Rules of One's Soul

Ch21 The Duke's Return

AH! Being loved and praised was such a remarkable feeling was it not?

Which is what he had been asking himself all night last night laying awake in bed for who knows how many hours after he and Jevil had parted ways that afternoon and couldn't help but feel like he wanted to ram his head against a brick wall and feel as happy as a young school boy with his first crush now....It was quite the internal debate really. But he surprisingly felt....Happy. Fulfilled even. Like a missing piece of the puzzle finally put itself together in his miserable life. Yes, he still felt regret for having to tell him something so personal but hey. His soul thumped with happiness and fulfillment and dare say...maybe...Love? Whoa. Whoa. Slow down there. Just because you two shared two personal moments and he kissed you a couple times, that doesn't automatically make you two in a relationship or even in love for all that matter. And there was still Seam to deal with and helping Lancer out with this ball idea they had been throwing together for who knows how long. That's a lot of responsibility for one child and needed to be taken seriously if he wanted to be the best father he could be. So for know he would sleep on it and return tomorrow with a fresh mind and not think of any kisses or funny laughing imp's right now.

And that went as well as you would think.

He woke up about two hours late past scheduale and he cursed as he rushed to get himself looking presentable and teleported to the castle. But what he wasn't really expecting was the amount of color to hit him all at once-....OH SWEET MOTHER OF LIGHT!! So much pink and red. The familiar slight twisted and rush of his light weight being carried through with his usually way of teleporting was quite peaceful compared to the amount of eye soar that greeted him once the beautiful white light of his glow faded away. He had to blink to make sure his brain wasn't tricking him. But nope! Pink and read decorations were everywhere. In just the hallway the duke landed in alone, there must've been at least a hundred hearts drapped from the ceiling and more frilly and lace induced decor stretching every which way he could see. .....He couldn't remember the last time he had beheld so much love induced decorating since...Well- He didn't need to be thinking about that right now did he?

"W-Welcome back, Sir." The sudden voice made him jump and whirl around only to spot a hathy just a few feet away from him. She giggled and held a tentacle to her mouth before giving him a sincerely happy smile. "It's so good to know you're break wasn't a boring one. Hehe."

"Eh...L-Likewise."

Everything beyond the hathy was as normal as he expected it to be. About every servant or guard he passed was either chatting about the upcoming ball or 'party' as he heard, or gushing about the up coming night they would hopefully spend the night with their true love. It was all rather adorable and made him chuckle a few times if he was honest. Oh he wondered how many cards he had already gotten from his admirers piled on his desk already. Begging him to go with them or swooning over his dashing looks.~....Imagine his surprise when he opened the door to his office and not only found everything clean, but with absolute no backed up paperwork and absolutely zero cards with the exception of one. The giant one left on his desk was crudely made and had a macaroni smiley face glued to the front of it's red face, and upon opening it up had a pretty stick figured portrait of himself and a small round blue potato which he could only guess was supposed to be him and Lancer holding hands. In terrible handwriting was spelt :

"mE Anb LeSSER Dad!! P.s. I TOTALLY dibs not Eat Half the CAKE!! It WAs Uncle JeviL!!"

That made him chuckle and feel himself be filled with even more joy. Oh Lancer. Ever the little scoundral....OH RIGHT!! He dropped the card back onto the desk and turned immediately to leave. He had almost completely forgotten about his little water beetle, he had to go to him immediately and see what damage had been done if an- Loud sounds and a small pair of fast footsteps approached and he could only guess who had could be. A blue circle dragged itself past the door way out of sight to the other side, before quickly changing it's direction and bulldozer it's way into the office.

"OOF-"

The blue circle blur rammed into his chest at the speed of sound and they both went down to the ground with a thump. He groaned from the impact and felt something constrict itself and bounce on his ribs.

"LESSER DAD!! YOU'RE BACK!!" The child shouted happily and leaned over his face to look down at the worm. Tongue stuck between his teeth.

"...G-Grand to seest thou too, S-Son. Now pleaseth get off mine chest," he wheezed, the spade child was heavier than he looked. But alas it seemed his boy wanted to be held because he giggled and wrapped his arms around his neck when he slowly sat up. To which the worm sighed but gladly accepted the boy's affections with open arms. It was just a little hard to stumble to his feet while holding him in his grip. But somehow he managed. Lucky him.

Lancer giggled when he was lifted up in his father's arms. "HOHOHO!! As king I get to make the Dad rules now Lesser Dad! And you're my loyal steed!!"

"Oh, art I now?" He smiled and shook his head. His eyes gazed over him, Lancer didn't seem worse for wear and it didn't look like anything had changed in the ten days he had been gone. That was a good sign. So hopefully Jevil had kept his word and had been telling the truth the whole time he was talking.

