Work Text:
“Why do we have to kowtow to this asshole anyway?” Levi asked, dragging the toe of his boot through the dust, making patterns.
Erwin sighed. “Because he’s the king, Levi. Certainly even you know this.”
Levi scowled and looked around. They waited outside the royal palace—apparently they weren’t worthy of waiting inside—while the king and his cohorts (the men who actually ran everything) spoke.
The palace was elegant in a simple way, made of stone and perched on a hill in the middle of Mitras. As the land fell away on all sides of the palace, the housing and buildings got less and less lavish, first stone, then wood.
There were no mud houses. All of the people too poor to afford wood lived either out in the countryside or Underground.
Levi shivered in the bright sunlight. The Underground. Where the lowest of Mitras ended up.
Levi had been born there and had lived there all of his young life until Erwin had recruited him into the Scouts. His mother had been a prostitute and he himself a common thief.
But look at him now. Levi Ackerman. And about to meet the king.
The vaulted doors of the palace creaked open. “Commander?”
Erwin strode forward like nobility himself, Levi crept behind.
They were led down long corridors of nothing but space. The entire population of the Underground would fit in these granite halls.
Finally, they came to a door draped in purple velvet. Levi had never seen such a color.
Inside was a vast room where six men sat. There was a throne, also draped in purple, and in it, a tired-looking man with his chin cradled in his hand. He looked profoundly bored.
“Your majesty,” Erwin said to him, sweeping into a low bow. “May I present Humanity's Strongest.”