Chapter Text
It dragged itself from the black egg into the temple. The first step had left it coughing. This was not a motion it was used to doing. Not even the coughing fits that would overtake it in chains had prepared it for the totality of this feeling; for then, it was in dream and she was more of its consciousness than it alone was. It only had the means to hack and spit because of her light. It had been her fingers that pressed against its throat, her light that burned into solid flesh and void. Whatever she occasionally claimed, the voice was for her. She tried to call to any other vessel to break the seals and free her. And it was just another portion of the vessel’s body reformed and eaten away, replaced by light and plague that slowly took every ounce of it away until, eventually, she would have no remaining prison containing her but the Dreamers.
This was not meant to be a part of a vessel. Another mark, another marring stain, another tearing wound that made it not the pure vessel it had hoped to be.
One cough turned to multiple. It couldn’t stop. They grew worse as less air was brought in through gagging breaths and the diminished intake left panic rising. It should not need air. It couldn’t stop coughing. The movement was racking its chest with pain, pain.
It stopped. No more than a few seconds. It had felt longer.
Its nail was too heavy to keep using to prop it upright. It had to let it go limp and drag it. Its chest continued to burn, like it had swallowed shards of hot metal. The temptation to stab into the source of the pain left its hand twitching. It wouldn’t make it better now. The Old Light was gone. The infection was gone.
It needed to find- go- needed-
Out.
To start with.
Then to make its way down to the city. Its purpose was complete, failed or not. It had no other.
It wanted to rest until there was no pain, no light, no sounds of pulsating plagues and angry gods.
But it did not make it to the capital. It did not even make it out of the temple.
There was color there. Stark against the dead skins of infectious pustules and the black stone of the temple. Red.
The cloak of a fighter, falling into a ready stance the moment it dragged itself out of the opened black egg.
The fighter held a needle at the ready. That was an unusual weapon.
She realized what the vessel did, seemingly the very moment it came to the shared conclusion. Her needle dipped from its position. It had not even pulled its nail forward into a ready position to start with.
The needle was much larger than those wooden ones she used to be trained with. Those, she would bring to the palace at times and carry around proudly. She’d gone so far as to ask the vessel what it thought of her tiny weapon. She asked what it thought of her sparring skills, eager to show them off. She had never once gotten an answer, because she asked an object that did not think.
Except it had. It had thought that her style was already shaping up to match her mother’s and she would do well learning under the sage that it had learned under when it was as small as she. It had thought she might go show her father instead because he would offer much more than the pure vessel could. If she caught him at a time he was not busy, he may rub a hand over the top of her mask and pretend to lose in a play fight just to see her laugh. She was a child, after all. She was so very, very young. It learned what a childhood was like by watching her’s.
She had never understood what it was, nor what it was for.
She was small enough to sit between its horns and dangle her legs down over its face without either obstructing its vision. Sometimes the threads of her little red capes would break off and stick to its horns long after until someone else finally noticed and brushed them off. Her voice was far higher than father’s and nearly unintelligible through childish lisps.
She was the Gendered Child and she was its sister.
But this figure now held a weapon proper to her size. She stood at nearly half its height. Far, far too large to fit between its horns. Her voice was low no matter its tone of surprise. Mature.
How much time had passed?
How long?
This was not what she answered. She seemed more concerned with other questions.
“You are…”
The length of her needle shook minutely.
Why?
The Gendered Child stood straighter still.
“Are you what I recognize you to be?” she spoke again, after her own pause. “You are the Hollow Knight?”
The Hollow Knight.
A title created by the Pale King. One he said would be recorded into history rather than its common title of Pure Vessel, not that he expected it to care about that privately shared information.
Long before that, the title it heard while it climbed from the Abyss.
Its purpose, its function.
It was not hollow. Nor had it restrained and destroyed the Radiance in any way worth celebrating.
Was it the Hollow Knight? A shadow upon the eternal history of Hallownest? The empty vessel that allowed it to live forever?
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. It was all it had to be.
It was never the title used by the Gendered Child before- she, who had never understood that a vessel was not a living being, who had never understood the object she called its sibling was destined to a fate it would never be retrieved from. This warrior in front of it was not the child of before.
