Chapter Text
To the King in Yellow, the council meeting must have felt interminable.
Not because it had actually been going on for very long. Not by Carcosa standards, and not even by the standards of beings who hadn't existed since nigh the dawn of the Omniverse—Hastur's daughters, for instance. To them, for whom time still passed in Carcosa much as it had in the waking world of their birth, the meeting had begun an hour ago. Even Camilla wasn't bored yet.
Hastur could not be bored either. “Bored” had absolutely nothing to do with why the meeting must feel utterly endless. Hastur was an eternal being, and an incredibly patient one at that, so the reason for his frustration was not boredom. It wasn't even tedium, despite the fact that a council member was currently reading aloud a very long report on the structural faults of the city's ancient and multidimensional system of aqueducts, a report he'd been presenting at every council meeting for the last century or so.
No, the reason for Hastur's frustration was seated directly to the left of his place at the head of the council room's vast table, observing his High Priest Not to Be Described. Nyarlathotep wasn't looking at Hastur, but he was observing him nonetheless.
Unlike Hastur, Nyarlathotep wore a deliberate expression of ennui, or at least what the gathered council members would interpret as ennui. Almost any mortal (or former mortal) would interpret it that way, and so would most other eldritch beings, for that matter. Only someone extremely familiar with the Crawling Chaos's preferred humanoid face would notice the slight lifting of the right corner of his elegant mouth.
Nyarlathotep knew that Cassilda must notice it, although she gave no sign.
He knew that Camilla definitely noticed it, which was why she wasn't bored.
He knew that a certain flower would have noticed it, but she was presently back in Kadath, basking in the rays of her invisible artificial sun.
All three of these facts amused Nyarlathotep, but they were inconsequential. The consequential fact was that Hastur noticed, and Nyarlathotep didn't have to look at him to know it.
Even as Hastur kept his pale, mask-like face turned toward the droning council member, even as his spindly hands remained folded at rest upon the ebony table top, he was noticing Nyarlathotep and had been doing so for the better part of the past hour.
Nyarlathotep knew this because fifty-three minutes ago, he'd accidentally brushed his sandaled foot against one of Hastur's many tentacles. Under the table, the tentacle's tip was extended past the hem of Hastur's heavy saffron robes. Nyarlathotep doubted Hastur had extended it intentionally; he was listening to the minutes of the last council meeting being read by a Yuramon secretary—a little ball of a creature that seemed to be all wool and eyes—and had probably shifted his tentacles unconsciously.
Likewise, Nyarlathotep hadn't brushed his foot against the tentacle on purpose. He'd simply moved his foot past the hem of his own, much lighter iridescent robes, and it had touched the tentacle because the tentacle was in Nyarlathotep's space. It felt like Hastur's tentacles always felt, smooth and dry and cool. Hastur always kept them under strict control. . . or tried to, for just as someone familiar with Nyarlathotep could read every twitch of his lips, someone familiar with Hastur could read every twitch of those tentacles.
After spending literal eons with Hastur as his High Priest, Nyarlathotep could read far more than that. Hastur's face, such as it was, conveyed no emotion; his deep and resonant voice often remained silent; those long pale hands usually kept still. But other aspects of the King in Yellow's corporeal form were tells to Nyarlathotep. The motions of his gray wings, the arch of his long neck, the incline of his ponderous head—Nyarlathotep could read them all.
But fifty-three minutes ago, he read the tentacle specifically, because when Nyarlathotep's foot brushed against it, it shifted. Not much, hardly even a shiver, but it moved in response to Nyarlathotep's inadvertent touch.
The corner of Nyarlathotep's mouth had quirked infinitesimally, and he had brushed his foot against the tentacle again. Deliberately this time, dragging the tip of his largest toe along its outer edge for a distance no greater than the breadth of two of his slender fingers. Before Nyarlathotep drew his foot back, he felt the tentacle curl.
