So close and with the light hitting just right, Dave could have sworn that the princess was just one breath from bubbling over with violent tears.
    His shock melted into melancholy as he realized, though volatile, her intentions were good and she just wanted to protect her friends and her kingdom. It wasn't that she saw less of anyone, beyond her pride, really, but that she was afraid that their greed and their pride would be the downfall of both of them.
    And as they do say, you can only save the hopefuls.

    In this very second John landed on his balcony and snuck back into his room, hiding under the cover of the now darkened sky dappled in white starlight. It was a moonless night and it was perfect for sneaking out, but the newly discovered dark prince commanded that he not be found out about. Nagging him into the bone filled dirt about how detrimental that would be to the folly-filled dream of peace he had been boast of.
    And so, obedient to his ally(as he called Karkat), he slid into bed and tucked his new spectacles under the pillow. However, as John was slowly drifting in his peace-induced sleep-coma, he wondered where Karkat was sleeping or if he had the same luxuries of prince-hood waiting for him back at the castle. Though, he thought not because of how sarcastically he spoke of his kin. Then, a flicker of a thought, really, he wondered if there would ever be a time he could show Karkat the castle.
    That would be awesome. Yeah, he dozed off. 
    Yes, a peaceful world without quarrel would be a grand delusion, wouldn't it.
    But how long can one self-indulge in fantasies and dreams before it becomes antagonistic to one's health?