Its breaths were a rattling whine. It did not know whether to nod in acknowledgement.
It was glad its sister was alive. It did not know how much damage the infection was causing, while it was restrained, but it feared the worst and those nightmares bled into and became reality. But the Gendered Child was alive. Below, past the city, in the palace…
It had to get down there.
It didn’t even feel like it had the strength in its atrophied form to make it out of the temple.
The Gendered Child shifted closer.
“You’ve lived,” she said. Her needle pointed lazily to the floor.
“I had never thought- But you’ve lived. The infection?”
The vessel tried to shift so that the cloak the Pale King had laid upon it for their final occasion together fell past its ruined shoulder. Black carapace and void alone would be visible. Though its chest cavity had been hollowed and filled with the infection’s designs, that substance was gone now. Gone, with only cracks and open wounds left to see.
The wounds were debilitating. She could strike the vessel down now and say later that it would never have made it to the city as it was.
She did not. When she saw no orange, her needle’s point fell as far to the floor as it could.
She would not be attacking.
The vessel felt nothing on that, though it did think it ought to. What harm did one more feeling cause now?
It just wanted to go home. Thinking and feeling could stop after that.
Duty came first. It must be sure the infection was truly gone. Vague visions did not make for certainties. The Hollow Knight had one purpose and it was to contain and destroy the threat of the infection.
The Gendered Child sighed.
“It’s gone. They must have- But I waited here to-.” Another sigh. A determined pinch of eyes behind the mask. “You are not infected, but you are wounded.”
Nothing in sight was infected. It knew that the chamber of the black egg had been recently overgrown with infection. It was gone. She was gone.
It kept breathing into lungs she had made and felt touched by Her regardless of the infection’s disappearance.
The Gendered Child did not seem to notice this fear, this terror gripping into it, causing its hunch to worsen. She continued to muse to herself.
“Then…”
Quiet again. A silent pause filled with a mantra of observations: it hurt it hurt it hurt.
“Then we do not need to remain in this place,” the Gendered Child finally said.
She moved. Forward, down the steps of the central dais. One last glance to an open door, seals hidden from sight. A mother’s mask. A gate meant only to open if no trace of the plague remained within.
Another whistling breath through a throat unused to anything but screaming.
No trace, then.
No trace.
Then think not of it. Think not at all.
It moved as she moved.
The vessel did not know what the Gendered Child planned. It would follow any instruction given, of course, as she was the child of the Pale King. She would control its movements until it could find their shared father. Where she directed, it would follow.
It would return to the city otherwise. The palace was gone. It could sense that now. A gap in dream and world lay over its location.
The Pale King would be in the city if not his palace. So the vessel had lurched westward in plans to return and follow the path it had been taken on to get to the temple.
But she noticed its direction and ordered it to stop.
“Wait.”
The Gendered Child did not speak again with a corrected directive. The vessel would stay until she decided on that, then.
She thought silently for a moment that it spent aching and longing- something it should not do- for all sensation to just cease. It ached and burned. She had touched every inch of its body in her attempts to get out. Cuts had been oozing that burning, sticky infection until recently. It could still feel the phantom touch of the substance. Lungs felt full of the gunk but hacking had produced nothing in the black egg and it would produce nothing here. The infection was gone. Something had so thoroughly done what it had failed at. The failure should have outweighed anything and yet it was still grateful to whatever had done what it was meant to. It meant part of the pain was gone. There was no more hot goo coating its throat down to its lungs. There was no more rotten-sweet scent trapped in its head. In the absence of the infection that had filled the vessel’s body so completely (held in only by thick skin that she would find a way to replace someday too), its form for the first time almost felt truly hollow.
It was difficult to stand. The weight of its shell was pressuring internal muscles that felt nonexistent- as if its skin covered only emptiness in the shape of a once-pure vessel’s body. It should not need to breathe, but air rattled down its throat and out again regardless. Every change the Old Light made stayed burned into its form aside from the orange substance of the infection itself.
