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Chapter Text

Fuschia and vermillion leaves drifted through the perpetual autumn air, bright as blood against the black sky. A morbid way of describing it, perhaps, but Seam was in a morbid mood.

Jevil darted ahead, tail lashing back and forth as he checked behind every crooked tree trunk. He wouldn’t find anything—nothing that he was looking for, anyway. 

Seam had told him that. But Seam could provide no source for that knowledge that Jevil would accept. The Shadow Crystal was Seam’s burden, and Seam’s burden alone.

It was a nice enough afternoon for a wild goose chase, at least.

“Cast out the shadows, won’t you, my dear?” Jevil called. The forest thickened up ahead, requiring the use of Seam’s lantern. 

Despite the futility of it all, Seam followed. The paper lantern swung gently on the Seamripper’s hook, making the shadows twitch left and right as Seam approached.

“The absence is palpable,” Jevil muttered, shaking his head. 

“I did warn you.” Seam sighed. “Our Queen is somewhere we cannot reach.”

Seam had been desperate enough to peer through the Shadow Crystal for confirmation. Doing so twisted one’s mind, stretched it near to fraying. Darkners weren’t meant to see the realm of their Gods. 

Regardless of what was meant to be, the Queen of Spades was absent from the deck. No Drawing could replace her—not that Seam would ever want to. Spade Queen had been a dear friend, just as she had been to Jevil.

“Yet you reach far, and always return.” Jevil frowned. “Inside the outside. Where the Lightners transpose your body. Could our dear Queen not be?”

Seam’s head shook. Catti had brought the magician home last weekend—the first in what felt like an eternity. Perhaps, somehow, she knew that Jevil needed Seam more than she did, right now.

“Her form serves no purpose outside the Card Kingdom.”

“Then why is she not here?” Jevil whirled on Seam. “She should be. Unless we were of less than her desire to be free, free…”

Seam’s brows furrowed in sympathy. It would be easy to believe that, under the circumstances in which Queen had disappeared. It was why it had taken Seam so long to decide to check the Shadow Crystal. 

“Queen cared deeply for us, Jevil.” Seam propped up the lantern and reached for the jester’s hand, cradling it gently within soft paws. “She wouldn’t have left us if she’d had a choice.”

She hadn’t had a choice—of that much, Seam was certain. The Lightners moved them where they willed. And why shouldn’t they? They knew the rules of the game. They knew each Darkner’s purpose, how best to keep them happy and safe.

Which was why Spade Queen’s absence didn’t make sense.

“Don’t speak as if she is past,” Jevil snapped. “There is no leave to leave, in the Kingdom of Kings. She hasn’t boarded the borders of the Great Board. She has to be, to be—”

Seam pulled him into a hug as he gripped at the magician’s cloak. The little jester trembled like a leaf.

He was right, in a way. Darkners didn’t leave. Except Seam. It made sense to worry, and yet…

There was nothing Seam could do. Spade Queen was gone. The string of fate had twisted, but it was easier to ignore those tangled knots in Seam’s stuffing. Easier to ignore the hole in the Castle where the Queen used to be, the statues in her image that had been locked in the basement, the oh-ho-hos that no longer echoed in the halls.

Light above, Seam missed her. But someone had to remain pragmatic.

“It will be alright.” Seam rubbed Jevil’s back, his hat’s bells jingling when bumped. The jovial sound felt irreverent in the moment. “We will persist. There’s nothing else to be done.”

Jevil hiccupped a little.

“You are—you are quite terrible at providing comfort, for a plush,” he mumbled into Seam’s chest.

Seam grimaced. Queen had always been better at that, in her own way. Either with distractions or her unique brand of humor, or on the rare occasion, with sweet words. Seam could only hope to console the mage’s dear companion with innate fluffiness.

Jevil blew his nose into Seam’s cloak. Well, hopefully that was consoling, too.

“It was. Quite lonely, while you were in the not-here,” Jevil said quietly. “What if, what if, you were to vanish, too? To stay in the otherwhere, or, or anywhere—”

“I won’t.” Seam said it too firmly, for a promise the mage couldn’t truly keep. Catti could take Seam anywhere she wished. 

But, she was benevolent. Even if she needed the mage less and less, with a high-maintenance new digital Darkner under her care—that just gave Seam more time with the Card Kingdom’s denizens.

More time with Jevil.

“I’m here,” Seam said. “It will be alright.”

Jevil didn’t voice his doubts, if he had any. He just squeezed Seam back, even as more tangled knots strangled them both.

They were both here, safe within the lantern’s flickering light. That was enough.

XXX

“Queen, Queen!” Jevil called as he flitted from tree to tree.

Seam had turned in for the night. Seam would be no help, anyway—for all of the mage’s workings of wonder, Seam didn’t believe. Strings whispered lies in the mage’s ears, whispers that Jevil couldn’t drown out. 

Spade Queen wasn’t gone. There were only two places: here, and not-here. Since she was not in Seam’s not-here, she must be here.

(Unless she was in Seam’s not-here, and the mage hadn’t searched as Seam claimed… but Seam was nothing if not brutally honest. If the mage gave an answer, it was sure to be a true one.)

(Unless that answer was about Queen, because she was not gone.)

The Scarlet Forest seemed to stretch into infinity. Seam had graciously lent Jevil the Seamripper lantern-hook, which he moved forward each time his search reached the edge of the ring of light. Now wasn’t the time for chaos. He couldn’t leave any tree untried, leave any leaf un-left—

He blinked. This, this was not the place he’d been. Where he’d been, there were trees bunched in uniform clumps, as far as the eyes could see. But here, there was naught but a clearing with one lonesome tree at its center.

Was this… the Otherwhere?

“Queen?” he called out, clutching the Seamripper tightly. If this Otherwhere had any dangers, he would already be quite capable of defending himself, but holding his companion’s weapon was a comfort regardless.

“Queen! Enough hide-and-seek!” He hopped forward a step. 

Though he wanted to investigate, delving too deeply into the Otherwhere posed a gamble. After all the promising he’d made Seam do, if Jevil were not to return—

No, no. He had the Seamripper. He may as well have a piece of Seam right here. There would be no vanishing acts.

He tiptoed around the tree trunk. If Queen was here, and she was ignoring him, he was going to, to…

There was a man here. A man Jevil had never seen, in all of his escapades across the Card Kingdom and the Great Board and the Field of Hopes and Dreams. His form was… hmm. Jevil tilted his head back and forth, and the man’s pitch-black body seemed to shift, liquid as water. Only his cracked white head remained constant.

“Who are you, strange stranger?” Jevil asked with a pleasant grin, though his grip remained tight on the Seamripper. “Or is the stranger me, to you?”

“STRANGER, YET STRANGER…” the man said, though his black grin didn’t appear to move. 

“Have you seen my Queen?” Jevil tried instead. That was why he was here, after all, whether he was here or not-here. “She is blue, and tall, and her stomach grins with dagger-teeth.”

“YES.”

“You—wait, you have?” Jevil bounced up on his tail, putting his face level with the man’s. “Tell me, is she here? Is she not-here?”

The man’s grin drooped, like running ink.

“I AM SORRY.

SHE IS

NOT.”

Jevil froze. 

“Not sorry?” he asked, his voice cracking. “Why—why would she—”

“SHE IS NOT

HERE.

NOT

NOT SORRY.” 

The man’s mouth twisted into a grimace. He shrunk from top-to-bottom to widen slightly left-to-right. Squishy as one small round boy who had been drawn from the deck recently.

“WORDS

CAN BE DIFFICULT

IN THIS FORM.”

Jevil wanted to feel relieved that Queen hadn’t spurned him, but the man’s words didn’t provide nearly enough answers.

“If she is not here, then where?”

“WHERE

SHE IS NEEDED.”

“We need her!” Jevil bared the Seamripper. If this stranger had taken her, had done what only Lightners in their glory should—then Jevil would end his game, here and now.

“I AM

SORRY.

SHE COULD NOT PERSIST

IN THIS WORLD.”

Jevil had had enough. He swung—

And the man split, his body of shadows dodging the pronged weapon entirely.

“I CANNOT BRING HER BACK.

BUT.

I CAN ESTABLISH

A CONNECTION.”

Jevil paused, head tilted. He’d tried to strike this man, and he still wanted to help? He didn’t appear upset by anything but Jevil’s own distress. Maybe it was hard to be inconvenienced if you were invincible.

“Then do so, stranger.” He gave his best King-like sneer. “Let me speak to her.”

“I WILL REQUIRE 

ASSISTANCE 

IN RETURN.”

“Fine, fine! What is it that you need?” Jevil bounced impatiently on the balls of his feet. This could easily be a trap, but he needed to see it through. Anything for a chance to see Queen again, even if she couldn’t come back.