The spade cub nodded. "Yep!...Hey, Lesser Dad. What's a steed?"

The duke laughed and walked out of the office and back into the love infested castle. He still got a sorrowful feeling in his gut being surrounded by all this love, but he guessed his calm mind must've finally been catching up with reality and numbed his skittish side. It was the only logical explanation for his behavior after all. But all that aside he made his way to the royal throne room where the other kings were most likely to be, if there was anything important to discuss or plan then he needed to get right on top of it. There was no time to dilly dally after all. ....But as he walked listening to Lancer ramble on able all the cool plans him and Uncle Jevil had come up with to 'Spice up the mushy party' he noticed a few of the staff gave him side glances and wide smiles, well he couldn't blame then for their gawking. Naturally he was prime crush material.~ But then why were some giving him weird looks? Oh well. Let them be jealous of his magnifinece.

"And he said his friend was gonna help him do this trick with fireballs! And it's gonna be like BAM! KABOOM!! BANG!!" He threw his arms out momentarily making ROuxls stumble and scramble to recover balance before they fell over. Which luckily he did. "...Uh..Sorry, Dad."

He rolled his eyes with a sigh, but made a mental note to instant a backup fire safety plan. "Tis alright." They were already at the entrance to said throne room already and on the other side he could hear the very familiar sound of the King of Clubs-

"AW! It's cute Clover wants to invite him as her date!" "NO! Absolutely not!" "He's not good enough for her! NO ONE IS!!" "But he helped save us?" "Still doesn't matter!"

He shifted Lancer in his grip to where he was holding him in one arm and a blue hand reached out to the door and opened. As sure as he suspected, on the other side down the hall like room was King Clubs in all his glory. Five heads arguing about some boy or date or whatever Clover wanted to bring with her to the ball. Across from his sat King Diamond who had one of his four hands rubbing his temples probably already over the whole thing, while King Heart was busy looking at a long scroll of paper that went almost to the floor. Don't ask him how he could read without any eyes visible, but what really made him raise a brow was the length of the scroll. The kings were easily almost three feet taller than he was, so the list was incredibly long if it was almost touching his feet. Diamond was the first to notice them approach and lifted his head from his hands with a smile.

"OH! Look who we have here. The return of the noble King upon his mighty duke steed."

Lancer giggled and wagged his little tail and the Duke rolled his eyes. "Good morrow to thou too, Mine Majesties." He did a light bow or what he could manage with Lancer not quite ready to let go yet. "I haveth returned from mine ...'vacation' as I shouldst. Apologies for mine tardiness. I assure thee it willst not happy again."

King Diamond waved a hand and gave a smile. "No, no. It's fine...At least you got away from Clubs for a good while." His eyebrow rose at the still arguing Multiheaded king who while wasn't as loud anymore still angrily whisper argued to each other and groaned. "At least you got to relax-"

Rouxls chuckled dryly remembering the past ten day's events. "Heh. Thou wouldst be surprised-"

"Did you say something Diamonds?" The giant Hathy looked up from the scroll in his tentacles and turned towards Diamonds, but before the giant snake monster could reply his gaze(or what he would've considered to be his gaze if he had eyes. Actually head) turned downwards near the floor and smiled at the sight of the small king being held by Rouxls. "AH! Mr. Rouxls! You returned! Thank goodness. I could help with the last of these erronds before the ball." He gave a guilty look and shifted the long scroll. "T-There's only three day left and I haven't even finished half of these yet and I still have to speak with my beloved Amory. She'll be so disappointed if I can't help her p-pick the floral displays like I promised. "

"Fear not my majesty. I shallst see to thine preparations accordingly."

"OH! Thank you! You're a life saver!" A major relief came over the giant hathy's face and Rouxls was happy to serve his Kings again. It would be a good distraction for what regretful feelings were being felt. "H-Here." He lowered the giant scroll down to the Duke who extended a hand to take it. "I-It's everything that needs to be done before then."

Rouxls smiled and held the list up to his face, expecting most of what was already on the long thing to be crossed out or marked as done...But his smile quickly dropped upon seeing the long list of things needed to be done. To be fair a giant portion of the list was crossed off, and the King being a bigger darkner of course had bigger handwriting so the words despite only being a few deeds, still needed a longer list of paper to accommodate the larger handwriting. Giving it the illusion of it being a long list of things when in fact it was only a few large words on the list. He was used to it, so that's not what shocked in. What shocked him was the amount of work, each task remaining task brought-

- Send out one invitation per darkner family

- Prepare the feast

- Give forth the orders of no 'adult talk' during the ball

He guessed he added that last one for Lancer, he could just add that into the invites. But that was only a few out of what must have been twenty or so. Lancer leaned a little closer to the list and pointed at a few crossed out words.

