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Chapter Text

Three skeksis were dead.

The battle at Stone-In-the-Wood was over. They had lost. And now three of their number were dead.

Purple light (or rather perhaps, light’s absence?) swirled and sputtered beneath him, and skekSo watched it, stance rigid. A waste of time, really. There weren’t any answers to be found churning below, and he knew that. But he likewise couldn’t think of any other form of recourse at the moment, so here he stood. Watching.

Dead.

The word bled through his mind, soaking into every thought and staining them black. SkekMal, skekVar, skekLach, all dead. He mentally cycled through each, reflecting on a million little should-haves and what-ifs, trying to find a common thread to pull from the situation to examine so that this might never happen again.

SkekMal’s demise haunted him with its abstruseness. Just before his death, he had called out to the Archer, which – by all rights – indicated the Mystic had something to do with it. But why would that be? Why would the Mystic choose to do that to himself? And right then, at the most inconvenient moment possible? Surely – surely – he wouldn’t have gone as far as to kill himself just to spite skekMal?

No. It had to be some trick of Aughra’s – some final spit in the face on her part. She’d tricked them into agreeing to release the gelfling in exchange for her essence, and had exploited some loophole or another to resurrect herself afterwards. That was the only explanation; skekSo refused to entertain the notion that it could be anything else.

Because if the Archer had been to blame… if he had, truly, ended his own life to stop his other half… what was stopping any of the other Mystics from choosing to do the same at any given moment?

(SkekSo shuddered, grip tightening around his staff as he willfully ignored his increased heartrate and stared still harder into the Darkening.)

SkekVar’s death made him feel… strange. Bitter and unpleasant in a way he couldn’t quite pin a definition to. SkekVar had unquestionably been a complete and utter oaf, and furthermore talking to him was about as stimulating as talking to a stump. But there’d been something freeing about his utter idiocy. There’d never been any question as to where he stood on any given matter, because he hadn’t had the brainpower to conceal his intentions. To that end, it had been abundantly clear that skekVar was genuinely loyal. That was a rare quality with skeksis, amongst whom it was much more common to profess undying dedication in one breath and then gleefully cry for each other’s blood in the next.

SkekSo wasn’t half as stupid as to believe this was anything more than skekVar’s immovable stubbornness at play. He’d decided he would follow his emperor no matter what, and so that’s what he’d do to his last breath (which, reluctant credit where it’s due, was exactly what he did). It wouldn’t have mattered who his emperor was (skekSo himself, skekUng, skekNa, bleeding skekTek), he was loyal to the position, not the skeksis who filled it. Presumably because he’d had it drilled into his thick skull that “skeksis serve their emperor,” and because it didn’t challenge him mentally or emotionally, he didn’t challenge it.

Still. Regardless of whether skekVar’s loyalty had truly been to him or his station, his devotion had clearly been there, and had been welcome besides. He hadn’t need worry about what he might let slip as he talked to him, or how it might be used against him later. Oafish or not, skekVar had lent a willing ear, there’d been something… comfortable about having someone to unload his burdens to. Even if the someone in question hadn’t been able to fully grasp the extent of the burdens being unloaded, which skekSo very much doubted skekVar had.

Well. The horrid gelfling insurgents had quite conclusively seen to it that there would be no more of that. His burdens would remain squarely on his shoulders henceforth. (Something bitter eked across his tongue at the thought).

However. Even over all his assorted grievances with the aforementioned deaths, it was skekLach’s that he found most upsetting.

A gelfling had slain her with the Darkening. A gelfling had absorbed and then redirected the Darkening he’d been using against the resistance. And skekLach hadn’t simply died – she’d exploded. What was keeping him from the same end? What held him back from oblivion if his enemies now wielded his safeguard?

This power was supposed to be his…

He stood there, mind swirling to match the deep purple at his feet and resolutely not trembling (though if he had been, there was no one around to bear witness to it, so what did it matter, really?), when it struck him that something felt… off.

He paused, misgivings and anxieties not forgotten per se, but set aside easily and willingly enough, before deciding it was like an itch. Not a physical one, granted; the feeling wasn’t on his skin, or anywhere he could ever really hope to reach it. It was more centered in his core, specifically somewhere in his chest. An internal itch.

He shut his eyes a moment, exasperated with himself. An ‘internal itch.’ How eloquent he was these days. How utterly ridiculous.

He glanced back down to his feet, back towards the Darkening. His experiments with it had allotted him no small experience with strange “feelings,” none of which were ever exactly pleasant or even particularly comfortable. In all likelihood, this was yet another side-effect of it. There was something reminiscent about it, anyway. No point in dwelling on it further, then. It was nothing dangerous.

(He told himself, firmly.)

Slowly, he retreated from the precipice that overlooked it and heading deeper into the castle. He had a fleeting idea to head down to the baths, an even shorter-lived notion of just going to bed, and then he passed by a window.

The itch – or whatever it was – got worse.

He stopped, staring out across the landscape, eyes searching for… well, anything, really. He found not one singular thing. It was out there, though – granted what “it” was wasn’t forthcoming, nor was the phantom sense he had offering any hints. If he wanted to know…

SkekSo stared out the window a few moments more, then glanced around as though he might see someone suddenly come down the hall, or trying to hide behind a corner to spy on him. No such thing was to be found in either direction. Haltingly, he began walking again.

If he wanted to know, he’d have to go and find it himself.

No one knew he had left, as he picked his way deeper through the landscape surrounding the Castle of the Crystal. Or if they did, he didn’t know that they knew. Perhaps not the smartest decision he’d made recently, but he was also bitterly aware it wasn’t the worst, either.

Not that that was any kind of excuse. If he was ambushed by something large and hungry (or worse, a marauding band of gelfling who were lurking nearby for such an opportunity), he didn’t suspect telling them “well this wasn’t the most moronic thing I could’ve chosen to do, at least” would make them reconsider whatever they had planned for him.

And yet he pressed on. He decided he could feel stupid about it later, though hopefully after he was securely behind the castle walls again and not as he was being confronted by a something-or-other. Right now, he had a metaphorical itch to hopefully scratch (he had enough trouble sleeping at it was, he didn’t need some undefinable feeling gnawing at him all night to boot).

More pressingly, he had positively zero tolerance for the questions that would inevitably arise should he try to explain his situation to the others at the moment. So: alone, then.

It was strange, really – he didn’t know what he was looking for or where he’d find it, but he felt very strongly he was on the right track. By all rights he was wandering aimlessly, but was regardless aware that he was making a beeline for… whatever this was.

He had his theories, obviously: As stated, this likely could be traced back to the Darkening in some shape or form. The fact that it had been spreading at an increased rate must have led to an anomaly of some sort, which (due to his connections with it) was pulling him towards it. It made sense, even if it was all wildly unusual – he’d never felt drawn to the Darkening’s assorted blights before…

He could feel down to the bottom of his heart that the next turn would take him to whatever had summoned him out here, so he wasn’t surprised when upon making that turn, he did indeed find something unusual.

It was a gelfling. It was the gelfling, in fact, the one who’d utilized the Darkening against him.

(That would explain why he’d never felt anything like this situation before; there’d never been a situation like this before.)

He wasn’t surprised, not exactly, but something hot and horrible had replaced the itch in his chest now.

The gelfling didn’t seem surprised to see him either, at least insomuch as she seemed to have been anticipating (and possibly even waiting) for something to come around the tree he’d just come behind from. At the same time, her expression made it abundantly clear that she hadn’t been anticipating him.

For lack of an idea of what else to do, they just stared at each other for a few seconds. Slowly, skekSo took in a deep breath, and said as evenly as he could, “I certainly wasn’t expecting to meet you out here, Gelfling.”

The gelfling blinked – whatever she’d been expecting (if indeed, she’d had any expectations at all), it hadn’t been that.

An important distinction to be made: The ire skekSo had broiling in his chest at that moment was near overwhelming, as he felt it rightfully deserved to be. He was facing off with the thief of a power that was rightfully his, and who’d used it to murder one of his own besides – the wretch was lucky he hadn’t bodily thrown himself at her to tear her apart with his teeth and talons alone.

However, there was a time and place to express such ire, and this was emphatically not it. Even more than his desire to rip the gelfling apart, he wanted to rectify this situation as swiftly as possible. That power was not hers, and he needed to convince her to let him remove it. He couldn’t do that with overt hostility – a gentler touch was required here.

More to the point (and even more than his desire to relieve the gelfling of the Darkening she’d stolen), he rather desperately didn’t want to give her any reason to unleash the power on to him (he didn’t envy skekLach’s ultimate fate at all). Even now as they stood there, he noted how the surrounding trees and foliage withered around them. It was disturbing to witness (if she could do that to plants what might she do to him), but he steadied himself. She didn’t know how to control the Darkening; what she was doing to the vegetation wasn’t a conscious effort on her part. Therefore, as long as he kept her calm, he would be fine. He’d be fine.

“You don’t seem to be handling your newfound abilities very well, if you’ll pardon my saying so,” he went on, gesturing at the still wilting trees. The gelfling flinched.

He straightened a bit, hoping to aid the air of “aloof yet authoritative” he was trying to give off. “I’m not particularly keen on you slowly draining the lands around my castle of all sustainable life, and I can’t imagine you’re especially comfortable with the idea either.”

She still didn’t speak, so he changed tactics: “Though I suspect plant-life is the least of your worries at the moment – whatever would you do if you lost control and someone ‘innocent’ got hurt?” Faux-concerned, he asked, “Might that be why you’ve separated yourself from the rest of your kind?”

A shot in the dark, really, but with the aid of some context-clues he was fairly confident in his aim nonetheless. That she flinched again was good point in the direction that he’d hit his mark.

He went on, “As this situation is massively unfavorable to both of us, perchance you might be willing to accompany me back to the castle? I could help you with it, if you’d like.”

“‘Help me with it’?” she parroted incredulously (at least she’d broken her silence). “You’re the reason the Darkening’s even a problem to begin with!” Then, more indignant still, “You’re the reason it exists at all!”

His beak creased in a frown he couldn’t be bothered to hide, but he responded in as even of a tone as he could: “I don’t expect you to understand the means I use to achieve my ends, Gelfling. That doesn’t change the fact that you are now alone, without resources or friends, or even the barest clue as to how to control the power you’ve stolen.”