He had to know why she’d left. 

(He had to know if he could have made her stay.)

“A WIZARD,” the man said.

A red leaf drifted from above, clipping through his skull as if he were not all there. Which he probably wasn’t, in more ways than one. 

“Like a court magician?” Jevil asked. Like Seam?

“LIKE ONE

WHO COULD PROVIDE

INSTALLATION.”

Jevil frowned. A wizard of installation? He had no idea what that meant. Would Seam know?

Seam would have to know. The strings would tell the mage, if nothing else. Seam could learn anything.

“It will be!” Jevil agreed, shifting the Seamripper to the crook of his arm and holding out his hand. 

…Oh. The man of shadows couldn’t shake, not without—

Hands. He did have a hand, it appeared. Five fingers, and one hole through the palm. 

Jevil shook it with his own mittenlike hand. 

XXX

“You want me to what?” Seam asked. 

The mage had been polishing the Seamripper. Jevil had dragged it through the grass on his way home last night, and the weapon was now scuffed with dirt. If that had been the worst of Jevil’s news, Seam wouldn’t have minded.

“Wizard an installation, of some sort,” Jevil repeated. His tail twitched where he sat on the seap’s counter. “You can do anything! I know you can understand the work’s workings!”

Seam’s head shook back and forth. Yes, Seam was the court magician. That could be considered a type of wizard. But to sell those services to a stranger? The Kings would have Seam’s head if they found out.

That wasn’t what worried Seam the most, though. The last time the mage had performed a spell… it had been Queen’s reading.

Seam was supposed to be pragmatic. Superstitions were an inescapable companion to magic, unfortunately. 

“...I’ll take a look,” Seam said, firmly avoiding a promise. 

It would be good to keep an eye on any strangers in the kingdom, anyway. Tensions were high enough as it was.

“You’ll see! You’ll see! We’ll reinstall our favorite Queen!”

Jevil tugged on Seam’s paw. The mage took up the still-stained weapon and followed him out of the castle.

XXX

The man was nowhere to be found. Not here, not not-here, not Overthere or Underwhere. The trees just went on, and on, and on-and-on-and-on. 

“Are you certain he was here…?” Seam asked.

“He was! He was!” Jevil insisted. 

But… it was impossible to recall where ‘here’ had been. Everything looked exactly the same. Every tree and leaf and square of grass.

(Had they always looked so similar? Like two mirroring mirrors, reflections fractaling into infinity…)

There was no cure for it. If Jevil had counted his steps, perhaps, measured the exact number that led to the single-tree clearing… but as it was, he had no answer.

He strayed a little farther from the lantern light, and—

Here he was. The Otherwhere.

“Seam!” Jevil beamed, but when he looked back and forth, the mage was gone. He was all alone with the lone tree.

Well, the lone tree, and the lone man. He poked his cracked head out from behind the trunk.

“YOU HAVE

RETURNED.”

“Yes, yes, but—Seam is missing.” 

Jevil tried not to panic. He didn’t hold the Seamripper, this time. Would he be able to escape this Otherwhere again? Would he be able to find his dear companion?

“MY APOLOGIES.

IT APPEARS

I CAN ONLY PRESENT

TO ONE AT A TIME.”

Jevil frowned. Then how was he supposed to bring Seam here? This stranger needed a magician. Why couldn’t the man have just brought Seam here in the first place, instead of Jevil?

Jevil couldn’t do anything. Not for this stranger, not for the Lightners, not for Queen. His uselessness had never bothered him before—being able to enjoy his games with Seam had been enough. He hadn’t needed to be needed.

But now. He needed. He needed.

“Then—I’m present, presently.” Jevil stood up straighter, then summoned his Devilsknife for good measure. The flashiness of it was more for party tricks than pragmatic magic, but this stranger didn’t need to know that. “I will assist, without my assistant! Uee hee hee!”

He could only imagine the dry look Seam would give at being called his assistant. But Seam wasn’t here. That was the problem.

No. No, there would be no problem. Jevil could do this—would do this. 

He was needed.

“EXCELLENT.” 

The man grinned, his inky mouth curling up near to the sockets of his eyes. The pinprick lights within glowed brighter, yet brighter. 

“TRULY

EXCELLENT.”

The man inched forward, his shadow-body gliding silently over the grass. One of his floating hands clasped the Devilsknife just above Jevil’s own.

“NOW.

WE MAY

BEGIN.”

Chapter Text

The Shadow Crystal was gone.

Seam sat on the floor of the Seap, lantern light flickering across overturned boxes, unravelled skeins, and broken glass baubles. Half of those items had been damaged in the Great Board’s assault on Card Castle. The other half had been strewn about as Seam searched for the missing artifact. The mage had lasted an hour before finally accepting the truth.

The Shadow Crystal could be anywhere. It could be in the metaphorical hands of a Ponman, or a C. Round, or even that pompous Mr. Society. It wouldn’t be with Ivory or Ebony, the two Queens of the Great Board, at least. The Card Kings had taken them captive during the attack—but unfortunately not before they ransacked the Diamond Floor. Where the Seap now resided… or, what was left of it, anyway.

This wouldn’t have happened if Seam had remained on the Spade Floor, nearest the top of the Castle. Spade’s young son (and his son’s… nanny…?) were too noisy for Seam’s taste, and Spade King himself had no fond feelings for Seam anymore. But Seam would have dealt with that if the mage had known this was the alternative.

“You can’t ever show me anything useful, can you?” Seam scowled at the Seamripper. 

It glinted in the light of the lantern hanging from its hooked end. As silent and mocking as fate.

“I’m full of use, use!” Jevil stuck his head through one of the tears in the cloth wall. 

Seam sprang up, paw over the space a heart would’ve been.

“Jevil.” Seam’s voice was scolding and relieved all at once. It was a voice that only Jevil could draw out of the mage. Seam had overheard him bragging about that fact to the Rudinns recently. “Are you trying to scare me to death?”

“Never, my dear!” Jevil gave a grin wide enough to soothe Seam’s frayed nerves. 

How could Jevil be so carefree under these circumstances? Then again, that was a jester’s purpose, Seam supposed—to entertain and distract from the darker realities of court life.

Jevil flipped through the gap in the cloth, landing perfectly on his feet. Seam would’ve sworn that tear wasn’t wide enough to accommodate him.

“What a day, what a day!” He flopped backwards into a pile of tangled yarn, arms outstretched as if to embrace the mess. “How went the field of battle? Did you rip any enemy seams?”

“I’m afraid not. I was out gathering Dark Candies when the Board came. You think this would’ve happened if I’d been here?” Seam gestured to the mess.

“Uee hee hee! I thought you just decided to redecorate. Naught like a discarding to whirl in charge.” Jevil wove strands of the purple yarn between his fingers. 

“Yes, I just thought I needed some new skylights.” Seam drawled, button eyes spinning. “Haven’t we had enough change lately?”

The departure of the Queen. The drawing of a new Prince and a strange Duke. The retreat of the Lightners, their distance unusual at this time of year. The Great Board’s encroachment, spurred on without the Lightners to keep them in their place. 

And, of course, Jevil himself. He had been awfully aloof lately, for all of his insistence that they remain stitched together. Was he still searching for Spade Queen, after all this time? Or did it have something to do with the strange stranger Seam had been unable to meet…?

“Un-so, my majestic mage!” Jevil grinned. “Change is the only thing that keeps this world spinning!”

“What are you on about, Jevil?” Seam frowned. It was the Lightners who kept the world ‘spinning.’ 

“On? No, not yet, but soon. For now I am off, off! The Kings’ children will be needing their bedtime jestings, after a chaos like this.” He sprung to his feet, placing his freshly woven swatch of fabric on Seam’s head.

Seam’s head shook fondly. The yarn square didn’t fall off. 

“Enjoy your time with the rascals, then. Should I expect you back once you’re done?”

Once, Jevil would retire in the Seap every night. The loud snork-mimimis coming from the counter helped Seam sleep peacefully.

“Expect? Would you insult me with predictable predicaments?” He held a mittenlike hand to his chest in faux offense.

Seam tried to smother real offense. A little predictability, a little routine, on a day like today could've soothed Seam's restless stitches.

“Don't expect me to keep any tea warm for you, then,” Seam replied easily.

Jevil only laughed. It was no true answer, one way or another.

Seam still kept the kettle warm through the waning hours, for all that no toothy grin returned to drink it.

XXX

“Today’s spar is sub-par,” Jevil scoffed, lowering his Devilsknife. 

It was a new “day”—as much as the perpetual darkness of the Card Kingdom could be called day—and Jevil almost seemed to be back to his old self. No spoken worries about Queen. No mysterious disappearances. 