Hastur had noticed him, and Nyarlathotep had proceeded to spend the next fifty-three minutes—fifty-four minutes, now—making sure Hastur kept noticing him. He didn't let the foot-brushing occur at regular intervals; instead, he ensured that each accidentally-on-purpose touch came unexpectedly. He also didn't let his dark gaze turn to Hastur very often. In fact, Nyarlathotep hadn't looked at Hastur for the past quarter-hour, not since he'd glanced at the floor and noted that another of the King in Yellow's treacherous tentacles had coiled itself around the leg of his chair.
The wood of the chair leg was cracked. Perhaps the tentacle had gripped it tightly enough to splinter it. Perhaps the chair leg had acted as an extension of Hastur's psyche, as Carcosa itself was wont to do, and splintered itself in response to Nyarlathotep's touch. Either way, the wood was cracked.
The corner of Nyarlathotep's pretty mouth had lifted then and stayed lifted ever since. He thought Cassilda had noticed the smirk and understood what it meant, for she had endeavored to get through the rest of the meeting's agenda quickly.
He knew Camilla noticed and understood, because she was doing her best to drag out the meeting as long as possible by asking numerous questions, making long-winded suggestions, and frequently requesting that the Yuramon read back to her from the minutes it was keeping. When she wasn't speaking, Camilla chewed on her lower lip in a vain attempt not to smile herself as she became Nyarlathotep's co-conspirator in tormenting her father.
There was a reason Nyarlathotep preferred her to her sister.
He shifted his right foot again, paused to think his sandals out of Existence, then extended the now-bare foot in the direction of Hastur's tentacle. His toes with their long painted nails found it first, then the ball of his foot. Nyarlathotep drew it upward along the tentacle—slowly—until his toes brushed the hem of the yellow robes, then slid under it.
Then stopped, because the tentacle had wrapped around Nyarlathotep's foot and tightened almost hard enough to hurt even that indestructible body, faster than any mortal's senses could have registered the movement. The corner of Nyarlathotep's mouth fell from its smirk, and his lips parted.
Cassilda and Camilla, seated across the table from him at their father's right hand, were too far away to be able to see the hint of a flush that rose to the Crawling Chaos's high cheekbones, or the dilating of his pupils within the starry voids of his eyes. But they could see his mouth, and that was enough.
Cassilda dropped her own eyes to the written agenda lying on the table before her, seemed to decide that the remaining items could be postponed for another month, and moved that the meeting be adjourned.
Camilla stared at Nyarlathotep for two seconds, then abruptly looked away without doing anything to interfere with the premature adjournment.
As for Hastur, he'd gotten the wayward tentacle under control in an instant, and it had released Nyarlathotep's foot before flopping back to the floor and going completely still. It didn't react at all when Nyarlathotep dragged his foot back down its length in the process of withdrawing, but the tension he felt under his toes informed him that Hastur hadn't relaxed his tentacle. He was holding it motionless by sheer force of will.
Restraining himself, Nyarlathotep thought as he tucked his delicate foot back under his robe beside its mate. Holding back. . . just like always.
While the council members rose and began to take leave of their king and princesses, the corner of Nyarlathotep's mouth lifted again, for he'd decided that this was the day he'd finally convince Hastur to stop holding back.
He still didn't know why Camilla had invited him to attend a Carcosan city council meeting. He still didn't really know why he'd actually accepted the invitation, aside from attendance being a somewhat tedious way to insert himself into his High Priest's other life as Carcosa's king. He hadn't even taken his seat an hour ago with the intent to provoke Hastur.
For once, the Crawling Chaos hadn't had a plan. For once, he had acted spontaneously to achieve a goal—and for once, he had almost succeeded. Hastur had almost lost control.
And since Not Having a Plan was going so well, Nyarlathotep didn't plan how he'd snap that last frayed tether of restraint. He just vowed that as soon as the doors closed behind the last of the departing council members, he'd snap it.