The gelfling flinched a third time, retreating in on herself. “That’s— I mean… I’m not…”

“I’ve been experimenting with the Darkening for likely longer than you’ve been alive, Gelfling,” he said. “I understand what you’re going through better than anyone else in all of Thra ever could hope to.” He glanced away uncaringly, still trying to foster the impression that this entire situation was beneath his notice, but that he was still generously giving it his attention anyway. “I’m willing to implement a temporary truce between the skeksis and yourself in the interest of ridding you of the Darkening. Which, if I may be frank, seems to be causing you no small amount of distress.” He looked back to her. “After which you may return to your motley resistance, and wait to be crushed alongside the rest of them.”

(A lie; after the Darkening had been removed and she was no longer a threat, she would, of course, be drained with the utmost prejudice. But that was hardly something she needed to know about now.)

He shrugged. “Or perhaps some time spent at the castle will make you see sense, and you’ll rightly abandon the rebellion as a pointless venture. I have no way of knowing. The important thing is that we rid you of this dreadful little… affliction you’ve brought upon yourself.” He bent down slightly, extending his talon to her. “What do you say?”

The gelfling looked at his talon, then back to his face, visibly apprehensive, and said nothing. Annoyance tingled at the back of his throat, but just as he was about to swap tactics again and play hardball, she took a tentative step towards him.

Yes, he hissed internally. Good. Don’t fuss or fight. Come to me.

She crept still closer, unsure and skittish, until the distance between them had been closed and she was raising a shaky hand to his. His mind echoed with triumphant peals of “there is nothing in this world that does not bend to my will,” until he realized that the hand she wasn’t extending towards his was also moving.

And then suddenly the air was thick with smoke, and his eyes were burning.

“I say ‘good riddance’!” he heard her call above the rapid rustling of her retreat.

SkekSo roared.

It took a full half-hour for his vision to recover enough from the gelfling’s smoke bomb to adequately make the trek back to the castle. Even longer to wrangle his thoughts into something that wasn’t a white-hot fog of anger so he could physically direct himself back to the castle. The helpful internal compass that had initially led him to the gelfling was not so generous as to escort him back.

How dare that— that— impudent— that utterly wretched little pile of nebrie refuse—! Once he managed to remove the Darkening, hang draining her, he’d wring her scrawny neck with his bare hands—!

The Chamberlain was waiting for him when he returned, because of course he was, and immediately noticed he smelt like smoke and that his eyes were red and puffy, because of course he did. He set about cooing and fretting over him, asking where he’d been, asking if he was alright, “oh Chamberlain was so worried Sire—” until skekSo told him in no uncertain terms to mind his own business and to leave him alone.

He did as commanded, thank Thra, though he worryingly didn’t look half as put-out or woebegone as he usually did when skekSo rebuked him for something. SkekSo could already feel a thoroughly not smoke-related headache rising up to add to his smoke-related one, and resolved to deal with it tomorrow.

His desire to collapse into bed was stronger than ever, but since he was apparently noticeably infused with the scent of whatever the disgusting gelfling used in their bombs, he deemed it prudent to head to the baths.

(Where had she even gotten that stupid bomb?? She couldn’t honestly have been hoarding it since the battle at Stone-in-the-Wood, could she? Ugh.)

Later, as he sat up to his chest in warm water, trying to ignore how horribly his eyes still stung, he attempted to soothe himself with the fact that things could have gone much, much worse. A mere smoke bomb was infinitely preferable to a face-full of Darkening, and while the encounter hadn’t gone quite how he would have liked, he’d still learned something from it.

He knew he’d always be able to find the gelfling now. The Darkening linked them in some capacity, and to that end there was nowhere she could hide where he couldn’t find her. He could try to coerce her back to the castle at a later date – whenever he wanted, essentially – or perhaps even send the Scientist’s new Garthim after her in a sneak-attack. Really it depended on how everything progressed, but otherwise the ball was in his court. Where it rightly belonged, frankly.

…of course, while this was all very comforting and logical, it did nothing to assuage his glaring state of physical discomfort. He growled quietly, lamenting the unfairness that had been plaguing his existence recently, and sank still further into the bathwater.

Chapter Text

The absent skeksis had finally returned to the castle. Well, three of them had, anyway. They had all been summoned, but so far only skekUng, skekShod, and skekNa had actually arrived. Understandably, considering said three had all been traveling together at the time. It would’ve been deeply worrisome if only one or two returned. The Mariner, unsurprisingly, had yet to turn up. Given that not only was it difficult to get word out to her in the middle of the blasted ocean as it was, but all the servants they could’ve used to deliver the message were in a dismal state of revolt, skekSo was more than a bit concerned that she wouldn’t be making an appearance at all, or at least not anytime soon.

(SkekLi was, by all accounts, simply missing in action. SkekSo was disconcerted, but not overly occupied with the notion. The clown certainly wouldn’t offer much help if he were here.)

While all of this was good and bad and varying degrees of important in turns, the more pressing issue, in his opinion, was that he’d developed a migraine. The resulting (read: immediate) squabbling that had broken out in the wake of the three’s reintroduction, the harried, disorganized call for answers, and the even more harried and disorganized retelling of current events, had turned into a nightmare to handle. He quickly decided he really would’ve much rather had his teeth snapped from his jaws one by one than have to deal with his runaway court a second longer.

Alas, he was the Emperor, which made it his unhappy duty to wrangle the lot back into something resembling a functioning unit. So like it or not he was stuck in the middle of their bickering for the duration. Woe.

SkekUng, in that gratingly bombastic way of his, was going on about how he, skekNa, and skekShod had heard Rian’s call for rebellion as they took their supper, and wasn’t that a fine little surprise. SkekNa seemed to be bitter and darkly excited in turns. (On the one hand, he had been grievously punished for his inability to hide his darker nature from the gelfling – everyone else was now doing so openly, to the degree an outright rebellion was being waged, with no consequences whatsoever. On the other— er, hook, he would no longer be held accountable for his cruelty. He’d just been given a clear path to do whatever he liked.) SkekShod was making hissing, stuttering inquiries about what exactly all the fuss was over “essence.”

They were all varying shades of outraged, angry, and frightened by the news of what had happened to skekVar, skekMal, and skekLach. Which, in turn, set off a chain-reaction that sent the rest into fits, as the memory of the losses they accrued at Stone-in-the-Wood were still fresh and still horrible.

And still, as always, it was skekSo’s job to collectively snap them out of it. That held for all of three minutes, and then they were off about another grievance: The castle’s podling servants had all disappeared, and as such there was no one left to handle menial chores. Most blame (justly or not) fell on the Scientist for this, as the podlings had been there when they all left for their ill-fated battle, and gone when they returned, and he’d been the only one in the castle at the time. He insisted that he had been in his lab the entire time, working tirelessly to create the garthim to fight for them – the podlings must have traitorously decided they agreed with the gelfling and ran off. Nothing he could have done about it – he'd been working.

SkekSo didn’t know one way or another, and he found he didn’t especially care just then, either. His head was pounding fit to come clean off his shoulders, and even worse—

The itch in his core was back full-force. The gelfling was close. He would try to talk to her again tonight, he decided.

“Where is Sire going, hmm? And so underdressed?”

SkekSo turned quickly upon being addressed, and as expected found the Chamberlain lurking behind him. He didn’t bother holding back a glare – both for the intrusion into his affairs and for the “underdressed” comment. He was suitably covered for both the weather and his own personable sensibilities, he just wasn’t dressed as ornately as he usually was. There was very little point, considering he was about to go traipsing around the woods. Might as well save himself some time.

The Chamberlain had his head tilted in polite inquisition, which for whatever reason grated specifically on skekSo’s already raw nerves.

“Out,” he said brusquely.

“I see, Sire,” the Chamberlain said, bobbing his head. “I see. If Chamberlain may ask—?”

“You may not,” skekSo bit back, “and you over-step your bounds by assuming you have any right to ask.”

“Of course, Sire, foolish Chamberlain,” he simpered, bowing his head penitently. “Chamberlain only asks out of concern for Emperor! What if something were to happen to him while he was away? Other skeksis would have no way of knowing, Sire, and would not know first place to look if he needed help!” With an expression that looked innocent but that skekSo knew was anything but, he casually added, “What if Emperor does not make it back before nightfall, and cannot see way back to castle?”

(Oh that nosy little—)

SkekSo gave him a hard look, quiet, but eventually broke his gaze and turned away. Loath as he was to admit it, the simpering fool had a point. (One he’d been painfully aware of during his last outing, and how dare skekSil be the one to catch on to that.) If the horrid gelfling had anymore underhanded tricks up her sleeve, at least one person ought to know what he was off doing. Hopefully they’d be able to band together long enough to find him and bring him back to the castle.

Hopefully they wouldn’t just declare him dead and start fighting to fill his position.

“The gelfling who turned the Darkening against us is camped somewhere along the borders of our lands,” he informed the Chamberlain shortly (small victories where he could get them: it was lovely to see the usually cloying expression slip into genuine surprise). “I’m heading out to try and convince her to come back to the castle, where the Scientist will hopefully be able to remove the power she took, and then henceforth drain her essence.”

The Chamberlain stared at him a moment, clearly trying to work out what to say. “That is… very astute, Sire,” he finally began slowly. “Very brave, as well, to put self at risk for rest of skeksis.” (SkekSo didn’t bother to correct him that he was primarily trying to remove the Darkening from the gelfling so he would once more be the sole wielder of such, and that the rest of the court could eat sog as far as he cared.) “But – not that Chamberlain is questioning Emperor, no no! – would it not be just as well to send out others to fetch gelfling, rather than go himself? Scientist’s new garthim, perhaps—”

“The Scientist was only able to create the one garthim,” skekSo interrupted, a bitter taste in the back of his throat. “He has informed me he requires more time to observe his creation to make more since gruenak are difficult to come by nowadays, and that it would be unwise to risk his only specimen.”

SkekSo had gone to the Scientist recently and demanded use of the garthim, and SkekTek had rattled off the aforementioned explanation. Despite a decent amount of raging on skekSo’s part (and no small amount of cowering on skekTek’s), he hadn’t budged on the matter. Until he secured a definitive way to mass-produce them, the garthim was off limits to everyone. Even the Emperor.

“Hmmm…” the Chamberlain said contemplatively. “Scientist is quite slow, yes? Impedes progress.”

“Indeed,” skekSo growled. “But no matter. I wouldn’t be going if I suspected the gelfling would attack outright; she’s far too spineless for it.” He considered, then grudgingly amended, “Provided of course there is nothing attacking her, which obviously I won’t be doing.”

The Chamberlain’s expression was unreadable, but all he said out loud was, “If Emperor is sure.”

“I am,” skekSo said. Then, with a small flourish of his cloak, he spun back around towards the exit he’d been approaching. “Speak to no one about this, skekSil. Or that slimy tongue of yours is mine.”