However, Jevil’s attacks weren’t typically so… relentless.

Or maybe it was Seam who wasn’t up to snuff. Seam had plenty of unspoken worries, primarily about what had disappeared. The Shadow Crystal likely wouldn’t have given Seam an edge in their game, but the disquiet its absence brought certainly put Seam on edge. 

“Are you not having fun, fun?” Jevil asked, dismissing his weapon.

He hopped over to Seam, scarlet and maroon leaves crunching under his feet. Seam had already planted the Seamripper in the earth and begun to stitch up the holes in the tattered cloak, which looked a bit like a pile of leaves itself. 

Yes, Seam’s footwork had not been near as swift as usual. Patches of fabric prickled where diamond-shaped bullets had penetrated the cloak. Seam would surely be sore in the morning.

“You were the one who called our game sub-par, not I,” Seam reminded him.

“Games are sub-par when you are not partial to the game! Your heart lacks the joy!”

Jevil circled Seam and plucked the needle from a tired paw.

“Jevil…” Seam sighed.

The stitching likely didn’t matter. Changes initiated in the Dark World were less substantial than those bequeathed by the light.

“You needn’t need this needle,” Jevil said, using it to pick at his teeth, then flossing with the attached red string. “Your form reforms. You know that.”

Seam’s button eyes spun in opposing directions. 

Yes, Seam knew. But Jevil wasn’t supposed to. That was one reason why Seam always pulled punches, kept needling bullets to a fraction of their potential power. Darkners weren’t meant to know their potential, to understand just how impermanent any wound could be. Seam only knew this because…

“Do not look so surprised! I have seen it with my eyes.” A devilish glint shone in the star-shaped voids of Jevil’s eyes. 

…Ah. That would be another method of knowing. Observing Seam too closely, rather than… peering into the Light himself.

He… he couldn’t have it, could he…? For all of Jevil’s teasing and pranks, he had never stolen from Seam. And the Shadow Crystal was unassuming. Nothing about it would attract Jevil’s attention.

No. Of course not.

“Is that why you are disappointed with our game?” Seam frowned. “Are you wanting to unravel, too? I assure you, it still hurts.”

“Uee hee hee! But it sounds like raving fun, doesn’t it?” Jevil flashed a grin, the needle pinched between his teeth. The red string hung from his mouth like a thin trail of bloody drool. “Reveling and unraveling! How else shall we strengthen our threads?”

Seam’s head tilted. Curiosity. 

“You want to be stronger?” 

Maybe the Great Board’s advance yesterday had taken its toll on him after all. Or maybe he was still convinced that there was more he could’ve done to keep Queen from leaving.

That was impossible, of course. No shadow could overpower the light that cast it.

“Strength to tie you near to my heart, my dear.” Jevil spun, looping the string around Seam’s waist to pull the mage forward. “Strength to loose, and strength not to lose. Is that well with you?”

Seam’s head spun with Jevil’s eager swaying. 

“You think you need strength for that?” 

Jevil was already as near to Seam’s cotton as a fellow Darkner could be. 

If only he would always stay this close physically, too.

“Hmm, hmm. Maybe it is un-so,” Jevil hummed, still leading Seam in their silly dance. It was more comfortable than the spar had been, less haphazard and reckless. 

…Though it was still reckless enough to tangle them together, sending Seam falling back into the carpet of leaves. Jevil landed on Seam’s stomach, a giddy uee-hee-hee airing out of him like helium from a balloon.

“You, my friend, are impossible,” Seam wheezed.

“Impossible? I am very possible! I can do anything!”

In that moment, Seam didn’t doubt it.

Chapter Text

For all that the young spade was the start of this mess, Seam couldn’t help a pinch of fondness for him. Perhaps it was that the boy’s whimsy reminded Seam of the absent Queen. Perhaps Seam was just growing soft with age.

Or, perhaps it was the way Lancer brought out a side of Jevil rarely seen anywhere else.

“One more! One more!” Lancer said for the sixth time, scrambling off of his bed and back onto Jevil’s lap.

“You’re not so knowing of how the number’s game.” Jevil chuckled, but hoisted the prince in the air once more. It must have been difficult, considering Jevil barely had a few inches on the boy, but the jester had always been stronger than he looked.

“Hee hee, here comes the ring-around!” 

Holding Lancer beneath his arms, Jevil spun them both until they were little more than a blur. It was enough to make Seam dizzy, despite watching from a safe distance on the other side of the doorframe.

Just when Seam thought there might be vomit to clean in the near future, Jevil released the prince, who landed with a SPLAT on the bed. The noise had once concerned Seam, but it had become clear that it was harmless. The prince was simply a squishy boy.

“Ho ho ho! My insides feel all twisted up!” Lancer grinned, his limbs starfishing across his dark covers. “One more—!”

“That’s enough rounds of ring-around for a round boy.” Jevil patted him on the head. 

“But—”

“Your majestic mage can lull you a bye, if I haven’t swung you well to sleep.” Jevil peered in Seam’s direction, despite Seam having done nothing to alert him. “Isn’t that what brought you to be, to be?”

“Of course,” Seam padded into the room, giving Jevil a deadpan spin of a button-eye. “I didn’t know you missed my yowling.”

“Hee hee! What a thing to miss! Yet I’m afraid I will miss it again, my dear.” Jevil’s kiss was careless, and a yellow tooth snagged a purple thread from Seam’s cheek. “I’m due for other duties. Bye-bye!”

“Other duties…?” Seam murmured, but Jevil was already pirouetting away. 

“Goodnight, spinning dad!” Lancer waved.

Seam’s brows twitched. Lancer addressed nearly everyone as a parent, currently, but the thoughts still wandered. 

If Jevil could be a parent—as much as any Darkner could… Well, Seam could see it. 

If only Seam could also be present for such a Drawing.

If only Jevil didn’t seem so intent on dodging Seam these days.

“I’m a tough boy. I don’t need a lullaby,” Lancer told Seam as he rolled himself up in his blankets. “I have my SPLATs to make me sleep.”

On command, the music player on Lancer’s nightstand began broadcasting a variety of wet noises. 

Seam chuckled. 

“Yes, I suppose that’s more fit for one your age.” The mage gave him a fond pat on the head before flicking the lightswitch. 

A chorus of SPLATs trailed Seam until the door was shut.

And then all was silent. Still. 

And yet… that faint ringing in Seam’s ears… 

Lancer’s nightly noise must have done a number, that was all.

Seam’s head wagged back and forth as the mage plodded away. No more duties for the night… none that were required, at least. 

The same should have been so for Jevil.

There was no use denying it. For all that the jester had claimed to want strength to tie them together, he seemed to be drifting further and further away. It felt like a reversal, as though Jevil himself had been plucked into the light, the way Seam used to be, and spirited across worlds. 

Seam doubted that was literally the case. Lightners had no use for Jevil’s true form. The Light rarely graced them these days, as it was. 

So Jevil was somewhere in the Card Kingdom, Seam was nearly certain of it. So where… and more importantly, why?

Seam could only think of one reason, though surely even Jevil would realize that was futile by now.

“She’s not here. She may as well be nothing.” Seam sighed, trudging out to the Scarlet Forest.

Leaves crinkled beneath the mage’s feet. Surely that was the only reason for the tickle in Seam’s ears.

“Where would that clown be searching this time…” Seam mumbled, only to spot him somewhere unexpected.

The bake sale?

“Interested in a Choco Diamond? All proceeds go to Rudinn Relief Funds, I guess. It’s only $40,” the Rudinn at the flimsy green stand said.

“Relieve you of one, I will, I will.” Jevil grinned, slapping a wad of dark dollars on the counter.

“Thanks, I guess.” The Rudinn handed one over.

Seam didn’t quite relax. Why had Jevil been so esoteric over going to buy a treat? Of course, esotericism was in his nature, and yet…

Jevil took one step back. And then forward again. 

“Interested in a Choco Diamond? All proceeds go to Rudinn Relief Funds, I guess. It’s only $40,” the Rudinn said.

“Diamonds to die on. Again, again.” Another handful of dark dollars.

“Thanks, I guess.” The Rudinn handed another over.

Again and again they repeated, until Jevil’s inventory was full.

“Thanks, I guess.”

And then, with a flourishing spin, Jevil grinned at Seam.

“So, you see, you see?”

“See… you wasting your entire salary?” Seam’s left button spun.

“Ah, but there is naught to waste.” Jevil waggled a finger. “You came because you wanted to see. So, see.”

He put one of the Choco Diamonds back on the counter. The Rudinn returned twenty dark dollars.

“You truly have an eye for investments,” Seam drawled. “All I see is…”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

A loop of buying and selling. Jevil lost money each time, for certain, but never enough to bother him somehow. And the Rudinn… 

Was this just what working at a bake sale could do to a Darkner? Why was he looping the exact same lines of dialogue?

