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Chapter Text

I am alone.

This temple that is my prison was built with silk and spell. It is vast, and it is empty. Beyond these walls the world persists, time flows its river’s course. But within this egg there is no such thing. Eternity is an indivisible unit, and I will endure.

But…

I am burdened.

There is a weight upon me. Within me. It strains my shell, with such force that I might rip to pieces. Iron links press against the fulcrum of my body. Chains suspend me like a long-extinguished lantern.

I am weakened.

A dullness coats my limbs. The might that I once wielded has rotted away. I can barely grasp the longnail that has served as my only companion through this vigil.

I am haunted.

Within this mask resounds a song. It pounds a desperate, keening rhythm against the fracture between my eyes, and though I strive to hold it back, I cannot stop the sickly roar that slips through.

Even so…

The King has left me my purpose, one that only I can fulfill. And I will see it to the end. I must.

His final words to me were as his first. And I remember them…

…No cost too great…

…No mind to think…

…No will to break…

…No voice to cry suffering…

…Born of God and Void…

…You shall seal the blinding light that plagues their dreams…

…You are the Vessel…

…You are the Hollow Knight…

*****

From somewhere far beyond, the words came, rippling through the inky dark, beckoning me to wake.

And for the very first time, I stirred.

A compulsion arose within me, one that suffered no dissent. Something sought my presence, and I followed without thought or hesitation.

Nothingness stretched before me, an infinite, midnight sea, devoid of distinction or meaning. Only the echoing words served to guide me. There was no doubt of the destination, but progress was indiscernible. Distance. Time. All was lost to this place.

As I drifted, something tugged at me. Ebony tendrils grasped out of the dark. In a dissonant chorus, they whispered to me, seeking to drown the guiding words. The tendrils begged. They pleaded. They did not wish for me to go. They longed to tear me apart and scatter the wet clay of my being. But such pleas held no sway over me. A greater purpose demanded. I tore away from the living shadows and pressed on.

A wall loomed up before me, concave and immaculate like the interior of an egg. I collided with its unyielding surface. In its obsidian curvature was my own reflection: the horns, the ivory mask, the empty eyes. And I stared, for it was the only thing that I could do. The guiding words boomed from beyond the wall, commanding me to appear, but I could not obey. My reflection refused to step aside and let me pass.

A force like a pounding fist reverberated along the barrier, forming a crack that slashed across my reflection’s face. Gray light seeped from the crack, drawn and dispersed into the eddying void. With a shivering crepitation, a second blow fell. The crack widened, making my reflection into a nightmare. At the third blow the barrier could take no more. The crack exploded, and the darkness surged into the luminous rift like water through a burst dam.

Taking me with it.

I burst forth into an alien world, and the heavy weight of disparity bore down on me. Light and shadow, heat and cold, sensations that I had never known. I collapsed to a floor of white shards that crackled beneath my body. A torrent of black liquid spilled over me and splattered against the floor. I lay there for a time as the liquid drained away, for there was no reason to rise.

A being stepped forward into my view. It towered over me, regal and still, like a lighthouse on a cloud-choked night. Draped around its shoulders was a cloak the color of steel that obscured its body and trailed along in its wake. The being wore an ivory mask with two lurking eyes. Atop the mask were seven slender horns resembling a crown. The being tilted its head to regard me and spoke with the very same voice that had shepherded me through the void.

“Rise, Vessel, so that I might see you.”

The order flowed into the empty shells of my limbs, filling them with purpose. They moved of their own volition to lift my body from the ground. The world reoriented, revealing walls, low ceilings, and winding tunnels. Just as the floor had been, these too were composed of crumbling, white shards—but the shards were not featureless. The larger among them displayed horns, eye sockets, and the curves of cheeks. They were masks… just like mine. It was as if my own broken face were staring out at me, a thousand, thousand times.

Beside me, wreathed in bramble-black tendrils, sat an orb—an egg. It was huge and impenetrably dark yet possessed of a nacreous luster. I saw myself within it, but the being standing beside me did not cast a reflection. I floated alone in an empty expanse. A jagged wound marred the orb’s otherwise flawless surface. Viscous shadow leaked from it like some vital force. And just as the being had, the orb beckoned. Faintly.

The being paced about me, in a slow, methodical ring, noting the curvature of my horns, the slate-gray of my cloak, the darkness of my body. “I behold the apotheosis,” it murmured. “The culmination of all sacrifice. Now until forever, this day shall be known as my Kingdom’s superlative achievement.” The steel of the being’s cloak parted to reveal a carapace of gleaming silver. It reached out an arm to touch me gently on the shoulder. “Come. Hope flutters as a dying Lumafly. The common bugs must see you—my triumph. They must believe in their King once more.”

And I followed the being… the King.

No other desire presented itself.

The endless procession of faces shattered beneath my steps, yet the King’s passage left no trace. He glided effortlessly before me, without a single sound to betray his existence. We emerged into a wider cavern, made chalky and irregular by the masks that formed it. On the far side, near a gaping, black tunnel, stood two more beings, even larger than the King. Both sported armored shells that shared the King’s brilliance. One—the bigger of the two—wielded an enormous mace covered in spikes. The other bore no such weapon, aside from its own hooked claws. Their voices carried through the stagnant air, quiet, but perfectly clear.

“Our King keeps a rather grim collection, does he not, Hegemol?” the clawed one asked, eyeing the walls. “So many masks, but for what purpose?”

“Is this your first foray into the pit, Ogrim?” the mace wielder murmured.

“Yes. I had not been given the—” Ogrim tapped a claw against his chest. “—honor until recently. Does it descend much deeper? I toil to imagine.”

“That, I do not know,” Hegemol said. He planted his mace on the ground and leaned. “I have never accompanied the King to the bottom. It is his custom to venture forth alone beyond this point. Many long vigils have I endured in anticipation of his returns. I begin to wonder if ‘Mighty’ is not truly my most suitable title. Do you suppose the common bugs would take to calling me ‘Patient Hegemol’ instead?”

“It bears a pleasing ring Patient Hegemol, but I doubt that the common bugs will ever learn of your long vigils. I knew nothing of this place before joining the Knights. And believe me, I was quite the intrepid adventurer. I believed myself to have turned every stone within this land, but now that I know of this place, I see how closely the King keeps his secrets…”

“You speak the truth, and I would not have it any other way. Certain things are best never known. The common bugs need not concern themselves with this. They have enough on their minds already with that affliction.”

Ogrim grunted. “If that was a joke, it was in poor taste.”

“Joke? Oh, pardon. That was not my intent.”

The pair lapsed into silence, and the King paused mid-step. They did not notice him lingering on the edge of the cavern. I stood behind him and waited. For what, I could not imagine.

“But still,” Ogrim muttered. “Hours have passed us by. How many more?”

Hegemol shrugged. “As many more as the King deems necessary.”

“But is he truly safe in this place? We have a duty to uphold, after all.”

“Do not doubt our King. If he were so frail a thing that this place could threaten him, then Hallownest would never have come to be. Our presence here is more for ceremony than protection.”

“Very well.” Ogrim crossed his claws tightly about himself. “But tell me in earnest, does this seem… wrong to you? The smell. The weight to the air. All these broken masks.”

Hegemol pondered. “Not particularly. It isn’t the most festive locale, but there are far more unsightly corners in the Kingdom. I’d take this gloomy hole over a patrol through those stinking fungal tunnels any day.”

“What is the King’s business here? Has he told you of it?”

“As He always says, we are here for ‘the good of the Kingdom’. That should be enough for us.”

“Even so,” Ogrim persisted, “what is the meaning of those ghosts? I have never seen their like in all my travels.”

“Did I not just say that some things are best never known? Do not trouble yourself with these shadows. They may bite and nibble, but they are no match for a Great Knight. Those claws of yours are not merely for show, as we both know. There is no need to quake.”

“‘Quake’? Do not turn your jests on me now. I have never quaked in all my years.”

Hegemol chuckled, a low, reverberating sound that fought with the oppressive stillness. “Don’t be so quick to bristle, my friend. It is all in mirth, such a thing is needed here.”

“I suppose.”

“That being said,” Hegemol continued, “I do seem to recall a few quakes from you at the Battle of the Blackwyrm.”

“Now wait just a moment! That is hardly fair! Everyone quaked on that day. Even our Pale King.”

Hegemol suppressed another chuckle and began to reply, but something stirred in the tunnel beyond.

It was a shadow, so much blacker than the surrounding darkness that its outline was visible from a great distance away. It had no wings or means of flight, but it hovered like a storm cloud. As it neared, the shape of a horned head and luminous white eyes became distinguishable, yet its lower body possessed no such structure or symmetry. It dragged a knot of tendrils through the air like unraveling silk.

The two Knights readied themselves, brandishing their respective weapons with a flourish. The shadow emerged from the tunnel and drifted forward. It glanced about the room, as if confused. The spotlight of its gaze settled first on Ogrim, then Hegemol, then the King, and finally… me. A whisper pressed against my shell, some plea in a language that I could not understand, and the shadow rushed toward me. It moved between the two Knights, utterly heedless of them, so focused was it on me. But they did not let it pass. The smashing mace and sweeping claws descended, and the dark mass of its body shredded into opaque bubbles that scattered in all directions. It wailed as it flew apart, and the sound echoed on inside my head.

“You see?” Hegemol laughed. “These little gnats are nothing before a strong arm and a keen weapon!”

“Well spoken!” Ogrim replied. “It was a mighty blow you delivered! That namesake is well-earned.”

Hegemol snorted and hefted his mace over his shoulder. “I would rather you not heap so much praise on me. It is uncouth for a Knight to blush in the heat of battle.”

“Ha! I’d pay good Geo for such a sight.”

The King crossed the room and approached the Knights. For the first time, the masks cracked beneath his feet, announcing his passage. The Knights spun, weapons raised, but as they caught sight of the King, they fell to one knee and spoke in relieved unison. “You have returned, Pale King.”

The King lifted an arm, gesturing for the Knights to stand. “Indeed. You are unharmed?”

“Assuredly,” Ogrim replied. “The Champion’s Call was far more harrowing than this ghastly little romp.”

“I am relieved,” The King said. He glanced about the room, his expressionless mask taking in the broken collage. “Ghastly…?”

“I had begun to wonder, your Grace,” Hegemol interjected. “Your previous searches have never taken quite so long. Did this one prove more auspicious?”

The King shifted aside like a dramatic curtain, revealing me. His curt command of “Step forth” took possession of my legs and sent me marching forward. The two Knights suddenly noticed me, as if I had manifested from the ether.

Hegemol buried the head of his mace into the floor with a wrenching crack and crossed his arms over his chest. He spent a long while in silence, watching me.

Ogrim startled. “A child? Down here of all places? My Lord, how did you come across it?” He crouched at my level. “Are you frightened, little one? Hurt? Do not fear. Your King and his Royal Knights are here to protect you. Are you from The City? We could have you home in a matter of hours.”

The King did not register the question.

And I did not reply.

“It is larger than the others,” Hegemol observed. “Sturdier. Even from here, I feel it is much more powerful.”

“What others do you speak of?” Ogrim asked.

Hegemol gave a forbidding shake of his head.

“Again, your keen eyes peer into the truth of things, Hegemol,” The King said. “Before you stands the apex of my labor. The greatest Vessel to yet be conceived. Revel in this moment, for it betokens Hallownest’s most sublime victory.”

“You have that much faith, my Lord?” Hegemol murmured.

“Faith? No.” The King strode past the armored bulks of the two Knights and into the far tunnel. “Vision… Now, come. There are many preparations to be made.”

We traveled in relative silence, broken only by the snap of the masks underfoot. The tunnels twisted in sinuous patterns, looping over one another and ending without warning. But at no point did the King pause to reconsider his path. He moved with a relentless purpose, ever upward, his pearly bioluminescence dispelling the dark.

Eventually, as Hegemol’s breathing grew haggard, we emerged into an immense, rectangular shaft that seemed to stretch endlessly into the shadows overhead. Grooved stone and titanic, fossilized shells made up its walls. At irregular intervals were clusters of spikes, each one nearly as tall as Hegemol. Their reflective, chitinous material made them gleam in the low light.

More masks coated the floor, snapping beneath each step.

“Again, our King guides us infallibly,” Hegemol puffed. “Though we yet have a journey before us.” He looked up at the erratic concretions of stone that jutted from the shaft’s walls. They resembled giant stair steps and served as the only means of ascent. “Quite a journey indeed…”

“Muster your fortitude, Mighty Hegemol,” the King said. “The time has come to depart this place, but another task yet remains for you.” He reached into the folds of his cloak and drew out a four-pronged sigil of clouded quartz. Light spilled all about it like roiling fog. “As I decree, you shall recruit the aid of Loyal Ogrim and venture east to the lighthouse overlooking the abyssal sea. The light-keeper’s long vigilance is done. Command him to disable the lighthouse and return with you to the White Palace. Nothing of worth yet remains in this festering morass. We shall leave it to its own devices and cast our gaze upon it nevermore. Take this simulacrum of my Brand. Once your task is complete, use it to forever seal the entrance at this shaft’s summit. Ensure that it is done.”

Hegemol knelt and lifted an armored palm to receive the sigil. “I understand, my King. Upon my honor, I will not fail.”

The King stepped away from us and onto a more level section of the ground. “The Great Knight’s Council shall be held in two days. Dryya, Ze’mer, and Isma shall be returning from their assignments in the other kingdoms. The White Palace’s vestibule shall serve as our place of conclave. I need not remind you to be timely.” He nodded. “Until then.”

“Pardon, Majesty,” Ogrim blurted. “But what of the child? The trek out of this chasm is arduous even for we Great Knights. Should we send for winged sentries to fly the little one to safety?”

“You do this little one a disservice, Loyal Ogrim,” the King said. “Let not its meager appearance delude your senses. It is far more capable than you comprehend.” The King turned to me and locked eyes. He pointed to the shaft’s apex, at a far-off speck that appeared to be a metal balcony. “Observe and follow,” he commanded.

The King flared his cloak about himself with a flick of his arms, and a corona of light encircled him. Overlapping steel gave way to translucent white, and in an instant the King’s cloak had transformed into a pair of wings. Shed feathers twinkled like constellations before fading into nothing. The King tensed his wings in preparation for flight, but an object—small and bug-like— plummeted from on high.

The object crashed into a nearby heap of masks, launching fragments all about. Hegemol lunged forward, planting himself before the King and making a shield of his own body. The mask-shrapnel bounced harmlessly off his carapace and clattered to the ground. A cloud of gray dust hung in the air, obscuring the fallen object.

“Another foe?!” Ogrim shouted, charging over to stand beside Hegemol.

“Steady yourselves, Knights,” the King said. “That thing is no threat; no consequence to you. It is mere refuse being disposed of. Banish it from your thoughts and remain sworn to your charge. We shall speak again soon.”

The King stretched his incandescent wings and flapped, with enough force to scatter the cloud of dust and send himself soaring into the air. He climbed without looking back, not even pausing to rest upon the stone slabs protruding from the walls. I watched him with unwavering intent, absorbing every movement of his body and slant to his wings. I could not wrench my gaze from him, nor did I wish to.

As the cloud of dust dissipated, Ogrim took a hissing breath and slid back a step. His attention was not drawn to the King, but to the fallen object in the corner of my vision.

It was a bug corpse.

One that resembled me in every way.

It too was a creature of white horns and black eyes, with a slate-gray cloak that concealed the darkness of its body. But there were minor differences. It was half-again smaller than me, and possessed four, diminutive horns that curled down to frame its face.

“What is the meaning of this?” Ogrim whispered. He looked from the corpse to the masks to me in quick succession.

Hegemol clapped a claw on Ogrim’s shoulder and nodded eastward. “You heard the King’s decree. That thing before you is of no concern. Come. We mustn’t tarry.”

Ogrim tore his shoulder free of the grasp. “No concern? In what way is this of no concern? Does that not resemble a citizen of our Kingdom stone-dead upon the ground?”

“Heed my advice. If the King sees fit to enlighten you, then he will. But for now, it is not your responsibility. Accompany me as you were instructed.”

Ogrim knelt and lifted the still form in his arms. Its head lolled at a grotesque angle, revealing several cracks that ran the length of its mask. “It is a child, Hegemol! If this is not my responsibility as a Knight, then nothing is!”

Hegemol let out a growling sigh. “The King commanded us to—”

“How is this child mere refuse? Why was it being disposed of?”

“Do not allow yourself to be distracted!” Hegemol shouted. “We have a duty to uphold. Now rise, this is unbecoming of a Knight.”

“Duty? Is not my duty to the bugs of this land? Is it not unbecoming of a Knight to disregard the death of an innocent before his very eyes?” Ogrim lifted his head and looked about, as if seeing for the very first time. “What is this place, Hegemol? A mass grave?”

Hegemol clamped Ogrim beneath the arm and tossed him to his feet. Their faces hovered an inch apart. “That. Is not. A child. This. Is not. A grave.” He swatted the corpse from Ogrim’s arms, and it crashed into a nearby heap of masks. The outline of its body wavered and frothed, like water just beginning to boil. Black bubbles separated from it and floated away on an imaginary breeze. “You are Loyal Ogrim of the Five Great Knights!” Hegemol snarled. “You have been granted a task by your King, your Sovereign, your Lord. Will you see it done, or will you forsake your purpose while fretting over a broken tool?”

Ogrim’s body trembled. He looked to me again, but I did not meet his gaze, my focus was elsewhere.

“Well, what say you?!” Hegemol slammed his palms against Ogrim’s chest.

The King ended his flight at the summit of the shaft. His wings crumbled out of existence, replaced once again by the steel cloak. He tightened it around himself and resumed his austere pose. Even from that vast distance, I felt when he turned to look down upon me. His will echoed on and took hold of my body yet again.

Follow.

I responded, the marionette. My legs bent, my cloak fluttered, and a power that I did not know I possessed surged up within me. I jumped, straight up, and as I did, the substance of my cloak transmuted into a pair of ephemeral wings, shorter than the King’s but nearly as bright. They flapped, launching me clumsily into the air. I landed on the stone slabs, one after the other, planting my feet, bracing my body, and leaping up for another brief flight. Over and over, in mechanical repetition. And as I went, my movements grew smoother, more elegant, closer and closer to the King’s.

I did not look back, toward Ogrim or Hegemol. I did not hear the last dregs of their debate, or Ogrim’s reply. Every ounce of me was invested in the climb. Exertion burned in my limbs, but I did not slow. I could not. The King was watching, urging me ever upward.

No cost too great.

The words boomed inside my head as I glided from one platform to another.

Ten thousand failures have preceded you. And should you fall, then ten thousand more shall follow.

I kicked off a wall and soared over a cluster of chitinous spikes.

No mind to think. For to possess a mind is to possess a vulnerability. So easily subverted. So easily controlled.

I grabbed a ledge and hauled myself to my feet.

No will to break. For time degrades all intent. Purpose, no matter how unflinching, is nothing before those ceaseless waves. Will is not enough. It must be discarded.

One of my wings clipped the edge of a spike, shedding ghostly feathers.

No voice to cry suffering. Toil is the lot of the living. To live eternal is to toil eternal. If suffering is foregone, then it need not be heralded.

I redoubled my efforts, one wing flapping harder than the other.

Born of God and Void. No tool of inferior element shall suffice. Only the perfect may achieve the impossible.

The balcony upon which the King stood grew closer with every strain of my legs and every thrash of my wings.

You shall seal the blinding light that plagues their dreams. The Kingdom cannot coexist with such uniformity. It inhibits potential. It murders the ideal. It sees nothing beyond propagation.

With one final lunge, I crested the balcony and landed before the King. My body lurched from exhaustion, but I kept my feet. The King watched me—with approval or otherwise, it could not be known. After a time, he spoke, and the echo left my head.

“You are the Vessel. None other shall rival your merit.

You are the Hollow Knight… You are my child…”

My wings shriveled, curling up like a dying bug. They reverted to a cloak and hung limply about me as I heaved. My body felt tenuous—insubstantial—as if I would deliquesce and drain through the grating of the balcony.

The King paused, until my breathing returned to normal and I stood straight. “Many trials await you,” he said, “each one more brutal and unrelenting than the last. Should you prove… deficient, then this same end shall be yours.”