"Uncle Jevil and I did that one! And that one! I got to help him decorate and he showed me lots of tricks! He let me pick the best one ones for the 'enter-containment'!" He beamed with pride as his tail wagged. But Rouxls wasn't smiling at his happiness this time.

Instead his gaze slowly turned to the nervous looking Hathy who was tapping his tentacles together and smiling apologies at him. "Sire. Pardon mine doubts in thou's abilities, ...but didst thou really not getteth ANY of this finished within the month thou has planned and mine time away from the castle?''

King Heart chuckled nervously. "U-Um..W-Well, we got...some of it done, b-b-but we couldn't really decide about which one of our ideas we should do f-for the invites a-and other things. Hehe..heh."

The other two things had fallen silent and gave each other guilty looks over it all. Rouxls sighed and gave the list in his hand another look over bouncing Lancer in one of his arms...This would take a lot of work, but also to get these kings back on track, he knew very well he couldn't just invite every Darkner on the entire kingdom. There must've beeen thousands of subjects in their small kingdom alone....They could just invite the castle staff and encourage everyone else to celebrate it there own way. Much easier to manage than thousands of citizens. Which just left the castle staff and nobles like himself....Which still left easily around three hundred people. Oh dear light he could feel himself already getting tired at just one job alone, but like with any task, he'd be sure to come up with something. After all, Rouxls Kaard was never one to give up easily. Whelp. So much of his relaxing vacation-

"Uncle Jevil can help!" Lancer shouted startling the poor Duke into almost dropping him again. "..Oops. Sorry Lesser Dad. But Uncle Jevil can help! He can-"

"Letteth me guess," He interrupted him with a roll of his eyes, "He canst so anythinge."

"...Actually he can help with all these invite-tation thingies. He can write paper really fast like when he did all your work!"

Rouxls looked at the child with a raised brow, "Jevil didst all mine paperwork?" Lancer nodded his head yes with a hum.

Well whaddya know. The loon actually kept his word by taking on all his tasks and getting everything done it seemed, of course he'd still have to ask Lancer a few questions about the events of the past few days to be completely sure, but it did seem like he had nothing to worry about beyond this giant impossible list...which had to be complete within three days including today. He cooed thinking about it...Except he didn't coo. That sound came from the giant Hathy who sighed and held his tentacles against his head as if he adored the sight before him, Rouxls had no idea what about him discussing the list with Lancer was so adorable but he guessed Lancer was the cutest little water beetle-

"OH! There's nothing more I'd rather see than blossoming love!" Rouxls smiled and rolled his eyes good naturdly but froze by the king's next words. "Amory and I never really got along at first either, but after we sparked and talked it over it was like we were meeting a whole new person! There was nothing we wouldn't do for one another even to this day!~ *sigh*"

King Diamond groaned and reached a hand up to rub his temples. "I swear you get too wishy washy at the tiniest things-"

"E-Excuseth me mine majesties," he interrupted before another arguement could be sparked between them, "But what art thou speaking of?"

"Oh? Well yours and Mr. Jevil's newly established relationship of course! It's so nice to see him settling down and so happy. He said hopefully there'll be little pitter patters of children soon!" He giggled like he was expressing a romantic novel he had just read. And failed to notice the dropping face of the Duke before him in horror at what he was being told. "Oh it'll be grand to have young life around the halls again."

Lancer grinned and turned to Rouxls excitedly. "I get a baby brother?!"

Rouxls fell silent. The weight of the situation hitting him like a sack of bricks. Not that anyone really noticed at the moment, except for Little Lancer who tilted his head at his father's weird face. Flashes of everyone's funny looks his way came back to him, flooding his brain with it, as well as the suspicious lack of love letters this year and with what King Heart had just said-.....

"EXCUSE ME!! WHAT?!" Any sound or talking was quickly shut up upon the duke's high pitched voice peircing their ears painfully and bouncing off the walls, the kings and Lancer wincing back at the loud shout and stare at him with confusion racked faces. Even the always arguing King Clubs had stopped to marvel at the duke who looked ready to faint from embarrassment judging by his flushed face. Even the guards stationed within the room looked almost uncomfortable watching this- "P-Pardon mine s-sudden outburst, Your Royalties. But t-t-that worm and I are nay in ANY sort of r-romantical s-s-shennanigans!"

"....Really?" His tone seemed genuinely confused, and when Rouxls nodded Heart hummed and brought a tentacle up to rub his chin. "Oh my, my, my. Well this certainly is an awkward position to have put you in isn't it? My apologies. ..Although I guess now it makes sense as to why he said he wasn't accompanying you to the ball, I suppose. He must've been referring to a different Kaard with a similar sounding I guess...." He leaned down near eye level with the worm and the duke did was he always did in this kind of situation and smiled wide and nervously. "Are you quite sure? With all the facts he stated I could've sworn it was you?"