(Dialogue? What a strange way to think of someone speaking.)

Jevil tossed Seam one of the Choco Diamonds, and the mage chewed on it thoughtfully. It tasted as sweet as the items ever did. 

Jevil ate a couple himself, then changed course to tossing the items out. A frivolous waste—but they seemed to dissolve shortly after hitting the fuschia ground. 

The Rudinn’s reserves, on the other hand, never exhausted. 

Seam couldn’t say where Jevil had collected enough dark dollars for this experiment, much less why. When asked, he only answered—

“I can do anything!” And tossed a Choco Diamond over his shoulder.

“There must be a reason—”

“Must there be?” The darkness of Jevil’s eyesockets seemed to twinkle.

And in that twinkling, Seam seemed to see something else. Something… darker. 

“This is getting boring, isn’t it?” Seam asked instead, trying to lure Jevil away from this strangeness.

Even in the Dark World, where change was as impermanent as breath, some things were supposed to stay consistent. The Rudinn shouldn’t have been able to conjure up healing items from nothing. Light, Seam knew how difficult it was to prepare Darkburgers; the mage never could keep them from charring.

(But no one had ever attempted to purchase hundreds of Darkburgers from the Seap. If necessity demanded it, would the items appear?)

It sounded ridiculous.

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Thanks, I guess—”

Seam dragged Jevil away by the collar before he could throw away another forty dark dollars.

“Do you see?” Jevil asked insistently even so.

(Something frayed around the Rudinn’s edges. Something black and white and speckled like static. Seam’s fur stood on end.)

(And that ringing in Seam’s ears… it was crescendoing into something… something almost like a song.)

“It would be much easier to see if I knew what I was looking for,” Seam said gruffly. “Is this another of your games? Normally we agree on the rules first.”

“Game? Uee hee hee. Game it is, but mine it is not. How can I write the rules when they are already written?” 

Seam shivered. The static… the noise…

“You can see,” Jevil said, voice suddenly quiet. His mittenlike palm was gentle on Seam’s cheek. “Those buttonholes of yours are sharper than any. If only I could have shown him you, and you him…”

“Him?” Seam asked, surprised by a sudden pang of envy. “I had assumed you were still searching for Spade Queen.”

“Yes, yes. He, Him—that strange stranger—is the key.”

The strange—oh. The man Jevil had taken Seam to meet, only to fail to appear. Jevil hadn’t mentioned the figure in… how long had it been? Time was fragile here in the Dark Worlds. Seam had forgotten the futile detour entirely.

That was odd. Seam’s memory never leaked such notable stuffing.

“Has he done anything helpful so far?” Seam attempted to humor him. “Other than give you terrible financial advice, I presume.”

“I am the one full of help, to him. But! The hand will help me in turn, turn. When I am finished with the Window’s Window. When eyes blinded by darkness finally see…”

Jevil trailed off, his gaze becoming distant. Then he snapped back to attention.

“But you. You, my dear, are special. You must not want for the weight of wait.” He clasped Seam’s paws, and for a brief moment, static obscured him—a static built of miniscule zeroes and ones. “You’ve seen what it means to be free, free. I’ll see you see the seas beyond our prison of vision.”

See beyond…

Cold crept into Seam’s cotton.

“You did take it, didn’t you?” Seam took a step back, slipping out of Jevil’s grip. “My Shadow Crystal.”

He had the decency to look sheepish. He bit his lip with sharp yellow teeth.

“The stranger had need of a window, to create a Window. I will return it when it is my turn.”

Who could—how could this man know what a Shadow Crystal could do—much less that Seam had one? 

“You took it.” Seam’s voice went flat with ice. “You told me nothing. You had—” Days? Weeks? Months? “—time to have confessed to me.”

“I am fessing! Now is a time!”

Seam growled as the music surged, a tense, insistent melody with a bouncing harmony. It emanated from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“Who is this man?” Seam demanded over the song. “A pawn of the Great Board? A traitor K. Round? That worm-loving Rouxls Kaard?”

“No, no, and no! He is…” Jevil’s head cocked back and forth in time with the rhythm. Did he hear it, too? “I do not know. I see more than I have seen, and yet. Yet. Ink and hand and grin. He is… no Darkner, I think.”

Not a Darkner? Of course, a Lightner could know of things beyond… but a Lightner here? Physically?

They were Gods. To have been chosen by one… what Jevil spoke was tantamount to blasphemy.

Seam let out a shuddering breath. No wonder Jevil had taken so long to confide in the mage. The tale bordered on the edges of belief. And yet…

“I believe you,” Seam murmured. 

“You do?” Jevil stood straighter. “You do, you do! My beloved mage can always see what’s true.”

Seam almost smiled. It was more like a grimace. 

“I can see no reason why you’d lie about this.” 

Though Seam couldn’t fathom why a Lightner would choose Jevil to be their prophet, rather than… well. The whims of Gods weren’t within Seam’s authority to question.

“No more lies lie between us. Cross my heart and swear to fly,” Jevil said, making the crossing motion over his chest with one thumb. 

Seam chuckled. It was difficult to stay frustrated with the jester.

(Frustrated Seam was not, but unsettled… that was another matter.)

(For a Lantern’s song tinkled through the Seap that night, filling Seam’s cotton with darker, yet darker dreams.)

Chapter Text

Seam awoke to a weight pressing atop the quilted covers. Buttonholes blinking, the mage tried to sit up…

“Oh.” Seam chuckled, a warmth spreading through cotton once clogged with darkness. “Good morning, dear.”

It had been quite some time since Jevil had fallen asleep in the Seap, and longer still since Jevil had fallen asleep atop Seam. Perhaps last night’s confession had mended some of the frayed stitching between them.

Jevil had been acting on behalf of the Gods. He couldn’t be blamed.

(How many times must Seam repeat those words for them to stick?)

“Morning…?” Jevil’s forked tail twitched. One star-shaped eye cracked open. “Am I not in the pleasant dream?”

The darkness flickered. Numbers and holes. Sounds like a twinkling lantern. 

Dreams hadn’t been pleasant. Nightmares danced in the dark, from shadows cast by the Light. Without the Shadow Crystal, Seam was as blind as the rest of them, and knowing whereabouts the artifact went offered little reprieve. 

Perhaps it was time for a reading. Light knew Seam had put it off long enough. 

“It might be a little more pleasant if you weren’t crushing me,” Seam grunted. 

Of course, that just made Jevil spread out further, starfishing across the quilt and wrapping his tail around Seam’s. And well that was. For all that the night had tormented the mage, leaving this corner of the Seap, this corner of time, did not appeal to Seam at the moment.

“A crush, a crush!” Jevil rolled upside-down, his grin a crescent moon above Seam’s head. “Are you not a-crushing me, button?”

Crescent to crescent, Seam’s split-seam mouth met Jevil’s. The kiss was a brief distraction, just long enough to tug his tail and flip their positions in the nest of blankets.

“Am I?” Seam asked with a sly buttonhole-wink.

“Uee hee hee! To be crushed beneath a crush! Could I petition to cushion your pins, too, Seam-stress?” Jevil took Seam’s paw, pressing the mage’s claws to his chest. 

Seam smiled wider. It was easier to ignore the ringing in ears with Jevil’s hot breath puffing in the air between their faces.

“If you’d like.” Seam twirled a claw, hooking a thread on Jevil’s shirt. Black, spooling out against the pale purple. “A game, then?”

“A game! A game!” Jevil echoed, wiggling delightedly and almost throwing Seam off in the process. “Never would I turn down a fray with my favorite fraying cheater. What rules are to be? That you will bend to break, to break?”

Seam spun a button eye, letting out a little huff. Seam’s tail twined with Jevil’s again, though, proving the lack of genuine annoyance.

“You are the only one fraying at the moment, my dear.” Seam tugged a little tighter on the thread. Warp separated from weft, the edge a multitude of tiny strings, like fronds that swayed with each of Seam’s breaths. 

Details. Focus on details. Unmistakable to the eyes. No darkness and digits distorting.

“Uee hee. Not for long, my dear.” Jevil’s grin stretched—

—Then struck. A twisted tooth in Seam’s collar, beneath the fluffed neck of the cloak. Where a stuffed head met stuffed body. Stitches popped, torn through by those sharp yellow teeth, but Seam minded not at all. Seam would that Jevil could stay like this, tearing into the mage’s cotton, replacing the darkness mingled within with something sharp and warm.

Seam laughed as Jevil bit and nuzzled closer. 

“I thought—” Seam gasped, “—you requested the rules?”

“To rule is to play, and to play is to rule. Would you that I play fair, when you’re fairly not?”