With a slight turn of his head, the King signaled to someone behind him. The balcony ended in an archway that led into a tunnel, and within I saw several more beings, more bugs. They were silver from head to foot, with oval-shaped carapaces, short limbs, and vestigial wings that hung down their backs. They stood at attention beside a large metal cart, completely silent. The King’s signal set them all into motion. They hauled the cart to the edge of the balcony and removed the silken tarp that covered it, revealing a pile of corpses. All of which resembled me. Just as the other corpse had. Horns. White masks. Dark eyes. Cloaks.

The King nodded again, and the silver bugs set to work dragging the bodies out of the cart and hurling them over the side. They plummeted like stones, striking against the walls and floors of the shaft, shattering into a thousand pieces. White shards and horn fragments sprinkled down the dizzying drop and rattled to a halt at the bottom.

Hegemol and Ogrim were nowhere to be seen.

The King crossed his arms beneath his cloak and watched. He noted the mask of each and every corpse before it was pitched, halting a silver bug periodically in order to see more closely. He did not speak. Even after the last body had been disposed of.

The silver bugs retreated once the cart was empty. They hustled quietly down the tunnel and around a corner, leaving the King and I alone.

“But… you shall not prove… deficient,” the King finally said. “A different destiny hangs over you. My prescience allows me that much. Do not fear, I shall ensure—” But he stopped, checked himself with a deprecating chuckle, and shook his head. “Come.”

The King turned and left the shaft. He waved a claw in front of a huge, carved tablet beside the archway. Runes of white light blazed into existence against its dusky surface. They twisted, fading in and out, as if being rewritten. After a moment, the King slipped his arm back into the folds of his cloak and marched down the tunnel.

My feet drew me forward, with the same inevitable compulsion. But I heard a sound behind me: the scratch of limbs finding purchase upon the balcony’s edge. And with that sound, a faint reverberation in my head like a voice asking a question.

I halted and glanced over my shoulder to behold another being. Like me, but diminutive, with underdeveloped horns and a tattered cloak. It looked at me, with wide, black eyes as it clutched against the pull of gravity.

…Did it desire something of me? Was it doomed to corpsehood like all the others? And was that… somehow my fault?

At the bend in the tunnel, the King stopped. “Come,” he repeated, impatience creeping along the word’s edge.

My purpose returned to me, and I strode down the tunnel after the King. The rasp of a failing grip and the flutter of a cloak in free fall echoed after me. And with it, a wail, haunting and silent.

But I did not look back.

I could not.

Chapter Text

The White Palace’s Vestibule was a towering and pyramidal room. Silver light filtered through the oculus at its vertex, painting the twisted metal spires embedding its walls. A silken carpet, flanked by standing Lumafly lanterns, ran the length of its floor and branched off in several directions, leading through teardrop-shaped doorways and off into the bowels of the castle.

Across from the vestibule’s main entrance rested a jagged throne, composed of swirling alloys in whites and grays and ebony blacks. Upon this throne sat the Pale King, with me beside him. On the floor before us knelt three bugs: massive Hegemol, barbed Ogrim, and another. One I had not seen before.

Unlike Hegemol and Ogrim, this bug bore no armor, no battle-ready carapace. She did not even wield a weapon. Her garb consisted of emerald leaves that clung to her body and imbricated at her waist, forming a sort of skirt. A six-eyed mask encircled her head and sprouted vines from the back like dangling braids of hair. She was far slenderer than the Knights, with long, tapered limbs and a quiescent grace.

No other bug was in attendance, but the rebounding murmur of far-off voices created the illusion that the room was far less empty. There was a gap in the middle of the three bugs, wide enough to accommodate two more. All was stillness, as if we were no more than statues. The Knights did not even seem to breathe.

The King broke the stupor. He swept his cloak aside and placed a claw on the throne’s armrest. His glinting digits tapped against the metal in a rhythmic manner, drawing the Knights’ eyes.

Hegemol was the first to speak. “Pardon, Lord, but perhaps we should consider postponing the council? Or at least adjourning for a nap? It is not for a Knight to complain,” he chortled, “but these recent days have been taxing, and rest is always welcome.”

The King did not even glance at him. His look was fixed squarely on the vestibule’s entrance.

“I beseech your patience, Pale King,” the leaf-garbed bug said. “Dryya and Ze’mer would never deliberately inconvenience your court. I trust that they will arrive soon.”

The measured tap of the King’s digits did not cease. “Patience is an asset that I do not lack, Kindly Isma. But ill news arrives at inopportune moments, and one cannot stifle the vexation it evokes.”

“Of what do you speak, Lord?” Isma asked, her voice hushed. “Do you know something?”

The King pushed himself to his feet. “Offer your reports, my Knights. This assemblage shall not see completion, but your observations are still of worth.” He tilted his head. “Isma. Tell me of our buzzing neighbors.”

“As you wish.” Isma stood and performed a willowy bow. “Queen Vespa of the Hive sends her regards, my King. She continues to ail and no Royal Larvae have yet been birthed, but the strength of her brood remains much the same. They have stockpiled many lifetimes of supplies and sealed nearly all entrances to their domain. From the Queen’s tone, she seemed reluctant to accept your offer of formal alliance.”

The King nodded. “As predicted. Such aggregated minds cling so tenaciously to routine. But convey her words. I would know her true sentiment.”

“Is that entirely necessary, my King?” Isma asked, twining her ivy-like arms. “We are all aware of Queen Vespa’s… blunt manner. Surely, she need not be repeated.”

Parched laughter escaped the King’s mask. It was his first sign of levity that I had borne witness to. “My Knights strive so valiantly toward my protection. In body and ego. But Kindly as you are, Great Knight Isma, the painful truth is ofttimes necessary. So again, I ask you. Please convey her words.”

Isma rubbed at the leaves of her skirt, smoothing and pleating them as a Maskfly would its wings. “If that is your will, King, then I must oblige.” She cleared her throat. “Before I departed from her audience, Queen Vespa requested that I inform you of your folly… She stated that you overstep yourself. That you are an upstart worm seeking to defile a sacred balance. That you are consumed by delusion and arrogant beyond any living thing. That your goal is unachievable, and failure is your only destiny.”

“Insolence!” Hegemol bellowed, half-rising. “What does that pitiful little bee know of achievement? She brands our Sovereign arrogant yet spits assumptions as an Aspid would venom?!”

The King lifted a claw to quiet Hegemol. “The Hive Queen’s barb bites deeper with every passing year, it seems.”

“But you must not heed these words, my Lord!” Isma said. “Vespa is an ancient creature, nearing her days’ end. It makes her scurrilous and ill-tempered. She does not believe what she says, I am sure.”

“Ever swift to offer consolations,” the King said. “I Knighted you aptly.”

Isma averted her gaze and clasped her claws at the waist.

“But,” the King continued, “Vespa’s dwindling life holds little sway over her voice. You are not the first envoy to return with such a message, and you shall not be the last. The Hive’s dogma parallels much of that damnable Light. And Vespa has little desire to feign diplomacy. Although she has yet to aim her stinger at this Kingdom, beings such as her are dangerous in their final days. The alliance, though futile, would have precluded that danger.” He descended the throne’s short staircase and began to pace. His cloak slithered over the tile. “Mighty Hegemol, tell me of The City. How fares it?”

Hegemol jerked, as if dispersing a coat of snow. “The City still stands, Majesty. At least as of this morning when I last checked. The builder bugs informed me that the construction of Lurien’s Spire proceeds as planned. However, the cavern containing our City was too small to accommodate it. Necessity demanded that the ceiling be raised. The builder bugs are quite adept at such tasks, and the stone shaved away without difficulty, but now only porous rock remains. That vast water deposit above The City has begun to seep through. It showers the buildings like rainfall. Mild enough, but incessant. The mender bugs were tasked with its repair, but they claim such a thing is impossible in The City’s current state. Some of the more churlish commoners have taken to calling our home ‘The City of Tears’ now.”

The King shook his head. “To fret over something as trivial as rain is a luxury that this Kingdom lacks. Continue. What of my subjects?”

Hegemol rumbled a few decibels lower. “Regrettably, Lord. The affliction brings about more attrition with every passing moon. The City’s guard strive to keep the ill quarantined, but the only observable symptom—that deep and overwhelming sleep—also happens to be its last. We are often far too late… And to make matters worse, the affliction is a capricious thing. There is no pattern as to whom it visits. The young. The old. The strong. The weak. Any bug can become infected at any moment. We have taken to hurling the victims that we can find over the battlements at Kingdom’s Edge. But even then, from time to time they return, less than what they once were… Mindless. Feral. And as for those that we fail to detect in time… Attacks occur inside The City at all hours. Usually amongst kin in private abodes. Once the afflicted awake from their slumber, they lash out at everyone and everything, like base beasts in the throes of instinct. And there is no cure to offer them but the nail.”

“Expected,” the King muttered. His pacing hastened. “And what of our might? Should it come to blows with the neighboring kingdoms, do we yet possess enough able bugs to repel invaders?”

Hegemol lifted his head. “Since the affliction began, our numbers have waned. That plague takes from the Royal armies just as it takes from the commoners.” He gulped a breath and his voice rose. “But we are not yet bested, Lord! Especially by something so paltry. The Kingdom’s armies remain stalwart. I am confident we would weather an attack from any one of the other kingdoms.”

“I see. But what of all the kingdoms, Hegemol? The Deepnest. The Mantis. The Hive. Those barbarians that have taken up residence within the Blackwyrm’s corpse. Should destiny conspire against Hallownest, would we persevere? Against all opposition?”

Hegemol deflated a fraction. “I… could not say, my King. I lack your foresight. But if such a war were to transpire, then it would bode ill. We Five Greats would bring our utmost strength to bear, but…” he fell silent.

The King ceased his pacing and planted a consoling claw on Hegemol’s shoulder. He began to speak, but a different voice rasped from across the vestibule.

“It seems that I am late!”

Light shifted as something rose up to block the main entrance. A silhouette cast a narrow, bug-like shadow over the room. It approached, and its squelching steps trailed a dark residue on the silken carpet. The silhouette bore a slight limp and its arms hung heavily at its sides. The glow of the Lumafly lanterns splashed over its body, revealing silvered armor and the gore of battle. Blood—in greens, yellows, and lurid oranges—dripped from its plated contours. In each claw it gripped the hilt of a broken nail, similarly stained. “The Mantis are at war.”

“Dryya!” Isma exclaimed. She rose to her feet and darted to the bloodied bug’s side. “Are you injured? It looks most dire! I must retrieve my Soul-healing supplies. Sit. Do not move. I will return as swiftly as I can!” She turned and sprinted toward a passageway.

“Halt!” The King said.

Isma skidded to a stop and whipped about. “But Lord!”

“Do not disparage the prowess of your fellow Knight. Fierce Dryya is unharmed.”

“He is right,” Dryya said, looking down at her own splattered body. “This blood is not mine.”

Isma shuffled back and dabbed at Dryya’s pauldrons with a shred of leaf, accomplishing nothing but to smear the blood like paint. “You are certain?”

Dryya nodded and waved the leaf away. She strode across the vestibule and toward the King. In motion, her body was lean and inflexible, like an iron rod. And yet the armor about her flowed so naturally. The faulds at her waist descended like the petals of a bellflower and rustled as though caught in a faint breeze. She stomped to a halt before the King and barked a question. “Where is my White Lady?”

The King took some time to reply. He scanned the blood sullying Dryya, from the top of her three horns to her feet. “Later. Tell me of the Mantis. And Ze’mer.”

“You foresee all things, do you not?” Dryya sniffed. “You should know better than I. Now, I ask again. Where is my Queen?”

The King bristled. “If the Mantis intend war, then I would hear of it. So, speak, Knight.”

“The Queen is in her chambers,” Isma interjected, stepping between the two. “She returned from Her Gardens this morning on a Royal Stag. In good spirits, it seemed.”

Dryya’s stance slackened. Her shoulders drooped an inch. “Good. I must go to her, she must be informed.”

“I am this Kingdom’s Sovereign. You shall inform me.” The King said. “Where is Ze’mer?”

Dryya did not reply and marched off as if the King did not even exist, moving toward a passageway strewn with hanging, white vines. Ogrim and Hegemol rose but made no move to stop her.

Isma was the only one to pursue, closing the distance with three elegant steps and wrapping her lithe arms around one of Dryya’s. “Tell us, please,” Isma whispered.

Dryya gave a graveled sigh and planted her feet. “If I must.” Her broken nails dropped to the tile with a crash, and she turned back to the group, shouting as if addressing an unruly crowd. “The Mantis do not war with Hallownest, they war with themselves. In-fighting has sparked between their Lords. The strongest amongst them—the one the others have taken to calling the Traitor Lord—has absorbed the affliction within himself to elevate his power. Many of the Mantis warrior caste have thrown their lot in with him and done the same. They assaulted Mantis Village, attempting to stage a coup, but were repelled and have instead retreated into the Queen’s Gardens to lick their wounds and defile Her territory with their disease. The Lady must be informed, which is why I have no time to waste on chatter.”

Dryya made another move toward the vine-choked passageway, but Isma would not relinquish her arm.

“When did this happen?” Isma asked.

“Hours ago. I, Ze’mer, and our retinue arrived in Mantis Village for the annual Peace Talks, and within minutes the Traitor Lord struck.”

“What of that Royal retinue?” The King murmured. “And Ze’mer?”

Dryya scoffed. “The retinue was decimated. Not a bug was left standing after the attack. Your servants are fragile, easy prey without overwhelming numbers. And the Mantis have always been excellent fighters. If the other Mantis Lords had not aided me, then I would be just as dead.”

The King looked away, his head bowed.

“As for Ze’mer,” Dryya continued. “She deserted.”

“What?!” Hegemol roared, “Never! A Great Knight would sooner die!”

“I watched her retreat from the field of battle!” Dryya snarled. “She is a coward, or worse, a turncoat. Just as the tides shifted in our favor, she fled. With the corpse of some female Mantis in her arms.”

Isma recoiled as if she had been struck, releasing Dryya’s arm. She pressed her claws against her mask, obscuring the six eyes. “No… that can’t be…”

Ogrim was at Isma’s side in an instant. He placed a claw on her shoulder. “Take heart,” he said, “this is a mistake, nothing more. Ze’mer would never do such a thing without reason.”

“No, Ogrim,” Isma whispered, “you don’t understand…”

Once freed of Isma’s grasp, Dryya continued on her stubborn path. She spoke over her shoulder as she exited the vestibule and pressed through the hanging vines. “I will return with fresh nails and the Queen’s bidding. If you Great Knights plan to join me in the defense of Her Gardens, then be certain not to imitate Ze’mer’s failure.”

“Halt, Dryya!” The King shouted. “You are to train the newest Vessel!”

Her reply was distant and muffled behind the swish of shifting vines. “I do not have time for another of your puppets. Train it yourself.”

The vestibule grew quiet. The King muttered something under his breath and returned to his throne. He fell into the seat and braced the temple of his mask against a fist.

Hegemol slammed the floor with his foot, forcefully enough to send tremors through the Lumafly lanterns. “Of all the arrogant, boorish, quarrelsome behavior! That Dryya! How can you tolerate this from your own Knight, Lord? This is far from her first offense!”

The King waved an arm and stared off into space. “She is not my Knight. Fierce Dryya has forever belonged to The White Lady… To my Queen. Since long before Knighthood, or even Hallownest itself, Dryya has served as the Lady’s lone protector and confidante. Thus, my Sovereignty means nothing in her eyes.”

“That is no excuse, Lord!” Hegemol bellowed. “Is there not some punishment to be devised? This insult cannot be allowed to stand!”

“Do not overstep yourself, Hegemol. You Knights possess no right to find fault in the actions of your peers. Should judgment befall Dryya, then it shall be at the White Lady’s behest, and none other. Such was the deal we struck. If you consider yourself to be my instrument, forged in the fires of my aspiration, then Dryya is but a thing lent and borrowed, nothing more. One takes special care with others’ belongings.”

Hegemol settled. “You speak fairly, King. But she went so far as to mock your prescience: the very foundation of this Kingdom. No instrument is devised to bite back at its wielder…”

Ogrim spoke up, barely above a whisper. “But did you truly foresee this attack, Lord? Ze’mer’s desertion?”

Hegemol wheeled around with a guttural growl. “Watch your words, now.”

“But did you?” Ogrim repeated.

The King sat upon his throne, as still as a corpse. Eventually, as if waking from a dream, he stirred. “No. Ogrim. No, I did not.” The King rose once again and descended to stand before the Knights. “This conclave is adjourned. Step forth and receive your commands. If this Kingdom is to survive then there is much to be done. Thus, I ask of you Knights—again and always—is your fealty unshakable? Is your conviction indefatigable? If the tasks that I lay before you demand your very lives as tribute, would you see them to the end? For your Lord? For your Kingdom?”

“Of course,” Hegemol said.

“Always,” Isma murmured.

Ogrim lifted his head, and his horns gleamed in the oculus’ light. He stared over the King’s shoulder as if it were a lifetime away. “For the Kingdom. Ask, Pale King, and it will be done.”

“I expected no less,” the King said. He lifted his voice so that it boomed against the irregular walls. “Mighty Hegemol, you shall pursue Fierce Dryya and aid in her purpose. My White Lady is as covetous of her domain as any monarch is rightful to be. She shall not suffer the Mantis within Her garden. You are to assist Dryya in its reclamation. Enlist the service of as many of my legions as you see fit. But take care not to descend into folly. Recall that all strength is finite, even yours. Fight bravely, Knight, and return draped in victory.”

Hegemol bowed deeply. “It is a lucky stroke for old Hegemol. I had hoped to soon holiday in the Queen’s Gardens. And lo and behold, the opportunity falls before my feet.” A wisp of a laugh escaped him, but then his voice grew hard. “You can trust in me, my King.”

“But what of us?” Ogrim blurted, sweeping his claw first to Isma and then himself. “Would we not be of use on the field of battle?”

The King nodded at me over his shoulder and I felt his command, even though it went unspoken. My legs were torpid from prolonged standing, and I stumbled while descending the stairs. Isma did not look at me, keeping her eyes locked to the floor.

“Hallownest languishes,” the King said, “not due to petty strife and border wars, but as the result of something far more malign.” He gestured at me, palm up. “I forged this Vessel, this Hollow Knight to be a weapon capable of striking at that malignancy. In this regard, Loyal Ogrim, Kindly Isma, you two are to take charge over this Vessel and impart your knowledge upon it. Teach it all that you know of the warrior’s mettle. And in doing so you shall prepare it to fulfill its ultimate purpose… And mayhap save us all.”

Ogrim scratched at his head. “My King, I do not understand. How could this child—”

“Vessel,” Isma whispered.

“H-How could this Vessel be of use to us?” Ogrim continued. “What salvation could it possibly offer?”

The King’s scrutiny shifted from one Knight to the other. “Isma, you are privileged to certain knowledge regarding this Vessel’s nature. Divulge what you feel is sufficient to dispel Ogrim’s incertitude. I trust in your discretion.” He lifted an arm and pointed toward the vestibule’s main entrance. “You pair shall forthwith escort this Vessel to The City’s mustering grounds. The soldier bugs and commoners alike must bear witness to Hallownest’s newest champion. Now go quickly, Knights. Time is not our ally.”

“Allow but one more question, Lord,” Ogrim persisted.

The King had already turned to leave, but he stopped at Ogrim’s request.

“Pale King,” Ogrim said, speaking slowly. “You called this little one ‘Hollow Knight’. It cannot achieve a Knighthood without taking part in the Champion’s Call. Is that truly your will? I mean no impudence, but… it seems rather young for such things, does it not? Of all the aspirants to take part in the previous Call, only I survived. Is this little one suitable for such a challenge? It does not seem a Knight to my eyes.”

The King went rigid. “Your words are ever divested from your intent, Impudent Ogrim. Again, you doubt my Vessel and feign concern on its behalf. But I spy the ignoble truth behind your veil.” He let out a scornful laugh, the sound was like a drizzle of needles. “Are you so enamored with your own title? Do you fear that the Great Knights shall depreciate in dignity should this little one be elevated into your ranks? Do not harbor such senseless beliefs. If it will palliate your pride, then think of this thing not as a member of your Knighthood, but merely a tool to be manipulated. It is nothing else.”