Not being one to lie to any of the royal family of course, the duke swallowed the lump in his throat and gave a nervous chuckle to the giant Hathy's confused frown. "I-I-I w-well...I guesseth over t-t-the course of ...however l-long we hadst been having a..fewest teeny tiny r-rendenvous??"

Heart looked at him for a bit longer, a few drops of slime forming at his face at the close proximity, but eventually a realization smile came over him and he leaned back up. "OH! I understand now. Silly me, he's courting you!"

Rouxls....blinked. Courting? Well if one looked at what exactly Jevil did do over the entirety of his behavior ever since that day before the lightners came, and with all he was doing up til now, one could quite consider his behavior as if Jevil was really courting him. The thought hadn't crossed his mind til now, but he guessed this did count as the fool's own way of 'courting'. "U-Uh-...Y-Yes. It wouldst appeareth so." His wide smiled appeared back on his face. "W-Wouldst thou excuseth mineself for just a moment- ...YOU THERE?!" He whirled around and pointed at one of the Rudinn guards in the room, the poor guard jumped and almost dropped his spear from the sudden action. "Send word out for the Court Jester immediately."

The guard gave a salute to the duke and without a word to argue they turned and slithered off towards the door as fast as Rudinn possible, thumbling his weapon a few times and dropping it with a clang before just leaving it and diving out the door. Spear forgotten in the door entrance. Rouxls stared a moment longer before sighing and straightening up, Lancer was giving him a concerned look.

"...Is Uncle Jevil in trouble?"

Rouxls flinched but gave a reassuring smile. "None at all, Little King." His teeth gritted under that smile and his eye twitched. "I just wisheth to discuss his...h-help with a few things is all."

"....Does this mean I don't get a baby brother?"


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The fire crackled peacefully in the room as the ones within it sat silently doing there own personal business. Seam sitting at the counter lazily like he did most days, now a days it was just a bit more busier than usual. Every few hours or so, a Rudinn or Hathy would come in, frantically looking around at the shelves and picking out one of his random knickknacks or buy some candy to give to their beloved as a last minute gift. Too bad he wouldn't be open on the actual holiday. Meanwhile Jevil was busy trying to sew up any odd patches or small threads in that odd purple suit of his...You would think anyone who would be able 'to do anything' would be decent at sewing, but it appears the master of chaos wasn't mastering this.

"....You got the wrong seam again." The child crawled their way across the couch and point to the messy attempt that was a yarn stitched up hole in the side. Mak tilted their head at it. "It looks sloppy."

Jevil grumbled and held it up to take a look at the terrible stitching job. They were right. It wouldn't do at all for the event if he wanted to do his best, and of course if a child thought it looked sloppy then who knows what everyone else would think. A laugh caught his ears and he turned to see Seam smiling at the two of them with a head tilt. Jevil had been at this thing for a while now. Who knew he was a perfectionist?

"Would you perhaps like me to help you? I think I have decent skill with needle and thread." He reached a paw up to rub the top on his head where the giant black patch was.

But of course Jevil shook his head. "No, no! I can do anything! Something as simple as sewing, sewing is beneath me." Once look back to his messy yarn stitch made him give off a nervous chuckle. "...It'll just take some time, time."

Seam chuckled and turned back to the sheap entrance. "Suit yourself."


Every since the discovery about the Duke...a lot of things have fallen into place. Rouxls's reluctance to touch and affection, his nervous habits, his scars-...And why he was so concerned about the boy's well being. Seam bristled. Just thinking about having to endure what the duke did and still be so proud of his job and take on the role of father to the very child of the terrible king...But he couldn't judge too much. After all he taken his own metaphorical beatings and taking a small ankle biter of his own-...His ear twitched and his head tilted towards the flap door of the sheap. A moment later it flapped open and a green blur plopped to the ground. Seam didn't even flinch as he looked down at the green puddle gasping for breath on his sheap floor.

"...Welcome, Stranger. What brings you to my sheap?"

The green puddle, who was a very tired looking Rudinn wheezed out and slowly raised his head to gaze up at the giant stuffed cat. "...*wheeze* T-T-The Duke has s-s-sent for the Court Jester-...I-Imediately. hhhaaaa-"

His face plopped back to the floor and Seam hummed. Turning around and finding Jevil staring in their direction. "You hear that Jevil? Apparently you're wanted at the castle."

A giggle came from the Jester and his tail wagged, thumping against the couch with soft thumps. Standing up, suit falling into the paws of Mak who gave it a look over.

"Oh. Yes, yes. Who am I to deny royalty, royalty.~"