No verbal response came; not for quite some time. The King of Many Colours, his high brow furrowed, stared at the vessel. His gaze shifted to Krahe, then back to the vessel, and he rose up from his throne. An enormous weight smashed down upon Krahe’s shoulders, as though a waterfall striking her all at once, but she remained upright. Krahe instinctively drew on the Adamas Organ, without even thinking, and for reasons unbeknownst to her, it worked, albeit in a manner unlike material reality. Instantly, she turned pitch-black head to toe, body stiffening to solid stone, taking the form of a living statue. She wasn’t alarmed even as the King walked down the steps and the pressure intensified, knowing by pure gut instinct that this was not the King’s wrath, but merely the result of his rising from his throne.
It was equivalent to what, ten times earth gravity? Eleven? She could withstand that. Not for long, but that didn’t matter. The will to withstand it was enough to warp her surroundings. Even as the King walked around the vessel, inspecting it with a mixture of confoundment and interest, the section of throne room immediately around Krahe’s feet continued to change, a geyser of black smoke erupting from her head, tendrils of shadow spreading, and furious red light erupting from the cracks of her form in a voiceless struggle. Krahe, despite having to strain just to stand, was too busy observing the King to voice a complaint. Compared to the pressure she had experienced during her initial approach, this felt like nothing. Just as the pressure of his presence, so too did his form come unshackled when he stood up. The vague figure of a human body remained, but it swiftly unfurled into an ever-shifting maelstrom of forms, different clothes and faces, different colours, different numbers of limbs, and limbs of wildly varied anatomy. At one moment he was a saurian, then a human, an insectoid, and ten-hundred different insectoids. Antlers. A minotaur body. A form of metal hemispheres coupled by dull-grey rods, so dull one couldn’t make out which of them were nearer or further, merging into a flat mass, and eyes, why were there eyes in the empty spaces, and why could she not see them with her own sight and only through a vague awareness of the immediate past? Gradually, with each passing moment, the King of Many Colours unfurled further and further, expanding to a scale that Krahe was in no position to comprehend, let alone quantify in words. It wasn’t until Barzai acted of his own volition, manifesting behind her in his humanoid form that the King’s attention snapped in her direction; its scale was just as distorted as his raven form, resulting in a manifestation of a truly enormous scale, towering over everything else in the throne room, everything except the King of Many Colours.
The King’s reaction wasn’t one of fear or intimidation, but an appalled one, recoiling at the sight. Thereafter, he looked down towards Krahe, only to freeze.
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“Ah. I am being most discourteous, aren’t I. Seeing you mould this vessel in so effortless a manner, I forgot myself,” he said. He rolled his shoulders, and his rapidly-expanding form collapsed in on itself. As he did this, he muttered with irritation, “Careless, careless…”
The Hueless Queen, having observed the whole thing in silence, barely raised a hand and caused a wave of Grey Fog to wash over the throneroom, and everything seemed to reset, as if the previous few moments had not taken place. Krahe’s astral form was no longer a living statue, her surroundings were the same, and the King’s form finally stabilized into a fully humanoid shape.
As if nothing had happened, the King raised a hand and willed the vessel that Krahe had wrought, as of yet devoid of its inhabitant, to disassemble itself, each nail, armor plate, and component peeling off, hovering to a distance from the main mass. Layer by layer, this continued, down to the greyish-white muscle and black bones, finishing just as the King reached the foot of the steps before his throne and reached up to his head, grasping an antler that had not been there the moment prior. In a geyser of iridescent-black ichor, he tore it from his skull, trailing root-like nerves and veins behind as it fell upon the scales. They had been tilted askew, Krahe realized, and the antler brought them back into balance.
“I must apologize once again for my indiscretion, and any undue discomfort it may have caused. I believe this vessel is beyond suitable, and so I shall set it aside for the binding ritual. If you wish to proceed, we may move on to F———a, or we may adjourn for a few subjective hours or even days. You may choose to depart, should you wish, but upon your return, all that has already transpired must transpire once again. Ah, and… Please, if you would, put that thing away.”
Krahe realized that Barzai was still behind her, this hunched-over giant, waterfalls of smoke pouring down from his feathers and waterfalls of tar trickling from his scales. Craning her head back as far as it would go, she stared up his beak, willing him to return to his vault. She was aware, in retrospect, that he had intervened on her behalf, and she intended to reward him for it, but this was neither the time nor the place. Just as before, he melted into her shadow.
The King of Many Colours, having sat back down on his throne, deflated into his seat at Barzai’s departure. It truly seemed as if the not-eidolon’s mere presence caused the King far greater discomfort than anything the King’s presence had exerted on Krahe. The King gestured once more, and the crucifixion vessel, including the tar and pillars surrounding it, shifted off to the side, out of the way. Afterwards, he fell silent, strangely deteriorating in the opposite direction as before, becoming an abstracted silhouette of facets and colours.
The Shadeless Queen, seeing as her husband was not speaking, perhaps sulking even, took the reins, her monotone voice reminding Krahe that she was even there. It was remarkably easy to forget the Queen’s presence.
“Shall we proceed with F———a, then?”
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