Yellow Prophecy

Kai's eyes blurred as he looked at it.

All things seemed to dim around him, their shapes warping into terrifying and repulsive bends. He couldn't say what he was looking at. If it was a sign, how could it have such a disgusting appearance?

When Kai thought of describing it to himself, he failed miserably. One moment, it looked like a number 3, with distorted lines. In the very next moment, it felt like a question mark sitting over a tilted P. Kai was sure he saw something curled in the middle of this Sign. An illusion of a thousand-tentacled monster.

The queer thing was that Kai didn't remember how he had drawn it at all, despite the hours of slow and meticulous drawing it on the paper. A strange thought struck him, then. 'What would happen if he could master this Sign?' he wondered. 'Is there some hidden Power in it?'

"You know what's happening, right?" Petyr asked, looming over the paper in front of him. "You know what will follow it."

Kai closed his eyes, fury rising to his face like hot iron. He knew. He knew what was coming and the thing that would follow this Sign. His last week had gone in thinking where had he got the paper, and the unknown words his future self had chanted in Blood Prophecy.

Never had he imagined that it was he who would write those words.

-And then she… she said the names- Selene's white dragonish scales trembled as she hissed.

-Stop!- Kai hissed loudly. He needed a moment to think about it.

This was the decisive moment, he knew. This was the point of no return. If he went through with it, then there was no point in not chanting those words. Only at this instance, Kai could change the course of his future.

'Burn the paper, forbid Selene to speak about all of this, and kill Meg as soon as possible.' These were the only sane thoughts Kai wanted to have but had he ever gotten what he wanted so easily?

'What? Scared, Blood Demon?' A voice sneered within him, testing his courage and what his name stood for. 'Giving up on Power so easily? The Elite Ability, the Worth, you think they are so easy to get?'

No. They weren't. Having them was also the reason that Kai knew how difficult it was to get them into the Primordial World. In the last week, even after using Cold Suppression and Emotions Manipulation for so long, their Proficiencies hadn't increased by a single percentage.

Kai licked his lips. Sweat had drenched his back, and above his head, the stars shone paler than ever.

-Tell me- he hissed. -Don't speak in one go, though. Pause in between-

Kai had no way of telling how these things worked. But if he had learned something from his future self, then he knew the moment he would chant those words, the prophecy would come true.

So Selene hissed, breaking her voice now and then, and Kai kept writing. Words after words appeared on the paper, forming a sentence. When Kai completed the last line, his face crumbled.

The King in Yellow!

Kai felt terrified even repeating those words in his mind. He remembered that eldritch sequence of events that had happened after his Blood Prophecy. The strange yellow patches, and the appearance of words in his mind as if someone had planted them there.

'That was no mere coincidence,' Kai concluded.

-Then she said…- Selene hissed, telling him the strangest string of words that Kai could have imagined.

Hastur. Priestess Margrethe II of House Ingrid. Sacrifice. Blood. Kyber Crystal. And the High Priest.

'Please do not mention the Temples to anyone else. They would know. They always find out.' Kai remembered the horror in Seline's voice as she had said those words to him.

The only thing that he couldn't make sense of was the relationship between these three sentences and the Temple of Hastur.

-Tell me the rest in one go- Kai hissed, closing his eyes.

Selene hissed for long then, with every change in words, Kai's anger flared, his eyes becoming bloodshot under the lids. His breathing rose, and his knuckles became white as his nails dug deep into his palms.

When she finished her hisses, Kai was already standing up, his saber in his hand.

"I will annihilate -the entire port- if I will have to," he said, blurting out words through his gritted teeth. "-Kill me?- Haha!"

"Calm down," Petyr said, coming up to him from behind. "Tell me what happened."

Kai glared at Petyr. But then remembered that indeed it was not like him to just barge into something. Especially when things had come to a level beyond his reach. So he wrote the things Selene had told him onto the paper and gave them to Petyr.

Petyr smiled slyly. "Do you think it's wise to go to her?" he asked. "She said she can't take you on. Nowhere did she mention she fears your strength. And then there is this talk of Blessing. Didn't Arlen also mention something about it?"

'Yes,' Kai suddenly thought. 'Arlen did tell me that the winner of the Tournament of Worth will get blessings.'