It must make it back to the Pale King, but the vessel sensed it would not manage to walk far without aid. The longer the Gendered Child made it wait, the more likely it would collapse along the way.
And would that not be pathetic?
Its efforts to hold itself completely still in a position that hurt the least slumped when it heard her speak.
“Let’s…Come this way. I need the chance to treat those wounds and the closest town will be safe.”
Another clear order. That was good.
Though her purpose in the order was for its sake. Its…It did not have a sake. That implied value. The Old Light was gone. Whatever value it had had as a vessel was moot.
And there was another thought accompanying that.
It should not be thinking.
But it did. And it thought of that purpose the king’s daughter spoke of. Treating wounds. Tending to its many marred areas where She had burned through and out of its body. And it thought, she did not have to do that.
Let it succumb.
Let it die.
The vessel hurt. Its mind hurt. It was far from pure in this moment. Years of pain could not allow instant clarity. Still, it remembered father. It must return to him. Only he could retire it from service. It could not decide that it should or should not be on its own. He might have purpose for it yet.
(He might have pride to offer it, one last time, before it could be retired.)
(It remembered those glances- and the thought of receiving one more, after everything, after the Light, was such a consuming, hopeful relief that it almost numbed its screaming mind.)
First, father, who it assumed was in the city. Then the pain could end.
It could follow orders until then.
But it hurt.
Every step, every breath, even holding as still as possible. It had hurt for years.
Internal, contained but no less agonizing. Mental, emotional, what it should not have- the cracks the light saw and wrenched further apart with glee. Then external, slowly, physical vessel rotting inch by inch away. Letting the light sear it from the inside had hurt enough, but it was what it had been created for. It had withstood it. It had withstood the constant inevitable pain of close proximity with a higher being in this raw form, as well as withstood rage and bargains and the isolation of being forever cut off from the palace and city and father and sister and knights it had spent the first portion of its life with.
If she had not found its cracks, then it would only have had to withstand that.
But it was impure. A failure. It had thoughts, of home and hopes of the Pale King being safe through its containment, being proud, or, unstoppably, though it tried to stop this, coming back to undo the seals and free it from the chains and Old Light. Father had never come, even as it had fallen completely to its impurity and screamed across its dream-prison for him. She would not have let the shameful noise reach anyone but those that benefited her. She controlled the dream-prison the vessel was trapped in with her, even as the Dreamers were meant to keep her powerless from her domain.
She was noise incarnate, stripped apart and strained and pushed into a singular point too small for a god to exist as all at once. But what parts of the noise retained clarity leapt on that weakness it had given away. No hiding could prevent its impurities from existing. Exist they did. And she used them all to burst out again.
Its form was slow to fall to infection, but it hurt with every step along the way. Internal moved to external and then it was pain, pain on every front, every battlefield, there were no nooks, no shadows, left to retreat to for even the briefest reprieve.
Even if shadows had come to rip the Old Light out of it and this world, the vessel’s body felt as if it had been ripped apart and the pieces sat together to grind with the slightest movement. Now, the infection was nothing but leftover wilted flabs of thin skin hanging from any opened orifice. It fought with a desire to use its remaining hand’s claws to rip these traces out and fling them away. Such a thing would exacerbate injuries. It would not make it to the city if any were worsened now.
The Gendered Child did not pause regardless of how the vessel dragged itself with rattles and wet choking breaths like a tool so damaged there was no point in keeping it.
It hurt.
She led it east from the temple. Marks of infection were everywhere. Corpses bore them. Fresh corpses and ancient ones alike. Shriveled skins of the infection’s vines and bulbs were left nearly translucent on the ground and walls.
Everywhere they went, it was reminded of her. And, if that was not already enough to leave it shaking, the signs were a reminder of its failure to contain her too.
Its failure to father.
Its failure to be pure.
Its failure to every bug of the kingdom, dead or grieving the dead now.
It hurt.
The Gendered Child watched when they reached the first significant divet in the ground. She did not descend first. It held still, waiting to follow.
She hesitated, aborting one movement and rapidly another before stilling again.
Then, she tried to reach for the vessel where it once had an arm.