“So you just wanted to know what to break, too.” Seam snorted, countering Jevil’s move with a sharp kiss to his sharp ear. Nibbling there left marks like torn paper. “How can you break what isn’t whole? How can you bend the rules without knowing them?”

“You understand! To be within a game is to bow to the rule of rules. To play, then, is to be trapped inside what is unreal—or else all is chaos, chaos.”

Seam understood bits and pieces of that. Yes, a game was not a game without rules, broken or otherwise. Perhaps this wasn’t much of a game then. 

Seam didn’t care right now. Would Jevil put his mouth back on Seam’s neck, please?

“Uee hee hee! If that is your wish, my dear.”

Jevil’s tongue slipped between the snapped stitches, and Seam nearly forgot that that question hadn’t been spoken aloud.

Nearly. 

“Jevil—” Seam’s brows knit together, then melted back when Jevil lapped at a particularly sweet spot. 

Difficult questions could wait, couldn’t they? Perhaps Seam had voiced that question and not realized it. Somehow. That made more sense than—

“—Plucking the thoughts from your cotton?” Jevil murmured, through a mouth full of said cotton.

Seam froze. That statement couldn’t be ignored.

Was this some new game? If so, what rules was Jevil playing by? Yes, part of Seam—most of Seam—wanted him to reach inside and have his way with whatever he wished. Cotton and thread and darkness and all in between, so long as he left a bit of himself behind, too.

Seam cringed just thinking it. Would he hear that, too? Would he know how desperately Seam wanted him to stay? How desperately Seam wanted him?

Jevil pulled back, resting his head on Seam’s pillow, a distant glint in the darkness of his eyesockets. His mittened hand reached up to cup Seam’s face.

“The window grows wider,” Jevil whispered. “To the SOUL. To your soul. Eyes blinded by darkness see, see. Only now can I read what your mind insists. Rules are being written as they write.”

“Jevil.” Seam pushed back against the nest of blankets somewhat, so as not to squish him too terribly. “Nothing you say makes any damn sense.”

Jevil frowned. It was such a rare expression on him. His round body seemed to deflate, and not just from the pressure Seam was exerting on his stomach.

“Your buttons are still lacking the sight.”

Seam scowled back. Who was Jevil to say that, when the jester had been the one to steal Seam’s sight in the first place?

“The Crystal of Shadows. My apologies have already been given—”

“No, they haven’t,” Seam snapped.

Seam didn’t want to be angry with Jevil. Seam wanted nothing more than to sink back into his familiar comfort. Games to pass the time, and eager touches in between. Seam wasn’t the one trying to bend the rules until they’d break.

“I… then, I hope, now is not too late?” Jevil offered the ghost of a smile. “Apologies. Sorry. Remorse. Contrition. Repentance, reproach—” 

“I didn’t know you knew half those words.” Seam sighed. “If I am an open book to you, then you’ll know I hardly believe you mean a quarter of them.”

“But I do! I do!!!” Jevil gripped Seam’s face with both hands. His eyes were wild, intense. “To hurt you is only fun in games! Never without those bounds would I blind you! The man, the man demanded it! And to your paws will it return, when time is due.”

Seam let out a ragged breath. Jevil was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar. Seam had just been—disquieted. 

Jevil was so strange lately. And not his normal, wonderful type of strange. Jevil, if you are listening to this, you must understand—these are Seam’s thoughts, and they cannot be censored, but they do not mean you harm, either. Seam lo—cares so deeply for you, from the bottom of the mage’s cotton. 

Jevil laughed, high and bright.

“You are sure there was no censor? I sense a sure omission of intention.”

Seam scowled. What was the point in sparing his feelings, when he would only repay with relentless teasing? He hadn’t voiced a return of the sentimental sentiment, if he felt it himself. He’d only spoken garbled nonsense. Perhaps to distract from how he didn’t share what Seam felt—

“Seam.” Jevil squeezed Seam’s cheeks. Pulled them back and forth, stretched and scrunched, until Seam’s scowl had been shaped away. “I love you, too, my dear. In work and in play. In darkness and in light. Whether it is forbidden or not.”

Seam’s mouth hung open dumbly. That—it hadn’t been expected. Not so plainly. 

Jevil used the moment of shock to slip a thumb into Seam’s mouth, stretching the cheek from the inside.

“Whether you smile or frown. Whether you believe me or not.”

“I—” Seam couldn’t speak without biting down on Jevil’s thumb, but knew he didn’t mind. “I believe you. I…”

Why was it more difficult to say out loud? Seam had already provoked Jevil into saying it. The mage had no ground to withhold the words now.

“Uee hee hee. Bound by your own rules.” Jevil kissed Seam’s nose.

“I love you,” the mage finally blurted in a rush. “Of course I do. How could I not?”

“You flatter me, my dear.” Jevil scattered kisses across Seam’s face, leaving warmth behind with each one.

A pressure had been released. Too-tight stuffing relaxed into something less tense. It was easy to melt back against Jevil, even as questions still pricked within Seam’s mind.

What was happening to the jester? What was the strange someone teaching him? Was he becoming something more than a Darkner? 

(He wouldn’t continue to leave Seam behind. He wouldn’t. He loved Seam.)

(How long had it been since Jevil had been the one worried about being left behind, and not Seam?)

If Jevil heard those deeper thoughts, he spared Seam the indignity of acknowledging them aloud.

XXX

Seam waited until Jevil left to entertain the kings before repairing torn stitches and setting up a reading. The delay wasn’t quite out of secrecy. Just—privacy, perhaps. If Seam’s thoughts were no longer private—a both terrifying and admittedly pleasant-intimate concept, in equal measures—then some things must be only thought in private. 

A nervous chuckle, as Seam unrolled a swath of violet fabric embroidered with stars. If only Jevil’s mind was as open as Seam’s own. What the mage wouldn’t give to better understand what went on under that jester’s cap…

Even the Shadow Crystal wouldn’t give Seam that much power. The Seamripper wouldn’t, either. Whatever forces Jevil courted were far beyond that.

Terrifying. Intriguing.

If Jevil could do that much… could he truly defy fate itself…? Could he hold Seam close, despite their lack of objective connections? Could a plush toy and joker card form something stronger than just a game…?

Seam wanted to believe so. It wasn’t a thought the mage had given an allowance for, before. Catti took Seam where she willed. But those journeys were so few and far between as to be near never, now. Without her, Seam lacked for a purpose—but with Jevil, the darkness didn’t feel so dark. Seam didn’t miss her light so terribly. In fact, it felt like ages since Seam had thought of her, too, something the mage had hardly thought possible.

Too many thoughts, and too few. Scattered and blasphemous, hopeful and desperate.

Seam needed a reading. Something concrete. A foundation to stand on when what the mage knew seemed unstable as shifting sand—or glitching numbers.

A rub of button eyes, and the monochrome digits—ones and zeros, primarily—faded. The music, however, did not. 

Three-four time. A glittering waltz with no dancers. Louder and clearer than yesterday. Mysterious enough to make Seam’s ears itch, but majestic enough for a reading. 

“Ha ha ha… I’m stalling, aren’t I…?”

Seam’s paws trembled on the Seamripper. Running paw-pads up and down the handle’s smooth surface provided little comfort. The last reading Seam had done… had been Spade Queen’s. And Light knew how well that had gone…

Seam didn’t have to do this. But avoiding the power would only leave the mage further in the dark. Prophecies were to illuminate, not change, the future. It would be written whether or not Seam chose to read it.

(That was the problem, wasn’t it? It was so much easier to pretend fate was pliable when not looking it in the face.)

Seam would look. If Jevil could handle so much forbidden knowledge, surely Seam could handle at least a fragment. It wouldn’t be Seam’s first.

The mage took a deep breath. Raised the Seamripper high above head, where the weapon gathered mystical light.

“Show yourself… Delta Rune!”

Prongs plunged into the pattern. Kaleidoscope light dazzled across the seap’s walls. Wind swirled and strings snapped.

Seam would not blink. Buttonhole-pupils tracked the movements of each silver thread as it rewove itself…

The embroidered threads were no longer silver. The backdrop was no longer violet.

Black bled into each thread, starting from the points that had once been stars. Inching like ink, spilling into the purple background, turning everything dark, darker, yet darker. 

The Seamripper fell from Seam’s hands, slicing a gash in the seap’s sackcloth wall before clattering to the floor. No light shone from it. The weapon had felt cold and dead.

This—this wasn’t because Seam had lost the Shadow Crystal, was it? The Shadow Crystal wasn’t the source of the Seamripper’s power—that power came from Seam’s knowledge of magic, and from the artifact itself. A remnant left behind by the Lightner, Lady Toriel, when she had once repaired Seam for Catti after a particularly brutal recess. 