As before, skekSo was acutely, inexplicably aware of the gelfling’s location, and was able to find her without issue. She reacted very much the same as he had during the first meeting: apprehensive, evasive, and infuriatingly defiant. This despite the fact that he’d very kindly not gouged her stupid, gigantic eyes out of their stupid sockets in retaliation to the smoke bomb she’d hit him with.

Gelfling were honestly the most ungrateful species in all of Thra, there was truly no contest.

After a brief (thoroughly aggravating) back-and-forth, he attempted to appeal to her common sense. Stupid him, this was assuming she had any.

“…How can you judge us for using gelfling to stay alive when you yourself killed a skeksis?” he asked, bouncing off her last immediate argument (some pointless drivel about the moral depravity of using gelfling for essence).

She gave him an alarmed, affronted look (though if she thought she could use that to cover up the way she flinched in guilt, she was to be sorely disappointed). “That’s not the same!”

“No?” he returned, eyes narrowed and unimpressed. “You murdered skekLach to protect your ‘friends,’ correct? To ensure they would live?” (She flinched again at the word “murdered,” and didn’t answer.) “What do you think we’re doing? By draining gelfling, we’re ensuring we live. We may be on opposite sides of the line of conflict, Gelfling, but our motives are the same.”

“We’re not,” she said, clenching and unclenching her fists, though out of nervousness or irritation he didn’t know. “Gelfling are trying to make sure they don’t die before their time, not cheat death forever.” She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “You’re all over one-thousand trine; you’ve had more than enough time to do whatever you’re going to.”

SkekSo felt something scalding bubble up his throat, and before he could rein himself back in he found himself shouting, “Our ‘time’ is limitless! We are immortal!”

“Well apparently not…”

His body tensed as if to spring, but then his limbs locked in place as he remembered that that would be working in the opposite direction of self-preservation. When his attempts to relax and regain his composure failed, he settled for spitting, “You couldn’t even begin to comprehend our position, Gelfling – your lives are fleeting. You barely even get to taste life, so you’re comfortable with the notion of losing it eventually. You say you simply don’t want to die ‘before your time’? How does one decide how long their ‘time’ extends, pray tell? Perhaps it was the gelfling we drained ‘time’ after all – what authority do any of you have to argue otherwise?” He glared at her poisonously. “Or perhaps you’re just a hypocrite, and the fact of the matter is no one wants to die, regardless of how much ‘time’ they get.”

“…that doesn’t make it right to take it from others to extend your own.”

SkekSo felt a violent twitch run through his left eyelid, and he had to physically take a step back and take a deep breath to calm himself, hands pressed together flat to deter his fantasies of wrapping them around the gelfling’s throat. This utterly hopeless, brain-dead fizzgig of a person was talking in circles.

“And yet,” he finally said icily, “my Collector is dead.”

She looked away.

He took another breath in and out, still trying to calm and slow his furious heartrate, but before he could say anything more she asked, “Why are you using the Darkening if you’re so afraid of dying?”

He faltered, taken off-guard. The most he was able to manage by way of response was a flat, “Excuse me?”

“Why are you working with the Darkening if you’re so afraid of dying?” she repeated. “The Darkening corrupts everything it touches. I can—” She wavered, then slowly raised her hand to clutch her chest. “I can feel it inside me right now. It— it hurts. I know what that means.” She looked at him. “How can you claim everything you’ve done is in the interest of staying alive when you intentionally use a power that’s actively destroying you?”

He stood there for a few moments, staring at her and shaking in anger. “It’s the way of the world that those without power will be crushed, and power demands sacrifice,” he finally said, voice level against all odds. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“…I guess you’re right on that count,” she conceded finally. “I don’t.”

“So then stop arguing against points you don’t understand,” he insisted forcefully, “and come back with me so we can find a way to remove you from the argument all together!” He gave her another glare. “If you truly believe the Darkening is so terrible and destructive as you claim, why not relinquish it and wipe your hands clean of the matter?”

“…Because,” she said, eyes fixed on the ground. “I want to stop the Darkening, and if that means hoarding all of it inside me, I will.” She looked up at him, and he reflexively moved his foot behind him as if to step back when he saw the deep purple glow in her eyes. She looked at him a moment more, then turned and darted away, back into the trees.

Chapter Text

“I’m not going to change my mind,” the gelfling said some days later, tone perilously close to something heated. “No matter how many times you bother me about it.”

SkekSo was rendered instantly and rightfully indignant. He’d come to expect a certain degree of insolence from the gelfling (as much as in rankled his pride to endure such), but this was crossing a line. He was not some childling that could be admonished and dismissed for making an unreasonable request.

“‘I’m not going to change mind,’” he mimicked back in a high voice, ever the picture of dignity and maturity. “I’m not trying to ‘change your mind,’ Gelfling, I’m trying to make you see sense!”

Rather than rise to match his argument, as she had before, she was giving him an incredulous look. She apparently hadn’t been expecting a rebuttal of that nature. (Specifically, the first chunk of his rebuttal, as that’s when she’d begun blinking in surprise.)

“Are all skeksis like this?” she asked, something akin to alarm peppering her tone.

Annoyed by her shift from the topic at hand and feeling unwarrantedly scrutinized all of a sudden, skekSo huffed. “Possessing common-sense, directive, and forethought, you mean? Unhappily, no.”

She tilted her head, suspicion on temporary leave as confusion filled in for it. “What does any of that have to do with…” She thought for a moment, then shrugged a bit helplessly. “…anything, really?”

He glared. First she switched topics, and now she refused to follow the new thread. Truly unbelievable. “There is exactly one skeksis capable of any of the aforementioned things for longer than thirteen minutes at a time, and they’re standing in front of you. The rest are apparently utterly incapable of thinking beyond the moment they’re in, and without specific tasks to attend to or constant instruction being doled out, they run around like a gaggle of headless shrookil.”

(For the record, he saw the additional look of confusion that crossed the gelfling’s face, realized that shrookil had been extinct for several hundred trine before she was even born, and then additionally realized that she therefore wouldn’t have the slightest clue what one even was. He simply didn’t care.)

“I… see?” she said at last.

SkekSo barely heard her, falling deep in to his own thoughts now. “They only worry about— about dying when it’s being waved directly in front of their faces, elsewise they occupy themselves with the latest bits of drama or the most recent squabble to crop up. And if any of them have ever contemplated the horrors we’ve left behind, they’ve certainly been careful about keeping it beneath my notice!”

(The gelfling likely understood even less about what he was talking about here than when he’d mentioned the shrookil, but all the same he found he couldn’t be fussed to stop and explain it to her. Anyway, it was none of her business really.)

He went on, increasingly agitated, “They seem perfectly capable of willfully forgetting the entire concept, frankly – and when they do remember they’re oh so very easily put at ease by having a bit of nonsense spewed at them!” He sent the gelfling another glare, much darker than the last. “And who do you think is the one constantly required to redirect the headless shrookils to productive things? Or spew nonsense at them so they don’t become hysterical?” Suddenly overcome with resentment, he made a series of furious (and though he refused to classify them as such, helpless) gestures, bursting, “Those peons get to live their lives in blissful ignorance thanks to me, yet I’m forced to constantly contemplate the worst!”

(He only just barely stopped himself from shrieking to the trees “it isn’t fair!” but let the record show that he did stop himself.)

“…that must be very hard for you.”

His fury came to a stuttering halt and he stared at her. She wasn’t looking at him, but for as reluctant as the sentiment seemed it felt genuine. Unused to such a thing and thusly lacking a proper response for it, he settled for scoffing.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” he asked, sarcasm coating his tongue and dripping past his teeth.

She cast him a quick look, then glanced away again. “It doesn’t excuse anything,” she insisted, speaking quickly, “but with everything together, I can understand why you’re so…”

He waited for her to finish her sentence (half-daring her to, honestly), but quite suddenly her wings unfurled and she’d flitted away.

He only entertained the idea of chasing after her for a moment, then discarded it quickly. He began his walk back to the castle still rather angry, incredibly frustrated, and perhaps just a bit confused.

The Darkness is impenetrable.

He can hear people calling out to him, but he can’t tell from where. It’s too Dark. He needs to find them quickly, or else—

“Succumb,” something tells him neutrally. “Cease.”

He doesn’t know how long he fumbles alone in the Darkness. Days, unum, trine – it feels like so many trine. He searches frantically for an escape and never finds one. And no one ever comes to get him.

Running out of time, running out of time—

“Succumb,” something commands him. “Cease.”

He runs out of time, and is forced to obey.

SkekSo jolted just before the final dregs of his life left him, gasping and shaking.

He wasn’t dead. It had been a nightmare. He wasn’t dead, he was lying in bed, still alive, it had just been another nightmare—

His heart was pounding so hard his chest hurt, he was chilled and doused in sweat all at once, sick to his stomach, he couldn’t stop shaking, sobbing, gasping, certain doom was breathing down his neck, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe—

He wasn’t dead yet, but he felt he soon would be.

(This was, of course, not the case. It never was. But there was a small voice in the back of his mind insisting that it would be if he didn’t fight with every ounce of his being. The problem there was that he didn’t know what specifically he was fighting. Which, really, only led to still more panic.)

When it was over, he was left feeling weak and shaky and tired – he was so tired. Yet he stared at the far wall, desperate to keep his eyes open. He loathed likening any of his feelings to terror, but oh, that’s exactly what this was. Deep, profound terror that if he fell asleep again, he’d have another nightmare, and that he’d wake up to another attack just like the last.

(Painful, clawing terror that if he fell asleep again, he might not wake up in time to subvert its reoccurring end.)

Another typical night, he mused bitterly, angrily wishing he could curb his detestable sniffling.

The gelfling wasn’t nearly as rigid the next time he found her. He wondered if that meant he was making headway, or if the stupid little thing was just becoming more comfortable with rejecting him. Either way, all she did as he approached was raise her head to look at him.

She was in the process of cooking herself an unidentifiable something over a small fire she’d made. SkekSo’s beak twisted at the sight (whatever the stuff was, “appetizing” certainly wasn’t it).

“Hello,” she greeted as she turned back to fuss with the fire.

This gave him intense pause. In all their encounters thus far, she’d never received him quite so openly. Additionally, her tone was much lighter than he’d ever heard it before. Not pleased, exactly, more in the direction of politely neutral. Still, considering the voice she'd spoken with previously had been laden with suspicion, apprehension, and outright dislike, it was a noticeable difference.