Cassilda and Camilla stood up together then pivoted in opposite directions. Cassilda went to the doors where two members lingered and cast polite glances back towards Hastur, who hadn't moved from his chair. Cassilda stepped into the council members' line of sight to address whatever civic issue had them waiting to speak directly with their king. Meanwhile, Camilla turned to her right to thank the Yuramon for its assistance. As she gathered up the papers upon which it had recorded the meeting's minutes (somehow, despite having no hands), her face turned downward to smile at the little fuzzball. . . and her dark eyes flicked up to look across the table first at her father, then at Nyarlathotep.
He hadn't moved from his chair either, and when Camilla's eyes met his, he smiled not with a twitched corner of his mouth, but brilliantly. Camilla's eyes flicked back to Yuramon where they belonged. She scooped up the papers, started to turn away, then paused to scoop up Yuramon as well and carry it to the doors in order to hasten its departure. As it rolled away at the feet of the last two departing council members, now appeased by whatever Cassilda had said, the twins turned to face the eldritch deities still seated at the table.
Now at a more comfortable distance from Nyarlathotep, Camilla looked less discomfited and even smiled herself as she said, “Good evening, Lord Nyarlathotep.”
He inclined his elegant crowned head in her direction. “Princess.”
Cassilda did not smile, but she did look directly at him for the first time in quite some while.
“Good evening, Lord Nyarlathotep.”
He inclined his head again. “Other princess.”
Then both young women looked at Hastur. In spite of all the awkwardness, their demeanors softened, and they said in tender tandem, “Good night, Father.”
With no mouth nor perceivable eyes, Hastur could not smile or look fondly at his daughters to convey his affection, yet he did not need to. The nod he gave them—his long neck curving gently rather than arching regally—said everything.
“Good night. Sleep well, my dears.”
Cassilda turned and stepped through the doorway into the vast corridor beyond the council chamber. Camilla remained, her eyes shifting from her father's face back to Nyarlathotep's and her soft lips parting as if she might speak—until Cassilda turned back, grasped the trailing sleeve of her sister's crimson gown, and gave it a firm tug.
Camilla closed her mouth and followed Cassilda out of the room; the twins pushed the heavy double doors shut behind them; and Nyarlathotep decided that while Camilla might be his favorite of the princesses, Cassilda did have her merits.
For a few seconds, the King in Yellow and the Crawling Chaos sat in silence, unmoving. Then Nyarlathotep pushed back his chair and rose gracefully. As he stood, his shimmering white robes fell in delicate prescribed folds, draping his inhumanly long legs and brushing the floor around feet once more clad in the sandals he'd summoned back into Existence. As he turned, his hips shifted more than was absolutely necessary within fabric so fine, it clung to them and the smooth thighs connected to them. As he ambled down the length of the table, his back to Hastur, he trailed the slender fingers of his right hand along the tabletop, his copper-toned skin shining in contrast to the black polished wood.
Nyarlathotep had crafted the humanoid body of this form with an artisan's deliberateness. Every feature, every detail had been selected to suit his tastes. He knew he was beautiful because he'd made himself so. He also knew that, from the perspective of an actual human being, he wasn't quite right—both too perfect and too alien. He was breathtakingly lovely at first glance but any eyes foolish enough to linger would begin to notice that Nyarlathotep's limbs and hands and feet were too long. His waist was too narrow, his facial features too sharp, his eyes too black with impossible stars glittering within them. He was too tall; his body was too thin, especially for his hips and thighs to possess the curves suggested by the cling of his robes.
To the gaze of most human beings, Nyarlathotep was progressively beautiful, then unsettling, then terrifying. But the King in Yellow wasn't human, and Nyarlathotep knew Hastur was looking at him. His High Priest's pale blank face had been turned towards the distant foot of the table when Nyarlathotep rose, and Hastur hadn't moved so Nyarlathotep had to be directly in his line of sight. And aside from logic, Nyarlathotep could feel Hastur looking at him, the weight of that eyeless gaze on the fringe of straight black hair brushing the back of his neck, the heavy golden collar Nyarlathotep wore on his shoulders, the matching golden belt encircling his narrow waist, the pull of the delicate iridescent fabric across his lower body.
When Nyarlathotep reached the foot of the table, he stopped and shifted his weight to lean lightly against it with his right hip braced against the table's edge. The shift caused that delicate iridescent fabric to pull just a little tighter.