(Catti had learned her own magic from Seam, by practical experience. Experimenting with sewn signs and sigils. Not all of them comfortable to have embroidered on one’s flesh.)

Still, Seam would have rather been needle-pricked a hundred times over than stare down this particular reading.

Paws traced the fabric. Smooth. Too smooth. No texture where stars had once been embroidered. No definition between warp and weft. It might as well have been glass, for all Seam could see and feel. Dark, endless glass. Like a wide, flattened Shadow Crystal…

Did Seam dare try to peer through it? On the other paw, did Seam dare ignore what the Light and Dark had created?

Seam already knew the answer to that.

Face leaning forward, buttonholes squinting, vision darkening…

Waves seemed to ripple on the surface. Images, rather than the words that a reading typically created. A reflection? For a moment, there was just Seam’s own face staring back. And then—

The glint of a curved knife. A missing button. A dance of death. Flickers, ripples, fears. 

Darkness. Alone. Bars between, a lattice of separation.

Seam took a step back. That—that couldn’t happen. Jevil wouldn’t—not—not like that. That didn’t look like a game. Hadn’t the jester just promised? He wouldn’t hurt Seam. Never without those bounds would I blind you.

Seam reached up to touch a button eye. Left. In direction, and still remaining. To lose one of those would be more painful than a few popped stitches. They could be fixed—Seam’s body was more adaptable than most Darkners’—but it would not be pleasant. And if said button was lost, or stolen—

Half of Seam’s sight, stolen by darkness. Permanently.

Seam shuddered. A peek back at the “fabric” revealed its shimmering surface had faded back to a soft matte. No longer glass. Woven texture could once again be felt, though the black lack-of-color remained.

What… did it mean…?

What could Seam believe? The words of someone who encompassed thief and friend and lover? Or the vision of magic and darkness, which had never yet proven false?

Yet. Yet. 

Seam’s breathing was as ragged as the mage felt. There had to be a way to avoid this. The future couldn’t be set in glass. Not this future.

It had to be because the Shadow Crystal was missing. Seam could cling to that excuse as if it were a final thread. 

For once, Seam had something to fight for. A future the mage wanted, unbound from expectations of Light and Dark. If it was only a delusion—well.

Seam was tired of being pragmatic. Seam had already lost too much. 

If fate wanted to take Jevil from Seam, too, then it would have to fight a little harder than this.

Chapter Text

“Where is that useless Jester?” Club King’s leftmost hand demanded.

“Oh, my poor Clover…” Club King’s middle head cried.

“We are the King! We are her fathers! We can handle this without him,” Club King’s rightmost head reassured.

Seam sighed, irritation becoming apparent in the flicking of felted ears. The Castle’s ballroom was decorated for the special occasion, courtesy of the Ruddins’ sparkling diamonds, and the catering was handled, courtesy of the Hathys’ Hearts Donuts and Top Chef’s Spin Cake. Even Lancer had helped out, despite no one asking him to (or wanting him to). He acted as self-appointed DJ and broadcasted a mix of SPLAT noises from the stage. Ah, how his music taste reminded Seam of his absent mother…

But speaking of absences. Jevil’s screamed like an open wound.

“Would the birthday girl be willing to accept my services in his place?” Seam asked.

Seam was the court magician. While the mage’s specialties were in prophetic and combat magic, every magician knew a few party tricks. 

“Well, she’ll have to, won’t she?” “I hope she likes it…” “I never wanted to hire Jevil anyway.”

“Very well.” Seam bowed. 

Guests parted for Seam on the way to the stage. Was it just Seam, or was the ballroom less crowded than expected? Fewer Rudinns and Hathys, and of course, the Spade and Club troops had been vastly depleted in the recent attacks by the Great Board. Hearts King had stationed several Hathys outside as guards, so at least it was unlikely that there would be more carnage tonight. 

Some of the gaps in the suits were plugged by guest Jigsawrys and Bloxers, but it was difficult to remember what it had been like to serve a full deck. The hushed whispers between Darkners suggested many were thinking similar thoughts. Despite the extravagance of the setup, no one seemed terribly at ease. Surely they couldn’t hear the ominous sounds that itched at Seam’s ears…?

Lancer’s SPLAT noises weren’t doing enough to drown out Card Castle’s ambient music. The past few weeks had only seen it grow louder. No one else but Jevil could hear it, and the Rudinns that Seam had questioned on the matter had seemed to think Seam was mad. For obvious reasons, Seam’s mouth had been stitched shut about it since.

Besides being ominous, the music was a fair bit irritating when exposed to for too long. Not fit for a birthday party at all. Even the SPLATs were much better suited. Though in combination, the two sounds were so strange, Seam wasn’t sure what emotion they evoked.

Seam attempted to tune them all out as the stage was reached. A paw was placed on Lancer’s shoulder, and the boy looked up.

“Hi, fuzzy dad!” Lancer beamed. “I didn’t know you would be part of the party! Where’s spinning dad?”

Seam startled a bit at the first title. The mage hadn’t realized the Lancer had space for that many dads, let alone… well. Seam had been filling in on several of Jevil’s duties, though Rouxls typically took over Lancer’s bedtimes. Seam would usually be assigned to Clover instead. She was a sweet girl. Girls. She also elicited far fewer complicated memories.

“I wish I knew, my young prince.” Seam sighed. “Would you mind quieting the music? I will be performing in Jevil’s place this evening.”

“Ho ho ho! Break a keg, fuzzy dad!” Lancer unplugged the mp3 player connected to the speakers, broadcasting a sharp static noise in the process, and then slid off the side of the stage.

“Where did he even hear that phrase…?” Seam mumbled. 

Clover had pushed her way to the foot of the stage, and all three of her heads were looking up at Seam eagerly.

“A new show?” “I wanted to see CLOWNS!” “There was only going to be one clown, anyway…”

“My apologies, my young Club. I hope you’ll put up with my ugly mug in his place.” Seam smiled, spreading paws wide and stretching a long, string-shaped bullet between them.

“This looks like fun!” “We see your ugly mug all the time, though!” “Seam’s not that ugly…”

The mage snorted at that, but kept smiling.

“This should still be new for you. Unless someone else has learned to pull the strings lately.” That last bit said more quietly, perhaps not intended to be heard.

Glowing string-bullets were woven up and down, from above Seam’s head to the stage floor. They remained taut when Seam directed them so, and emitted a soft twang when Seam plucked one with a claw. 

Seam wasn’t done yet, though. Another string extended from a paw, stiff and straight, almost like a baton. Seam wasn’t here to conduct, though—the mage was here to perform.

With a flourish, Seam twirled the bowstring, then set it to hover an inch away from dextrous paws. There could be no resonance if Seam had to touch the string directly.

With the bowstring hovering in conjunction with Seam’s paw, the mage began to play. Seam’s free paw grazed down the vertical strings, holding chords, changing pitches. The mage’s tail swayed back and forth, conjuring up bullets in different shapes and colors to dazzle and entertain. Most Darkners had never seen orange bullets, which would damage any motionless target, or light blue bullets, which would damage anything that moved. They sparkled like complementary stars, sometimes bursting into smaller and simpler bullets, enough for a full fireworks show. No child could resist colorful pyrotechnics. 

“Oooooh!” “Finally! Something COOL!” “The music is really nice…!”

Seam smiled. While a duet would have been preferable—a certain Jester’s horn paired quite well with Seam’s strings—it was a relief that the performance was appreciated. (Though, perhaps some of that was due to Lancer lowering the crowd’s standards a bit.)

A few Darkners had cleared space in the center of the ballroom to dance, and Clover went to join as the girl of the hour. Seam had enough stamina for a few hours of performing, probably longer than any of the guests would want to dance for. Hopefully. Still, Seam would rather have been down there, or out searching for a certain—

A trumpet blared next to Seam’s ear. 

“Jevil!” Seam burst, bowstring screeching before regaining its rhythm. “Where did you come from!?”

The jester grinned unrepentantly, trumpet hovering near his lips.

“Come from? Uee hee hee. A card, just like most, excepting you.”

Seam’s button eyes spun in an annoyed roll, but honestly, the mage was just relieved to see him. He had done a better job lately of coming home—that was, to Seam’s seap—at night, but during the days, he was more difficult to pin down than ever.

With that quip, Jevil joined in the music, mouth too occupied for conversation.

Seam smiled a little wider. Better late than never, correct? Seam’s makeshift cello faded into the harmony, letting Jevil take up the melody with his more earcatching instrument.

“Woah, can we learn to play that?” “It’s LOUD! I like it!!” “Dad wouldn’t…”

“She was looking forward to your performance,” Seam muttered to Jevil, low enough that it wouldn’t project off the stage. “I am glad you decided to deliver.”