He was promptly torn between two opinions: On the one hand, this could be very good – perhaps he was making headway. On the other… the abruptness with which she’d changed her stance wasn’t especially encouraging. He had a sudden, powerful concern that he’d just stumbled into some sort of trap, and uneasily resolved to keep his distance for this meeting.

“How are you feeling today?” she went on. “Well, I hope.”

…oh Thra he was most definitely teetering on the edge of a trap. He cast a hasty glanced around himself, unsure whether to be calmed or more unsettled when he saw nothing.

Ire stirred by her (potential) audacity, his expression split into a glare. “Alright, Gelfling, what are you playing at? Usually when we meet you’re trying to slink off into the trees, and now you’re offering well-wishes?” Eyes narrowed, he demanded, “What are you up to?”

Her hands stilled, and after a moment’s silence she sighed and looked up at him somewhat guiltily. “You were very upset last night…”

Everything ground to a halt around them. The hateful suspicion dropped from his face, and he was unable to respond for a moment.

“What makes you think that?” he finally asked tonelessly. He could certainly guess, and he loathed the implications of it (he was already inseparably connected to a spineless oaf, he didn’t need another worm on that hook), but presently all he really wanted was to divert her attention away from whatever she thought she knew.

She glanced back to her food. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It’s just… I know. You didn’t have a good night last night. Something upset you so much it woke me up.” She turned back to him wearing a strange expression. “What happened?”

There was a protracted silence before skekSo surprised himself by saying, “Nightmare.” Then, perhaps to capitalize on an opportunity and scare her, perhaps just to save face, he sneered, “You can expect some of your own once the Darkening settles into you further. I didn’t even dream before I began investigating its power, and now I can’t remember the last time I’ve had an unbroken night’s sleep.”

“You have nightmares every night?” she asked softly. She didn’t look apprehensive or worried, as she ought too. She looked… oh, he couldn’t place it. “This is the first time I’ve been woken up by it, though…”

He shifted (gracefully, not at all uncomfortable or self-conscious). “Last night was… particularly unpleasant.”

“Are you alright?”

SkekSo was wholly unsure of how to respond to that, so he simply didn’t.

There was a beat of silence, then, “Look at that tree over there.”

Taken off-guard, skekSo momentarily forgot he’d been awaiting a trap to be sprung, and glanced in the suggested direction. There was, indeed, a tree that way.

“Don’t its branches sort of make it look like its shaking its fist at that other tree across from it?” the gelfling asked, tone reaching for humor.

Confused, he turned back to her, brow raised.

“That cloud over there,” she continued, shifting her gaze and gesturing to something beyond his right shoulder, “doesn’t it look like a hollerbat?”

He didn’t fully turn to look this time, remembering himself (and still very confused), and instead put more energy into looking annoyed by the pointless babble.

She either didn’t pick up on the message he was trying to send or willfully ignored it: “And then a bit over to the left, there’s some other clouds that look like a pluff’m chasing a fizzgig—”

“Gelfling,” skekSo interrupted, abruptly reaching the end of his patience, “what are you on about?”

She blinked, likely a bit taken aback by the sudden force of his tone. She looked back down to her fire and food, and there was another short pause as she chose her words.

“You seem… stressed,” she eventually said, slowly. “When I’m stressed, or even just sad, I try to distract myself. I’ll look at the things around me and try to pick out as many details as possible, or find as many— well, ‘pictures,’ I suppose you could say – in whatever I’m looking at. That way, once I’m ready to go back to whatever’s bothering me, I’ll have had time to calm down to work things out.” She looked back up to him. “Did it work? Are you feeling any better?”

Now he blinked, once more unsure how to respond. Then he took an irritated breath, in and out. “It’s disgustingly presumptuous of you to assume how I am feeling, and even more so to assume that I would want your help to begin with. Particularly with such useless tripe as all that.” Expression darkening a shade or two, he asked, “Do you think my attention-span so short as to be torn from my own thoughts by the sight of a cloud?”

“Well… no,” she said. “That’s why you keep looking at different things. It’s hard to stop thinking once you’ve started, which can be awful when what you’re thinking of is upsetting. That’s why you keep switching things to look at – to trick yourself into thinking of other things.” She gave a half-shrug. “It doesn’t always work, but it helps sometimes.”

Just as he was about to scoff and say something scathing about the nonsensical thought-processes of gelfling (what he wasn’t explicitly sure yet, but there was a comment to be made in there somewhere, he could feel it), she went on, “When looking at the things around me doesn’t help, I usually recite some sums.”

Vitriolic backbiting was nudged aside by a fresh shot of (admittedly irritable) confusion, so he once more raised his brow and repeated, “‘Sums’?”

The gelfling nodded. “I’ll come up with random math problems as fast as I can, then try to solve them just as fast. I end up so focused on trying to work out the right numbers I forget to worry about things.” She tilted her head suddenly, considering. “Thinking of sums usually works best, if I’m being honest. Probably because I’m not actually very good at math, so I have to think about it harder.”

There was another pause, one, two, three – and then he huffed. “I’ve never been particularly fond of math, either.”

“Oh?” she asked politely, tilting her head.

He shook his head. “Just as well,” he said uncaringly. “I have a treasurer for that sort of thing, thank you.”

“Going through sums would probably work pretty well for you too, then,” she said, her tone gentle.

He sent her another glare, hopefully more pointed this time. “And why on Thra would you care, one way or another?”

She paused and looked away again, considering (and plainly uncomfortable with whatever was rolling through her head), before supplying lamely, “You’re… upset.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

She shrugged evasively. “It’s the best I’ve got.” Looking back up, she added, “And you never actually corrected me and said you weren’t.”

He shifted again, sending her a sour look just because he could, and didn’t dignify that with a response.

She asked, “What’s nine times three?”

“What’s— excuse me?”

“What’s nine—”

“I heard you, Gelfling, but I never agreed to this stupid game of yours!”

“Don’t you know?” At his flabbergasted silence (the complete and utter cheek of this wretch—!), she added, “It’s alright if you don’t, after all you have a treasurer for this sort of thing, so you’re probably out of practice—”

“Be silent, Gelfling!” he snarled. “It’s— It’s…” Alright, nine plus nine was eighteen, so add another nine, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one…

“Twenty-seven!” he finally burst, perhaps a bit too forcefully.

She smiled at him encouragingly, and his mood curdled still further.

“Want to know a neat trick?” she asked. “If you’re multiplying nine by another single digit number, the first digit of the answer will be one less than the number you’re multiplying it by, and will add together with the second digit to equal nine. So nine times three is twenty-seven, nine times five is forty-five, nine times six is fifty-four, so on and so on.” She offered him a hesitant, awkward smile. “I don’t know if that’s something common across the clans, but that’s how we’re taught our tables in Grot.”

“Hrmph. Sounds idiotic to me,” he dismissed, hoping to distract from the fact that it was actually decently clever.

“What’s nine times eight?” she asked back.

He debated getting the answer wrong for a moment just to spite her. But skekSo had never excelled at lowering himself in any regard, even if it was to prove a point, so after a moment he grudgingly bit out, “Seventy-two.”

She smiled again, and the only thing that stopped him from walking over and whacking her upside the head was the purple glow tinting her eyes. He settled for snapping, “Don’t look so smug, Gelfling.”

Her expression dropped, which would’ve been welcome if she hadn’t suddenly looked so contemplative. She did look slightly troubled, to be fair, but that likely had more to do with whatever notion she was privately entertaining than it did anything he’d said.

“Deet,” she said suddenly, quietly. As he was puzzling over what in Thra that noise was supposed to signify, she clarified, “My name’s Deet.”

He stared at her for a moment. “…that’s your name?” he asked, disbelieving and vaguely appalled.

She nodded, oblivious. “It’s short for Deethra, but I like when people use the nickname. It feels friendlier that way.”

He offered her a cold look. “Good to know, Deethra.”

The gelfling – “Deethra” – looked at him expectantly. When he said nothing more, she prompted, “What’s your name?”

…now wait just one singular second—

“Come again?” he demanded. “You don’t know who I am?”

“Oh,” she said, suddenly looking surprised and a little embarrassed. “N-no, it’s not— I know you’re the Emperor, it’s just— well, er—”

“You don’t know my name?!”

“Hardly anyone ever says skeksis’ names!” she defended. “Everyone just refers to you all by your titles! ‘Emperor’ and ‘General’ and ‘Scroll-Keeper’ and such. And all your names sound very similar besides—!”

“Oh, excuse me??”

“They all start with ‘skek’!” she insisted.

“And are completely different beyond that!” he countered.

She gave him an incredulous look. “There’s skekEkt and skekTek and— probably a skekNeck—”

“There is not,” he asserted. “And twice does not make a pattern.” Then, out of reckless, morbid curiosity, he asked, “What do you think my name is, Deethra? Take a wild guess.”

She stared at him a moment, likely sifting through all the names she even knew to begin with, then offered a hesitant, “…skekSil?”

SkekSo felt like he’d just been rather soundly slapped across the face.

“‘SkekSil’?!” he squawked. “‘SkekSil’?!”

“…I’m assuming I’m wrong—?”

“My name is Emperor skekSo, you ignorant little whelp. Do you hear me? SkekSo. Memorize it.”

She observed him for a moment, then offered a tentative half-smile. “Nice to meet you, skekSo.”

He grumbled something indistinct back, disbelieving and irritated.

(Somehow it took another hour for the conversation to come to an end. He wouldn’t realize until after he got back to the castle that he’d never gotten around to trying to convince her to come back with him.)

The Darkness is impenetrable.

He can hear people calling out to him, but he can’t move to find them. Something shackles his feet in place.

“Succumb,” something hisses to him, cajoling and impatient. “Cease.”

Something is thrown over his shoulder, yanking him down to his knees. His hands hit the ground to catch himself, and shackles spring up around his wrists too. Something else is thrown over his opposite shoulder, tendrils twist and lock around his thin chest, and suddenly the floor isn’t solid enough to hold him on top of it.

He’s being dragged into it. Beneath it. His thrashing does nothing to free himself or slow the process.

Legs, knees, hands pulled under, up to his elbows, chest, up to his shoulders now—

“Succumb,” something roars at him. “Cease.”

 SkekSo woke up in his bed, just like he always did. This time though, he was already sobbing. There was no moment allotted for him orient himself.

The room was getting smaller as he frantically glanced from shadowed corner to shadowed corner. The tendrils that had dragged him under were bubbling just beneath his bed waiting to rise up and claim him again, he just knew it. He would die, he would die he would die—

Underneath it all, past his wild, helpless, fear, he felt something immaterial pulling at him from somewhere in his chest.