It did not try to flinch back, but the movement occurred. Its stump of arm was raw and unprotected. Vulnerable.
The jerking movement made every wound flare into fire. It heaved while it waited for the pain to fade into something controllable. The Gendered Child was waiting when it finished. Waiting, staring. She reached again and it held itself still this time. The heir did not move for the stump of its shoulder, no matter what (impure, fearful) instinct expected. She was just repositioning the vessel to put weight on her as she moved down the divet, over the rubble, and up onto the ruined cobble path again.
Her destination was a chain not far at all from the temple, yet with the vessel’s speed to hinder her it felt like a short eternity. Time was stretched to everything and nothing at all within the temple. Its mind hardly knew its surroundings now after so long letting dream and chained reality blur.
The Gendered Child had asked if it would rather put its nail down and retrieve it later. The vessel did not understand why it would be asked this. If she wanted it to release the nail, she would make it an order. Without that, it would not release its nail. Not to stabilize its balance. Not to lose the agony that that extra weight caused.
It hurt. But it would hurt without the nail. And that was its weapon, decorative though such a thing would be while it hung restrained for eternity. It was not necessary yet it had been given.
That was, now, the best way it could tear into the vessel’s chest and let whatever haunting rot spill out before it returned to the void and all the absence of sensation and thought that the void offered.
It had no chance at all for fighting back against the Old Light after she had ripped that first crack wide. Its grip was left to tighten further on the object it saw as its chance now.
It did not think as it ascended what ended up being a well. It felt, it burned, it nearly screamed with the voice She had forced upon it. But without thinking of this pain, it stayed distant enough that no scream occurred.
None should.
No voice to cry suffering.
It could not see for a short time. It could not tell it was breathing.
It was hunched on the ground when it did recover those senses. The well was nearby and so was the Gendered Child. Her red silks stood out from the fading air around them. It was nearly dead air, like that of the temple, that which She hated. The caverns were dark up above and left the town with its huts sitting above and beyond the king’s daughter dim.
It was not no light. But it was close.
It was close.
And the vessel felt, once more. It felt relief. This was not the void, but it was far too dim for Her tastes.
The Gendered Child had spoken, but it hadn’t heard her. There was still noise in its head. It would never return to the perfect vessel, ready and open to receive any words from its creators. It had never needed to request words be repeated before.
The vessel did not have the means to make a request now regardless.
“This way,” she said, when it had pushed onto its legs once more.
It almost tried to lift the nail enough to stab it into the ground and rest its weight upon it. But the vessel’s arm protested in pain when it tried to lift the weapon any higher than it must to drag it along. Its point screeched against the ground, likely too quietly for others to notice but the vessel had been without true sound (aside from the rhythmic pulse of infection in its body and the room it hung in) for so long that it was sensitive to all.
Hornet walked ahead of it, stepping up into a town without hesitation. It hesitated, however. It hesitated far too many times for a pure vessel- but it was impure, already, and all must know it. What was the point of hiding?
(It did not want to face any who would see it as corrupted. It did not want to see the pain its failure had caused those destroyed by infection that they had likely once been hopeful was gone when it had been locked away.)
This was not the city or palace by any means. The huts here were few and worn. It was a dirty little place.
There were lumafly lanterns and the vessel could not help its instinct to cringe away from the light. If this dim of a light bothered it, how would it hold itself properly in the palace where father’s light kept metal and gardens alike bright?
Hornet walked past the first hut without pause, even though there were two bugs out front. Real ones. One was a blue beetle, listening. One was talking. Not the mind-speak and screams of a god trapped in dreams with the vessel. Not the mindless pained sounds of an infected bug.
It had failed, but the infection had not destroyed everything. If it had not spread to consume such a nearby town, perhaps it had not returned to the city below. Perhaps its failure to contain the Old Light had not been a death sentence on the Pale King’s kingdom.
The thought made the vessel emotional, though it could not name what it felt.
The talking bug did not even pause in speech while first Hornet and then the damaged vessel walked by. It appeared to be a knight by garb, though a very small one. The vessel in its dreams had been small. That had not stopped it from ripping the Old Light open and consuming her.