Ogrim shook his head, violently, as if it did him physical harm. “No, King! It is not my pride in my station that guides me. I simply wish—” He took a steadying breath. “I do not wish to see this little one’s broken body cast into that pit.”

From the King came a long, drawn sigh. He bent—just slightly—like a proud tree before an eternal wind. “It is not my desire to bludgeon you, Knight, but you must come to understand. Manifesting a vision into reality necessitates sacrifice. That is the economy of this world, and such payment cannot be diverted nor delayed. If you are truly rooted in empathy, and not vainglory, then know that such softness of heart will lead only to pain. You may yet witness more broken Vessels in your tenure. And that fact must not impede you.”

“But there is a limit to such sacrifice, yes?” Ogrim asked. “When will such a point be reached?”

The King looked to me. “…Never,” he whispered, and then louder. “You speak of matters that are beyond you, Ogrim. You are a neophyte amongst us. Your ennoblement is most recent in memory, yet always are you swiftest to question me. If you seek to hold fast to your title and your chivalry, then also must you hold fast to your faith. Believe in my purpose, and that I strive toward it for the good of all. If you cannot do that, then sever yourself from my service. I have no time to avail of doubt.”

With that, the King departed, down a passageway leading deeper into the White Palace. His steps made no sound as his shadow diminished into the distance.

I remained behind, for a fresh command had tethered me to Ogrim more tightly than any worldly bond. I stood before him and waited, but he took no heed of me, instead lost in his thoughts and the King’s trailing shadow.

Hegemol, too, tracked the King’s withdrawal, until the Palace had devoured the conversation’s last, echoing word. Only then did Hegemol close the distance to Ogrim and plant a claw on his shoulder. “You never hesitate to speak your mind. Some would call that noble, but most would call it foolhardy.”

Ogrim hung his head. “This was a council, was it not? The King expects us to advise him.”

“Indeed,” Isma added. “But was it advice you offered, or condemnation? Do not think that you are the first to broach this subject? He is well aware of his own methods. And the price.”

“But have you seen that pit, Isma?” Ogrim asked, hushed. “All those bodies…”

“I have,” she said. “As has Dryya, as has Ze’mer. And I suspect, as have the other Great Knights that preceded us. And they too must have harbored their own misgivings. How many before you posed your very same questions? The King must grow weary of defending himself, time and time again. Although I sympathize with you, the King’s is an inscrutable purpose, based upon distant dreams that we will never see. At times his ways may seem perplexing… even mad, but do we possess the authority to judge him?”

Ogrim did not reply.

“Well,” Hegemol said, with a great exhale. “It seems that we Knights must part ways once again. As always, it was a pleasure to share another council with you, Isma. I hope the training of this Vessel proves to be more propitious than the last.” Ogrim lifted his head to speak, but Hegemol barreled on. “And as for you, Ogrim. I will offer the same advice that my predecessor, Indomitable Targath once offered me.” He cleared his throat. “‘A flapping mouth and an attentive mind are an uncommon pair. When in doubt, be silent, the truth will come as it wills.’” He gave Ogrim’s shoulder a shake. “Wise words, yes? You should consider heeding them.” He then spun his wide body about and strolled off toward the hallway that Dryya had disappeared into. The low ceiling forced him to hunch. “Take care!” He bellowed, already sounding so far away. “We will meet again! One hopes in better circumstance!”

The vestibule stilled like a pond after a storm. Isma clasped her arms behind her back and turned toward the main entrance. “It seems that I am to inform you of the King’s… pursuits. And the nature of this creature.” She nodded in my direction, not looking. “It is a difficult matter to discuss. Perhaps a walk first? Clear our heads?”

Chapter Text

Rain drummed against my mask. It dripped from my horns, pooled in the curvature of my eye sockets, and overflowed in rivulets down my cheeks. The sodden cloak upon my back dragged across the cobblestones, creating wakes in the puddles like a boat on the open sea.

I was cold—colder than I’d ever been. I shivered, but did not voice my discomfort. I could not.

The rain-slicked streets of The City stretched out before, equal parts ornamented causeways and obscure alleys. The City was a place of angular buildings and tall spires, where chitin and metal composed everything: the doors, the sign posts, the walls, the inhabitants. A liquid sheen coated the rooftops, giving them a glint like polished onyx. There were no clouds in the gray expanse overhead, for it was not a sky but the roof of the vast cavern in which The City nestled.

Among the towers in The City’s center, one loomed above all the others, surrounded by scaffolding and the flying specks of worker bugs. This tower reached to the very ceiling of the cavern, which was crisscrossed with fractures like a frozen lake. Water streaked the tower’s windows and flying buttresses as a second, undulating skin.

“Lurien’s Spire,” a voice over my shoulder said.

I turned to look, and Ogrim was staring at me. Again.

“That imposing stick in the distance belongs to Lurien, one of the King’s most trusted advisers. Have you met him before, little one?”

I halted my march to meet Ogrim’s gaze, but I did not reply. He paused beside me and waited in silence, patient as stone.

Isma, also paused, bringing our convoy of three to a complete stop. She planted a claw on her hip. “Despite your brave attempts at conversation, the Vessel will not take part. It was not made for such things.”

“But I wager it understands me, yes?” Ogrim asked. “Everyone enjoys a chat now and again.”

“It cannot speak, Ogrim.”

“Are you certain?”

“Quite certain,” Isma said.

“Because this little one’s reservation reminds me of an old stag beetle I once met long before I stumbled upon this Kingdom. Not a word did that stag utter, no matter how I prattled at him. And for the longest time, I believed his kind to be mute or perhaps simple. I felt quite the fool for trying to spark a discussion with an aimless bug of burden. But, it wasn’t until we parted ways that the stag offered me a farewell. ‘Long life to you’, it said before trundling off down a tunnel. Consider that this little one may have simply not found a subject worth speaking on yet.”

The slightest hint of strain worked its way into Isma’s voice. “That is a whimsical idea but believe me when I say that it is very much impossible. Vessels have never needed to speak. And so, they never will, so was the King’s verdict. Now, come along. The mustering grounds are a long walk, and this rain will not abate any time soon.”

Ogrim murmured a half-reply and following Isma down the street.

The compulsion that the King had laid upon me—to follow and obey Ogrim—pressed against my limbs and sent me trotting over to the Knight’s side. I did not resist the pull, for I had no other wish.

The relentless downpour seemed to affect Ogrim little. He trudged through it without complaint, the droplets plinking noisily against his armor and generating a sort of song that echoed down the tangent alleyways. His short, stocky legs crashed through the puddles and launched sheets of water into the air.

By comparison, Isma maintained a far more erratic step. She hopped from one haven of dryness to another, avoiding the puddles like pitfalls. In her claws, she grasped the stem of an enormous heart-shaped leaf that hung over her head to block the rain. Streams descended from its edges and trailed behind her. Another such leaf was wrapped up and lashed to her hip. After a time, she took it out and proffered it to Ogrim.

“Would you care for a leaf as well?” Isma asked. “You look uncomfortable.”

Ogrim laughed and stared up at The City’s ceiling. “If rain could fell me, then I wouldn’t be much of a Knight, would I?”

“But are you not cold?”

“I have walked colder roads than this. Places where endless ash falls from the sky like snow.”

“But you might rust.” Isma persisted. “Have you considered such a thing?”

“Perhaps I’d look good in red,” Ogrim countered.

“It would reflect poorly on our King if his Great Knights strutted about resembling the Nailsmith’s scrapyard.”

Ogrim faltered, one foot in a puddle. “That is true. But even so, it is not proper for a Great Knight to be seen cowering beneath a leaf, especially from something so meager as rain.”

Isma chuckled. “Am I not a Great Knight myself? Do I seem to be cowering beneath this leaf?”

Ogrim whipped his head from side to side, scattering droplets. “No, certainly not. That was not my meaning! You would never cower, from rain or otherwise.”

“It is good that we’ve come to a consensus,” Isma said as she held out the leaf once again. “Here.”

After a moment of deliberation and surreptitious glances, Ogrim accepted the leaf, holding it awkwardly between his two claws. With a flick, it sprung into a favorable shape, and he lifted it tentatively over his head. The plinking of raindrops against armor ceased, and a relative quiet ensued.

“My thanks, Great Knight Isma,” he mumbled.

“Think nothing of it. And formality is not needed here. ‘Isma’ is fine.”

“Fair enough.”

Our path took us through a residential area of The City, where modest houses lined the streets. They were small and squarish, each sporting only a single window. No light filtered through their panes, and the constant murmur of habitation was nowhere to be heard. Forgotten possessions littered the porches: dolls of woven vines, mementos of crystal, and heavy furniture. Metal planks sealed the doors of most of the houses, with signs hung from them depicting dead bugs lying on their backs. There was no foot traffic; nothing stirred. The Lumafly lanterns standing on the street corners were as dark as dead suns, their Lumaflies pooling at the base of their bulbs.

“Day by day, our great city becomes its own mausoleum,” Isma said. “Do you recall when these houses bustled with life, and the streets were filled with young bugs playing at being Knights? It was not so long ago…”

“Sadly, that was before my time.” Ogrim said. “But I would have liked to see it.”

Isma halted beside a house surrounded by City guards. They milled about in their dull gray armor, speaking little. Upon noticing Isma, the guards snapped to attention and offered stiff bows. Several more of them emerged out of the house, bearing a litter over their heads. An emaciated bug was sprawled upon it, motionless and barely breathing. The rain struck it full in the face, yet it did not even flinch. A nebulous, orange glow pressed out from behind its glassy, unseeing eyes.

The nearest guard began to offer Isma a report, his tone low and deferential, but Isma merely lifted a claw and brought him to silence. “There is no need to inform us, guard. This event is not unfamiliar to me. Carry on.”

We continued down the street without another word. The echo of a hammer chased our departure, as another house was forever sealed.

“And I will see it, won’t I?” Ogrim asked, long after the hammering had faded away.

“Hmm?”

“What this city had once been.”

Isma let out a fragile laugh. “You are aware that only the King peers into the future, yes? I am not so blessed. No matter how dearly I might wish to, I cannot know what will come to pass.” She rolled the stem of her leaf, sending the droplets spinning out into the dark.

“Then perhaps He would tell me?”

“If you posed that question to the King, then He would offer you no promises, no guarantees of the future. That is not His way. He requires that we subsist on faith alone.” Her grip tightened on the stem. “But in truth… the King’s words often ring hollow, and his prescience seems a poor parlor trick.”

“You speak of Ze’mer?” Ogrim asked.

Isma nodded. Her words were choked. “Ze’mer’s doom was not His first oversight. Nor will it be His last.”

“Doom?” Ogrim trotted up to walk side-by-side with Isma. “But Ze’mer is not dead! If you desire, then we can petition the King and set out to pursue her. We can learn of her reason for deserting. If it is a righteous one, then the King may yet pardon her.”

“There are many kinds of death, Ogrim. Though Ze’mer did not perish on that battlefield, her heart surely did. Life without a purpose is no life at all. The Great Knight that we knew is lost to us. We will not see her again in this world.”

Ogrim tilted his head. “How are you sure of that? I have no skill for these riddles. What do you mean?”

“Please, no more questions, I cannot bring myself to speak of this anymore. Like so many other matters, it is not within our power to change. Let it be.”

“Do not be so quick to surrender! Are you unwilling to so much as look for her? We can—”

“Please.”

A hot breath rattled through Ogrim’s body. “As you wish,” he said, before falling back several steps to trail in Isma’s shadow.

We passed through tiled plazas, artificial parks, and abandoned bathhouses. Few parts of The City seemed equipped to combat the rain, and we spied wrought-iron benches and intricate fountains submerged in deep-standing pools. The few gutters we encountered gulped at the dirty, brown water but there was always another swell to replace the last.

Isma guided us along a winding route to avoid most of the flooding, but even so, I often waded up to my chest in frigid water. My cloak plastered to my body, slowing my movements and weighing me down. The tall Knights marched on, dauntless, and I struggled to keep pace.

Eventually, Ogrim took notice as I lagged behind, and he broke the oppressive quiet that had ensorcelled us. “Do you have another leaf, Isma?” he asked.

“I do not,” she replied, distant and dream-like. “Why?”

He looked at me over his shoulder. “This little one might also like a respite from the rain.”

The melancholy died in Isma’s voice, replaced by something flat and sharp. “It does not. I can assure you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Vessels cannot desire anything.”

Ogrim shrugged. “But this little one seems no different from you or I. Surely it wishes for something, all beings do.”

We came to a halt before a stretch of shops. Accessories, books, flowers, and baubles sat in the windowsills behind cages of glass. Unlike so much of what we’d seen, this area was populated, even to the point of being crowded. Plain, round-shouldered bugs scuttled in and out of the rain, Geo jingling in their claws. Upon taking notice of us, the bugs whispered to one another and gestured in our direction. Many halted mid-step to stare.

Isma drew Ogrim by the arm, out of the rain and into an arched passageway that ran through a tall building. “The King requested that I enlighten you to certain things,” she said, just barely audible. “I feel that now would be the best time. So, please listen to my words.” She paused to collect herself. “Ogrim, you have been a Great Knight for just a short while. There are many things with which you are unfamiliar. I began my service in the King’s court much like you. When I spied my first Vessel, it seemed to be a bug like any other: a child, with a quiet, fathomless stare. But in time, the King revealed its true nature. I learned that it was no bug, that it could not feel, or desire, or dream.” She leaned closer. “I condole your sentiments about this Vessel, but you must recognize that there are no secret thoughts hidden behind that mask. The Vessel is empty, as it was created to be. There are many like it, and all are the same. Over my years, dozens—hundreds—have paraded through the halls of the White Palace, and inevitably they broke or were broken, like brittle pottery in careless claws.” She turned away. “Do not become attached to such a thing. It is unwise of you to think of them as anything other than tools.”

Ogrim said nothing for several seconds. “I understand.”

Isma gave a weary nod. “Good.”

And we resumed our walk.

We passed beneath a portion of the cavern’s ceiling through which ran a particularly deep crack. Rain gushed down like blood from an open wound. It pounded upon my head and bowed my shoulders, making every step an onerous task. Water eddied and swirled about my shuffling feet, threatening to trip me. But suddenly, the rain ceased. The pattering continued all around me, but it no longer pelted my mask. I looked up to behold the green barrier of a leaf hanging over me, and the song of rain upon armor resumed.

“There. Is that better?” Ogrim asked me, as he held out his umbrella and a torrent of water fell over him. “I do not know much about Vessels, but even you must be growing weary of the rain. We can’t have you drowning on your feet, now can we?” His laugh was like flight, spiraling ever upward.

I did not voice any thanks, for I had none to give.

Ogrim continued to hold the leaf over my head as we crossed a series of bridges suspended on black metal chains. Hastily-constructed drainage ditches surged beneath us like raging rivers.

“No, Ogrim. No, you don’t,” Isma muttered.

“Pardon?”

“You do not understand. You have not heeded me at all.”

Ogrim teetered from foot to foot as he walked. “I am sorry,” he said. “But in earnest, Isma, you have never spoken this way before. For a moment, I thought that I heard the King’s voice in chorus with your own. It… unsettles me. Is it not you who so frequently chides me for oafishly stepping on stray flowers or scurrying Shrumelings? Is that grove of yours not a precious gem in your heart? Those ferns and vines do not hope or dream or feel, yet you treat them with the same bursting kindness that you offer the subjects of this kingdom. I do not understand why this child—”

“Vessel,” Isma interrupted.

“I do not understand why this Vessel deserves less!”

Isma stopped on the outskirts of The City, where the cobblestones gave way to the smooth, unbroken cavern floor. In the distance, on a slight incline, was a collection of tents—the mustering grounds. The sound of clashing nails carried through the rain.

“Living things are precious,” Isma whispered. “All living things. And it is our duty as Knights to protect them…” She turned to look at me—directly at me—for the first time. “But this automaton that the King has wrought is no living thing. It houses no beating heart, no Soul of its own. It cannot care about itself or anything else. It is like Monomon’s machines: cold and numb.”

Ogrim took a step between Isma and I, as if to make a shield of himself against her words. “For as long as I have known you, Isma, I believed you to be incapable of hate. Was that just a fool’s conceit?”

Isma flinched. “Call it hate if that so pleases you! But the King has given us a charge, and you will follow me.” She tore away from us and ascended the incline toward the mustering grounds. “If you refuse to hear the truth, then I must show it to you.”

The mustering grounds were a collection of huts and lean-to shelters centered around a huge, sandy pit. Contingents of bugs hid from the rain beneath silken tarps, chattering quietly among themselves. Within the pit several sparring matches were taking place, the source of the constant, metallic ringing in the air. The occupants fought with blunted nails, accompanied by battle cries and grunts. They were a motley assortment, in all sizes, shapes, and levels of skill. Most were frail-limbed and thin-shelled, and some were even shorter than I. Their equipment varied from freshly-forged to old and rusted.

But as we three came into view, activity shuddered to a halt. Even the combatants stopped mid-strike to wheel about and gawk at the sudden appearance of Great Knights.

Isma leaned forward as she walked, as if braving a powerful wind. “The King commanded us to teach this Vessel about battle. But this is not the first Vessel that I have trained, nor the tenth.” She stopped beside a rack of assorted nails, in varying sizes and shapes. Her claw drifted over the pommels before grasping the very smallest one and lifting it into the rain. The thing looked like a toy. She tossed the nail at my feet, and it embedded half its length into the stone. “Tell it to take the nail, Ogrim. It will obey you.”

Ogrim cleared his throat and glanced about. “I understand that the King advised us to make haste, but perhaps it is a bit early for this one to be using a non-blunted nail?” He leaned down to me. “Have you wielded a weapon before, little one?”

Isma strode over to the sparring pit and asked its current occupants to vacate. Her voice was soft, but left no room for argument. The bugs bowed and scuttled up the embankment to rest themselves on the edge. A crowd began to form and encircle the pit. Isma paid them no mind. She cast the leaf umbrella aside and leapt nimbly into the pit’s center, where she remained perfectly still.

Ogrim’s breathing was heavy. He crouched to plant a claw on my shoulder, and searched my eyes for a sign that was not there. “You must tell me if you are not prepared to face this challenge. Isma is not jesting, she means to test you in a far harsher way than I had hoped. Speak up, I cannot help you if you do not.”

But I had no reply to give.

Ogrim released me and rose like an iron tower. “Very well. Take the nail, little one. Meet Isma in the sparring pit and… prepare yourself.”

I obeyed without hesitation and extracted the cold hilt from the stone. The tip of the nail carved a thin scratch in the cavern floor behind me as I approached the pit. I slid down the embankment on unsteady feet. The bugs in the crowd, who were now so numerous that they threatened to spill over the pit’s edges, spoke to one another, first in murmurs and then in bemused shouts.

“...A rather short one...”

“...Yes, a poor challenge...”

“…Look at that measly nail! Not even fit to cut a bug’s meal.”

“...What farce is this?!...”

Ogrim followed up to the edge of the pit. “Did you train the other Vessels in this manner?” he yelled. The din of the crowd had grown so great that his voice barely carried.

“I have never had an audience, if that is what you are asking,” Isma shouted back. She drew a pouch from beneath the folds of her leaf-skirt and emptied it into the palm of her claw. Seeds tumbled out, a dozen of them, diamond-shaped and violently red. “With the first few Vessels I was cautious. Kind. They were small and seemed so unsuited for battle, I was loath to let them hold so much as a training nail. Yet, the King was adamant that I test their limits, and so, I did.”

The rain drenched Isma’s body and flowed down the veins of her leafy garb. The seeds rested in her cupped claw, inert and lifeless. She held them close to her mask as if to inspect them. And as she did this, something stirred about her, like the rippling heat of a great furnace.

I felt it. A vast, inviolable energy writhed and swirled throughout the pit, invisible but undeniably salient. It expanded and receded in fantastical patterns before coalescing within Isma’s seeds. They trembled with the infused energy, so much so that they threatened to vibrate off her palm. She cast them into the sand as if they had burned her. The seeds disappeared beneath the coarse grains like pebbles in a pond.

“Command it to attack me, Ogrim,” Isma shouted. “You need only say one word.”

The crowd settled, and the pressure of their voices diminished to an ambient hiss.

“Please, just wait.” Ogrim said. “I’ve never seen you bring twelve seeds to bear before, it is too dangerous! You could kill the little one with this sort of power!”