Hastur said nothing, but the wall to Nyarlathotep's right, on the opposite side of the table, made a quiet sound. Not the crack of Hastur's unfortunate chair leg nor the groan of straining stone nor the shattering of crystal, but a deceptively gentle sound like a pane of glass dropped into place.
Nyarlathotep turned his head towards the sound and found himself gazing through a window that hadn't been there before. The wall was an interior one and had never needed a window, yet it had a window now. What's more, that window did not look upon the adjacent room of the palace. Instead, through its three panels of beveled leaded glass, Nyarlathotep saw the lake of Hali with Carcosa's twin suns, the Hyades, hanging just above the edge of the water. Reflected in those three panels, he saw Hastur, still seated.
Outside the chamber's three preexisting windows on the opposite wall, which also looked out upon the lake, the Hyades had set hours ago.
“Oh,” said Nyarlathotep. He turned his head from the new window to one of the old ones, decided he liked the sunset view better, and turned his head back again. “That's new.”
Hastur didn't speak. He didn't have to. Carcosa's spontaneous generation of a contradiction to its existing windows spoke volumes.
Still regarding the sunset window instead of the King he was addressing, Nyarlathotep observed, “Anyhow, that was quite the productive meeting.”
Then he heard another sound but not from the window. This one—a brief hum so low it would be inaudible to mortal ears—came from Hastur.
Finally, thought Nyarlathotep. He shifted his attention from the view outside the window to the reflections in its three beveled panes. In the one to the left, Hastur still sat immobile. In the one to the right, his wings had lifted slightly from his back. And in the middle reflection, several of his tentacles had begun to unfurl from beneath his saffron robes.
With his starry eyes fixed on the middle reflection and a slight hitch in the breaths he didn't need to take, Nyarlathotep waited.
Hastur spoke.
“You,” he said, “are a brat.”
Nyarlathotep smiled, then turned around so Hastur could see it. It wasn't the slight smirk he'd worn during the meeting nor the near grin he'd given Camilla. This smile was slow, delicate, satisfied. . . and private, a smile for Hastur alone.
Hastur was still seated, but he'd moved into a position that somehow combined the three separate states of existence reflected in the window. His blank face remained turned toward Nyarlathotep, and his long pale hands were no longer folded: one rested on the ebony table top and the other had closed over a fold of his own sleeve draped across the arm of his chair. Only his left wing instead of both had lifted from his back, and only two tentacles had unfurled. One had rewrapped itself around the cracked chair leg. The second lay extended across the floor from beneath the hem of Hastur's robes. Its tip pointed directly towards Nyarlathotep.
Like his breath, Nyarlathotep's pulse was completely unnecessary, and like his breath, it betrayed him. It raced, sending the heat of equally unnecessary blood through a body built by the dreams of Chaos. Warmth spread across his face. Through his chest. Downward.
“A. . . brat,” he repeated slowly.
“Yes,” said Hastur.
“Hmph.” Nyarlathotep frowned. “I'm a brat. Because I attended your city's council meeting—at the invitation of your daughter, I might add?”
“No,” said Hastur. His tentacle shifted on the floor, extending a few inches further toward Nyarlathotep before stopping again. This time, the movement was not involuntary.
“Because I almost laughed when that Yuramon read the minutes from the last meeting?” Nyarlathotep continued. “I didn't laugh, you know. Or at least, it didn't know I was laughing. I very discreetly laughed behind my hand, and only because that little fuzzball acted so self-important about it.”
“No,” said Hastur. At another time, he might have patiently pointed out that Nyarlathotep had no room to be calling any other entity “self-important.” Now, however, he said only “no,” and his resonant voice was strained, not patient.
Nyarlathotep again leaned a hip on the table's edge, this time his left. He rested his left hand there as well, slightly behind him, and tilted his shoulders back in the same direction. . . away from Hastur.
“Well. If that's not what makes me a brat, then I'm afraid I don't know what you mean,” Nyarlathotep declared. “Surely it can't be because you broke your chair leg with your own tentacle.”