The blue beetle next to the small knight did what they had not and noticed the two walking past. It heard a gasp and saw the oddest pink washing over their face.
The beetle moved to follow after the two even as their companion did not pause in their speech. They paused to hesitantly pull at the other. What happened next, the vessel would not know. It had walked on and its attention was solely on the Gendered Child in front of it while its focus was consumed on making sure each step was steady.
A few of the huts here had open doorways with more light (light, hurt) pouring out. Two circled around a cobblestone town center where an iron bench lay and another living bug stood.
It was a stooped bug moving slowly to turn and face their approach. The Gendered Child walked up without any form of hesitation or deferment. She was an heir. Why would she have either? The vessel dragged its feet unsteadily behind her.
“Oh. Hello there, travelers,” the stooped bug greeted. “You’ve arrived from below? There was a piercing cry earlier. Did you happen…No, better I do not know. If you are passing through, this bench is a good place to rest.”
It did not look it. The vessel would more likely never rise again if it sat on that bench.
(Would that be such a poor thing?)
“I did not plan to merely pass through,” the Gendered Child said. “I seek temporary board. My sibling and I need a place to stay.”
It did not want to stay long. It must return to Hallownest. To the heart, the palace, its king.
It likewise wanted to lay in darkness and stay forever until the pain eventually faded.
(She viewed it as a sibling? It had expected her to grow out of that misconception sometime after it was sealed away.)
(Her insistence as a young child had affected it, no matter if it hid that from watching eyes and questions. It had begun to consider her a sister in return for the relation that she insisted. Another impurity.)
“Oh,” the stooped bug repeated. They were quiet for a moment. “We are a little town. We don’t have much to offer. That dreadful carnival left b…There have been more residents, lately. I am unused to it.”
The bug shuffled a little closer. Their attention was still on the Gendered Child. With its own stoop, the vessel was not the unignorable presence it might have been before.
“What are your names, then, lass?”
They did not recognize the king’s daughter?
This town and the crossroads below were not all that far from the heart of Hallownest. Surely its inhabitants would recognize the daughter of Hallownest, regardless of if she was heir to Deepnest rather than father’s eternal kingdom.
The vessel did not know how long it had been since it was sealed. It felt an eternity, but that was through pain, isolation. It could have been shorter than it felt.
It could have been longer.
Why did a town of Hallownest not recognize its king’s child?
“I…” that very king’s child hesitated. “Hornet. My name is Hornet.”
Oh.
She had a name now.
Gendered Child was a placeholder, after all, but it’d thought…
It hadn’t really thought much on the matter. It tried not to think at all. Its assumptions had been a name much more traditional to Deepnest, or one reminiscent of the Pale King and White Lady. Herrah would not have gotten the chance to name her when her daughter reached the proper age, would she? No, she would be dreaming by then. And it would be gone by then. It was gone by then.
She had been given a name in the time between and it imagined that it had come not from the postmortem choice of her mother nor from her father and other mother.
It did not know what to think of names aside from believing it could not have one. Father had never had a name that it knew of. Only a title and a descriptor. And he had given both to the vessel. He had made it the Hollow Knight and it was the pure (but impure) vessel.
The Gendered Child had a name. Its sister had a name.
It was struck again with the swooping, dropping sensation that far, far too much time had passed while it was sealed.
The old bug looked past Hornet to the vessel. They did not appear to recognize it. Few would. The palace knew of its purpose, if not its origins. Most inhabitants of the city did not. Those that saw it when it trekked to the crossroads would not necessarily understand what it was there to do.
This bug appeared old, but the vessel had not been told how much time had passed. She had not known either. It had left her raging, flaring, collapsing, despairing, reaching out through her infection to see and never seeing enough. Its dream kept her trapped without time, no matter what parts of her power did force their way out of it. If not for the Gendered Child- Hornet’s survival, it could have been left thinking a millennia had passed and left it with no living bug from the age of its sealing. If not for her presence revealing her age, it could also have thought few years had passed. Had this stooped bug even lived in Hallownest before its sealing?