He latched on to it like a lifeline, desperate for anything that might save him from the panic and terror he was drowning in. He quite literally jumped from his bed, hoping to clear the grabbing range from the horrors he could feel were festering under it, and skittered to the door.

As he stumbled down the hall, heart pounding and limbs shaking, he had a panicky, fragmented notion that the Darkening itself was summoning him to it. It felt so familiar to how his experiments with it felt, and now it thrummed through his entire quaking body. The fact that it would be deeply troubling for the Darkening having enough will to summon him couldn’t make it past the barriers of his fright, and as such never occurred to him. Nor could he begin to postulate why he might be being summoned, if that was in fact what was happening, so instead he set his focus on putting one foot in front of the other. It wasn’t until he realized that the “pull” was leading him towards the front door, not down the hall that lead to the Darkening, that his frenzied mind finally put the pieces together.

He continued onwards into the night.

He heard the gelfling long before he saw her. She was sobbing, and not making any effort to quiet herself as far as he could tell. Then again, why would she bother – she was essentially a miniature harbinger of death at present, what did she have to fear?

She must have heard him approaching, or perhaps she could sense his location like he could hers, because as he drew nearer her head snapped up towards him. The purple glow still dominated the majority of her eyes, so he couldn’t tell if they’d gone red with tears yet. They were more than a little puffy, though, and still had tears carving tracks down her dirt-covered cheeks.

She didn’t say anything once she realized who she was looking at, not at first. She set about trying to discretely wipe her eyes. He didn’t speak either, simply staring for a moment, and then he noticed the thing she was cradling in her lap.

It was a fizzgig. He was momentarily confused as to why the detestable furball would make her weep like this, until upon closer inspection he realized that it was dead.

It was at that moment he realized that, once again, the plant life was dying around them.

She was weeping because she’d killed it.

SkekSo watched silently as she tried to pull herself together. He certainly couldn’t say he emphasized – never in his entire thousand trine of life could he ever even imagine being so broken over some random, worthless creature. All the same, he found he couldn’t bring himself to say anything antagonistic to her, either.

(This was just perhaps because he was still in emotional throes himself, but still. It kept his beak shut.)

“W-what are you doing out so late?” she asked, voice shaking. Evidently she wasn’t in the mood for preamble or small-talk.

There was a moment where he felt he should lie – claim he’d felt her this time, that she’d woken him up – but he quickly realized that it was extremely improbable he’d be able to keep his own voice steady, either. And, honestly, he was too tired to lie.

“I had another nightmare,” he said, throat constricting around the words so they came out too quiet. “Then when I woke up I felt you…” he trailed off, gesturing at their surroundings half-heartedly. A fresh sob burst from her throat and she looked away, back down to the dead fizzgig in her lap, and hugged it a bit closer.

There was a silence, wherein skekSo wondered why he hadn’t left yet, and then the gelfling asked thickly, “What are your nightmares about?”

He felt an abrupt surge of white-hot anger. Which was strange, really, because it was an innocuous enough question. Consciously, he insisted it was because she didn’t have the right to ask him that. What plagued him in the dead of night was no affair of hers, and how dare she be so presumptuous as to assume otherwise.

(Subconsciously, he acknowledged it was because she’d asked him now, when the memory of it was still fresh enough to make him shake.)

But his anger mixed with the emotions that had already been churning in his chest, and he felt sure that if he didn’t find an outlet for everything they’d claw their way out of his ribcage and leave him to bleed out on the underbrush. So it was with an inexplicable air of defiance that he finally spat, “Death. I dream of dying, Gelfling.”

impenetrable darkness voices calling running out of time feet shackled in place tendrils to chain him up and drag him down down down

“Succumb,” the dying, withered trees seemed to whisper. “Cease.”

And all over again, he was undone.

His heart began beat so heard he was sure it was bruising the inside of his chest and his limbs began to shake. He drew in a rattling breath to remind himself he still could, but this was revealed to be a mistake when he released it just a quickly, only to rapidly draw another in.

Succumb, cease. Succumb, cease.

He stood rooted to the spot, mortified and hyperventilating and lost, when he felt a small hand touch his arm.

The gelfling had set the dead fizzgig down and moved to his side.

“Shhh...” she soothed, albeit in a very wet and quavering voice. “It’s al-alright. You’re alright, you aren’t dead or dying now – you’re r-right here with me.”

She seemed to hesitate (but then with how quickly the moment passed he may have imagined that), then softly took hold of his hand. Feeling nauseatingly untethered from absolutely anything, he clutched back to ground himself.

“Deep breaths, now – in, one t-two, three, out, one, two, three, in, one, two, three, out – good, just like that, you’re alright. I’m here with you now.”

Had this been another skeksis, he would have essentially just sealed his own doom. His inordinate display of weakness would be common knowledge by breakfast, and he could expect to be deposed sometime before lunch. If he even made it to lunch – there were no promises he wouldn’t be gleefully stripped of his rank during his breakdown.

The other skeksis would’ve had no reason to comfort him. The gelfling had even less.

And yet here she was, doing just that.

This was twice now that she’d made his eyes sting.

“Wh-what’s—” he choked, then swallowed, trying to get his voice back, “what’s s-sixty-seven plus eighty-f-five?”

She looked up to him, surprised at first, but her expression was quickly crumbling into something else, something he had no experience with and therefore couldn’t place.

“Um—” she said, voice just as choked and shaky as his. “Well, l-let’s see… seven and five is twelve, carry the one… one-hundred and–and fifty-two, I think?”

He wasn’t sure, honestly – he’d just thrown numbers out. Sounded close enough, though.

The sky was turning pink before he finally began heading back to the castle.

Chapter Text

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Deethra began, which in skekSo’s experience mean she was likely about to say something very rude, “but what happened to your beak?”

…oh. Well. Not rude, per se, but not something he was especially pleased to have attention called to. He was about to offer a story about the metal tip simply being something he wore for personal aesthetic preferences, but then she went on, “I noticed it the other night when we met up, um… were you injured at some point?”

…ohhhh no that was right… she’d seen. He hadn’t been in a state of mind to remember to grab his prosthetic before he’d stumbled out into the night that evening, nor had he been in a state of mind to realize he hadn’t remembered.

And Deethra had seen. Lovely.

His previous exit from the topic now blocked, and unable to come up with a convincing and appropriately grand tale of how he’d lost a chunk of his beak on the spot, he was forced to admit the truth.

“The Darkening,” he said shortly.

Deethra didn’t look particularly surprised; in fact if anything, she looked a bit sad. “…I figured as much, but it seemed better to ask than just assume.”

“Something to look forward to,” he muttered, albeit without his usual venom. “Unless, of course, you’d let me—”

“No thank you,” she said matter-of-factly (he tried not to be too annoyed with her blunt dismissal). Suddenly, she added, “I liked your nightgown. You looked very sweet in it.”

…he hadn’t changed before he’d left, either.

“…ah,” was all he could manage to say.

She tilted her head at him, and with an indignant twist of his gut he realized she was fighting to keep down a smile. “Really, I’m not making fun or anything! I thought it was cute!”

SkekSo suddenly found himself thoroughly unable to continue looking her in the eye, and turned his head to look in the opposite direction. The worst part, he decided, was that she did, indeed, seem very earnest in her declaration that she thought he’d looked “cute,” and was in no way trying to mock him.

“Thanks very much,” he mumbled, words stumbling from his mouth, awkward and reluctant.

He heard her giggle, and he abruptly wished very much for the ground to swallow him where he stood.

“You really don’t have any family? None at all?”

SkekSo shook his head, poking at the food she’d offered him. By his best assumption, it was a plant of some sort, though considering she’d cooked it down near to nothing it was really anyone’s guess.

“The closest I’ve got are the rest of my court,” he said, semi-contemplatively. “But based off what I’ve heard of gelfling, I don’t think they’d count by your standards.” Then, out of some ancient form of courtesy he likely hadn’t used in the last five-hundred trine, he asked, “What about you?”

Deethra blinked, surprised. “Oh! Er— I’ve got two fathers and my little brother Bobb’n, and the nurlocs, of course—” She faltered, expression suddenly drooping.

Sensing an outburst of sentimentally (or at the very least, an underlying current that would put a complete damper on the entire conversation going forward if left to stew for too long), skekSo asked, “What is this I’m eating, again?”

She looked at the plant-something-or-other he was indicating. “I’m… not sure, exactly,” she admitted.

He very nearly dropped it. “You’re ‘not sure’??”

“I’ve eaten it before and nothing happened,” she said, looking at it scrutinously as though it might whisper its name to her if she paid close enough attention. “I just don’t know what it’s called.”

“…does it at least taste decent?”

“…eh.”

“Deethra—”

“Is there a reason you stay so close to the castle?” He asked one day.

It was a particularly egregious case today, as she’d come as close as the moat surrounding it, and was now attempting to skip rocks (her success was… varied). To her credit, the spot she’d picked to do this was sheltered from view for the most part, so it wasn’t likely that anyone from the castle would be able to spot her from within.

And he was the only one who ever seemed to come out of the castle nowadays, so what had she to fear?

She tried to flick another rock, which landed with a plonk into the water and didn’t skip at all. As she began casting around for another appropriately shaped stone, it struck him she might be hesitating.

“No other gelfling are likely to come this close to the skeksis,” she admitted finally. “And if none of them come close, I can’t hurt them.”

He respectfully curbed his desire to roll his eyes, and merely nodded once. A thought was nagging at him – had been since the battle at Stone-in-the-Wood, honestly – and as carefully as he could, he asked, “How is it you came to be able to utilize the Darkening anyway? Do you know?”

So far, Deethra had be entirely uncooperative when it came to acquiescing to his requests, so they’d see if she was any more willing when it came to divulging information.

Trying to aid the illusion that it was a completely casual question he’d just asked, he selected a stone himself and flicked his wrist, sending it out over the water.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven— plonk. Hm. Usually he could do better.

She looked to be momentarily impressed (but then in his experience it had never been particularly difficult to impress gelfling), before she chewed on the corner of her lip, thinking.

“The Sanctuary Tree gave me the ability to absorb the Darkening,” she finally said quietly. “Because it was being attacked by Darkened nurlocs and couldn’t do it anymore.”

SkekSo had numerous questions for this answer, of course. Countless, really, but rather than try to pry answers out of her, he wondered if perhaps a more pragmatic approach might yield better results.

“As I’ve said, I’m more than willing to try to assist you if the duty becomes too great for you to bear.”

“It would be a waste of the Sanctuary Tree’s sacrifice,” she returned instantly, staring out over the water.