What? Did Seam expect Jevil to do otherwise? Jevil was a jester of his word!! He would rather be de-livered than not deliver!

Seam blinked, bow stumbling over the strings. What—what had that been? Jevil was still tooting away, perfectly in rhythm.

He had learned how to write, not merely read. The internal monologue could be a dialogue, now! Wasn’t that wonderful, my dear?

Seam’s smile froze. Paws still had a part to play, and couldn’t afford to stop now. Not without causing a scene.

Everything seen is scene, Seam! Is that not a wonderful dream? To dance between words and sounds and thoughts? 

“Jevil…” Seam’s breath was growing a bit ragged. The makeshift cello sounded as strained as Seam felt, bullet-strings trembling with Seam’s exertion. 

Did you not want this? To hear Jevil’s thoughts, as transparent as your own? For two to become one, twined together, tail to tail and tale to tale—

“I—please, Jevil.” Not now. Not yet. Let Seam be in a position to—to decide what this all meant, when the two of them weren’t the center of attention.

Clover should be the center. Jevil and Seam were just background noise. Like the background noise Seam keeps hearing, yes? The music that Jevil and Seam played together now, the music that rings through the Scarlet Forest. Ringing around and around the ring-around—

Ah, but Seam wanted Jevil to stop. Jevil could stop! Jevil could do anything!

…

The inside of Seam’s mind quieted. Jevil was surely still listening—the nosy little bastard—but he no longer interfered. His voice was limited to the tooting of his horn.

No one else seemed to notice anything strange. The floor was still full of dancers. Clover had begun to spin Top Chef around and around and around. Rouxls Kaard was dragging Lancer away from the refreshments table. Spade King and Diamond King were engaged in hushed conversation in the corner of the room. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.

That was for the best. No one else was meant to bear such madness. Even for one who had seen so much Light, Seam felt left in the dark.

Still, the two of them continued their song until long into the evening. For tonight, that was their purpose.

XXX

Seam missed peace and quiet. 

Nowhere was without music, these days. The seap. The forest. The field. Card Castle. A couple secluded areas of the kingdom only echoed the weird sound of birds, though, and it was one of these places that Seam had set out to with Jevil the day after the party. A small chessboard was tucked under Seam’s arm, while Jevil carried the game’s pieces in his jingling hat.

“You still want to play?” Jevil asked, plopping down on the fuchsia grass. The shadow of an empty doorframe loomed behind him, but Seam had grown accustomed to the strange landmark. “I thought your questions would be itching on your tongue.”

“You know we both think more clearly while playing a game.” Seam sat down as well, placing the chessboard between them.

“True, true.” Jevil clicked his tongue. He dumped the pieces out of his hat before twirling it back onto his head.

He began to set up the board. You wouldn’t expect him to have the patience for a game of this sort—and it was true that cards better suited him, naturally—but his mind was keener than many gave him credit for. The two of them were evenly matched when it came to chess.

Seam played white. Jevil played black. Despite Jevil’s earlier assumption, the silence stretched between them, lingering in each empty square of the board.

The things Seam wanted to ask couldn’t be put into words. They could hardly be put into thoughts. If Seam could think them, that would be enough for Jevil to answer. 

Their minds were nearly one. So why did it feel like Seam understood Jevil even less?

“To understand, what must stand under?” Jevil mused quietly, moving a rook and getting close to pinning one of Seam’s bishops.

Seam frowned. Jevil had an unfair advantage, here, peering into Seam’s mind at will. How was Seam to prevent him from cheating? Would Seam simply have to make moves at random?

(It had been weeks now since Jevil manifested this new boon. What did Seam normally do to circumvent it? They had played games together since then, hadn’t they…?)

“You can feel the gaps, too.” Jevil’s tone was subdued. “I knew you would.”

“Is something the matter?” Seam’s paw hovered over a white bishop. Games were both focus and distraction for them. Would it be better for Jevil if they kept playing, or took a break?

“Nothing. Nothing is the matter. Uee hee hee.” Even his laugh was hollow.

“Nothing…?” Seam’s head tilted.

“Nothing, nothing. Nothing matters.” 

Well that was a frighteningly straight answer.

“Are you… struggling with your purpose…?”

Frankly, it was a miracle that Jevil had stayed in good spirits for so long, useless as he was in most Lightner card games. And the Lightners hardly visited the kingdom at all, these days. Not even Seam was exempt from feeling the strain of that.

The mage missed Catti. Jevil’s attentions kept Seam occupied when he was here, but otherwise… there was still plenty of time in a day to rot, cotton clotting with misery. Restlessness. Hopelessness. 

(The black-blank prophecy didn’t help, either, though Seam tucked that to the back of mind whenever Jevil was around, to keep him from asking. To keep him from worrying.)

“Am I? Are you?” Jevil rested back on his palms, squinting up at Seam. “Tell me, my dear button, do you care for this board?”

“The board…?” Seam’s brow furrowed. “Of course. I care for the game. When I play with you, I—the darkness is less suffocating.”

Seam had gotten better at honest words in the past weeks. It no longer felt like punishment would rain from the heavens each time Seam spoke blasphemy. Besides, Jevil would hear what Seam thought, so any incriminating sentences might as well be committed to. 

“The game. But not the pieces. Uee hee. So what would the Light care for us?”

Seam didn’t answer aloud. Seam was an outlier, and an exception. Most denizens of Card Kingdom were as valued as this chess set. To say nothing of the Great Board, which were a chess set. 

Uncanny, when you thought of it that way. Seam never minded playing cards. Seam never minded playing chess. Games were games, and it wasn’t as if there was anything below a Darkner to manipulate or misuse.

“Is that something you can see, see?”

“I… I have seen the Light World,” Seam admitted aloud for the first time. It was hardly a secret by now, though. “There is Light, and there is Dark. What is below to serve that which is above. Even those who haven’t seen it know that.”

Each Darkner could feel their purpose. They didn’t have to see the hands moving them to feel the love from the Light. To be held by the Light was to be real. To be whole.

Wind whistled through the trees. The whole kingdom felt hollow, these days. As delightful as the party had been, it had only been a bandage on a wound, a hole that couldn’t be filled. Not by more darkness.

“You have seen above. Not below. ‘What must stand under’?” Jevil echoed his earlier nonsense. 

Seam stared down at the board. Paws trembled above pawns. Games were all Seam and Jevil had, these days. Did Jevil want to take even that away? 

“What have you seen?” Seam asked, directly. Let Jevil slip away from the question, if he must, but it wouldn’t be for lack of Seam trying.

“Above. Above above.” Jevil’s yellow pupils guttered out, leaving nothing but an empty void in his star-shaped sockets. 

“...Would you care to elaborate?” Seam sounded longsuffering, but it was a guise to hide behind. Anxiousness thrummed in the spaces beneath felted fur.

And what point was hiding it? Jevil knew. Because it was written, he could read it.

“Would I care to care… uee hee hee…” 

He moved a rook diagonally to knock over Seam’s knight. Seam gave him a withering look.

“What are you doing? If you’re going to cheat, at least do yourself a favor and wait until I’m not looking. It’s no fun to catch you when you aren’t even trying to hide it.”

“Is it cheating? Or is it a different game?” Jevil grinned, the light returning to his eyes. “Does anything stop my hand?”

Seam swatted his mitten, and he dropped the rook. It clattered to the board, knocking over an extra pawn in the process.

(What did that feel like, to a pawn? Would it understand what was happening? Or would it see the breaking of rules as something beyond comprehension—like an infinitely-spawning Choco Diamond?)

“Uee hee hee! You see, see!” Jevil crossed his arms, tail swishing with satisfaction.

“I don’t…” Seam’s head shook. 

Seam didn’t want to see. Seam didn’t like this game.

“And yet, it isn’t ours to play.” Jevil shrugged. “Spare your pretty head its worries. I know not what lies beneath the Dark. That is simply an extrapolation from explanation.”

“But you know what lies above,” Seam murmured. “Above above.”

Jevil’s nod was disjointed, like it couldn’t decide between enthusiasm and reluctance. A stutter of a motion.

“And I thought I’ve been speaking blasphemy.” A huff, something that could be mistaken as a laugh. “You really think there’s something beyond the Light?”

Please say no. Please say this is all a joke, some drawn-out jesting, an underbaked prank.

But Jevil nodded again.

“Even the Light is a game to those with the proper Window.” Jevil’s voice was quiet. It was rare to see him so somber. He couldn’t have known this long. 

Believed. Believed this. Because there was no possibility it was truth. 

“You can feel the gaps.” Jevil insisted. “What you cannot see, you understand. There is an absence. When the Light looks away, we wither. And when that Above looks away—”

…

…

……..