They certainly did not recognize it. Their words made that clear.
“And this is a fearsome looking fellow,” they mused very carefully. It probably hid fear, discomfort. Many had before. Even before its molts had made it tower over all but a few bugs. The stooped bug did what most in the presence of the king did: played polite. “Is this your sibling?”
Hornet looked back at the vessel, unreadable.
“Yes.”
And Hornet was the daughter of Hallownest and Deepnest. She was the daughter of the Pale King. He was not here yet. It would follow his daughter until it reached him.
It could allow this, then. It would not even be mimicry or lies. The vessel had never been pure. It had considered her a sibling before the world was shown its masquerade.
There was a wavery voice near its knees. It had not paid attention to any approach.
“Are you staying here? What’s their name?”
“What does it matter? These vagabonds will be here to hide in their shops like the others, nothing more. They were likely nearly killed by those beasts down there and came running here!”
It was rather too much noise. The screams of the Radiance did not leave it used to so many sounds. The lanterns were uncomfortable and the bugs here would not stop talking.
Hornet was staring at it again.
“Are th- are you a knight?” the first bug asked. It was the closer of the two- the blue beetle from before.
The vessel stared while the beetle’s attention wavered and dropped and looked from its cape to nail to head to Hornet. They did the same with her, head shifting minutely as their vision went from garb to needle to glare.
“They do not speak,” Hornet said in its stead. It had not seen a need to respond, but if she saw one, then it would note that for their return journey to the city.
“Why does it matter?” that other bug asked again, a little louder as they glared at the back of the blue one. “They’re not a knight of great renown, no matter if they call themself a warrior.”
Hornet’s head turned to face that one before they had finished scoffing.
“This knight saved Hallownest,” sister said, making each word distinct in a way it did not understand. The vessel did not deserve such a defensive introduction from her.
The small knight lacked any awareness of the danger its sister exuded.
“Saved?” they scoffed again. “In what way do you walk through those infernal ruins and think its former self was saved? Why, any one of these oafs-” they spread their arms open to gesture to the few others in the town circle. “-could die just by walking down that well! Not all are capable warriors like myself!”
The stooped bug cleared their throat.
(Throat. It had a throat now too. The noise of the other made its own clench and spasm and it wished it was gone.)
Their frown went unnoticed by the speakers. The blue beetle’s defensive retreat into their own posture went unnoticed by the speakers. The vessel was used to going unnoticed.
It watched while its sister kept herself tense and looked a string’s breaking away from making a likely fatal movement.
When she spoke, Hornet’s voice was as deadly cold as her mother’s sometimes was.
“Mind your words. I’ll not have any of you speak ill of the Hollow Knight. Without them, the infection would have consumed this town long ago. Without them, your infected crossroads down there would be impossible to travel.”
It was, again, a defense.
For what?
Its failure?
If it had not hid its own defectiveness, then it would not have given false hope to everyone. It would not have meant the sealing of the Dreamers all for the sake of a plan that would not work so long as it was the vessel central.
It was the only vessel, then. It was the only hope. Father had no better plans. He had void in his labs still regardless. He had void on his hands. It could not be the one responsible for sending him down there again to find another solution. It could not be even if it would send him to desperate searches again once its containment of the Old Light broke.
(It could not have helped, either way. It could never have worked.)
It should have revealed its impurity before giving false hope. It should have, before being trapped with a god inside it. It could never go through that pain again. It could not think about it now. It could not, or it would be lifting its nail to stab itself until it could be sure She was not in it.
More words had been spoken while it reached for all these thoughts and fought to drown them away. The vessel did not know what had transpired. It was a vessel. It had no need to know.
It certainly did not need to know if the Gendered Child had spoken like that about it again.
She was near it again when it did refocus. The small aggressive knight was back to the building it had been standing at before. The beetle was standing near the tall arched building instead, watching.
Hornet aborted a motion to reach for it and waved it forward instead.
“Here,” she spoke, needlessly. Her command had been understandable. It did not need the reasoning behind it.