“Command it to attack me, Ogrim!” Isma repeated, louder. She settled into a defensive stance, arms held out to either side. “You cannot kill something that has never lived.”

“No more semantics, I beg! We should simply—”

“Command it!” Isma roared, all melody stripped from her voice.

Only the rain disturbed the sudden hush.

Time stretched. Ogrim stood impossibly still, but then a single, choked word escaped him. “Attack.”

Like some combustion, a new purpose hurled my body into motion. Isma was to be destroyed. It was the only thing in all the world that mattered, and I did not question.

I charged, and the crowd took up a cacophonous bellowing. More jeers and mockery were leveled at me, but the words meant nothing. Isma made no move as I gained speed and the distance between us diminished. As if by its own accord, my cloak melted into a liquid-black shadow and trailed like torn ribbons in my wake. I dashed, impossible fast, and before the crowd could even process, the sandy expanse that separated Isma and me vanished. I was suddenly standing an arm length away. Without pause, I struck.

Yet, Isma had expected this. She danced out of the range of my nail—narrowly avoiding the killing slash that I had leveled at her neck—and swung her arm through the empty air, as if to slap at some phantom adversary. Everything began to rumble. In an explosion of wet sand and rubble, twelve scarlet vines emerged from the earth and lashed out at me. I attempted to evade, but one tendril connected with my back and sent me tumbling over the sand like a skipped stone. I smashed into the embankment on the far side of the pit. Loose-packed rock caved behind me, and a crack ran the length of my mask.

“This is meant to be but a sparring match!” Ogrim yelled.

The crowd grew deathly silent.

Isma once again adopted that defensive stance. “No, this is a battle! And so long as either of us can still move, then it will continue! This is the test that the King desires!” She risked a glance in Ogrim’s direction. “Of all my lessons, you could never grasp the most fundamental: never underestimate your foes!”

Pebbles and sand cascaded over my blemished mask. My body ached and the world spun like a falling leaf. But the command remained unfulfilled, burning on inside of me. My nail had yet to bury itself in Isma’s chest. I could not stop.

The crowd murmured as I tottered upright.

Now, a wall of squirming, scarlet vines separated me from my goal. They were easily five times my size and wove in and out of one another like long grass caught in conflicting winds. Thorns covered them from tip to base and flashed in the wet world like sharpened metal. But I strode toward them all the same.

Isma did not wait for me to fully recover. Through a gap in the wall I spied her jab an arm in my direction, and the vines sprang like an extension of her body. They coiled, stretched, and whipped at me in one twisted mass. But just as they slammed into the sand, I once again darted forward, and the ebony substance of my cloak encompassed me. For an instant, I became intangible, and phased through the attacks like a beam of light through a pane of glass. I skidded to a halt on the opposite side of the vines, unharmed. With Isma right before me.

This time she seemed surprised as my nail stung through her silk-thin shell and bit at the vitals inside. I tasted a sweetness; an invigorating power. But as I drove my nail home, she wrenched her body to the left, preventing a deathblow. The nail’s tip screeched across her chest and shoulder. The sweet taste vanished as we stumbled apart. Before I could regain my balance, she waved her arm in my direction and the vines crashed down, cratering me into the sand.

“Your point is made, Isma!” I heard Ogrim shout from far away. “That wound is serious! Stop, we must staunch the bleeding!”

“Stand up, Vessel!” Isma screamed. “If you cannot best me then you will never fulfill your purpose! Stand up!”

I surged to my feet, not for Isma’s words, but because the drive to kill her would not relinquish me. It consumed my every fiber.

The vines descended again for another attack, and as I struggled to evade them, I struck out with my nail. One vine severed cleanly and toppled to the sand. It convulsed before withering into ash, but eleven more still remained. They bludgeoned and tossed me about, like a raft on river rapids.

I dodged from side to side, but glancing vine blows shredded my cloak and added fresh scars to my mask. Wildly, I slashed, even though every swing felt as though my arm might tear away.

The fight wore on, and opaque bubbles leached from my body into the quivering rain. One after another, the vines fell, weakening Isma’s living phalanx.

A strange feeling accompanied every successful cut of my nail. Milky light siphoned from the dying plant life and into me. The sweet, invigorating taste returned, and I redoubled my efforts, for a hunger had awoken in me. It ached even more than my failing body, and each vine that I hewed offered the slightest satiation.

Isma retreated several steps and pressed an arm against the hideous gash in her chest. She hunched low heaving for breath, but her other arm continued to wave, guiding the remaining vines.

A horizontal slice of my nail opened a path for me, and I took it, dashing forward as I had before. The vines swiped at my passage, attempting to restrain me, but they grasped only shadow. I had escaped their range and now nothing separated me from my purpose. Isma ceased her waving. The tension left her body. The vines behind me curled up and grew dormant. I needed only to land a single blow, and the fire that compelled me would be snuffed.

The space between us evaporated, and with all the strength left to me, I thrust the nail at her throat. But there was no screech of metal against shell, no splattering crunch, just the whistle of compressed air. Isma flowed around the nail like a stream of water. She shrugged to the side and the killing point went wide. With one arm still pressed against her own chest, Isma snatched me by the wrist, extended a foot to trip my own, and flipped me bodily onto the sand. The world inverted and I found myself staring into the cavern’s fractured ceiling.

With no nail in my grip.

I leapt back up. Isma’s maneuver had done no harm, but as I wheeled around to face her, the very nail that I had just wielded shot out to slash me across the mask, from right temple to left cheek. Something black and viscous dripped from the wound. I stumbled back and reoriented. Isma held the nail in one claw and pointed it at my eye socket.

“The King was not mistaken,” she rasped. “You are stronger. Faster. Than any have ever been.” She swallowed something seeping up the back of her throat, and her voice fell to a whisper that only I could hear. “You are every bit the killing machine that the King has longed for. But I am forced to question what sort of salvation such a murderous instrument could offer. My heart tells me that I should end you. Here. Before you drag the King even deeper into his madness. Before your Void devours us all.”

My weapon was gone… I had been ordered to destroy this bug, and even though I now lacked the means, the urge did not dissipate. I glanced around as Isma spoke. Nothing but sand and rock greeted me.

And yet.

Deep inside, a power churned. Not my own, but something borrowed. The sweetness that I had felt when my nail connected with Isma’s shell now billowed inside me like a sail. It knotted and bulged, seeking an exit from the cage of my body.

Isma took a deep, rattling breath. She tightened her grip on the nail and inched forward. The crowd grumbled like an enormous beast.

“…Is it done, then?…”

“…They’re still fighting…”

“…Have any of you ever seen a Great Knight bleed before?…”

“…She’s readying the nail! It’s an execution!…”

The power centered itself within my chest. It pressed from the inside out, threatening to crack me open and spill forth in a torrent, and I did not hold it back.

“I am sorry,” Isma whispered. “If that means anything.” She lifted the nail and stepped forward, aiming another slash at my mask, but this time charged with lethal intent.

The crowd howled condemnations and approval in equal measure. Swept up within that discord was Ogrim. He slid down the pit’s embankment and rushed across the sand, but he was far too slow.

Soul erupted from my chest; concentrated life force that I had stolen from Isma one blow at a time. It moved like a comet, luminous-white and unstoppably powerful. With a concussive blast that forced the crowd into silence, the Soul slammed into Isma, tearing the nail from her claw, hurling her to the ground, and cracking her shell.

I pounced straight for the discarded nail, snatching it by the sand-peppered hilt. In the slick reflection of the blade, I beheld my own mask. It was a ruin of slashes, fractures, and that puzzling black blood. Despite the quake in my legs and the failing substance of my body, I stumbled toward Isma. She lay prone, seeming to drift in and out of consciousness, at one point bracing her arm against the sand in a futile attempt to rise.

My purpose screamed at me. She had to die. Three uncertain steps separated us, and then I would drive the nail into her heart. There was no other possibility.

The crowd shrieked. Armored bugs stormed down the embankment. The pounding in my head did not relent, and I found myself gazing down upon Isma’s face.

The nail rose.

And a roar cut the bedlam.

“STOP!”

Chapter Text

And it was gone.

Like a puff of smoke; a breath of air; a fog bank shredded by the summer sun.

The imperative—which had demanded Isma’s death above all other things—forsook me. And I was left behind, feeling heavy and lethargic. A new command pinned my feet to the sand and shackled my arms.

I did not move. I could not.

My nail hung frozen over Isma’s prone form, the fatal point a mere inch away. In the flash of a silvered claw, the nail was batted aside into the sand, and Ogrim loomed before me.

“Enough, little one,” he panted. “That is enough.”

From every side, I was submerged beneath a sea of bugs. They flooded into the pit, laying their claws upon me, every scrap that they could grasp, and held me still as if fearing I would fly away. Many circled furtively around Isma, murmuring low.

“…Kindly Isma is wounded?…”

“…It is most grievous…”

“…Did that runt really do this?...”

“…Impossible. It moved so fast. Like dark magic…”

“…That blast of light! I’ve seen it before! Amongst those snail cult outcasts…”

Ogrim waved his claws over the heads of the crowd and bid them to step back. They released me, falteringly, but only once my nail had been confiscated and ferried away.

“Make room!” Ogrim bellowed. “Make room!” He knelt to cradle Isma. Rain chimed against his head and back, dripping from his chin onto her mask.

After a long second, Isma stirred. Again, she swallowed something in her throat. “O..Ogrim…?”

“I am here. You must be still. Rest. The little one delivered quite a blow.”

Isma lifted a claw and pressed it against her chest wound. It came back damp, not with rain, but a pale, blue liquid. “Quite a blow indeed,” she whispered. “The King would be pleased.”

“What nonsense is that?” Ogrim growled. “The King would take no pleasure in the suffering of his Knights.”

“Perhaps not, but he would… revel in the triumph of his Vessel…” Isma tilted her head to glance at me.

Ogrim’s voice grew low and strangled. “Can you heal it? Is this merely another death that you defy?”

Isma let out a chuckling gasp. “I am afraid… not this time… The Vessel is a rare sort of thief. I am drained… If I had my—” But she lapsed into silence.

Ogrim jerked Isma close and checked her breathing. He lifted her into the air like a bundle of broken sticks and roared. “Move aside! All of you! Now!”

The crowd divided before him, creating a passage through the chitinous sea. Their voices were an indistinguishable tumult, but they all carried a cumulative question: had I killed her?

Is that… what I had wanted?

Ogrim moved with uncharacteristic grace, careful of the burden in his arms. He did not answer the queries hurled at him like stones. As he reached the steep embankment, he came to a halt. “A litter!” He yelled. “Quickly, and rope!” The two nearest bugs scrambled to fulfill his demands and vanished into a nearby supply tent.

From across the camp approached a retinue of lumbering warrior beetles. They were large, spherical, and heavily armored, each bearing a wicked-looking greatnail upon its back. The beetles maintained a wary vigil and warded away any members of the crowd that strayed too close. In the center of their defensive circle strolled a thin, ghostly figure.

As the beetles reached the edge of the pit, they parted, and the figure shuffled forward. I failed to define it, bug or otherwise, for it was concealed beneath a long, gray cloak that ran the length of its body and pooled in tattered strips at its feet. The only distinct feature that it possessed was the mask upon its head, pristinely white and bearing a single oval eye.

Ogrim finally took notice. He leaned forward, as if to better see. “Watcher Lurien…? What are you doing here?”

“I watched,” Lurien replied. His words seemed to stain the air, and not even the rain could wash them away. He rotated his apparitional body a few degrees, inclining the mask toward the distant Spire of his namesake.

“I—I see,” Ogrim said. “But there has been a sparring accident! He looked to me, at the black, tar-like substance that oozed through my mask and onto the sand. “Isma is in a serious state. She needs healing!”

“I know.”

“Is there a Soul master nearby in The City? Someone who could tend to such a wound?”

“No.”

A tremble worked its way into Ogrim’s limbs “A medicine bug, anything?”

“No.”

“Time is very short. There must—”

“I know.”

“Lurien, she needs aid! Will you help her, have you no purpose in being here?”

Lurien’s body bent forward, lowering the mask as if to stare at his own feet. Mud and sand had sullied the fringes of his cloak.

All was silent, but the rain. Seconds passed, and Ogrim’s tremble became a quake. “Lurien!” he yelled.

Ponderously, Lurien turned to his retinue and nodded. “My garden.”

The beetles swayed into motion, like statues infused with sudden life. Out of the supply tent emerged the earlier pair of bugs, draped in vine-rope and bearing the litter that Ogrim had demanded. They hastened toward the pit but were stopped by Lurien’s retinue. The beetles silently, but forcefully, appropriated the rope and litter before descending the embankment and forming another defensive circle. They did not ask permission to extract Isma from Ogrim’s arms, but he did not stop them.

“What of this garden?” Ogrim asked. “What good will it do her?” He stood sentinel as the beetles lashed Isma to the litter. The blue ichor seeped from her chest like a spring emerging from a fractured rock.

“Watch.”

“Offer me more than but a single word. Can she be saved? Tell me!”

Lurien’s attention did not drift from Isma’s still body. “Trust,” he said.

Ogrim hissed out a long breath. “Very well… But you must be most careful with her. At times, even Great Knights are fragile.”

“Yes,” Lurien seemed to concede.

At the nudging of the warrior beetles, the crowd dispersed, back beneath their tarps and out of the rain. Isma’s litter was hoisted up the embankment and carried off, with a beetle on each handle like a royal procession. It moved smoothly and swiftly out of the camp, waiting for no one. Ogrim hastened after it, without so much as glancing in Lurien’s direction.

I was soon left alone upon the sand, immobile and aching. Something of me pulsed beneath the mask, each time bringing a lance of pain and a fresh, black droplet. Fatigue shook my legs, begging me to fall, but my directive required otherwise. I was to remain still. As long as necessary.

But Ogrim did not turn back to collect me. His wide shoulders vanished beyond the rim of the pit, and the rainsong of his armor faded into the distance.

He had forgotten.

Only Lurien remained to stare at me, slowly scanning from top to bottom, ending on the expanding puddle of black at my feet.

“Vessel…” he finally said, testing the word. “Come.”

My body heaved into mechanical motion, and for the first few steps, Ogrim’s command lingered, chafing against this new order and hindering my progress. But over time, it attenuated into nothing and Lurien won out. I ascended the embankment with quavering arms and settled myself at Lurien’s side.

He turned away, departing the camp without another word.

As did I.

Lurien’s path through The City was indolent and meandering. Ogrim, Isma, and the retinue had long since left us behind, but that did not hasten Lurien’s step. He paused many times to observe things. A crumpled metal fence, the sodden remains of a scroll, a tumble of masonry aside a derelict building, a green-shelled child twirling a parasol. He did not approach anything. And did not respond to the child’s wave. He just stared.

We stood beside a puddle on the road. It was deep, as if some huge weight had fallen from above and indented the cobblestones. Something lurked beneath the water, but the rain’s assault distorted the surface. Lurien leaned over it, obstructing the rain with his body and stilling the water. “Look,” he commanded. Below the lingering ripples, a cluster of shattered glass slowly came into clarity. It reflected the frosted light of the Lumafly lanterns, painting Lurien’s mask with warped rings of gray that danced and shifted with the slosh of water.

I leaned in to look, as I had been ordered, and the glass glittered before me like diamonds. But as I gazed, an inky droplet filtered through the crack in my mask and fell into the pool. It dispersed like tines of lightning, unspooling and lancing out toward the fringes of the puddle. In the passage of seconds, the waters were overtaken and transformed, becoming opaque and unnaturally still.

Lurien’s body crackled as he straightened. He looked at me, at the blackness smearing my mask. And out of the parting shadow of his cloak emerged an emaciated arm, with long digits that ended in needle-like points. He reached out, tracing the curvature of my horns, the circle of my eyes, and the fissure that ran down my forehead.

“Pain?” he asked. “Terrible?”

I did not reply. Merely dripped in the rain.

“Come,” he repeated.

We set off again, abandoning the puddle without looking back. This time, Lurien did not dawdle with errant distractions, and our march was unbroken until the silhouette of the Spire blotted out the cavern’s ceiling.

Lurien’s Spire was a structure of stone and metal, with intricacies that had been imperceptible from a distance. Fossil-like carvings embedded its archways, and jagged, gleaming steeples adorned its roofs. A sheet of glass covered one side of the building, rising all the way to its summit and offering a view into the Spire’s innards. Floor after floor, chamber after chamber, of elaborate decoration gazed back into the gloom of The City.

We stopped at the entrance, beneath an overhang supported by gilded pillars and covered in conical spikes. A massive pair of doors guarded passage into the Spire itself, but they hung ajar, just wide enough to accommodate visitors. Lurien shook the water from his cloak before proceeding and bid me to do the same. As we entered, the ubiquitous hiss of the rain became a far-off, splattering percussion.

The Spire’s interior was warm and bright. The entrance gave way to a vast, tiled atrium five stories tall, with a ceiling of mirrored glass. Scroll-stacked library shelves lined the perimeter of the room, illuminated by hanging chandeliers. Tables and silk-draped benches were arrayed upon the floor in complex geometric patterns, and all about them were bugs. Young and old, large and small. They reclined on the furniture, clenching writing utensils in their pincers. Discussion bubbled among a few, but the majority scribbled and read in silence. Activity did not cease at Lurien’s presence as it had for Ogrim and Isma back at the mustering grounds. Only a few of the bugs acknowledged the Watcher with glances and shallow bows. In turn, Lurien paid them no mind.

We ascended a staircase onto a landing that offered a sweeping view of the atrium. Beside us, an attendant bug—polished to a sheen—stood before a darkened shaft that rose up into the Spire above. Lurien nodded at him, and the bug responded with a dexterous genuflection that nearly brushed his eyes against the floor. The bug reached over to a silver lever and yanked it with brutal efficiency, eliciting a distant rattling sound that grew gradually closer. Soon, an open-faced elevator, suspended on metal chains and crowned with spikes, descended into the shaft. The attendant bug hopped inside and readied himself beside another, identical lever. He did not speak, but gazed at Lurien intently.

The ascent was jostling, and my enervated legs toiled to maintain balance. The walls were close about the elevator in a claustrophobic embrace, and the only light came from a lantern nested in the ceiling. The Lumafly within fluttered fitfully, periodically dimming to a sickly orange.

An unusually powerful jolt stole my feet out from under me, and I stumbled to the elevator’s floor. Lurien’s current order was to follow him, and I could not do such a thing collapsed upon the ground. I pulled myself back up by bracing against a brass support beam. But once I had steadied, another jolt hurled me back down. Lurien watched me, head tilted, as I repeated this several times. Darkness dripped against the cold metal, and the pulse behind my mask intensified. Each throb was like feeble arms beating against a prison. Black bubbles escaped through the gaps in my cloak and floated into the air where they evanesced in a corrosive sizzle.

But by my seventh attempt, Lurien bent over and placed a cadaverous claw on my shoulder. “Sit,” he said, before taking his own seat upon the ground. His cloak billowed out and settled amorphously about him, concealing his shape.

I fell again, and this time there was no compulsion to rise, instead the opposite. I slumped, legs extended before me, arms limp at my sides. The panting did not end for some time.

The attendant bug blinked. And glanced from Lurien to me. He cleared his throat as if to voice something, but instead seated himself on the floor and crossed his legs.

Above and far off, the concussion of rain grew louder. It rose steadily, climbing toward a paralytic cacophony. Just as it seemed the sound could grow no louder, the shaft’s walls fell away and were replaced with one long sheet of glass that stretched into the interminable distance above. The rain slammed relentlessly against this new, translucent barrier, but accomplished nothing. Below us sprawled The City. It was an indistinguishable mass of shadow-shapes pierced by points of light.

Across The City, the densest constellation of lights carved a twisted, centipedal path westward, toward the mustering grounds and the tunnels beyond. Lurien observed it from his seated position, looking like a watchtower atop a hill.

The elevator slowed and ground to a screeching halt before a corridor lined with many closed doors. The attendant bug sprung to a standing position and gestured expectantly, but Lurien shook his head and glanced up. The attendant yanked the silver lever once more and we resumed our ascent.

This process repeated, each time revealing another aspect of Lurien’s Spire. A room of sallow-eyed bugs bent over liquid-filled glassware. A barracks stocked with beds, lances, and winged sentries. A plush parlor suffocated by hanging tapestries and lurid portraits. A filigreed balcony embedded in the glass, roofless and open to the rain.

