Mid-Blueprint Nap (ft. The Demon Bull King)
I've been thinking about Red King a lot, so here's a ficlet with an accompanying art piece! (Or an art piece with an accompanying ficlet...?) It includes a lot of information about the Red King AU, so I hope you guys enjoy it and are interested in the AU!
Heads up: Red King has a funky little gender! She uses she/her pronouns and male nouns, so if you have problems recognizing which pronouns go to which characters in prose, this might be a little difficult for you to read!
2.5k words
Despite her quick disappearance, Red Son—or, as the Demon Bull King learned, she was now a "Red King"—didn't abandon her family. She'd never been one to do so; his Princess had assured him that such a thing hadn't happened in his absence. (His wife hadn't explained why their boy left in the first place, which gave him the idea that it was a tender subject. He would ask her in detail as soon as they had exacted their revenge and taken this city.)
When he desired more power, the Princess called for the bull clones to get their son and she was instantly at the Flaming Foundry with a solution. She'd brought out the blueprints for the Furnace with an uncharacteristic indifference, and explained how she'd imagined that this would be what he wanted, so years ago she’d come up with an idea years ago.
She’d said something about being unable to make a prototype because she didn’t have his measurements (which made no sense, why hadn’t she just asked her mother…), but she’d updated the ideas whenever she could. (Her specific wording was ‘woke up’, but the Bull King had no clue what she meant by that. She couldn’t have worked on it every morning if she was this disinterested…)
After that, Red King (how odd it was, to think of his son as being a king now; how much he had missed) had built the Furnace, oversaw the bull clones as they fit the armor onto the Bull King, and then explained how the armor worked. Halfway through her explanation, her eyes began to fall closed and her words slowed.
He’d watched her nod off in confusion until his wife struck her fan against the floor and startled Red King awake. They’d shared a look—tense on the Princess’s side and tired on Red King’s—before his wife sighed and his son continued, going on about finding rare items and giving pointers on where to find them in the city. She’d left after that, leaving him to find a shoe store on his own.
Something was happening in his family, and the Bull King was completely on the outside of it.
But, nonetheless, they continued like that: Red King would arrive when needed, providing them with what they asked for, and then depart quickly—it was like she was leaving as soon as possible. Which, frankly, was unacceptable. It was disrespectful and rude, especially to her family! However, it didn’t seem new; his wife, who was normally intolerant to any form or implication of disrespect, let their son blatantly disrespect them without a word.
In fact, she seemed almost grateful for it. She would relax her tense shoulders the second their boy had gone, let out a snide comment about how she was surprised that Red King was still awake or how it must be the little boy’s naptime under her breath, and then return to managing the dig site.
The dig site.
The dig site was the reason that Red King was called here by his mother today.
The Bull King wouldn’t lie, he was getting rather impatient with the slow speed of the excavation of the power source. He could feel the power in his fingertips, but he just couldn’t access it. He was so close, but he had to keep waiting! He had spent hundreds of years waiting, and he wouldn’t STAND for it any longer!
His wife, understanding his plight, called their son. There was no reason to even think about calling anyone else. They needed a machine, and they needed it to be precise so as to not disrupt whatever power was down there; who else would have that done at the same speed their son would?
(She’d arrived only 30 minutes after they sent a bull clone to fetch her. She was never one to be late, but the Bull King was beginning to wonder if she showed up so quickly so that she could leave sooner.)
The Bull King had been on his new throne, chin in hand, brooding, when she arrived. Red King was still in that robe of hers, he’d never seen her in anything different. Not that that was particularly unusual—it was quite like his son to have an article of clothing she liked to wear often—but the more she wore it, the more he began to realize it didn’t look much like a royal robe, and potentially something more for lounging in at home.
She rubbed her eye with the heel of her palm before asking, “You need me, Father?”
He grunted in affirmation, grinding his teeth for a second before he started, “I did not spend an eternity trapped under a mountain to be forced to wait longer! This is taking far too long, and I need you to speed it up.”