He took a frustrated breath in and out. Well, that would be that argument summarily shut down…

 He went to throw another rock, when quite suddenly something knocked into his elbow, ruining his angle. The stone hit the water with yet another plonk.

He looked down to give Deethra an affronted look, as she’d been the one doing the knocking. She offered him a hesitant (if utterly unabashed) grin, and said, “Oops.”

(He spent the next thirty minutes frantically waving his talons in front of her face whenever she went to throw another stone.)

“—but when we got there, people were very rude because I was grottan. At one point I got knocked out of my seat just because two stone-woods didn’t want me sitting next to them, but when Hup jumped in to defend me they said he was the one who started the fight – which he hadn’t, he’d been trying to protect me! – and the guards threw him in jail.”

“Hm,” skekSo said, brow furrowed. He hoped that of the gelfling from Stone-in-the-Wood that had been drained for essence, the aforementioned two had been among them. “Now, you keep mentioning this ‘Hup,’ is that another grottan?”

“Oh! Not at all! He’s a podling.”

“Ah,” he said, understanding. Then, contemplatively, “I didn’t know you had a slave.”

“He’s not a slave!” Deet sighed, emphatic and exasperated. “He’s my friend!”

As he gave her a confused look that he typically reserved for people saying the sky is down, she went on, “Why do you skeksis all think he’s a slave?”

…wait—

“What other skeksis have you been talking to that called your podling a slave?” he asked, looking at her suspiciously from the corner of his eye.

She flushed suddenly and began muttering, to which he paid no heed, mind working. It couldn’t have been any of the skeksis within the castle, they all would’ve had infinitely more reason to either attack or report her than they would to sit around and discuss her podling with her. Save skekSil, that was, but if he’d been sniffing around trying to talk with her, he suspected Deethra would’ve mentioned that at the first opportunity—

How had the gelfling acquired the Dual Glaive, precisely?

“…you met the Heretic, then?” he asked calmly.

Deethra flushed further. “I— w-well—”

“We’ve been wondering where he disappeared to,” he continued casually. “We lost track of him several hundred trine ago. Tell me, where did—?”

“No,” she interrupted, looking close to terrified. “I can’t. You’ll kill him, I can’t.”

“Skeksis don’t kill skeksis,” he corrected quietly.

“You’ll hurt him terribly then!” she insisted. “And if that’s not what you’re planning to do, why else would you want to know where he is? Please,” she begged, “he’s not bothering you, he puts on little puppet shows with his Mystic, please don’t try to find him to hurt him!”

SkekSo couldn’t exactly say he was moved by her plea, more that he was aware she wouldn’t be budging from her stance no matter what he had to say about it, and knew it was a waste of energy to try to make her. Besides, he was already in the process of getting her to process a request – he could pursue that route after completing the first.

Rather than say anything more on the matter, he said, “Look at that stupid, scraggy tree over there Deethra, and do try to calm down.”

Deethra was humming to herself when he found her. He didn’t know the tune, so he asked her about it.

“Old grottan song,” she said, sounding somewhat fond. “My fathers taught it to me.”

“…sing it to me,” he requested.

Her expression was that of soft surprise, before morphing into an even softer smile. She took a quiet breath, then sang,

“Far from the brothers’ blinding light

“Beneath the blanket of the long night

“Grottans work in the dark and deep

“Where the glow moss grows and the crawlies creep…”

The song was hardly impressive, by all accounts.

SkekSo enjoyed it immensely anyway, for some odd reason.

SkekUng was becoming more and more adamant about leading an attack on the gelfling, to the point skekSo was starting to regret promoting him to general. SkekSil pointed out repeatedly that they had no soldiers to lead an attack with, to which skekUng came back with instead launching a sneak attack. Implement guerilla warfare, or something like that.

In the end, skekSo agreed with the Chamberlain, who seemed in no small amount pleased by this. He was right, of course – it made no sense to risk their already limited number on a tactic that may not work. Best just to wait until the garthim were ready.

Under different circumstances, he might have agreed instead with skekUng – he was, by all accounts, a very talented tactician – but… well, those were different circumstances, now weren’t they?

…at any rate, an attack on gelfling at this time could really only work to impede his own personal endeavors. Deethra would be utterly devastated to learn of such an attack, which in turn would only drive her away from where he wanted her. Thus, the most strategic option available was to hold off on any and all such violence until he’d successfully talked her over to the side of the skeksis.

SkekSo had been sat in his chambers, jotting down potential plots and plans on a bit of parchment. Presently, he was trying to work out if there would be a way to remove the Darkening from Grot. He supposed there would have to be, if there was a way to remove it from living things (which, yes, fine, he had yet to definitively pin down, but anyway) – how much different could it be to clear out a bit of land?

Failing that, he wondered how he might track down Deet’s fathers and brother. He could bring them here, and set them aside to specifically not be drained. Call them pets, or something, or perhaps just put them to work around the castle. They were woefully understaffed at the moment, after all.

Both these things – the cleansing of Grot and bringing in Deethra’s parents and brother – were only even considered by way of bargaining chips, obviously. Deethra loved Grot, and she loved her family. If he could deliver both to her, surely her joy would eclipse any misgivings or mistrust she might still harbor.

He wondered, absently, how a reunion of that sort might play out. Gelfling sentimentality was, for the most part, still lost on him. He expected Deethra would smile a lot. He wondered if it would bring her to laughter.

He’d grown bored of plotting, he realized. Actually, he’d apparently, he’d grown bored a while ago – half the parchment had turned into abstract scribbles. Oh well.

He idly began sketching out what he imagined a nurloc might look like.

“How often do you have nightmares?” Deethra asked. She was sitting on the ground, legs crossed, and (purposely, he felt) not looking at him.

“Just about every night,” skekSo answered. “Though just how bad they are vary. Why do you ask?”

She didn’t respond right away, which in and of itself was a sort of answer.

“…they’ve found you at last too, then, I take it?” he asked quietly, politely finding interest in a shrub in the opposite direction of her.

Again, she didn’t immediately respond.

Deducing that she likely wasn’t going to (or, more likely still, that she just didn’t know how), he said, casually, “After a while it becomes more annoying than actually distressing. Generally. You will have the occasional bad night here and there, but… as I’ve said. Generally.”

He did get a response this time, but it was by way of trees creaking and groaning, and undergrowth rustling. Looking back over, he saw the tell-tale signs of the Darkening at work once again.

“Why does this happen?” she asked forlornly, staring at the dying trees around her.

SkekSo paused, thinking it over, before slowly asking in return, “Has it ever occurred when you’re not distressed in some fashion?”

She thought for a moment herself, then shook her head.

He tilted his head sympathetically. “I suspect that’s your answer right there, then.”

“So you’re saying the only way to prevent this is to not feel sad?” she asked, looking up at him.

He hesitated for apparently a moment too long, and she looked away again.

SkekSo stared, momentarily partaking in whatever the more dignified version of “fretting” was, before tentatively inching towards her. When he was at her side, he plopped down on the ground next to her.

(His joints popped and creaked as he did, and he had to consciously banish his mind’s trilling insistence that it was going to be a task and a half to get back up again. He’d worry about it later.)

“Aren’t you lucky you’ve got someone so knowledgeable about – and simultaneously unaffected by –these matters?” he asked, tone intentionally lighter than he felt. “I certainly didn’t have the luxury of asking anyone what was going on when I started this. And look! I’ve soaked up enough Darkening on my own to not be affected by your general aura.” Still aiming for humor and completely unsure if he was hitting his mark, he added, “You ought to thank me, Deet.”

She didn’t respond. Just as he was beginning to feel rather stupid though, she suddenly leaned over to rest against his side.

“I wouldn’t go that far…” she muttered.

The contact was doing something to him, but rather than puzzle out what he simply offered a light, “Fine, be ungrateful, then,” and put his arm around her shoulders.

It struck him that this would be the perfect moment to request she let him try to remove the Darkening again. She was clearly unhappy with its effects, she was clearly vulnerable, and she’d just sought out comfort from him (albeit subtly). If he were to suggest she come back with him, she might finally concede.

“What’s four-hundred and eighty-seven minus three-hundred and five?” he asked instead.

She gave a soft laugh that could’ve just as easily been a sniffle, and said, “Hold on, let me think…”

“Sire,” skekSil began, and skekSo’s attention was immediately caught by that certain something that would worm into his tone on occasion. (SkekSo, to this day, despite spending one thousand trine with him, still could not pin down what that “something” was, only that it never heralded anything good.) “Do not mean to intrude on personal business, but…” He shuffled a bit closer, speaking conspiratorially. “Other skeksis are starting to notice that Emperor has been sneaking out of castle. Are starting to ask questions. Now, faithful Chamberlain knows that Emperor’s business is Emperor’s business, and if he does not wish to discuss, he is not obligated to. But Chamberlain can’t help but wonder precisely why Emperor does not share his efforts with rest of skeksis? He works for good of all, yes? Very noble thing to do.”

He offered an innocent look. “How goes talk with gelfling, by the way?”

SkekSo felt something dark simmer somewhere in his chest (though what or why he couldn’t even hazard a guess), and he had to take a second to compose himself.

“Well,” he said slowly, “that would be my business, now wouldn’t it?”

And with that, he began to walk away.

“One more thing, Sire!” skekSil called after him.

SkekSo turned, visibly irritated and silently urging him to get on with it.

“Forgive foolish Chamberlain, nearly forgot – Scientist wishes me to tell you he has managed to create more garthim, with more on way! Is wonderful news, hmmm?”

As SkekSo stared at him, taken aback by the news, he went on, “If horrid gelfling thief is being a thorn in  great Emperor’s side, Chamberlain would be more than happy to inform Scientist that he must send new garthim out to annihilate—”

“Don’t you dare!” skekSo snarled, bristling and hissing. SkekSil hastily retreated back a few paces at his abrupt fury, thoroughly alarmed and crouching suppliantly. “I have everything completely under control, and you are to keep your beak out of it, do you understand?! You are to leave the gelfling alone!”

Suddenly realizing his hackles were visibly raised and a bit alarmed by the force of his response himself, skekSo smoothed himself out as best he could, saying evenly, “The garthim will not march until I decide it is strategically appropriate for them to do so, and not a moment sooner. Remember your place.”

“Y-yes Sire,” skekSil said, carefully angling around him to take his leave, clearly trying not to do anything more to set him off. “Of course, Sire. Forgive, forgive…”

He swiftly disappeared around the corner. SkekSo watched him go, eyes narrowed thoroughly unsure why he was near shaking.