"You think…" Kai trailed off.

Petyr nodded. "I think this High Priest ordered you to be killed only after hearing this matter of Dementor's blessing," he told Kai. "From her wording, it doesn't seem she wants to kill you or has plans to do anything other than monitoring you. We can use these things to manipulate her, you know. Tell me, my lord, what is more important? Her life, or…"

"That Box…" Kai knew it even before speaking it out. If she had lost everything other than her Ability, then only that box was important.

"You know what you must do now," Petyr said, losing his smile. "Your past self is waiting for your actions."

Kai brought the paper in front of his eyes and nodded.

He walked into the light tree line on the roadside with Selene slithering behind him, and his gaze never leaving the paper in his hand. Petyr walked alongside him, his head craned up, looking at the stars.

'He wasn't a part of my Blood Prophecy,' Kai thought, never looking at Petyr. 'Hmm…'

A flick of the saber cut a tree from the foot. Kai took out a candle from his MRB. After his first venture into the sewers in GOT world, he had kept the habit of storing a few of them, just in case.

"Have you thought of what you will ask?" Petyr asked. "You don't have something good to sacrifice, either, my lord."

Kai hadn't thought of it. He didn't want to ask for something that might be used against him in the future. 'Concentrate on the present,' he told himself. 'Ask something that you need now the most.'

There wasn't much to think about, then. There was only one thing Kai needed the most in the present. His thoughts wandered to the time when Heavy Block had used that strange power-up technique.

'I know who I am dealing with,' he reflected. 'But I don't know their powers.'

"I have a thing -to sacrifice-," Kai told Petyr. "-It should be- good enough."

"Oh?" Petyr smiled. "What is it?"

"The Tales of Beedle -the Bard-."

Petyr went into a shock, stunned at what he had just heard.

Kai looked at the Character, sensing Petyr's broken breathing, and smiled. 'No emotions of their own,' he thought. 'Then where are these expressions coming from?'

-Selene- he hissed.

The Ghost Serpent burst into a silver mist and went inside him, coiling into a ball just over his heart. Kai took out a box full of meatballs. He reached into it, his hand going deep into the box's bottom. There was fresh blood there. Kai thanked MRB's properties for it.

'No way I am gonna use my blood, heh!' Kai sneered. 'If it works, it works. Otherwise, fuck it!'

He drew the Sign on the tree's stump and lit the candle after placing it in the middle.

"Think again, my lord," Petyr said, smiling a hollow smile. "The Book is a major part of your Power."

Kai ignored him. He enjoyed the slight shaking in Petyr's body as he kept thinking about why hadn't he seen Petyr in his Blood Prophecy. Finally, he calmed his mind and prepared himself for what he was about to do. It felt odd, knowing that at this exact time, his past self was suffering because of his current actions.

-The Dweller in the Depths-

-The Bringer of Madness and Doom-

-The King in Yellow-

Kai's hisses echoed like hundreds of snakes singing a deadly song.

Darkness engulfed both Kai and Petyr, as the wind howled around them. Above them, all the stars shone yellow except one which glowed redder. The candle flame grew longer, larger, and bulged at the end as if someone had come, dwelling in it at the end of the sentence.

-I, Blood Demon, sacrifice blood and a Coreless Wand, and request information about the Spinning Duos of the Order's 4th-floor-

The moment Kai hissed it, an odd feeling rose in his heart. He felt like somehow, asking the Chaos questions, and then getting answers by paying Mission Credits was like this. But no matter how he thought, he couldn't see the relationship.

Time was not in his favor, either.

Kai took out the wand, and as Petyr let out an audible sigh, he placed it under the candle. The wand lifted by itself and merged into the candle flame. A video screen flickered into existence above it instantly.

And then Kai saw a boy and a girl, standing on the opposite side of the rim of a giant metallic pit.

The boy laughed, taking out something like a fist-sized toy from his pocket, and attaching it to the device in his hands. The girl did the same.

"Are you ready?" the boy asked, smiling.

"Ready when you are," the girl sniggered back at him.

The boy shouted then, along with the girl.

"3… 2… 1… LET IT RIP!!!"