“Carcosa broke my chair leg,” said Hastur.
“Same difference.”
“Because of you,” said Hastur, as if Nyarlathotep hadn't spoken. The tentacle on the floor crept forward two more inches. The left wing drew farther away from the King in Yellow's back.
Nyarlathotep arched a thin eyebrow, as perfectly shaped as if it had been meticulously plucked. It hadn't. It didn't need to be; Nyarlathotep's body only grew hair where he wanted it to grow.
“Surely you recognize that it isn't my fault if your city can't control itself,” he retorted. As if to prove his point, a second new window abruptly appeared at a right angle to the first. Although its frame extended out into the room perpendicular to the wall, through it Nyarlathotep could see a lovely view of the palace courtyard at dawn.
He glanced at it then back at Hastur, whose smooth white face held no expression. It never did.
“I even listened to that tedious report about the aqueducts,” Nyarlathotep pointed out. His shoulders remained tilted back in an arrogant fashion, but he allowed his pelvis to tilt forward and one long leg to bend just enough to pull the fabric of his robe taut across its thigh and his hips.
A third window materialized. Nyarlathotep couldn't see what view it held, because it lay horizontally through the other two.
“Your city does seem agitated tonight,” he observed.
“My city is not the problem,” said Hastur.
The angle of his long neck changed, and the left wing extended, flaring wide open. The tentacle directed toward Nyarlathotep curled at its tip as if attempting to grip the stone floor.
Nyarlathotep's smile widened as he returned, “Oh? Then just what is the problem?” He paused portentously. “Me?”
He lifted his right arm, bent at the elbow, and gestured inward with two long fingers—indicating himself. Or beckoning. Or both.
Finally, Hastur rose from his seat. The motion was unhurried, in a way that was not languid but, again, restrained. As he stood, his heavy robes spilled around him, both wings lifted and spread, and more tentacles uncoiled across the floor. The King in Yellow unfolded himself to his full height and breadth, and the walls of his palace expanded to accommodate him. Nyarlathotep saw them from the corners of his eyes as the very architecture of the room reshaped itself, lifting ceilings and sprouting supporting beams and columns like a flower opening in several dimensions at once.
Most mortal beings would have cowered in terror, if not gone completely mad, at the sight of the incensed, looming King in Yellow surrounded by the living city that was his kingdom. Even Hastur's own daughters would have suddenly remembered they had somewhere else to be.
But the Crawling Chaos stood his ground, regarding his High Priest from the other end of the table with his hand still raised and his hips still cocked.
Upon his tentacles, Hastur moved forward the equivalent of a single step.
False construct though it was, Nyarlathotep's body again responded: dusky cheeks flushing, pupils widening, pulse twitching in his slender throat just below his sharp jaw, heat coiling in him like one of Hastur's tentacles. As before, they were signs no human would notice from across the room, yet Nyarlathotep knew Hastur could perceive every last one of them.
Hastur confirmed it when he said with all the solemnity of a royal decree, “Perhaps my city cannot control itself, but neither can your body.” He paused as if taking time to look Nyarlathotep up and down, studying every inch of him from head to sandaled toe, though Hastur's head never moved. Then, after a few seconds, he said, “You're hard.”
The words lacked intonation and held no judgment. That was more humiliating than if Hastur had expressed amusement or disgust, but for once, humiliation didn't infuriate Nyarlathotep. It only excited him more.
His smile renewed itself, and he repeated the inward beckoning gesture of his fingers, slower this time and even more deliberate.
Hastur's tentacles clenched, his wings flared, and his neck bent forward as he growled, “Brat.” The growl resonated in the room around them, making even the air seem to hum.
“Maybe,” said Nyarlathotep. “But isn't this how you like me best?”
The resonance of the King in Yellow's palace rose from a hum to a harsh buzz. Still, for several seconds, Hastur remained motionless. Then all his tentacles seemed to be slithering toward Nyarlathotep at once, and the architecture of Carcosa shifted to make room.
–
to be continued