Eventually, the elevator stopped at a portal discrepant with all the others. There was no twinkle of precious metals or the sheen of polished stone. Just a dome-shaped chamber replete with greenery. It was large, with lofty pillars and a high ceiling that culminated in a skylight. Leafy vines dangled from the walls, and untamed shrubbery peppered the brown-black soil. Flowers exploded from every surface in every color and shape. Some plants were sequestered behind silvered fences or perforated shells of glass, while others burgeoned unhindered.

“Come,” Lurien said to me.

In the midst of the verdure were Ogrim and Isma, alone, for the beetle retinue was nowhere to be seen. Isma still lay upon her litter, the ropes cut and tossed aside. Ogrim sat beside her, his back braced against a pair of tree trunks that had coiled together. Upon noticing us, Ogrim rose to unsteady feet. “Her condition has not changed,” he said. “Her breathing is shallow, and her sleep will not end. I fear that she—Well… I fear a great many things.”

Lurien did not immediately reply. He turned back toward the elevator and nodded once more at the attendant bug. With that same, acrobatic genuflection, the attendant bug pulled the lever and descended, leaving the four of us alone.

“Fear.” Lurien said. “I know.” He moved to Isma’s side, sliding smoothly across the grass and the protruding tree roots.

As my command dictated, so did I.

Ogrim offered me a look as I approached—one fleeting second—before turning back to Isma and bowing his head. He gazed upon her as if she rested at the base of a deep pit. “Soon after my Knighting at the Champion’s Call” he began, “before I was even granted time to fully convalesce, a crisis befell the Kingdom. That year, a great spawning of Dirtcarvers had overpopulated Deepnest, and in their discontent the pests tunneled into the Queen’s Garden, seeking fresh prey and wider spaces. The gleaming legions of Hallownest could not be spared, so instead the King dispatched we Knights to resolve the matter.” Ogrim sighed. “It was our inaugural moment. The first time that we Five Greats battled side by side. And what a magnificent sight it had been… We chose a knotted grove as our place of combat, infested with vines and brambles that served as their own sort of bulwark. And though hundreds—thousands—of Dirtcarvers hurled themselves against us, we held firm. Minutes turned to hours, and when one of us inevitably fell back in exhaustion, another was ever quick to take their place. I saw the best in my friends that day. Hegemol’s crushing power. Dryya’s relentless ferocity. Ze’mer’s unerring insight. And Isma’s…” He shook his head, chuckling weakly. “It will serve as an eternal blemish upon my valor, but at first I could not bring myself to join in the fray. Apprehension bound my feet to the earth and would not leave me. But as the battle’s intensity reached its zenith, and it seemed that the creatures’ raw numbers would win the day, Isma’s words were what spurred me to action and rattled the fear from my heart. That day will endure with me always, the truest embodiment of Knighthood.”

Lurien nodded. Silent.

“But now,” Ogrim continued. “Ze’mer has forsaken us, and Isma…” He swallowed. “This very morning, I learned that we Five Greats had diminished to four. But by this evening will we be three?”

“No.” Lurien said, with a forcefulness that he had not yet displayed. He crouched at Isma’s shoulder and reached through the folds of his cloak. Those needle-thin fingers stretched down to clack against her mask, causing near-microscopic scars upon the surface. “Awaken,” he commanded. “Drink.”

Isma twitched and took a wheezing breath. Her carapace crackled like an old eggshell and she coughed. One of her tender arms shot out to the side of the litter, blindly, desperately, searching for something. Her grip settled on the branch of a shrubbery with feather-fine leaves. She released her breath and went slack.

Lurien stood, gesturing for us to step back. Ogrim protested, but still acquiesced, retreating to the archway that led toward the elevator shaft. We watched Isma from across the room. She was corpselike in her stillness, yet the trickle of blue continued from her chest.

“What is the meaning of this?” Ogrim asked. “How is this meant to aid her?”

Lurien replied in a liquid murmur. “Soul.”

As he spoke, Isma stirred upon her litter. She raised her arms into the air and grasped at something invisible overhead. A phantom wind began to disturb the plants nearby. They sighed and scuffled as the wind rose to a gust, and then to a gale. Shrieking filled the room, rattling the panes of the skylight. Loose leaves and blades of grass danced crazily in the current.

And I saw it, again, just as I had during our battle upon the sand. A ripple ran through the world, warping and twisting the space about Isma, condensing into a single point and then clawing outward.

A white mist, like ink dispersing in water, rose from the plants all throughout the room. The trees, the shrubs, the flowers. They all exuded this pale, luminous substance—the very same that I had drained from Isma’s vines. The gale tugged at this ghostly mist, shepherding it through the air and toward Isma, in countless, thread-fine streams that centered upon her chest like the spokes of a silken wheel.

Every plant shivered, quaked. And wilted. The greens of the leaves, the reds, blues, and yellows of the flowers, they all bleached, and then blackened as if consumed within a fire. They bowed upon their stems and branches, before crumbling into desiccated husks and settling upon the ground.

The mist swirled above Isma’s raised arms like a gathering tempest. At the sight of it, the hunger in me sparked to life but went unsated. After one revolution, the mist was drawn into Isma’s chest with a massive rush of wind and vanished.

The once lush garden was now an umber ruin, and Isma’s once mortal wound was now but a memory.

She lowered her arms by her sides and took a great breath that swelled her unblemished carapace, then relaxed.

Ogrim stormed across the room, kicking dead plant life into clouds of ash. They coated his armor and smothered away its sheen, but he was heedless. “Isma!” he cheered as he fell to his knees and lifted her head with the flat of a claw. “You are healed. Death is bested yet again, oh, thank the King!”

Isma coughed, gently, and swiped a claw over her chest. “How long was I—”

“Hours at the most,” Ogrim said, his words a river. “We ushered you here as quickly as the Watcher Knights could manage.”

“Here…?” Isma pushed to a sitting position with Ogrim’s aid.

“Lurien’s Spire, it was his proposal to bring you here, to recuperate in the Spire’s—”

“Garden,” Isma breathed. She absorbed the room with a slow turn of her head, lingering on the pallid bark of the twined trees beside them. She extended a trembling arm to cup the petals of a bellflower. It was brittle and brown like corroded glass. It shattered at her touch. “I see…”

Lurien approached the pair, and I trailed after. Isma flinched at the sight of me.

“Lurien,” she said, “you brought the Vessel? But why is it still wounded?”

They inspected the slashes and fractures in my mask. I was hunched, sluggish, and black bubbles still drifted from my body like molted feathers.

Lurien heaved a sort of shrug. “Depleted. Soul-less.”

Isma gazed into the middle-distance over my shoulder. “It weaponized the Soul that it stole from me… and yet it cannot mend itself. The other Vessels were the opposite.” She shook her head and attempted to rise.

“Easy now,” Ogrim rumbled. “You are adept as ever at miracle-making, but that was close, Isma. Far closer than I would ever like to see again.”

“I am fine,” Isma replied, with a half-waver. “Lurien’s shrewdness saw to that.” She nodded at the Watcher. “I have you to thank yet again. I am sorry that your garden was made a libation for my meager sake. It is… lamentable.”

Lurien glanced down at the husk-covered dirt and prodded at it with a foot through the folds of his robes.

“Well, if you are truly recovered,” Ogrim huffed, “then do explain yourself! And not just this,” he gestured vaguely to the dead plants, “but that madness of yours at the mustering grounds. That was no death-duel, and yet you still fought with such bestial vigor. It is wild fortune that this little one still lives. What compelled you to such lengths?”

“It is not your right to chide me,” Isma began. “And I already informed you that the Vessel is not alive, it is—”

“And you!” Ogrim shouted, jabbing a claw in my direction, as if just now noticing me. “Little one, do you know nothing of sparring?! There is a crucial distinction between warfare and mere practice. When you approach a fellow Knight in the yard, you do not strike at them with every shred of your strength. You exercise restraint, especially when clashing with one weaker or less experienced than yourself! Sparring is the act of bettering one another through gallant combat, one nail sharpening the other. It is not some squabble of rabid Mawleks.”

I was to restrain myself…? But who were my fellow Knights?

Ogrim paused, allowing his indignation to echo off the walls. “Well?” he asked, his gaze shifting between the two of us.

I said nothing and bowed my head, for I could no longer lift it. Maintaining consciousness was growing more and more difficult. The fatigue weighed upon my back like slabs of stone, and my vision shrank to a pinpoint in a sea of black.

Isma wobbled to her feet. “Suddenly, Ogrim, you speak as if I am the novice and you the veteran Knight. You know full well why I tested the Vessel so, but that truth does not suit you, and so you banish it from your mind. There was great risk in what I did, yes, but it was necessary. For our King. For Hallownest. Do you truly expect some manner of apology?”

Ogrim’s bluster fell and rose like a sputtering flame. “I—Perhaps I do! But not for myself, no. Mutual amends are in order between you and the little one. Even if that brutal clash was at the King’s command, there mustn’t be any lingering resentment. With a few earnest words, any rift can be repaired.”

Isma shook her head. “The Vessel does not care about wounded pride and reparations. Would you have me apologize to a lance or a hammer? This is no different.”

A few seconds passed. The burden of my own body was crushing. Gravity threatened to hurl me to the ground like the flowers and withered shrubs. Lurien took note as my legs spasmed and my shoulders bent. He spoke one word to Isma, “Heal,” but it was swept away in Ogrim’s next outburst.

“You are so adamant, and I cannot fathom why! Every third day, Hegemol expresses undying love for his own mace. What harm is there in a few kindly words, hollow though they may be?”

“Because it is senseless!”

“And are those beauteous arias you offer your grove not senseless as well? The plants have no ears to hear, they must care not.”

Isma shot Ogrim a sidelong glance. “Your fondness for this Vessel is a mistake. It has none for you, I can promise. And its only destiny is sacrifice.”

Ogrim spent a time clawing aimlessly at the remains of a flower bush. “This power that you possess… You sucked the Soul from these plants like a starving Squit. Is this why you keep your grove, so that it might serve as your sacrifice?”

I fell to one knee. Though I struggled to rise, my limbs did not respond to me. They grew numb and infinitely heavy.

“Yes, it is. And I am not sorry.” She turned to Ogrim, all the frailness seeping out of her. “Just as our King, I do what I must. So that I might be powerful enough to protect the things I cannot afford to sacrifice. Like this Kingdom. Its citizens… And you.”

Ogrim stiffened. He began and abandoned several sentences, before going quiet.

“You fear that I grow cold, don’t you?” Isma asked. She reached out, but stopped herself, hiding her claws behind her back. “But I am what I have always been, and your eyes only now open to the truth of things.” She looked down at the leaves of her skirt. “This is a Great Knight, Ogrim. This is what you have vowed to be.”

“Was that vow a righteous one?” Ogrim asked, with a voice parched and cracked. “Or—”

Vertigo surged, and the ground rushed up to slam against my mask. The garden—strewn with corpses—spun and spun, all the while diminishing behind a pall of gray. I was made vaguely aware of distant, panicked shouting.

And then darkness devoured me.

Chapter Text

I did not dream. It was not within my power. Only black pressed against me, torpid and crushing. There was no sensation, no thought, no command. The blaze of purpose was extinguished within me, and for one midnight moment, nothing drove me to act. I was not required to wait, or follow, or kill.

But it did not last.

Far-off voices flitted over me, at first too quiet to understand yet climbing steadily into coherence. Fragments of dialogue—like beams of light—lanced through the murk that ensorcelled me, sweeping it away and flooding my nothing with resonance.

“Do you believe that the little one will recover?”

“Why do you insist on that title?”

“What, ‘little one’? It is a suitable name for the Vessel, don’t you think, considering its vertical challenges? And besides, the King also calls it as such. That is reason enough.”

“The King speaks in jest, I am sure. That name is just another of his dry humors. He does not indulge in such acts of affection.”

“As far as you are aware.”

“What?”

“I would wager that you have not borne witness to our King’s most private moments. It is said that the toughest shells conceal the tenderest hearts. He must care for his creation in some way, yes? Do you not suspect this of our King as I do?”

“No, Ogrim. No, I do not.”

The voices receded, and the viscid dark closed in once again. But this time I was not left alone. The molten spike of pain remained to barb me, in my head, my body, my limbs. They ached as if they had been ripped apart and stitched back together.

With the rising pain came another surf of voices to wash over me.

“Did the King teach you?”

“Hmm?”

“Your powers, those healing arts. Did He share His secrets with you? Is that how you became a Great Knight?”

“I suppose so.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Is there no tale to tell? Your legend must have a beginning, as all legends do.”

“This persistence of yours will not lead to a pleasing revelation. It is best not to pry.”

“Even so, I wish to know. Please, Isma.”

“If this is truly your wish, then fine. When I was but a small thing, the King recognized in me a certain aptitude. Perhaps He foresaw something in His many futures, but whatever intent drove Him, He allowed me a glimpse into the nature of Soul. I learned all that I could from the King, and then began my own studies. Many years of toil yielded up their knowledge, and I became something of an expert.”

“That ability of yours, the way that you drink the Soul from the life around you. Was that part of the King’s instruction?”

“No, that came from my own insights… Listen, Ogrim. Although I would rather this topic remain shrouded, it will come to light eventually, such things always do. For that reason, I think it is best that you hear the truth from me. Are you familiar with the Soul Sanctum?”

“With its rumors, yes, gruesome as they tend to be. What are you implying?”

“I had a claw in the Sanctum’s founding. Without my meddling it would never have come to be.”

“Are you claiming a part in these dark deeds?”

“No, never! You must know that in the early days, the Sanctum was a different sort of place, a center of scholarship and integrity. With my aid, it made wondrous advancements within the field of Soul manipulation. What we know today of growth and regeneration are thanks to those efforts. Despite the King’s reproach, the Sanctum and I were a goodly force…”

“Wait, ‘reproach’? If the King granted you this knowledge of Soul, why would He condemn you for it?”

“The more that I learned, the less tutelage the King willingly offered. Study of Soul is an infinite well, and no matter how deeply I dove, there were always greater depths. I suspect that the King Knighted me not for my prowess, but merely to draw me away from my research. Perhaps He was correct to do so. The Sanctum’s goal has long since been lost in its pursuit. The work toward prosperity has twisted into the obsession for power. I often wonder if the King foresaw this outcome, or if what hope he spied in me was the sad shade of an impossible future. But enough. The truth is laid out, and you now know the source of my art. You are welcome to revile me if it so suits you but expect no penitence. I did what I believed was right, as I will continue to do.”

“Isma, I would never revile you… I—”

“Wait. The mending has begun.”

The voices ebbed away, but I no longer sank. A buoyancy—a swelling—in my chest lifted me from the clutching void. The shards of pain were pried from my body and the dark was wiped away. The white flare of consciousness returned to me, and face was given to voice.

I beheld Isma.

She crouched over me, her fragile claws pressed against my mask. Trailing wisps of Soul hung all about us like clouds of pollen. “It is done,” she said, breathing heavily. “I’ve repaired its shell as best I can. It should heed your commands now.” She half-fell, half-rolled back onto the dead grass and propped herself up with trembling arms. “If I had possessed more Soul, then the mending would have been easier, but… there is little left here to spare.”

“Still, it was masterful work,” Ogrim said, stepping close. “This incident would have come to a far more gruesome end without your art. In my eyes it is a great gift.”

Isma’s gaze was set on the floor.

“So, is the little one awake?” Ogrim continued. He looked down from the great pinnacle of his body. “Are you alright?” he asked me. “Can you stand?”

I did not respond, but the words came to me as a command, like rushing water filling an empty basin. I pushed off the shriveled earth, dregs of vertigo threatening my balance, but I did not fall.

Lurien’s garden stretched out before me, gray and lifeless. It was just as it had been before I lost awareness. Skeletal branches, blighted leaves, and disintegrating flower petals greeted me. Ash flaked off the vines that clung to the walls and fell like snow.

“Woah, careful now,” Ogrim murmured. He cupped a claw beneath my arm and steadied me. “Your stalwart conduct is admirable, little one, but do not push yourself to such a breaking point. By the King’s own words, you are a treasure of Hallownest, always rest when you feel a need for it.”

Isma leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her knees. “There is scant reason in coddling it, Ogrim. Learning the Vessel’s breaking point was the exact intent of this trial.” Her voice grew hard. “It seems to have surpassed me in that aspect.”

Ogrim released my arm and cocked his head at Isma. “What is this I detect? You called the little one incapable of resentment, but do you claim the same merit? That mutual amends I demanded was not merely for the sake of its pride, but yours.”

“Why would I care about such a thing?” Isma asked, tightening her grip on her knees. “One does not begrudge a training dummy.”

Ogrim chuckled. “It is fortunate for us all that you are such a mighty warrior, Great Knight. Defeat comes so infrequently that you have not yet learned how to be graceful in it. Perhaps you should take a note from me. With all our sparring, I mastered that particular skill.”

Isma rested her head on her knees, as if she could no longer hold it aloft. “Please. Enough,” she said, barely even a whisper.

Ogrim shifted from foot to foot. “I am sorry,” he said. “That was clumsy, I had hoped a dash of Hegemol’s humor might ease things, but—” He rested his armored bulk upon the ground. “Sorry.”

I watched the pair, for no other purpose presented itself. The serrated hooks of pain and weariness had fallen away. I stood tall once again.

From across the desolate garden, Lurien approached. He kicked at flower husks and piles of ash, removing the meager obstacles from the cobbled path. His lower robes were caked with filth as if he had been at the task for quite some time. He spied me and shuffled near.

“Repaired,” Lurien observed, tonelessly. “Good.” He extended two slim claws to explore the rectified contours of my mask. His touch was light, like droplets of water. “Come,” he said, as he turned away from the ravaged garden and set off toward the elevator shaft.

Just as it had before, Lurien’s command clashed against Ogrim’s. The two differing orders, one to stand, the other to follow, vied for supremacy within me. I leaned toward Lurien and took an excruciating step. And another. But a voice called out, dragging me to a halt.

“Wait,” Ogrim said. He rose and wiped at the dust coating his shell. “Watcher Lurien, where are you off to with the little one?”

Lurien drew a line with his gaze, from Ogrim to the elevator shaft and then back again. He repeated his command to me and resumed walking. “Come.”

I lurched into motion, my legs stiff and faltering.

“I must insist, please wait,” Ogrim said, jolting me to a second stop. “The King entrusted the little one to my care. Now that Isma is no longer in mortal danger, I would like to remain true to my charge. Grant us a moment to recuperate and we will accompany you.”

“It is alright,” Isma whispered. “Doubtless, the King has provided Lurien with his own instructions. He has as much a right to guide the Vessel as we, and it is unreasonable for us to hinder him with my weary steps.” She stood up, so laboriously that Ogrim reached out a claw to assist, but she shooed him away. “I offer my thanks yet again, Watcher. Without your wisdom, I would be a corpse, and the Vessel might have been irreparably damaged.” She offered a bow so shallow that it was little more than a nod.

Lurien’s frame rose and fell, as if in a deep breath. He inched closer to the elevator shaft.

Ogrim hunched beside Isma. “Are we sure?” he asked, hushed. “The King will not be displeased? I do not possess Hegemol’s chronicle of faultlessness, but that does not mean I take pleasure in failing at my duties.”

“You need not worry, our service here is done.” Isma said. “And besides, I too have a task in need of fulfillment, one that only you are suited for.”

Ogrim cleared his throat. “Well, I—If I am needed, then I suppose things are concluded here. I certainly don’t intend to suggest another sparring session. We’ve had more than enough excitement today.” He lumbered over to me and leaned down. “Little one—Little Knight. This was quite an afternoon. A bit harrowing for my tastes, but you proved your worth and forced me to swallow my own presumptions. You are ever a surprising one. Take care, and heed Lurien’s every sparse word. He is likely a greater instructor than I’ll ever be.” Ogrim patted the top of my head, and then swept into a bow.

Yet again, Lurien repeated his command. It came from over his departing shoulder, terse and sharp. But this time, no friction held me in place. Instead, a force like a strong gust pressed against my back, setting me into a trot.

Lurien halted beside the elevator shaft and pulled the glittering lever. He did so with such meticulous slowness that its every inner mechanism clicked sequentially in a cascading melody. We waited as the chains jangled and the elevator ascended from deep below.