Chapter Text

Deet had stationed herself further from the castle than she ever had previously. Unusual, but not especially concerning. SkekSo had long since gathered she liked to wander, though whether this had always been a trait of hers or something she did now to escape the aftereffects of the Darkening she held, he wasn’t sure. Either way, this combined with the strange air of melancholy that had been hanging over her during their last few meetings, her moving deeper into the land made a strange sort of sense.

Just as well – he’d started feeling strangely at home amongst the trees, and as long as he and Deet were connected by the Darkening he was never at any risk of losing her. A slightly longer walk was no real detriment.

Presently, he was weaving around and over roots, trying not to jostle the parcel he was carrying too much. Not that it would matter terribly if its contents were knocked around a bit, or even smashed – they would still taste the same. Regardless, in the interest of presentation and upholding his reputation, he was attempting to be careful.

Several meetings ago, Deet had made a whole grand point about how delicious some moss was (something that had made him want to pat her head and gently tell her how stupid she was), which he had posited couldn’t possibly be true. He’d insisted that, even if her moss was adequately tasty, it was still moss, and therefore could easily be eclipsed by literally any other properly prepared snack.

(She’d asked is his snacks could make you glow, which he’d been forced to concede that no, they couldn’t. Honestly he wasn’t fully convinced hers could either, but he’d grudgingly admit to being intrigued, now.)

He’d resolved to prove to her that he had superior taste, and had demanded the Gourmand whip up some berry tarts. These were some of his favorites (not his most favorite, mind, but he heartily doubted Deet would appreciate skinned crawlies). He was anxiously, stupidly really hoping Deet would like them too.

At any rate, it might take her mind of her nightmares. Which was a perfectly considerate, achingly gelfling-esque gesture that he suspected could only endear him to her, which in turn would make things easier for him in the long run.

Plainly, that was the goal of this endeavor.

The now familiar sensation that he was closing in on his individual of interest resonated in his chest, alerting him that she was just behind the next few trees. His pace increased accordingly.

He rounded the tree, but the greeting that had been hovering at the tip of his tongue (something to the tune of “I’ve brought you actual food to compare to your moss, and I expect you to be honest in regards to its obvious superiority”) withered and died in his mouth. Deet sat at the base of a tree across from him, upright but curled into a ball, and she looked… off.

It was her eyes, he realized after a bout of alarmed, confused staring. They were – well, they seemed more purple for starters, but more pressingly they seemed empty. Her eyes were wide open, but her expression had a vacancy to it that suggested an absence of thought usually only found in sleep. It was eerie to witness, frankly.

“Deet…?” he called hesitantly, words finally unsticking themselves from his throat. “What’s wrong?”

She blinked slowly at the sound of his voice, and he was relieved to see some semblance of her usual self return to her eyes as she did. She lifted her head to him, and after a short lag finally seemed to process who she was looking at.

“Oh,” she said, blinking again. “Hello, skekSo. Sorry about that, I— I must’ve just been lost in thought.” Eyes drifting down towards his hands, she asked, “What have you got there?”

He glanced down at the parcel in his hands, then apprehensively back to her. Her speech was just a touch slower than usual, and her voice sounded much more faraway than usual. Something wasn’t… something wasn’t right.

“Bit of food,” he said dismissively. “Deet… are you alright?”

“Of course, I’m fine, how are you?” she replied, voice hollow as an echo. As he gave her a hard look, a bit of sheepishness managed to break through… whatever all this was, and she insisted, “Really, I’m fine, I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.” She winced. “The nightmares have been a bit hard to get used to.”

Then, hesitantly, she muttered, “Also there’s been more – more pain recently.”

Something must’ve flashed across his face, because she seemed to put more effort into appearing – for want of a better term – “normal” again. “You said you brought some food?” she asked. “What did you bring?”

For all her effort, unfortunately, she was still very obviously not herself. He could already see her wilting from that small, forced burst of energy.

He didn’t respond immediately, instead taking to chewing on his words as he tried to decide which ones to use.

“Not to beat a dead landstrider,” he began slowly, “but I would genuinely advise accompanying me back to the castle and letting me try to remove this from you.”

The front she’d been hopelessly trying to prop up crumbled away, and she was once more staring at him with half-dead eyes. “…no,” she said quietly. Then, “I’m sorry.”

“Why not?”

“It’s— it’s not worth it, anyway—”

“What do you mean it’s not ‘worth it’—?”

“Please, I promise, I’ll be fine—”

“Deethra!” he interrupted forcefully. “Look at yourself!”

Slowly, she did. The stark lines of deep purple that usually cut their way up her arms glowed just a bit more insistently. Even her skin itself seemed to be changing hue, going from a faint greenish tint to something closer to a sickly lilac. Much like his own, really – The skin beneath his prosthetic beak itched in dark reminder, and he had to forcefully shove down the mental image of Deet with a gaping hole where her nose should be.

“Skeksis are naturally heartier than gelfling, Deet,” he continued, emphatically not afraid but frustrated, rather, at how she wasn’t more concerned about the situation. “Has it not occurred to you that your kind can’t handle exposure to this kind of power for long? Your rate of degeneration is far faster than mine has been – how much longer until—?”

He wouldn’t finish that sentenced, he wouldn’t, he was making a conscious choice not to.

“Deet,” he said again, sounding appallingly close to pleading but unable to self-correct at the moment, “come back with me.” Grasping at straws for ways to convince her, he added, “On my honor, you won’t be hurt.”

(Under different circumstances, this would have been a thoroughly unbinding contract – he willfully had no honor. Frankly though, if it meant getting Deet back to the castle and dragging the Darkening out of her, he might cultivate a small patch of it to set aside for special occasions.)

“I can’t imagine the rest of the skeksis would agree to that,” she argued tonelessly. “And I don’t think any of them would be very thrilled to see me considering…” She trailed off.

Considering what you did to the Collector, he finished internally. She was likely right on that count.

“None of the others need to know you’re there,” he insisted, thinking quickly. A partial lie, he knew – he’d have to involve the Scientist at some juncture. Sooner rather than later, by the looks of it, but he’d cross that bridge when he got to it. Better now to just get her where he needed her first.

“…I can’t,” she said. “The things you do to gelfling—”

“Won’t happen to you.”

“That’s not the point,” she sighed.

“Then what is?”

She opened her mouth, but if it had been to respond he’d never learn what she’d meant to say.

It wasn’t dramatic – she didn’t gasp or collapse or make a show of it. Her expression tightened, her body seized, her eyes glowed, and personal experience left little doubt what was going on.

She was in pain.

He realized he was at her side before he noticed making a conscious effort to move there, arms outstretched towards her. (The parcel of tarts lay on the ground somewhere behind him, forgotten.) He faltered as it struck him that agitating her in any way might cause her to lash out (that was certainly the case with him during episodes like this, at any rate). More than that, there was a high chance that even if she didn’t consciously strike out at him, her deteriorating physical state combined with her evident waning mental presence would make no promises that she wouldn’t do so without thinking.

The entire point of trying to convince her to come with him willingly was to avoid such an ordeal… It was counter-productive to the degree of near lunacy to forgo that now when she was arguably at her most volatile. Much less for the sake of such a nonsensical, thankless, sentimental whim.

…and yet…

Gingerly, he reached forward, pulling her to his chest, then collecting her into his arms. She roused slightly, which made him tense, but when no Dark energy burst forth to turn him into a smattering of gore across the leaves and roots, he regathered himself marginally.

“We’re going back to the castle,” he said matter-of-factly, straining slightly as he tried to rise to his feet without the use of his arms. “No harm will come to you there, you have my word.”

Her lucidity seemed to be hanging by a thread, but her eyes flashed, the purple light within flaring as she weakly moved to extricate herself from his grip. “I’ll be drained,” she said.

“You won’t. I am the Emperor, and if I say no one is to lay a talon on you, you will not be touched.” Then, compromising, “We won’t even go down to the lab. We’ll go to my private chambers. We’ll—we’ll work something out from there.”

Deet muttered a bit more, things he couldn’t quite make out, but her struggling slowed to a stop. Hopefully that was a conscious choice of hers, and had nothing to do with the vacant, empty look that had returned to her eyes.

SkekSo walked a bit quicker.

He realized, as he crossed the threshold into his room, that it was a bit stupid to tell Deet he wouldn’t take her down to the lab. If he’d had the ability to rid her of the Darkening without assistance, he would have done so the first time he found her wandering his grounds. He suspected (though unsettlingly did not know for sure) that removing the Darkening would involve the Crystal of Truth somehow. Something like draining essence from things, but… different, obviously. Gentler, if that made any sense. He didn’t know – it would be the Scientist’s problem to work out the details. All he’d really done by bringing her straight to his room was waste time.

This, of course, beget the question of why he was bothering with this charade any further. He had her exactly where he’d been working to get her all this time: Within his grasp, and seemingly compliant to (or at least, unable to fight against) his will. Why shouldn’t he cash in on all the hard work he’d put in and have her drained? Or simply kill her and be done with it—?

He stomped on the thought and ground it beneath a mental heel. Logically, she was only compliant because she didn’t feel threatened. If he went against his word, that may soundly demolish that sense of safety and instigate an attack.

Why not just leave her be and let her simply die?

“This is your room?” a thin, somewhat groggy voice asked suddenly, surprising him. Deet was glancing around the space, looking tired and sickly but somehow still more like herself.

“Wouldn’t make much sense to take you to someone else’s room, would it?” he asked haughtily, shoving an assortment of nonsensical emotions to the side.

She nodded absently, still slowly looking around. “It’s very fancy.”

“How many times are you going to make me reiterate that I am the Emperor?” he asked, moving towards his bed and putting her down on it. “‘Fancy’ is my right.”

He tried not to let it show, but it was a relief to finally be able to set her down. Deet wasn’t overly heavy – well within the weight limit he could comfortably lift, actually – but for some reason the simple action of transporting her to his room had left his limbs and eyelids feeling heavy. (Small blessings, he hadn’t crossed paths with anyone on his way there, at least. Though in retrospect it was quite late, so perhaps that made sense.)

She sat awkwardly, looking fairly uncomfortable. He attributed that to her physical state of discomfort over anything else. Failing that, at least she wasn’t demanding to leave or making ridiculous statements that she would be drained if she stayed…

He needed to find a way to convince her to go down to the lab. He inhaled quietly, trying to pick his words to make his argument, but before he could make his selection Deet cut him off. “If I were to fall asleep,” she began slowly, “would I wake up here?” Then, amending, “In this room, I mean? Do you swear?” When he didn’t answer immediately, she added (somewhat plaintively), “Honestly, I really just need some sleep. Please.”