She tilted her head minutely to the side as she mulled over his words, and then yawned. Agitation set into his bones at her disrespect, but she quickly amended, “Apologies for that, Father... Consider it done, I’ll have an excavator built by the end of tomorrow.”
She turned to leave, but the growl he let out stopped her. She turned back to him with a confused and cautious glance, “Father?”
“I won’t wait any longer, especially not for you to return. I want work to start the second you’re finished with the drafting. You’re to stay here.”
She frowned deeply, “Father–”
“You are to stay here,” he shut down her protests immediately, slamming out the words “stay here” with utter finality.
She sighed and put her hand to her forehead as if nursing a headache, “As you wish, Father.”
What a rude little boy his son had become. As if he was wasting her time.
Leaned against the wall nearest to her workspace, arms crossed, the Demon Bull King’s anger at his son quickly turned to concern. It was the concern that had been bubbling this entire time, amplified as he watched her work—er, try to work. He was beginning to think she truly did have a headache.
She was on her third blueprint page, frustration clear on her face; she’d crumpled the first one and ripped the other. He watched with unease as she kept beginning to nod off, snapped herself awake, and then spent maybe ten minutes working before she was back to barely conscious. Her pencil skidded across the paper far too often as her hand went lax over and over again, leaving white marks in its wake.
She snapped herself out of another sleeping spell and sighed miserably, a hand on her forehead the only thing keeping her from faceplanting onto the workbench. It was time for him to step in.
The Demon Bull King stopped leaning and walked over to her desk, arms still crossed, “What is the holdup?”
She scrubbed her face before looking up at him, “I can’t focus, Father.”
“Clearly,” he bit out. She scowled at him in return. He sneered back at her, showing sharp teeth.
She didn’t let up her own stare at his visual displeasure, so he lowered and turned his head. A threat display only meant to intimidate her and remind her to be respectful of her father, he’d never even think of hurting her. (He'd kill anyone who injured his precious boy, including himself.)
It seemed they’d entered their first standoff, like the ones she and her mother had, but the Demon Bull King couldn’t explain for the life of him why it was happening.
She sighed heavily—long-suffering and, again, miserable—before she turned back to the blueprints. After a moment's consideration, she began to speak: “I am making an excavator. It’s construction equipment for digging, a human-made design. I’m designing a boom, arm, bucket, and a cab on a rotating superstructure—the undercarriage isn’t necessary. I don’t imagine, we won’t be moving it from the Flaming Foundry, and we’re digging in one spot.”
The Bull King raised an eyebrow. Well, at least she wasn’t half-asleep anymore, and he wasn’t stuck waiting. He prompted her to continue with a nod of the head and a grunt.
She put her cheek in her hand and gestured around the blueprint as she explained, her voice still mostly disinterested, “I can build an excavator easily, but we both know you don’t just want an excavator, Father.” She chuckled minutely at that before continuing, “You want something that looks nice and sleek, but also looks powerful. But… how do I make an excavator look powerful? The arm, boom, and bucket will all be fine, you’ll like those as is, but I need to do something for the cab…”
Her tone concerned him so much in a way he couldn’t explain to anyone who didn’t know her. She was always so talkative and excited when she was a little boy, young and excited about her work—nearing manic. She would've killed to have her father's attention like this when she was getting into engineering…
Red King rubbed her eyes as she continued to prattle on about excavator cabs, noting how she normally wouldn’t struggle with the cab design but nothing was coming to mind. The Demon Bull King was not in the habit of lying, as said before, so he would admit she was entirely correct about him wanting something designed personally, and he did appreciate her care. It was a form of affection, he could tell when she said it, to pay attention to his aesthetics and how he liked his machinery.
Her chin was in her hands now, both elbows on the table. Her voice was slower as she said, “I might look back at old designs I made for you, but all of those blueprints are at mine…”
Now her cheeks were in her hands as her elbows slid forward slowly. Her eyes were slipping closed, and her words became just a bit slurred, “Mmm, i’sh not like I’m incapabul of designing somethin’”—she yawned—“I’m jush… so… tir’d…”
Down, down, down–
He slid a hand under her quickly before her head crashed into the workbench. She used what must be the last dregs of consciousness to bring her arms up to cross on his palm and cushion her face, and then she was dead-to-the-world asleep, snoring immediately. It might be a trick of his mind, but the Bull King was certain she was even slightly heavier in his palm.