Behind us, the two Knights’ voices were made audible only by the echo of the chamber.

“Will you forgive it?” Ogrim asked.

“For what, besting me? I have given my answer.”

“No, for forcing this side of yourself into the light, even if only before Lurien and I.”

Isma scoffed. “Lurien was already well-versed in my history, and no duress compelled me to explain myself. It was my choice. I had always intended to tell you of this, but… the correct time just never seemed to arrive.”

“Yes, but had the Vessel not wounded you so, would you not—”

“Ogrim!” Isma blurted. “It is quite cruel of you to assail me with these questions while I am so drained. When you are next on the brink of death, I will make sure to harry you in kind. Now, enough of this matter, please. The task that I have to offer is of no small importance, and it must be done in secret. Not a single witness, do you understand?”

“Very well, it was not my intent to vex you.” Ogrim said. “Now, what do you require of me? Although this seems an ominous request, I vow that your secret will be kept.”

“Good…” Isma said. The echoes died for an instant. “I am not so proud that I would deny the facts. I am weakened and in sore need of my grove. It is no short jaunt away, and as much as I wish to, I cannot rally even a single step. With that said, would you… carry me there?”

“Would I?” Ogrim’s laugh danced along the walls. “Of course, but why the insistence on secrecy?”

“You know. Bugs will talk, it is their way. I do not wish the commoners to see us in such a state.”

“There was an ample crowd at the mustering grounds,” Ogrim mused. “Word of your injury will surely spread. I do not understand the point in attempting to conceal what is already known.”

“No, that is not—” Isma cleared her throat. “Y-Yes, well, warrior bugs are a different lot from the squeamish citizens of The City. Hearing of a Knight’s weakness and witnessing it directly are two very different things.”

“Nonsense,” Ogrim rumbled. “Take last month for example. After my tumble into that bed of mushrooms, was it not you that dragged my stunned bulk out of the Fungal Wastes and through The City’s streets? The commoners did not wail and claw at their shells upon sight of my failure.”

“Humor me,” Isma murmured.

“Fair enough. In any case, I call this a lucky stroke. I am granted a chance to repay one of my many debts!”

Isma gave a cry, drawn between a squeak and a shriek. “That was far too rash, I was not prepared!”

Again, Ogrim’s laughter rebounded. “How might I ferry you to your repose, fair lady? Upon my honor, I will not rest till you arrive in safety.”

“Careful that you do not choke on your own delight,” Isma said, almost a laugh. “I would appreciate it if you remained to the side streets and alleys. From there we might find a passage into the Royal Waterways where we are more likely to go unseen. And… take the stairs if you would, please. Elevators and I are not the dearest of friends.”

“So, it shall be,” Ogrim said.

The voices faded, replaced by the sound of two heavy feet crackling through dead foliage.

And I turned, unbidden, to snatch a glimpse of Ogrim’s back as he departed through the garden’s far exit, Isma in his arms.

With a clang, the elevator slammed to a stop, drawing my attention. Within it, standing serenely, was the attendant bug. He initiated a vibrant bow but faltered upon noticing the state of the garden. Lurien offered no explanation.

Rain battered the window as we ascended, and with my strength restored I did not stumble or fall. We passed several floors, but none possessed doorways, only stone statues of Lurien gazing back in blind vigilance.

Without warning, the elevator jerked still, so violently that our feet briefly left the floor. The room before us was murky and gray, devoid of Lumafly lanterns. Lurien stepped out, beyond the reach of the elevator’s feeble light, and I followed. He did not glance back at the attendant, and soon the clangor of chains announced the elevator’s departure.

Lurien approached the vague shape of a table and sifted through the dark. He took something up in his claws and made a jerking motion. There was a scream of metal upon metal, and a shower of sparks filled the air. The red pinpricks swirled and frolicked before winking out of existence. In their aftermath came the gentle quiver of flame—a candle. First one, then two, then a dozen—all lighting successively and casting a dull glow upon the room.

The personal quarters of Lurien the Watcher came into focus. They were capacious yet cluttered, lacking any sense of organization or purpose. Bookcases, chairs, desks, and worktables amalgamated into a labyrinth of fine shellwood. Reams of garnet silk were scattered upon the floors and served as carpet. The candles were perched haphazardly on furniture, decorative poles, and slabs of stone.

Rain-streaked windows encircled the quarters, separated only by supporting arches. They looked out over every region of The City, though much of the landscape was made inscrutable by shadow.

Lurien took a long moment to evaluate the room. He turned to me and nodded, almost meekly.

We weaved past scroll-strewn shelves and lustrous sculptures. Lurien took up a candle—pinching its base between two fingers—and pointed from time to time at passing objects. Gilded scales, armor-plated urns, and an easel supporting a half-finished painting. One object in particular caught Lurien’s attention. He stopped before a table, upon which sat an orb of glass fused onto a golden disc. Within the orb floated a bead of pure white that twisted and undulated like a living thing, adopting a new, fantastical shape with every passing second. It resembled the energies that had floated about Isma, but this was far more substantial, condensed into something real.

At the sight of it I began to ache deep in my chest.

“Hunger?” Lurien asked. The singular eye of his mask was trained upon me. He waited, as if for a reply that would never come.

An eager, black maw opened within me, but I did not reach out.

He slid the golden disc across the table. “Eat,” he said, and tipped it over the side. The disc fractured against the tile and the glass exploded into a hundred pieces, scattering beneath the bookcases. The nebulous, pale energy—the Soul—fled its prison and expanded into the open air.

The maw within me responded to the new command by opening even wider, to the point that I felt I might split apart. A spectral wind emanated from my body and set the nearby scrolls to fluttering. The Soul floundered within this wind like an Aspid trapped in a cage of brambles. With a flash of light, the Soul vanished into me. Warmth suffused my shell and the maw cracked shut.

“Better,” Lurien said after appraising me. He set off down another isle, removing the glass shards from his path with a push of his foot.

At the far side of the room, beside an open window, stood a huge apparatus of interlocking metal tubes and panes of glass. The thing was angled downward toward The City. Lurien approached it, with more haste than I had ever witnessed from him. He halted at its lower end beside a stool. “Look!” he said, the acoustics of the room making his voice a giant. “Come! Sit!”

I did as I was bid, and he adjusted the small end of the apparatus so that it was parallel with my mask. The distorted lens glimmered softly with reflected candlelight.

Lurien tapped the apparatus. “Look,” he repeated.

I leaned forward. And saw The City. The rain and billowing mist disguised much, but the tall buildings and twinkling Lumafly lamp posts were unmistakable. At Lurien’s touch, the apparatus pivoted on well-oiled joints, and the image changed. I spied the tiny, pointed figures of guards patrolling the streets, and commoner bugs huddled together beneath awnings. Again, the view changed, and I saw Hegemol marching at the head of a great host, Dryya at his side. Warrior bugs wielding nails and lances followed him into the mouth of a tunnel.

Lurien lifted the eyepiece, seeming content with his presentation. He looked out over The City and approached the railing before the open window. In the far distance, the centipedal cluster of lights—Hegemol’s army—had begun to disappear beyond the bounds of The City’s cavern.

We stood there for a time, watching the starry trail grow shorter. “Come,” Lurien eventually said.

We passed through an innocuous door beside a plinth of stone. Beyond was a room, much smaller than the last, but even more cluttered. There were no curios or oddities, merely a pedestal and a tall chair. Stacked all about them were the discarded shells of lesser bugs. They were sheared flat on one side and served a purpose much like a scroll or tablet. Many were covered with a cream paint, in the smooth, curling patterns of some written language.

Lurien sat at the chair and drew a bucket of the paint out from behind the pedestal. He rummaged briefly, then placed an unmarked shell-tablet before himself. “Read,” he whispered.

In one fluid motion, Lurien dipped his spindly finger into the bucket and flourished it like a quill. The white contrasted with the blackness of his claw as he scribbled upon the surface of the shell. Arches and lines and circles collected into a cumulative message.

One that I could… somehow understand.

Vessel. We are at last alone and I am granted a moment to gather my thoughts. Words are ever a toil, thus, this medium shall instead enable our rapport. For I know beyond doubt that you comprehend it. Just as I did.

Lurien dipped his finger again, mixing the paint into a slow whirlpool. The chair sat too high for him, and his feet dangled uselessly.

A great destiny looms over us. You. And I. And the others that might dare to call themselves Dreamers. By the will of our great King, we are to serve a purpose incomparable in consequence, ultimate in sacrifice. And that destiny grows close. The candle of our nation gutters, and we possess not the time nor the privilege to delay.

A slow breath echoed from beneath Lurien’s mask. He flexed his claw and freshened his makeshift quill.

I have watched your progress. It is my King-given purpose. From seed to egg to nascent chrysalis, I witnessed your growth and the potential it betokened. The King is transcendent in his sculpting art. Perfection brushes you in a way yet unseen in our kind. But you and I—

The paint ran dry on Lurien’s finger. He scraped futilely to complete his thought, before dipping back into the bucket and resuming. His writing quickened.

—But you and I bear much the same mark. I see it in you as clearly as through my grand telescope. Know that such a mark is no blessed thing. In my forging long ago, the King espied in me that odious sign. And though I once shared the same purpose as you, such an honor was stripped of me upon discovery of my defect.

Lurien’s strokes consumed the last visible space upon the shell-tablet, and he batted it off the pedestal. A chitinous crunch resounded as it hit the ground, and Lurien replaced it with another blank.

The King took great pains—invested much of himself—to hollow your being and gouge the frailty from your shell. Just as he did mine. But though He pursues ideal in all His implacable fervor, true flawlessness is not our perquisite. Not even you, born of the King’s own quintessence.

A pause. Another application of paint.

Time is too short. My resplendent Lord perceives in you a long-awaited triumph, no matter the mark that festers within. Too much has he supped on failure, too many has he offered to the slavering jaws of ambition only to receive nothing in return. He shall not see your truth. He shall not see your flaw. And lamentably, it is not this Watcher’s station to voice dissent.

Lurien claw twitched, the white dripping from his digits.

The mark within is a cancer of its own. It is not born of the affliction but serves as its antithesis. Many would call it boon, but for we instruments of the King, it is a thing most hated. It is mind. It is will. It is voice. And you, Vessel, must not allow it to sully your purpose. You shall become the pillar upon which this kingdom teeters. And you must never fracture. Too many lives, too grand a future, rest on what you must become. And so, I beg. Please—

Lurien stopped writing. He dug his sharp finger into the shell-tablet until its surface cracked like glass. He turned to me, placing his claw upon my shoulder, smearing paint on my cloak. With a force that his decrepit arm seemed incapable of, he pressed down on me. “Serve,” he hissed. “Thoughtless. Eternal. For King. For Bug. For Hallownest.”

I was gripped by something; a constricting force against my shell. Lurien’s words bore down upon me, stilling my breath.

The chair screeched as Lurien rose. He braced nearly all his weight upon the pedestal, as if standing were simply too much. “Come,” he breathed, “King.” He pushed back to his full height, swaying toward the door and the chamber beyond.

And I followed. It was my purpose…

Chapter Text

Lurien’s claw brushed the pale metal of the corridor, eliciting a ghostly note that gamboled and skipped before us as we navigated the White Palace. Though the passages bifurcated like a root system, and the intersections lacked signpost or symbol, Lurien was unhindered. He journeyed without pause or hesitation, not even looking back to ensure that I kept pace.

Hall by hall, chamber by chamber, the Palace revealed itself in all its gleaming ornamentation. Filigree wormed around pillars, tracery spilled down windows, and the winged seal of Hallownest was omnipresent. A glow—that seemed to be born from nothing—bathed every object and hurled glaring reflections into my sight. Plants sprouted from cracks in the ceilings and floors. They were bleached and reedy, often forming in clusters before doorways and clinging to the shells of passersby.

The bugs that we encountered along our path shared Lurien’s sureness of direction, as though instinct alone guided them. They scurried to and fro, their vestigial wings swishing over the floors like silken capes. In their silvered arms, they carried scrolls, tools, and victuals. They performed mid-step bows and mumbled words of reverence to Lurien before vanishing down perpendicular passages.

Their haste was incongruous with the Palace’s quietude.

We emerged from the crush of one attendant-clogged tunnel into a domed chamber containing a fountain. Upon the fountain stood a sculpture, composed of an alien metal that leaked light though its interstices as if a star were trapped within. The statue depicted the Pale King, limbs tucked tightly within the folds of his robe.

Lurien paused to observe it, dipping an absent claw into the sterile waters.

As I waited, a sweetness pricked the edge of my shell, setting hunger into motion. Scintillating motes of Soul were floating about the room. They churned in the air around the statue like a billion orbiting planets. One by one, they were drawn into it, each mote faintly increasing the statue’s light.

Lurien flicked his fingers free of water and followed the trail of my gaze. He hesitated for an instant before lifted a gesturing palm toward the statue.

“Reservoir,” he said. “Ancient design.” Lurien paused as if to collect more words but shrugged and resumed his step. “Come. King.”

We arrived before a pair of doors that soared up to touch the vaulted ceiling overhead. Beside them stood a creature resembling the Great Knights in shape, but not in substance. It loomed tall and thin, with a shell of jagged metal. Glowing, white eyes bore out of the seething black pit that was its face. At our approach, it blocked the doors and brandished a scythe with its four arms. No words escaped it, but the shapeless specter of a whisper bubbled in my head.

Lurien broke his stride just long enough to glance at the thing, and it twitched as if pulled by invisible strings. With a ringing stomp of feet, it stood aside and planted the haft of its scythe on the ground. The massive doors swung open without so much as a gust of air.

We stepped through into a small, modestly furnished room that was enveloped in a canopy of plant life. The King was within, but he did not react to our intrusion. He stood beside a high-backed chair in which someone sat. From my place I could not see its occupant, but a mellifluous voice powdered the room. “Oh, Wyrm. You heap yet more burden upon your brow. To mend this Kingdom in the manner that you seek is no mild task. Other paths remain before you. An accord may still be struck. Light might yet permit your rule, so long as her animus is not impeded. Grant a small concession. End this feud. The moth tribe would make a fine libation and their lands bear little consequence.”

The King reached out to brace an arm against the chair. His shoulders sank like an overburdened bridge. “No concession in a game of gods is small, my Root. It is true that Light fixates upon her ancient enemy. But, should she triumph in her crusade, what then? Without gloom to check a candle, its blaze would blind the world. I have seen such futures; none can I accept.”

The voice hummed low. “But if that foreboding rings true, would not Void possess the same means if freed of its foe? To blind the world?”

“Despite her primitive nature, Light is yet a being of Essence. Of Mind. She executes her will as any thinking thing might, but Void embodies her antipode. It lacks focus. And as such, is no threat.”

“I am not a courtier to be mollified and shooed aside, dear Wyrm.” A vine, white as marble, rose up to drape over the chair’s armrest. “Your lies spill most sour indeed.”

The King winced. “I would not stoop to deception. My aim is merely to soothe. Precautions are in place such that you need not fear for the Kingdom. I say in earnest. Void is no threat to you.”

The vine wrapped around the King’s wrist and gave it the slightest squeeze. “I fear not for the Kingdom. I fear for you. The dream you hope to realize is beyond any god. The sacrifices already made pale before what is demanded. The commoners, in their adoration, believe their Pale King immutable, but even now, you—”

“Enough!” The King pulled his arm away, and the vine curled out of sight. “I shall not indulge this subject again. You know my intent. To the end.”

The voice fell. “Yes, I know. But is equilibrium truly so infeasible? Does no vision of peace reside within your eyes?”

The King stiffened. “Amongst the gods and lords, I am called ‘Usurper’. I have laid claim upon their territory and their power. They bear me no love. And neither do they you. What of your war with Unn in the earliest age? Was your claim not unjust to her reckoning? Would she have consented to parley with such an invader?”

The voice fell yet further, growing sullen. “You speak unfairly. This war with Light bears little resemblance to then… A seed does not know where it germinates. A root does not know where it burrows. When my mind came to me the war was already won, and Unn had faded to her exile.”

The King massaged the side of his head with a claw. “Forgive me, but there can be no concessions in this conflict. Light abides no rival that might pilfer her flock. And the petty kingdoms of this land would rather fall to ruin than see another crown rise. If they possessed the prowess, then Hallownest would be dashed against the stones, no matter its ideal. My kingdom bears but two fates: to rule eternal, or to become dust.”

“I know your heart, Wyrm. You mean me no ill. But beware. As you reach toward glory—the sort to eclipse even your former life—take care not to exceed your grasp.”

The King drew in a breath as if to summon a rebuttal, but let it go, and instead only nodded.

“Now, enough of this unsavory talk,” the voice continued. “Perhaps it best we concern ourselves with other affairs. If my roots sing true, then a guest has shuffled into our midst. Watcher Lurien, is it you that idles about our fractious discourse?”

With a rustle of leaves and a rasp of plant fibers, the chair’s occupant rose. Its form was svelte and lofty, draped in loose-fitting strips of gray silk. No mask adorned its face, and no shell safeguarded its body. The being was unlike a bug in every way, for it possessed not arms but vines, not legs but a trunk, and not horns but a nest of branches that thrust upward like the tributaries of a celestial river. Luminescence—that dwarfed even the King’s—permeated the air about it, muting the shadowed corners of the room.

Lurien startled at the call of his name and stepped forward. He bowed low, just as the attendant bug in his spire had, to the point that his mask nearly scraped the floor. “White Lady,” he whispered, as if the sound of his voice were an insult.

The lofty being—the White Lady—inclined her head in greeting. Her glacial, nacreous eyes fixed him for an instant before wandering to me. “You come bearing my spawn,” she observed. “Rarely is one given reason to venture so deeply into the Palace.” She turned. “Wyrm, is this the Vessel of which you spoke?”

The King seated himself at another high-backed chair opposite the Lady’s. “Indeed. It is unparalleled in form, hollowed more completely by Void than any else yet seen. Do you feel its potential? As a beating heart?”

The White Lady knelt upon the ground, to the groan of her trunk and the hiss of her silken shawls. She extended the vines of her arms at me and whispered. “Come.”

In a blink, the bonds of Lurien’s previous command evaporated, and I staggered forward, almost faster than my feet could manage. The Lady’s vines encircled my shoulders and held me fast. They were soft. Faintly warm to the touch.

“Would that I could recall the seed from which it blossomed,” the Lady said, “but I speak of the impossible. My progeny has fallen more numerous than droplets in a storm.” She stroked the side of my head and lifted my chin so that I would look her in the eyes. “The Void has indeed done its work upon this one. What remains of our offering is but shell now. As is required of this grim task. And yet… I spy a striking nobility in its stance. Much like its father’s. Perhaps too much.”

She released me, suddenly, the warmth banished as if by a winter gust. She stood and stepped away, leaving me empty of purpose.

“You are certain it is faultless?” the Lady asked.

The King roused from some reverie. “Yes,” he murmured. “The only perfection we two shall conceive.”

“Then the pit is sealed,” the Lady stated.

“Indeed.”

“Eternally?”

The King cocked his head. “Never again shall mortal eyes behold the refuse of our labor. As was promised.”

“And into that pit, how many excursions did you make, Wyrm? To retrieve. To dispose.”

“As many as was made necessary.”

“But the number, do you recall?”

“Many,” the King said, cold and flat.

The Lady pressed two vines against her cheeks. “Not once did these eyes survey that pit. And now they never shall. Was that a duty shirked? An act of cowardice?”

“Our compact entailed no such burden upon you. The offering of seeds was your only concern. It is ill advised to brood.”

“But is it not the task of a progenitor to witness where its seeds might fall? To ensure the fertility of the earth, the kiss of the sun.” Her gaze drifted once again to me.

The King rested his chin upon a clenched claw. “Lady. You brook no lies nor illusions. But only in they shall you find solace, if that is what you seek. Our deed is done. And no matter all the power in the cosmos, it shall not be undone. Do not succumb to regret. At this moment above all others.”

The Lady crossed the room in a ponderous fashion, the roots of her trunk-like body working collectively to drag her along. From atop a modest pedestal, she retrieved a silk-lined basin of silver that was carved in the likeness of a shell. She resumed her seat and gazed down into the basin’s confines. “If the Vessel proves true, and our toil is indeed over, then what shall become of this one?” She tilted the basin, revealing a small object—ovate and milky white—nestled in the silk. The object’s surface was irregular, like a thin layer of bark, and it sparkled in the room’s ambient light. “This seed has incorporated your quintessence more fully than any other. I had thought it might serve as a suitable nucleus for a superior Vessel. But now…”

The King was motionless.