He hesitated, thwarted, then nodded, once. “Yes, Deet, I swear.”

“…stay with me?”

SkekSo blinked, taken off-guard by the request. “In the room, you mean?”

(No sooner were the words out of his mouth and he felt incredibly stupid. What else could that possibly mean?)

“Mm-hm,” she affirmed, and he could tell it was taking all she had not to fall back into whatever nothingness had been intermittently holding her captive.

He tilted his head, one part amused and the other baffled. “It’s hardly as though I have much choice in that – these are my quarters you’re in, after all.”

He was not so stupidly charitable as to waive rights to his own bed, thank you – that was gelfling sentimentality, and as a skeksis he’d have no part in it. He still had some self-respect left, however much he was apparently content to gleefully chuck the majority of it screaming off his terrace.

Deet made a small noise he suspected was meant to represent relieved acknowledgement, and he was somewhat reassured to notice that her expression looked closer to regular exhaustion than it did blankness as she sunk further into the bed.

Not a bad idea, really, he thought, the weight in his limbs increasing by the second. After a moment’s pause, he flopped beside her gracelessly. She seemed pleasantly unbothered by this.

“…I’m getting dirt all over your bed,” she mumbled, seemingly just realizing. “I’m sorry.”

SkekSo made a sound in the back of his throat which plainly indicated he presently could not care less, and his eyes closed of their own accord.

He didn’t have any nightmares that night. Or if he did they were inoffensive enough where he was able to sleep through them and then forget after.

So indeed, he was very confused when he was jolted from sleep anyway.

At first all he did was blink bewilderedly, not fully awake or sure what was going on, and perhaps just a bit disoriented by his present lack of all-encompassing terror. He was very nearly about to shrug and fall back asleep when it struck him he’d been hearing something strange all this time. After listening a moment (and punting his still swimming thoughts downstream towards something coherent), he identified it as someone wheezing shallowly.

He was abruptly very awake, jolting upright and scanning around his room, remembering. Deet was not where he’d left her beside him and it wasn’t him making that godawful sound for once, that could only mean—

He finally located Deet, curled in a ball on the other side of the room, struggling to suck in air.

“Deet?” he called, shoving himself off the bed and hurrying to her side. He couldn’t see the irises or pupils of her eyes now – they were solid purple. She didn’t respond to her name, seemingly staring at nothing. “Deet, look at me—”

A sudden, sharp crack sounded, punctuated by a flash of purple, and skekSo recoiled.

Deet was discharging Darkening.

SkekSo sat frozen and rigid from his place on the floor, yet more crackling and flashing cutting through the air, and stared at her. What was happening? In all his experiments he’d never experienced anything like this before – was this because she’d literally absorbed the Darkening, or was this common for creatures exposed to it right before they—?

Unbidden, his mind flashed to the dead fizzgig Deet had held in her lap all those nights ago.

“Deet, look at me,” he repeated, heart starting to hammer in his chest as he once more moved towards her. “You’re going to be fine, do you hear me? You’re going to be fine. I won’t let you die, you won’t die.”

He brushed her hair out of her unseeing eyes, holding her face in his hands and wincing at the crackling of the Darkening in the air around them. “Everything’s going to be alright Deet, you won’t die, just focus for me. I’ll pull the Darkness out of you myself if I have to, send it back to Thra where it can’t hurt you anymore, you’ll be fine, I just need you to focus—”

He was only aware that there was pain before he was able to pinpoint its location or cause, mostly because it seemed to thrum though his whole body and was intense and all-encompassing enough to momentarily turn his thoughts to soup. He suspected (but could not be sure) that he was screaming.

If he’d had room for fear just then, he might’ve been worried he’d somehow been struck by the discharge Deet was letting off. Before he had a chance to give much time to that particular concern, though, he realized (either because the pain was lessening and giving him space to think or simply because he was simply getting used to it) where the worst of it was originating from.

His wrists.

Because Deet had her hands wrapped tightly around them, nearly to the point of crushing them.

Moments later, he realized why this was effecting his whole body.

Deet let go, skekSo tipped over and collapsed onto the floor, and he watched as whatever dregs of Darkening he’d managed to absorb during his time experimenting with it vanished into her tiny body.

She had drained it out of him.

“Deet…” he croaked, unsure and – unable to curb it – afraid.

She’d moved to stand, still rattling and wheezing as she breathed. Some deep, primal part of skekSo’s brain screamed at him to press further into the floor, to be as submissive as possible until the danger passed, because there was no fighting this (whatever “this” was).

“Deet,” he tried again, because everything would be fine if he could just get her to answer him. Once he confirmed this was still the gelfling he’d been sneaking out to meet in the woods, that this wasn’t some horrible apparition mimicking her form, everything would be alright. He just needed her to answer him.

She turned her head towards him, which he wanted to believe meant she was looking at him, but with her eyes still like that he found he couldn’t be sure.

“Everything must be destroyed,” she said, tone void.

He blinked, alarmed and confused, blurting a rasped, “What?”

“Everything must be destroyed,” she repeated. “It’s the only way. Everything. The plants, the animals, podlings, gelfling, you… me. All of it.

“Thra must succumb to the Darkening and cease.”

SkekSo felt the bottom of his stomach drop out, and the floor beneath him seemed to fall abysmally into nothingness.

“Deet—” he tried, voice breaking. He was prevented from saying more as a streak of the Darkening cracked directly in front of him, scorching the floor and making him yelp and scuttle back. He looked back up and saw Deet was staring at him, directly and unquestionably.

His limbs went numb. Never, not even in all his nightmare-induced panics, had he ever been as utterly terrified as he was right then.

The next shot of Darkening came directly from her hand.

“Deet!” he shrieked, diving out of the way and only narrowly managing to avoid the blast. Two more came in quick succession, and given no time to stand he was forced to scramble and dodge across the floor until his back hit the far wall.

“Deet please!” he begged, near sobbing as desperation and fear smothered any sort of pride that might have otherwise kept him quiet. “You need to snap out of it, this isn’t who you are—!”

Deet – no, this couldn’t still be Deet, couldn’t possibly, Deet would never do this – stared him dead in the eye. Neutrally, she declared, “It is now.”

Then, without warning, the door opened.

“Heard Emperor shouting,” he heard skekSil say as he pushed into the room (he had screamed, apparently), “followed by awful racket. Is everything—?”

SkekSo wasn’t quite sure what the Chamberlain’s sudden appearance made him feel – relief, possibly even concern, still more fear because it seemed all he was capable of at the moment – but he was given very little time to puzzle it out. SkekSil, putting the pieces together very quickly, began immediately backpedaling from the room. Deet, either from being startled or perhaps out of retribution for being interrupted, sent a blast of Darkening out after him just as he cleared the door’s threshold. SkekSo heard a scream, though whether it was out of shock and fear or if it was the sound of skekSil’s death throes he wouldn’t know. He had started moving again before the poor, wretched Chamberlain had even made it out of the room.

SkekSo’s bedroom had an attached terrace overlooking the moat that surrounded the Castle of the Crystal. Scrambling, still mostly on all fours thanks his panic rending him seemingly unable to get his feet back beneath him, he launched himself onto it.

With equal franticness, he hauled himself over the railing. As freefall overtook him, he saw a dark streak of purple just scarcely miss where his head had been not a second prior.

He dragged himself out of the water some odd minutes later, shivering and shaking and teeth chattering loud enough to wake half of Thra.

The Castle of the Crystal was alight behind him, tinting the darkened sky purple. He was sure he was imagining it, insisted to himself that he was, but he almost thought he could make out the sounds of screams being carried on the night air.

He stared up at it for a few minutes, arms wrapped tightly around himself to retain what body heat he could, feeling mentally frozen. He couldn’t go back to the castle now, it was risky to even be near it, but there was nowhere else to go, the gelfling would have his head if any ever found him, so what should he do, couldn’t stay couldn’t leave not safe anywhere, he’d just lost everything, his home his position everyone he’d ever known and Deet—

He tore his eyes away from the castle and began walking in no particular direction. Just for something to occupy himself with, just for a distraction.

“Thirty-four plus twenty-three is fifty-seven, ninety-eight minus forty-six is f-fifty-two, nine times three is— is—”

and Deet and Deet and Deet Deet Deet Deet—

A sob ripped its way from his throat before he could stop it, and then another, and another.

“N-nine times— nine times th-three—”

And Deet wasn’t coming back.

‘No matter the cost,’ echoed hollowly through his head. ‘No matter the cost.’

Snarling even through his tears and snot, he spat on the ground, disgusted.

He spent most of the night like that, wandering nowhere in particular, sniveling pathetically and shivering in his sopping wet clothes, until eventually he exhausted himself and couldn’t anymore. He braced himself against a tree, sliding down into a sitting position, and took a deep breath.

This wretched, insufferable weeping would accomplish nothing (he told himself firmly, still hiccupping). First matter of business: What needed to be accomplished?

He needed to find a way to restore himself to his rightful place as Emperor, and he needed to find out how to restore Deet back to her usual self.

Alright then, how to accomplish it?

…not alone, that was clear. The fact that he hadn’t been killed already (breathe even breathe even) was thanks to sheer luck. He wouldn’t able to face Deet overtaken with the Darkening as she was.

Something curdled and twisted in his gut, disgust and fear intermingling with each other. The Darkening was plainly not what he’d thought it was, there was – there was will there. He hesitated to call it a consciousness, because frankly that was too horrifying to contemplate, but he couldn’t fool himself into thinking that Deet echoing the phrasing that had been haunting his nightmares for the last several unum was mere coincidence.

Deet had told him. The Darkening corrupts everything it touches, she’d said, how could he claim he was working to stay alive when allying with something bent on actively destroying him? Perhaps, he thought suddenly, all the other skeksis were already dead, destroyed by whatever they’d created by tampering with the crystal—

—no, none of that. Thoughts like that wouldn’t fix anything. They wouldn’t help anyone.

Help. He needed help.

He needed someone who could give him a more substantial understanding of what the Darkening was, if such a person existed. Failing that, he needed answers on the Crystal of Truth itself (fiddling with it had apparently brought the Darkening forth – perhaps getting rid of it was as simple as yet more fiddling). Then after that whole business was worked out… he’d work on that bit. Dissolving the Darkening was the more pressing matter at hand, anyway.

He stared at the slowly lightening sky, and his stomach twisted anxiously as he realized what he had to do. Still exhausted, he latched on to the fear of being found somehow and let it carry him forward, resuming a steady beat of one foot in front of the other.

Off to see Mother Augrha, then.