It followed-
It hurt
-laboriously while the stooped bug moved slowly towards a round hut nestled behind those buildings nearer to the well. The bug spoke with sister more, but the vessel did not try to register the meaning of the sounds now. The noise had been enough. The pain was constant and so very distracting. It consumed nearly every thought.
There was a skylight in the center of the hut’s ceiling. It could not escape that light, no matter how dim.
-Light crawled in it.-
Hornet shut the door on the old bug. She spent some time moving around the place, acting more concerned than necessary when the both of them would be here only until it was repaired enough to return to the king. It stood with its nail, too large for this room, breaths rattling and whistling in a way that would not let it escape the reminder that Her Light had crawled in it. Hornet put her needle away before opening a door in the floor and disappearing below.
It felt a surge of alarm to see her vanish. What if-what had-what if-
The world knew it was impure. He knew it was impure. It could panic. It made no difference now. Fighting it would not make a difference for the better.
Hornet returned before its panic had fleshed out into something clear. She spoke of a room below and asked- asked!- where it would rather go.
There was dim light pouring in from above.
Its nail would not fit down that door. It would hurt to descend and ascend anything.
Everything hurt.
It remembered that she would have no way of knowing its answer unless it actually answered, and so lifted its nail enough to extend a finger off of the hilt and towards the hole.
She took its nail after that. When it became too clear to deny that was her intent, the vessel had made its fingers loosen around the weapon. This was the daughter of the Pale King. It would follow her intent. Even if the separation felt unsafe, unreal.
It could take it back later, if she said nothing contrary to that. It would be difficult to rest with the weapon and rest…
Rest would come, whether it sought it or not.
It was far too weak to avoid that.
But before its sister could lead it to the door there, the vessel made both pause.
It wanted to ask why.
No voice to cry- no mind to think, no voice to cry-
Stop.
No wants. Let alone wants for a voice.
(It had a voice now. It had Her voice now.)
But it did want to and it had been torn apart, hollowed out, filled with sick light, altered and corrupted and hurt and fixed- and it had lived. It was alive now, even with the Old Light gone and its purpose completed by another.
The world itself reeled.
It would not do any more damage by falling into impurity now.
What were the shapes (letters, they were called) for these questions? It read. It had never dared to replicate any of the shapes involved.
So it would ask in another way, since it had momentarily resigned to its impurity. The vessel extended an arm and tried to wave out over the hut and town beyond. The motion felt awkward. It felt awkward to hold an arm up without its nail in its hand.
Hornet followed the motion and continued to look at the door as she spoke.
“The other…Our- The ghost. Another vessel. I brought us here because of them.”
She went quiet but did not move to push it from the spot. Thought, then.
It took far longer than living bugs to compile and understand a thought. It could understand the pause.
“They returned to Dirtmouth often,” she started again, after. “I followed and watched. It seems a safe enough haven, for now. Even if a god took up residence nearby.”
Another higher being?
It wanted to panic. It wanted to fear. Higher beings were painful. Even when they did not intend to be, their presence seared. Only the Pale King and White Lady hadn’t, but both kept their distance. The vessel could not bear to have a higher being drag it close and consume it again. It could not bear that.
Hornet drifted away from it. She moved to a window and stared out for some time before quietly turning to brush rubble off of a nearby stool.
“I was waiting for that vessel, when you were freed. I had expected they would meet me there. They have not met a single one of my expectations since they entered this old kingdom.”
There was almost a smile in her voice when she spoke next- almost a hint of the voice and attitudes she had once had, so completely hidden in this adult she had become while it was sealed away. Almost. But it was still too far from that self of her’s she had once had.
Hornet paused again after clearing the rubble.
“I trust their judgment,” she said eventually.
She sat down and it seemed that all her strength and height and age that so impressed them with the difference in passing of time deflated out of her.
Not that she returned to the Gendered Child of youth, but now.
Now she was small.
Hurt. Resting from that.
The vessel hoped (do not hope, do not, a pure vessel can not hope) it was not from something it had caused.
It probably was.
She looked over to it.
“I wish I had trusted it, before they vanished,” she said.
And it had no more understanding of that than anything else she had expressed.