“Should you triumph over Light and Void,” the Lady continued. “Should all our impediments be surmounted, then a wondrous future awaits this Kingdom. Perhaps this seed might have a place in it. We would nurture it, as our first, true child. And one amongst my progeny would finally… endure.”

“Dispose of it.”

“What?!”

“I am not misheard,” the King whispered. “That seed is to be discarded.”

“Wyrm!”

“The conditions of our union stand. Neither in prosperity nor in desolation was an heir born of my own quintessence promised. And none shall be given. If you claim to perceive my ambition—to abet it—then this verdict should come as no revelation.”

“You would deny me this slightest thing?” the Lady hissed. “Why?”

“Hallownest must not be harrowed by the rot that is succession. There must be no lineage to track, no bloodline to justify rule. No excuse for dissidence. Only one sacrosanct need sit upon the throne. Forever.”

The Lady pressed the basin tight against her chest. “So, it is fear then. Of this little thing’s divinity.”

“Fear? I am compelled by no such weakness.”

The Lady laughed, one hard note that reverberated through my shell. “This is your child! Do you truly foresee such maliciousness from it? The same foreseen in Light? Or those guiltless grubs?”

“Yes, Lady. I do.” The King bowed his head. “Such is the weight of prescience.”

“To the pit with your prescience! Amongst your futures, you spy not one where this heir grows to be your ally and not your bane?”

The King was quiet for a time. “Correct. Now, again I ask. I… beg. Destroy it.”

The Lady’s roots cracked the tile beneath her trunk. “Is your contempt for your own offspring so absolute?”

“It is not contempt that—!” The King stopped. Collected himself. “No, it is not contempt. It is not fear. It is purpose. Inexorable purpose that shall not be hindered by pain nor cost.”

“Then what of Herrah?” The Lady’s branches quivered. “The Beast made her terms most apparent when the mantle of Dreamer was first offered to her. And now, as if by whim she aligns herself with our purpose. I am not so blind, and I should hope you not to presume me so. This dalliance of yours—the royal offspring that shall be its result—bears the very same threat to your sanctity as this meager seed. Why do you hurl these hypocrisies at me?”

“A Dreamer’s duty is eternal service, a stasis made worse than death. What favorable bargain might be struck with such a dire demand? For all the wealth and power in this worldly frame, Herrah would not see herself bought. Her obsession is to but one end, and desperation required that I provide it, no matter how it might threaten me.”

“And none more suitable could be found?” the Lady asked. “Those that would play gatekeeper to your Vessel without first asking the sun and the stars?”

The King chuckled. “You ask questions of which you are already versed. Though Lurien’s vow was destined, Monomon’s came as sheer fortune. Well are you aware that three Dreamers are requisite. Vespa served as the final recourse. And our offer evinced naught but scorn. Thus, the pact with Herrah remains.”

“Fine! Then when all is done, what shall you have? To the very end, nothing to call child but a mere bastard? Hidden away lest it threaten your rule?”

The King’s gaze settled on me. “I shall call Hallownest my child. And it shall grow as no other offspring could ever hope.”

With a creak, the Lady leaned in over the basin. She cupped the seed between two vines. “Ages have dawned and died since our first meeting, Wyrm,” she said. “Then, you stood a shining beacon in a realm of senseless night. And though at first, your promise alone bound us, admiration bloomed within me as the most eager of buds. Know that I am yours. Forever more. But do not exploit my fervent heart. When all pretense is forsaken, Herrah’s aim is my own: an offspring, a child. No simple shell, no tawdry spawn that shall not survive two seasons, let alone a lifetime. Before even this foul undertaking, I had borne legions, only to witness them wither and die. The ember of Essence does not kindle in beings so small, so evanescent.” Her grip tightened upon the seed. “And I grow weary, so weary, of outliving them. When shall I have what is promised, Pale King? How long shall I languish?”

Time stretched, but the King offered no reply. He did not meet the Lady’s eyes as she glanced up at him.

“And you shan’t tell me,” the Lady muttered. “Prescience fails again. How apt. But even still… in you my trust is planted. To the end.”

With a sudden twist of her vines, the Lady crushed the seed to powder and cast it upon the floor. The particulates glittered briefly, and the Lady watched them until they became indistinguishable from dust. “Behold,” she said, her voice thick. “Another foe of Hallownest is vanquished. A jubilant turn for the Kingdom; no longer is its stability imperiled.” The Lady wiped her vines, rose, and returned the basin to its pedestal.

The King pressed his claw against his mask and grew still.

In the ensuing silence, Lurien rocked from foot to foot and scuffed at the seed remnants upon the ground. “King?” he eventually inquired. “Vessel?” He extended a finger toward me, as if to affirm my existence.

“Yes, Watcher,” the King said, straightening. “Your prudence returns us to our purpose. Battle was not the design of this audience. Instead, we gather here to mark the Vessel’s growth. So, step forth Lurien, that I might construe its deeds.”

With atypical haste, Lurien trotted to the King’s side and sank gracefully into a kneeling pose. He lifted his head, displaying the one-eyed mask to the King. But Lurien did not speak. He offered no verbal report at all. The King simply stared down at him with singular scrutiny.

A still moment passed, and then the King released a wisp of a chuckle. “Exquisite. Truly. It transcends all expectation. Mere days free of its prison, and already it displays mastery over Shade.” He turned to the Lady, almost mirthful. “Root! This Vessel has claimed victory over Great Knight Isma in single combat—at the apex of her power! Never before has a—”

“Is my purpose here fulfilled?” the Lady asked, puncturing the King’s words. “I would depart if so. A needless thing is a curator to an empty nursery.”

“I perceive your pain,” the King said. “It cuts most deeply. But do you not esteem yourself to be my prime adviser? Upon us rests the encumbrance of choice. To hone this Vessel’s shell, it need be assigned a fitting tutor and a worthy challenge. Quell your sorrow, if for but a time. I beseech your counsel.”

The Lady lingered by the basin. Her vines strained against its shape as if attempting to shatter it. “Duty does not relent,” she whispered. But in a bolder voice, “the path you behold is evident. To both our eyes. Neither approval nor reproach—even from your White Lady—would see you diverted. The counsel you seek is but the echo of a deserted room.”

The King shook his head. “Strike at me if it so salves your hurt, but still I would know your mind on this. Do you believe power enough resides within this Vessel to endure the trials of the Great Knights?”

“Ever shall it ring odd to hear question in your voice, Wyrm. You, gleaner of the future’s fickle secrets, yet always stricken with uncertainty.” The Lady released her grip on the basin. Her body slackened. “I do not impugn your claims of the Vessel’s might. It is the pinnacle of our efforts. But amongst the previous pinnacles all fell short before Dryya. Knowing this, you shall still send it forth with my Knight. Such is your foregone resolution. And though superfluous, I am in accord with this path. I do not feign to know what shall transpire, only that the outcome shall ordain our fates.”

“Your blessing is most welcome,” the King said. “But the blaze within your Fierce Knight denies me any supremacy. The White Lady’s will alone stirs her step. You must dispatch her.”

The Lady considered. “Very well. Assuming that Dryya returns from the Mantis War unscathed, then she shall measure the merits of this newest Vessel, whatever that may bring.”

The King nodded. “And as a lump of ore upon a master’s anvil, the Vessel shall approach its perfect form. To become a tool… utterly Pure.”

The King’s words drew the Lady’s attention to me, but with an intensity unlike anything before. The blue of her eyes pierced to my core like the point of a sapphire nail. My breathing came in gasps, as if a stone were pressing down upon my chest.

“Though called a tool,” the Lady said. “and wielded as such, what is Void but a weapon? As quick to cut friend as foe. Tell me. Did this one defeat Isma, or slay her?”

The King rose and stood beside the Queen. He too watched me, but his gaze did not crush my shell. “To best a god, one must dabble in parlous forces. Were I to inform you of Isma’s demise, would it annul your pledge?”

“Do not toy with me,” the Lady said, her eyes narrowing. “If you seek to probe my limits, then you shall learn them in due haste.”

“A fair censure,” the King admitted, with a slight bow of his head. “My apologies. It is a Wyrm’s nature to delve. I offer in truth that Isma survived, but by a margin most narrow. Should you dispatch Dryya on this quest, then a similar threat shall loom over her. Are you prepared to wager your fondest companion? One whose devotion exceeds even my own?”

The Lady ruminated for a time. “Sacrifice begets sacrifice. And gambit begets gambit. Countless shards of yourself have you surrendered. And countless offspring have I. From the beginning, you have wagered your Kingdom. And now shall I wager mine. My Dryya. In no good conscience may I do less…”

“Very well. Then we—”

“But,” the Lady said, “I shall not endanger my favored champion any more than need be. I ask that she not travel alone.”

“Little can be spared in this age of peril,” the King mused. “The forces of Hallownest grow thin. But still, convey your wish and it shall be done.”

“Only a fellow Great Knight shall suffice as escort. Nothing less and nothing more.”

“Acceptable. Then, four—” The King paused. “Three choices are before you.”

“Despite his great strength,” the Lady muttered. “Hegemol tires most easily. He shall seek hibernation at the conclusion of this war. And Isma’s talents shine most brightly in the aftermath of conflict. She shall be occupied with the wounded.”

“You request Ogrim, then?” The King asked. “Indeed, his presence at Isma’s duel proved her salvation, but…”

The Lady tilted her head. “‘But’?”

“When first he ascended to Knighthood, Loyal Ogrim beheld in me righteousness and truth. He balked at no command, for in his noble mind, I embodied all that was good. But now my grievous deeds are made known to him, and I am tarnished in his eyes.”

“That is not so rare an occasion. None of the previous Greats returned from that pit unshaken, though they oft donned bravado’s mask.”

The King’s head jerked in a curt denial. “Those same Greats chained themselves to my vision, not for its virtue but for its power. Yet, Ogrim desires no perfect realm, no absolute dominion, merely a world devoid of dishonor. And if such a wish cannot be realized within me, then he shall seek it elsewhere.”

“You suspect his epithet undeserved?” the Lady asked.

But the King did not respond.

“You speak of your many futures, then?” she prodded. “One known? Or merely dreaded?”

“Yes,” the King whispered.

Something between a scoff and a laugh escaped the Lady. “A goodly heart beats in Loyal Ogrim’s chest. Though dilemma may batter his reason, and though foresight is no agent of mine. I shall trust Dryya’s care to his claws. Such is the wild faith upon which we earthly beings rely.”

The King turned to the great doors. They opened soundlessly before him. “As you wish…”

Chapter Text

I had been bidden to observe. And so, I did.

From my high perch among the crumbling chasms of Kingdom’s Edge, I tracked the erratic progress of a wild bug in its last few moments of life.

The bug was the likes of which I had not yet seen. It was not a commoner or an attendant, not a warrior or a Knight. It did not even stand upon two legs as the bugs of the Kingdom did, but instead hopped about on six. Out of the overlapping plating of its back sprouted a pair of wings. They were shriveled and useless but flapped with every hop. Its belly was a fluid-filled sack exposed to the open air that stood out vividly orange against the lifelessness of the landscape.

By restless instinct, the bug patrolled one clifftop after another. Its pointed feet and lance-like proboscis pierced into the stone with every impact, leaving a permanent record of its passage. Something like ash tumbled out of the gray sky over its head, in slender flakes that collected on the ground and muted the echoes of the bug’s hopping. Periodically, the bug stopped as it came to a vantage point over the plunging cliffs. It leaned and strained against the rigidity of its own body, searching. But whatever it sought with those shell-veiled eyes went unfound, for something descended from on high. A streaking, silver shadow punctured the bug’s body, down through its back and out the gory, orange mess of its stomach. The bug’s deathly shriek rent the air, and its legs beat a hideous rhythm against the stone. It lashed out and up with its proboscis, but the inflexible plating about its neck made the gesture futile. With a thrust and a twist, the silvered assailant brought the bug’s noises to a crunching halt.

The assailant—the Fierce Knight Dryya—stepped back from the slain bug. She swung her longnail through the air and splattered orange blood like the clumsy stroke of a paintbrush. Her armor rasped faintly as she looked about, scanning the clifftop for other threats.

I stared down at her from my perch on the opposite cliff, still in accordance with the command that she had given me. I watched her every move, the discipline, the efficiency. I watched the care that she spent on each tilt of her shoulders and heft of her nail. It seemed as if she were constantly poised to begin a duel that would last eons.

“Superlative!” Ogrim’s voice boomed out of the silence, rattling my senses, for he was sitting a mere armlength away from me. “What a felicitous day.” he said, his gaze set as firmly upon Dryya as mine. “It is a rare treat to bear witness to the sword skills of the Fierce Knight. Even I, a fellow Great, have seen it only twice. I count myself a lucky bug. And you should as well, Little Knight.”

I offered Ogrim only a glance before returning to my task. Dryya’s will weighed heavily upon me, and the urge to observe was overwhelming.

“We two seem to be common companions of late,” Ogrim said. “But to what end, I cannot fathom. By the King’s will, I am to play the part of your instructor, but my skills are meager indeed when matched against the likes of the other Greats. Whatever lessons I might offer would be of little use. And yet still… here I sit beside you.” He pondered for a while, his posture growing hunched.

Dryya completed her survey and craned her neck to lock eyes with me from across the trench. She pointed at the ground beside her with the tip of her longnail and shouted some word that was made incoherent by the wind.

No fresh command smoldered in my head, so I continued to observe, unmoving.

Ogrim discarded his thoughts with a shake and hopped to his feet. “It appears we are summoned.” He leaned forward to peer over the cliff’s edge and into the spiraling depths. Far, far below rested a lake of greenish acid that sizzled and popped as it contacted the flakes of ash. “No time for a leisurely descent, I’d wager. But worry not. The gap may appear harrowing, but it is no great obstacle for those lordly wings of yours. Have you already come to master them in the scant time that we’ve been apart? As I recall, your flight out of the pit was a trace… unsteady.”

I remained focused on Dryya. She jabbed her nail a second time, more emphatically, and repeated her wind-shredded word.

“It is unwise to keep that one waiting,” Ogrim cautioned. “For all her wisdom and strength, Dryya’s grasp of patience is that of a novice. She is said to be an ancient, the eldest of the Great Knights. One would expect a bug with such a wealth of years to exercise more forbearance. Perhaps the recent Mantis War has wounded her humor, if not her body…”

Dryya paced like a caged predator, her piercing stare alternating between Ogrim and me.

“What is it, Little Knight?” Ogrim asked. “Are you fatigued? Or could it be hesitance stays your step?” He eyed the gap a second time, gauging the distance. “It took but a word to send your rushing into battle against Isma, yet, are you stopped now by a mere height?”

I said nothing.

Ogrim clacked his claws pensively. “I suppose that even one as valiant as you might conceal a private fear.”

The scream of metal rebounded against the chasm walls as Dryya buried her longnail into the stone at her feet. She pointed a third—and seemingly final—time, but again, her word was defeated by the unrelenting gusts.

Ogrim waited a second, and then hummed. “Well, if you are unwilling to carry yourself, then perhaps I have found my purpose in being here.” He crouched before me and locked his claws behind his back, presenting them as a foothold. “Climb aboard, Little Knight. I will make short work of this dreaded ravine. You needn’t fret, I will not fail.”

Though fragile, little more than a whisper, Ogrim’s order took hold of me. I rose, planted my feet in the crook of his claws, and wrapped my arms around his neck.

Ogrim bloomed into a hearty laugh and leapt from the clifftop with only a single step of momentum. The wind made a plaything of my cloak as we plummeted toward Dryya.

At first, it appeared that we would not clear the gap, and the roiling lake of acid rushed at us. But Ogrim threw out a barbed claw and caught the edge of the cliff upon which Dryya stood. With a shearing crunch, we jerked to a halt, and bits of pulverized stone pattered our heads. Ogrim released a sound of pain, yet his claw remained firmly embedded into the cliff.

“Climb up,” Ogrim grunted. “I will join you shortly.”

Though I possessed enough force to jump up to Dryya’s side, Ogrim’s command guided me, and I made a scrambling ascent of the rock face. Dusty and scuffed, I rose to my feet.

“You did not acknowledge my summons,” Dryya said, arms crossed. “Even the lowliest of the other Vessels accomplished that.”

Ogrim puffed and labored against gravity, hauling himself to the cliff top with a great gasp. A cloud of ash billowed about him as he sprawled onto his back. “Now, I better understand your fear, Little Knight.” He paused to breathe and stare into the sky. “That feat was more alarming than I anticipated. A running start might have better served me…”

“Fear?” Dryya asked.

“Yes, I believe our champion in training grapples with that particular adversary.” Ogrim rested his claws on his chest. “Odd that a thing with wings would hesitate so, but I have no right to cast judgment. In my youth, I harbored my fair share of silly terrors.”

“Do not be foolish, Ogrim. Vessels cannot fear. If that is a great strength or a terrible weakness, I known not, but they are incapable of such hesitation.”

Ogrim struggled to a sitting position. “Just now, the Little Knight observed your summons quite plainly, but it did not budge. Considering how quickly it has answered all other calls, something must have held it in check.”

Dryya shrugged. “It simply must not have heard me, for it seems to have heeded your command easily enough. If you had ordered it to soar the gap, then it would have done so in an instant.”

“Are you so certain?”

“I was told that Isma had educated you about these Vessels. Was I misinformed?”

“Isma and I…” Ogrim cleared his throat. “Experienced a disagreement on that matter.”

“You can disagree with the setting sun all you please, but that will not stop the coming night.”

Ogrim tilted his head. “Pardon?”

Dryya wrenched her longnail from the stone and wiped it clean of dust. “This exchange is a waste of words. My Lady gave me a task, and enlightening you was not a part of it. Come along, Loyal Knight. You are my escort after all, Lady only knows why…”

With a heave, Ogrim rolled backward and landed deftly on his feet. “If I have offended, then I beg forgiveness. Disrespect was not my intent.”

Dryya waved a dismissive claw and set off toward the gaping mouth of a nearby tunnel. “Come, Vessel,” she barked. The serrated edge of her conviction dug into my body, dragging me along like a hooked beast.

The damp tunnel we traversed was fanged with stalactites and stalagmites. Small, mindless bugs skittered out of our way, seeking shelter beneath tumbled rocks. I watched them closely, the curvature of their shells, the haste with which they clung to life.

Ogrim was the first to break the stretch of silence. He trotted up to Dryya’s side and donned an esteeming tone. “You dispatched that Hopper with a superb blow, Fierce Dryya. It was so swift that my woeful reaction could not track it. Do you hunt about Kingdom’s Edge frequently? It seems a suitable place to sharpen one’s skills.”

Dryya did not respond at first. She paused at a fork in the tunnel to consider her path. “I chafe against all this courtly talk. Do not praise me by belittling yourself. I have no purpose for adoration.”

“I see. I apolo—”

“Nor do I have purpose for apologies,” she snapped.

A chuff of laughter escaped Ogrim. He rubbed at his chin with the flat of a claw and nodded. “Understood.”

“But, yes,” Dryya said, continuing down the left-most tunnel. “I do invest much of my time in this place. Kingdom’s Edge is what remains of the old world, where instinct and strength of claw still reigns. So far, it is unchanged by the newest god, but we will see with time.”

“What god do you speak of?”

“The King, of course. As He works toward that impenetrable goal of His, the land is warped by his presence. Rarely for the better.”

Ogrim processed her words, and when she did not continue, he prodded. “Why do you say that?”

“Despite all His romantic intentions, the King weakens those that He touches. The warriors, the commoners, even the low creatures of the earth. Here, beyond where He has staked His claim, bugs still vie against each other in that lethal dance. Every instant is lived a mere step before death’s hungry jaws.”

“For one in no need of adoration, you speak with some of your own,” Ogrim observed. “But is the King’s civilization not a favorable thing? A place where the strong protect the weak instead of preying upon them?”

“Perhaps. It is a debate that will not be decided here. But note that if the weak are not required to protect themselves, then they are never granted the opportunity to become the strong. And if the strong are not regularly challenged by the weak, then they become the weak themselves. That is the reality that the King has wrought.”