Bewilderment overtook him as he stared at his son. They’d just been having a conversation—well, she’d been talking and he’d been listening—and now it was as if she’d been asleep for hours. He was stuck, half-leaned over and waiting for his son to wake, which he was certain wouldn’t happen for a while.
He sat down begrudgingly, ready to stay here until she woke up so that she wouldn’t bash her head against the metal workbench; this wasn’t necessary, but that would be an unfortunate way for his boy to be woken up, and Red King clearly needed this sleep. He huffed in irritation as his eyes traveled the room for a second, but they soon returned to his offspring.
The Demon Bull King realized quickly that he’d been unintentionally denying himself of one of his greatest joys: admiring his child. It was perhaps foolish, but no matter what anything thought of his boy, he still loved her. For years, he’d recanted the details of her birth to anyone who would listen for years and had memorized her zodiac (inner animal, true animal, and secret animal, of course), earthly branch, yin-yang, and element. He couldn’t shut up about his son.
And there was so much to admire, so much that was new. He paid close attention to her now as he cradled her in his palm: her even breaths against his skin, her thigh-length hair—warmed by her magical power as it spread across and fell between his fingers (and it was so warm, his boy was so strong), her cute horns that she'd grown scraping against his palm as she turned her head.
His son is was still little, like all creatures are compared to him, and yet she had gotten so big. So grown.
And she was asleep on his hand like a baby.
The Demon Bull King (again, not a liar) sat there for perhaps hours—he had no idea how long it was, there wasn’t a clock—admiring his boy and listening to her snore. She hadn’t moved an inch other than her body rising and falling with her breathing, completely in deep sleep and giving no indication that she’d wake soon.
“My love?”
The Bull King looked behind him to see his wife, “Yes?”
“It’s been four hours, beloved. Why are you still over here?” Concern colored her voice as she came to his side, a frown on her face. (She was so pretty, even when she was frowning. Or, perhaps, especially when she was frowning. She had such an elegant frown.)
He gestured to the sleeping boy on his palm, “She fell asleep.”
Her concern turned into annoyance quickly as she cast a callous look at their offspring, “Ah. Of course she did.”
“Her inability to stay awake is… concerning.”
The Princess scoffed, “Yes, it seems she’s given herself narcolepsy. What could possibly be so upsetting that she’d rather sleep for the rest of her life instead of having a conversation with her own mother, I couldn’t tell you. Did you even know we’re in her territory?”
The Bull King’s eyebrows raised, “Are we now?”
“Yes! The entire city is hers, but she refuses to take control of it!” His wife was exasperated, rolling her eyes as she continued, “She’ll barely even help her family take over her city! She’d rather sleep all day in that dreaded cave of hers—oh, well that’s not true.”—she checked her nails—“It’s a lovely cave, my love. You’d love the architecture, she put a lot of thought into it. It’s the last thing she’s put thought into for the last 500 years.”
The Bull King hummed deeply, his unease mounting.
“I can’t believe her sometimes! She doesn’t even send letters anymore! She doesn’t send letters, she comes without gifts, leaves before tea– How disrespectful can one get?” It seemed that he was not the only one offended by his son’s behavior, at least. But the Princess refused to comment on it in their son’s presence…
Why?
What questions did he need to ask to get to the bottom of this? Could he just ask his wife, “What happened?” Would that get more answers that explained everything but the core of the issue?
“If I didn’t visit her, she’d only wake up to eat every few months. Oh, and on that! She’s abandoned her diet! Not that I care about her diet, and we’ve all eaten people before, but it’s just another thing that she’s neglecting.”
“My love,” The Bull King sat up straight and eased Red King down onto the workbench with gentle fingers, “I think it’s time for us to turn in as well.”
His wife sighed and nodded, “It is getting late.”
They left the Red King to sleep.