……………

Someone has to write these words. Without them—

“—we disappear.” Jevil grinned, all teeth and no good humor.

Seam swallowed. The thoughts seemed to slide off the mage’s mind, like raindrops on glass. There was little for them to stick to, no purchase, no possible way to understand.

But Jevil could. Somehow.

The jester hummed, twirling a fallen pawn between his thumb and fingers.

“Could you see, see? Would the writing allow sense to your senses? Or must I be so lonely in my lack of matter…”

“I don’t… you are not alone, Jevil…” Seam reached for the jester’s hand, covering the pawn with a paw. “Even if I don’t understand, I am here for you. Our happiness together is the closest thing I can call a purpose, these days.”

Perhaps it wasn’t the sweetest comfort, but Seam was historically mediocre when it came to affirming words. But the words, reassuring or not, were true.

“Uee hee… you are an honest plush, yes, yes.” Jevil gripped Seam’s paw like a vise. “The Light would be better, but I will do, yes?”

Ha ha. Seam hadn’t even had to think it for Jevil to intuit the buried meaning.

“Don’t tell me you don’t feel the same,” Seam murmured. “It’s woven into us, like it or not.” 

Darkners were just mortals, and Lightners were gods. Was it Seam’s pride, refusing to release the strings, refusing to bend to fate, that had led to Jevil’s current strangeness? Seeing things that weren’t there, making up excuses, forces beyond Light? Tempting and terrifying…

Jevil cackled madly at that.

“Seam, my dearest, if there is any pride in you, it is that you still think you could change this.” 

He swept to his feet, tail toppling the rest of the chess pieces in the process. Though he was barely over half Seam’s height, he pulled Seam up, too.

“You will see, see. What can change, what won’t change.”

He dragged the mage west and south, into the mazelike area of the forest.

(The chessboard was left behind. Seam did not need to think about it waiting alone for their return.)

“Jevil—” Seam cut off, sighing. Was there any point in asking what the jester was up to this time? Any answers would be riddlesome nonsense.

(And yet not all slid off Seam’s glass mind. Cotton was too porous. Some was bound to stick.)

A Bloxer was wandering through the maze ahead. Was the tri-part Darkner lost? Did it just have nothing better to do?

“Here! Watch, watch!” Jevil grinned, summoning his Devilsknife with a flourish.

“Jevil—!?” Seam gaped as Jevil released his grip.

Jevil dashed for the block Darkner. Bloxers were typically neutral in the wars between cards and chess. It had no reason to expect a sudden attack. 

All it managed was a single Lego-shaped bullet in its shock, before the Devilsknife was tearing through it.

“Have you gone mad!?” Seam cried out, summoning the Seamripper.

“Mad? Uee hee hee! I’m the only calm one!” Jevil grinned over his shoulder. 

The distraction allowed the Bloxer to escape, at least. With a cartoonish sound, it fled into the trees.

Seam didn’t strike Jevil, though the mage had half a mind to. 

“You’ll see, see. Watch, watch!” Jevil tugged on the Seamripper—and the attached Seam—until they rounded the corner of the maze again.

And then back. Was Jevil just trying to make Seam dizzy? If Jevil wanted a spar, Seam was right here! He didn’t need to run around tormenting innocent—

The Bloxer was back. There wasn’t a scratch on it.

“HOOH…! Did you want to train? You look like you could use it!” The Bloxer greeted Seam and Jevil as if nothing had happened.

“See? See??” Jevil wiggled the Seamripper until Seam snatched it out of his grip.

“Jevil. I understand even less,” Seam huffed.

“If you’re not here to train, block it off! I don’t need distrac—”

Jevil cleaved Bloxer apart. The three disjointed pieces fled again.

“You can’t—since when do you take your frustrations out on strangers?” Seam grabbed Jevil’s arm, but he shook them off.

When had he gotten so strong? His flashy Devilsknife used to be for show. Those strikes…

“Uee hee hee! I’m not mad!” A grin split his face. Too wide.

Back and forth again. Another Bloxer. Another blow.

“See? Nothing changes!” 

Seam didn’t want to follow. Seam didn’t want to see it again. 

Another Bloxer. At least Jevil never killed it, no matter how strong the strike seemed.

“I can do anything! But not that.”

“Would you want to if you could!?”

Another Bloxer. Seam was getting dizzy. The mage should put an end to this. It was just—

It was just like with the Rudinn. The Choco Diamonds. The back-and-forth. The static, numbers blurring at the Bloxer’s edges. A different song barged in with each of Jevil’s blows, the forest’s music giving way to something harsh and chaotic. The noise was too distracting for Seam to tear Jevil away, at first.

“Jevil—”

Violence. The flash of a knife.

(It wasn’t aimed for Seam. If it was, Seam could handle it. It wouldn’t—Jevil wouldn’t—)

“Jevil, enough!” Seam roared, lantern-flame flaring around the Seamripper. “You’ve proven your point, I understand! Nothing matters! You can do anything!”

Jevil paused, the Devilsknife inches from Bloxer’s face (which was currently swapped with its abs).

“Uee hee hee! I knew you would see!” He twirled, weapon vanishing.

“GOOH…! No spar after all?? Then beat it!!”

Seam obliged, dragging Jevil back towards the castle. A stop was warranted along the way to clean up the discarded chess set. Seam gathered all the pieces within the mage’s cloak, not trusting any to Jevil at the moment.

“You look mad,” Jevil pointed out unhelpfully. His stride was practically a bounce. 

“I am not the mad one here.” Seam glared. “You’re lucky Bloxers are so forgiving.”

“What is there to forgive, when nothing is given? No scars, no marks! No memory!”

“No sense.” Seam’s head shook. “I know we Darkners repair quickly. Wounds from the Dark are nothing compared to the Light. Even the wars between our kingdoms would be meaningless if the Lightners decided to shuffle the deck or reset the board.”

The captured Queens of the Great Board would eventually break free from prison. The discarded cards would be drawn anew. Different faces, same fate. 

(All except the Spade Queen. The one card that could no longer be drawn.)

Most Darkners were unaware of the endless cycles. Seam was not most Darkners. The mage had come to terms with such impermanence long ago. 

“But no Lightners are present at present,” Jevil pointed out. “And yet the meaning is even less.”

Seam planted the Seamripper’s end in the ground, whirling on the smiling jester.

“Then what is your point, Jevil? That nothing matters? I know that!”

A chest rose and fell, full of breaths Seam didn’t need to take.

“Do you expect congratulations for proving that Darkners are expendable? Should I gain some pleasure from that? What do you want from me?”

“I… I wanted…” Jevil shrunk back, “to share the rules of this world. With you. So we could play… together.”

“Using other Darkners as toys?” Seam’s mouth twisted, somewhere between grimace and snarl. “Is a second Above an excuse to reach higher? Do you want to be a Lightner? Do you want to be a god?”

“N-no, no! I want us to be free, free! To find our favorite Queen—!”

“She’s gone, Jevil! How many times do we have to have this conversation?”

He never could give it up. He never could let her go. This was why Darkners weren’t meant to form attachments! They couldn’t hold onto anything!

Nothing mattered!!!

“Nothing…” Jevil echoed, the sound barely audible over the ringing in Seam’s ears. “Then… do I… to you…?”

Seam froze, teeth still bared.

“Do I, to you?” Seam mirrored, posture losing some of its tension. “If so, then please. Stop this. Don’t… don’t try to be something we’re not.”

Jevil stepped forward, timidly taking Seam’s paw.

“Aren’t we already?” His voice was quiet. “A card and a plush… how could we hope to be one in the dark? How could we be anything but nothing, if the rules don’t change?”

“You just said we couldn’t change, didn’t you?” Seam couldn’t decide whether to squeeze Jevil’s hand tight, or shake him off. 

Perhaps Seam was mad. Angry. Insane. Both.

They were objects. Objects weren’t supposed to have choices. They didn’t have choices—it wouldn’t matter—and thank you, Jevil, for reminding Seam of that. 

The music was too loud.

“I don’t understand you at all…” Seam’s head shook. 

A motion decided, a paw revoked. Jevil’s hand hung in the empty space between them.

“Nor I you.” Jevil’s voice cracked. “I try. I try. Everything within my mind is shared. Why are you still so far away…? Is my strength still too loose, to lose…?”

Had Jevil ever looked so fragile? Had Seam done that to him? But Seam was just trying to be honest. Just trying to protect him, from seeing too far. From reaching too high, and falling, falling…

Seam didn’t want to lose him.

Seam should have known better than to think there was ever a choice.

“Don’t… don’t just give up… you promised, promised…”

“Then don’t go farther than I can follow.” Seam had never asked for any of this. Seam had only ever asked for Jevil to stay.

(So why was it Seam who walked away?)