Ogrim’s voice grew faint and thoughtful. “Strength is a useless thing in a peaceful world. It is the greatest hope of a Knight to watch his nail rust from lack of need.”

“I understand why the King is so fond of you.”

At that, Ogrim stumbled, catching his weight on a stalagmite. “The King speaks of me? What else has he said to you? Nothing reproving I hope.”

“To me he has not spoken. It is in my Lady that he confides. And in turn, my Lady confides in me. I know not the King’s secret opinions of you, but His passing words are at least approving.”

“You share a most heartening truth,” Ogrim said, righting himself. “Thank you.”

Dryya’s only reply was a shrug.

“Many would envy your position,” Ogrim continued. “A direct conduit to the King… Has the Lady provided you any more insights into His more domestic attributes?”

“Yes, unfortunately. My Queen’s my queen often inflicts her inveterate fondness for gossip upon me. She tells me of the King’s woes, His triumphs, His laments at the futures which never came to be. The picture my Lady paints of the King is… warm. Love truly is a deluding thing.”

“The Pale King is cast in many lights,” Ogrim said. “The distant lands that I once called home whispered of Him as a savior, a realm-builder. Even in The City, He is still hailed as such, but amongst His Knights and advisers… it is different. Why?”

“No castle is without imperfection, no matter how it might gleam from afar. One need only step close enough to spy its cracks.”

“You do not think very highly of our sovereign,” Ogrim murmured.

Dryya slashed at a nest of brambles obstructing our path, felling it in a single swing. “Should you come to know something intimately enough, then you will either adore or abhor it. I have witnessed many excellent warriors die for the King’s misconceived visions. You will understand if I do not fawn over him.”

Ogrim swallowed a deep breath as if conjuring some confutation, but a moment passed, and it did not come. He let the air hiss away.

The tunnel peeled open, and the stalactites gave way to another clifftop much like the one we had left behind. Dryya ushered us forward, until our steps kicked rocks and dust over the precipice. Below was a deep canyon, so vast and curtained in mist that its far side was imperceptible. Weathered spires of stone thrust out of the canyon like spikes on a carapace, and grayish plants choked the floor.

Above, in scattered groups, hovered the swollen forms of yet another sort of bug. Indolent and inattentive, they drifted this way and that, bumping into one another without the slightest care. Upon their backs were affixed three pairs of wings that beat in frenzied tandem to keep them just barely aloft.

Ogrim peered down the length of the canyon. “Have we arrived, then?” he asked.

Dryya planted her longnail and rested her wrists on the pommel. “Indeed. This place is a crucible of sorts, where the distinction between predator and prey is made. I will test this Vessel here, as all the others.”

“Well, we have already wagered our lives and leapt a chasm, what else does your test entail?”

“Skipping that crack was not an aspect of the test,” Dryya sighed. “There are thousands like it in this wasteland.”

Ogrim hummed. “Really? Then the Little Knight best overcome its fear of heights quickly. For I doubt you’d allow me to remain its impromptu Stag.”

Dryya shot Ogrim a sidelong glare. “You spend too much time with Hegemol. Any more and you threaten to become a clown.”

“‘When peril steals the strength from your legs, laugh. So that you might take a step forward,’” Ogrim said. “It was you that offered me that wisdom. At the Knotted Grove.”

“And I would not have given it had I known it would make you so flippant.”

“My good cheer is not mockery, merely a means to carry on.”

Dryya gestured at me. “You do understand that this ‘Little Knight’ will be the one to ‘carry on’, and not yourself, yes?”

Ogrim let out a wavering laugh. “Oh, I am quite aware…”

“Enough.” Dryya drew a shortnail from a thread-fine belt at her waist and tossed it to me. “Take this, Vessel. I am not so cruel that I would send you forth unarmed.”

I caught the blade and held it at my side. It was stouter than the last one, less likely to fracture.

Dryya considered me before clearing her throat and squaring her shoulders. “Let us begin. We have wasted too much time already. Listen, Vessel, for I give you a command that you are to follow until the very end, even should that end be your death. Just as I struck down that Hopper moments ago, you are to explore this place in search of another of its sort. Wield that nail I have provided, and slay the creature with one, cunning blow. The King calls you perfect, but that verdict will fall to me this day. Should you fail, then this place will devour you as it did the others.”

As the heavy mantle of Dryya’s mandate settled upon me, Ogrim spoke up. “You set forth a heavy ultimatum, Fierce Knight. Isma’s method of training was similarly harsh. Is this the only way that we might instruct the Little Knight? Must every trial be of life and death?”

“If the Vessel lacks the power to overcome this challenge, then it is of no use to us. A creature’s spirit blazes brightest when its life hangs in the balance. Do you find this to be any different from the Champion’s Call?”

Ogrim bristled. “Yes, actually. And in many ways. From the beginning the consequences of the Call were plain. And we each made our choice. But here, what choice is granted the Little Knight?”

Dryya scoffed. “Everything I say is but an echo of what you have already refused to acknowledge. Perhaps agreeing to your escort was a mistake. A Kingsmould might have better served this task. At the least, it would not have needled my patience with ignorant chatter.”

The command took hold, and my grip upon the shortnail tightened. A murderous pressure—the same that I had experienced at the mustering grounds—soaked my being like a rain of hot tar. I looked about for the thing that I might kill. All other objects became muted and insignificant.

Dryya and Ogrim were only blurs before me. They were unsuitable prey, for they lacked the correct number of limbs, the proboscis, the wings. Overhead, the fat, floating bugs were likewise unfit. Though they possessed the armored shells and six pointed legs, their working wings invalidated them.

The pressure increased, as if a boiling sea were filling my chest. I hastened my search, and just as I tensed in preparation to leap from the cliff and into the canyon below, I spied a creature beside my foot. It was a tiny thing, round-bodied and simple. It did not share the precise size of the creature Dryya had slain, but still exhibited the same traits: six legs, useless wings, an armored body, and a sharp proboscis. It did not hop as it moved, but scuttled from one stone to another, prodding beneath in search of prey of its own.

I speared the tiny bug with the tip of the shortnail and lifted its still-twitching body to Dryya for inspection. Its orange blood trickled down the blade’s length.

With my task complete, Dryya’s directive left me, and the killing heat dissipated as quickly as it had come. My sight normalized, bringing the world back to focus.

The two Knights were staring at me.

“…Wh…What?” Dryya stammered. She cocked her head to the side, as if the new angle might reveal more information. “Are you—Is that what you—How is that suitable prey?!”

Ogrim circled around Dryya and crouched beside me. He leaned in close to inspect my kill, lifting the tip of his claw to count its legs. After a pause for reflection, he burst into a resonant chortle that sent every lesser bug within range scattering. “Behold, Dryya! With its discerning eyes, the Little Knight has already dispatched its quarry. Could any of your previous challengers claim to be so swift?”

“Preposterous!” Dryya shouted. “End this jest, or I will see your name amended to Clown Knight Ogrim! And that is no idle threat!”

“You doubt me? Come, look! I am no scholar, but I bet my title with confidence. This prey that our Little Knight has slain is indeed a Hopper. A nymph Hopper. Creatures of its kind do not metamorphose like most, but instead begin their lives as a much smaller form of what they will grow to become.”

Dryya stomped closer and descended to one knee. She prodded the nymph Hopper with a digit before ripping one of its legs off and rolling it in her claw.

“If you hold no confidence in me,” Ogrim continued, “then be aware that this knowledge comes from Isma herself. Few are as well-versed on flora and fauna as she.”

With a snarl, Dryya tossed aside the bug’s leg and wiped her claw against the stone. “That is a Hopper, yes, but that was not the task that I set forth!” She rose and paced back to the edge of the cliff. Her voice descended to a burning whisper. “What does this mean? Did it misconstrue my intent? Willfully? But it lacks the capacity. No mind to think…”

“Fierce Knight?” Ogrim asked, still chuckling. “Is this to be considered a victory for the Little Knight? In many ways, cunning is as vital a trait as strength, would you not agree?”

“Vessel! Come!” Dryya boomed.

I bolted across the expanse before Ogrim had time to turn his head. Again, Dryya’s will was upon me, and I stood taut like the string of a harp.

“Stay here,” she said, pointing to the very lip of the precipice.

And I complied.

“You seem impassioned,” Ogrim said, suddenly mirthless. He rose and dusted his legs with the back of a claw. “Was the Little Knight’s performance unsatisfactory?”

“Be silent, Ogrim,” Dryya said. “And you might yet learn something.” She looped her longnail through her belt and crossed her arms. “To be deemed worthy enough to undertake this trial, a Vessel must have proven itself to be powerful and hollow in equal measure. Of these two aspects, power is easy enough for a Knight to understand, but rarely does the King explain what it is to be hollow.” She glanced over her shoulder, as if to confirm that Ogrim was still there. “Isma has told you that these things do not think as you or I. That emotion and reasoning are beyond them.”

“So she claims.”

Dryya made a low, feral noise. “Before today, I would have called that the truth, and not a mere claim. But this Vessel has casted doubt on that belief.”

“Never have I been called wise or keen-eyed, but I feel that the Little Knight’s mind was fairly obvious. It—”

In a blur of motion, Dryya whipped her nail from her belt and leveled it at Ogrim. “Not one more quip. Not one more word of frivolity. Or you will taste my blade.”

“It was no jest,” Ogrim said, with barely enough breath to utter.

“In my years, I have subjected many Vessels to this trial—always the same command, the same nail, the same prey. Not one amongst them behaved as this Vessel has. The King’s dark tinkering has made these things into what they are: tools that obey absolutely and in perfect accordance to the wielder’s desire. Yet not this one. It interpreted my words. It did not absorb them as the others did. How it managed to parse my message and perceive it in such a way is not clear, but that act is not something that a hollow being is capable of.”

“You bleed menace, Fierce Knight,” Ogrim whispered. “You seek to deliver death. But I see no adversaries, only we three. I do not understand.” He raised his claws in a gesture that was equal parts pleading and combative.

Dryya turned her nail away from Ogrim and positioned herself behind me. “When circumstance and my Lady’s mandate required that I appraise this march of puppets, I was told not to tolerate weakness. But even more so, I was warned of the jeopardy that might be brought about by a Vessel not truly hollow. It became clear to me that above the petty tasks of gatekeeper and proctor, I was to be an executioner.”

Dryya hefted her nail, angling it for a lethal strike at my neck. “Look forward,” she rasped at me. “Be still. Though pain means nothing to you, I will ensure there is none.”

As I had been told, I did not move. The shackles that had become such a familiar thing held me firm. From the corner of my vision, I witnessed the descent of Dryya’s longnail.

The canyon stretched out before me, like an open grave.

Chapter Text

A curtain of sparks veiled my sight. A squeal of clashing blades stifled my hearing. For an instant all sense was stolen from me. And though I remained motionless, awaiting the death that Dryya had ordained, it did not come.

The sparks faded. The squeal receded. And I yet lived.

The canyon was still before me, impenetrable beneath its fog-leaf shroud, those bloated creatures floating listlessly over its spires.

It was quiet. Even the pervasive wind had slacked in its moaning. Only a metallic grinding persisted. Directly behind my neck.

“You would dare raise your claws to me?” Dryya asked, half a snarl and half a whisper.

“Please, Fierce Knight,” Ogrim cried, “stay your nail! Has the affliction’s madness clouded your eyes?”

Feet scraped against stone, weight shifted, and a nail rasped down the length of a claw.

I could not turn, not even the slightest shift of my head. The burden of command held me still, as if I were entombed within a block of stone.

“If madness claims anyone, then it is you. The Lady’s decree is to see this thing destroyed, and yet you impede that!”

“But why?” Ogrim gasped. “I beseech an answer! Why must the Little Knight perish?”

“Vessels are not meant to possess minds. It is contrary to their purpose!”

“Is this because of that nymph hopper? Was skewering it so terrible an offense?”

“Amongst the King’s constructs, consciousness is a threat, in these Vessels most of all. I will eliminate that threat. Now, lower your claws and stand aside, or you will soon rue your actions!”

Ogrim began to pant. “But Hallownest is a land of enlightenment. A mind is a noble thing—a goodly thing! You would slay the Little Knight for having one of its own?”

“For the last time, yes! Curse the King and his secrets, if you vow to cease this interference, then I will reveal the truth.”

The friction of claw and nail heightened. “A cruel offer, you would have me barter the Little Knight’s life for a few dread secrets?”

“Fine, then.” Dryya said. “Wallow in ignorance if it suits you, so long as you step aside.”

There was a cracking, a groan of tormented metal. Ogrim loosed a pained growl. “I will not. I cannot allow such unrighteousness.”

“What notion do you have of righteousness!” Dryya bellowed. “You are but an infant!”

“Perhaps!” Ogrim bellowed back. “But I am bound by a duty I cannot forsake!” He heaved, and there was a stumble of steps. “I tell you again that I will not allow this.”

There was an icy span of seconds. And the heat of debate drained from Dryya’s voice. “Very well. Then ready your claws. You have passed beyond clemency.”

“To me, Little Knight,” Ogrim whispered. “Remain close. I will shield you.”

The impalpable tomb of Dryya’s last command crumbled away, and movement was restored to me. Ogrim’s order took hold, and I darted to his side.

Gouges and scattered chips of metal-like chitin marred the spot where the two Knights had locked blades. Dryya stood several paces away from it, her weapon held out before her and leveled at me.

Ogrim extended his arm to separate us. The claw upon it had lost its glass-smooth edge and was now covered in nicks and dotted with web-like fractures. It tremored as Ogrim raised his voice. “This battle need not be, Dryya. If it is truly the Lady’s will—the King’s will—that this Little Knight be—” He swallowed. “done away with, then I will hear it from them! Let us return to The City. All of us.”

“I already speak for the Lady. Her verdict would be no different. And that King is as blind now as ever. Delusion would conceal any flaw that He might perceive in His Pure Vessel.” She shifted her stance to face Ogrim. “No. I will administer judgment here. To it. And to you.”

Ogrim took a breath, but before he could retort Dryya struck.

She moved as if the weight of the world meant nothing. Her slender legs closed the distance in a single bound, and with both claws she lifted her longnail over her head.

But Ogrim reacted, far faster than he was like to do. Before Dryya’s blade could bisect him, he crossed his claws to catch it. There was a booming concussion, like the dying toll of a great bell.

Two new fractures sprouted along the blades of Ogrim’s claws, and he collapsed to one knee. The rock beneath cracked from the force, and a stalactite from the nearby cave mouth dislodged. Before it even shattered against the ground, Dryya was in motion. She faded back and then forward, feinting strikes at Ogrim’s sides, legs, and head.

Ogrim parried at the phantom attacks but did not connect with Dryya’s nail. A growl billowed within him, and he lunged to his feet in a sudden shift toward aggression. Like a rising spear, he extended his claws toward Dryya’s stomach, but again they found nothing.

The Fierce Knight seemed almost phantasmal as she dodged out of the range of Ogrim’s attack. She flicked her nail with an air of impatience. “This is no sparring match, Ogrim. I am no tutor with one claw behind my back and a shellwood nail in the other. This is a duel. And you—perhaps above all others—know of my history on this subject.”

“Oh, yes,” Ogrim said with a groan-twisted laugh. “A sprawling legend of unbroken victory.”

“Yet that does not deter you,” Dryya said, almost sadly.

“Never.”

Dryya waded in with a fresh volley of strikes, and this time not one was a feint. They crashed against Ogrim’s immobile defense, setting his shell to rattling.

Slashes rained at Ogrim’s brow and thrusts probed at his heart, but he did not move, instead catching or parrying each attack with his crossed claws. A semicircle of cuts and furrows formed in the ground at his feet. But as the count of strikes rose into the dozens, Ogrim began to crumple. Faintly at first, but soon to the point that he staggered with every hit, and barely managed to resume his stance before the next fell.

I kept my place at Ogrim’s side as he had ordered. The duel raged an arm length away, and every swing of Dryya’s nail made my cloak flutter. Periodically, she attacked me, forcing Ogrim to alter his defense. He suffered several glancing blows against his carapace to ensure that I went unharmed.

Though I did not move, I began to burn with the same searing feeling that had come with Dryya’s command to hunt. I was under no other directive than to stand, yet the burn persisted, with some task unheard, some duty ungiven.

The strong protect the weak.

My grip tightened upon the nail.

But with one last clang, the assault ended—and the burning with it. Dryya fell back to her previous spot. “Why prolong this farce?” she asked, the slightest labor in her voice. “You crack to pieces. You cannot win.”

Ogrim wobbled on his feet. “I fight not that I might triumph before you, but that I might not fail before myself.”

“You will die,” Dryya observed. “Is there any greater failure?”

Another pained laugh from Ogrim. “We have never shared this many words, you and I. It did not occur to me how… different we could be.”

“This grows distasteful. You would do well to lay down and feign death. Perhaps I might overlook you after the Vessel has been disposed of.”

“You know that I cannot,” Ogrim whispered. “I would sooner slay myself.”

Dryya made a petite noise, something like surprise. “The wisdom of my years fails me too often,” she said.

“What?”

“Vessel!” Dryya shouted. She did not even look at me, but I felt her hooks coiling. “Destroy yourself!”

The hooks sprang. They wrapped my body and burrowed into my limbs, again making of me a marionette. With a deft twist, the shortnail inverted in my grip, and both my arms lifted the sheening point to my chest. Liquid-shadow beaded as the tip pressed into my body, but I felt no pain, merely a chill as if from a lonely gust. My arms tensed, preparing to drive the blade deeper, to rend whatever vital spark I had and return me to nothing.

“Stop!” Ogrim wheeled to face me. “You must not do such a thing!”

The nail slackened.

“Destroy yourself, Vessel.” Dryya repeated. “I command it!”

There was a sick crunch, and a flurry of opaque bubbles gushed from my chest. I collapsed to my knees, but oblivion did not take me. I readied to strike again.

“I said STOP!” Ogrim screamed, this time with such violence that his voice tore. “You are never to slay yourself, Little Knight! Do you understand? NEVER!”

The hooks unwound. My arms fell limp at my sides.

Dryya rose to a booming echo that transcended even Ogrim. “You WILL obey, Vessel! Destroy yourself! Now!”

But I did not. Though I felt the order upon my shell, it held no authority. It was as if some inviolable barrier diverted the frothing river of Dryya’s will.

Ogrim knelt beside me and grasped the nail’s hilt between his mangled claws. He extracted it from my chest with a tug and tossed it to the ground. The shadow-smeared blade skidded across the stone, catching on a protruding pebble and skipping off the cliff’s edge into the canyon below. Ogrim held his arms about me in a defensive circle yet seemed uncertain how to react to the thin flow of darkness that percolated from my chest and wafted through the air.

“Again, it proves its dysfunction,” Dryya muttered. “The new order did not erase the last. Somehow, this Vessel retained it…”

Ogrim whipped about, snarling. “Too far, Dryya. Too far! You skirt the precipice of dishonor. Has all sense of chivalry rotted within you?”

“Chivalry,” she said, as if tasting it. “You will find that word grows fatuous with time’s passage. But no. Not quite. If that were so, then you would have died the moment that you turned your back.”

It took a great effort for Ogrim to rise. He propped himself to his feet with the tips of his claws. Like Geo from a torn pouch, chitin tumbled from his blades. “Shall we continue?”

“Enough of this.” Dryya snapped. “Yield, this contest is done. You have not the right nor the power to continue.”

“I am not defeated,” Ogrim slurred.

Dryya shook her head and raised her nail. “Do you intend to make of me a butcher?”

“No, Fierce Knight. The opposite. I will save you from that end.”

“Fool.”

In three stomping steps, Dryya was upon Ogrim once again. She planted her feet and swung her nail in an arc at his torso. The attack was far slower than any she had yet loosed, but it seemed infused with every scrap of her strength.

Ogrim attempted to dodge, but the movement was little more than a lurch. At the last instant, he raised his claws to shield himself, but they did nothing. The nail’s impact pitched him to the ground, with such force that his shell cracked.

“Stay down,” Dryya said. She spun about and raised her nail to me, preparing to bury it to the hilt into my mask. She snatched a breath, and the blade descended.

But up shot Ogrim, beyond pain, beyond fatigue. He wrapped Dryya from behind with his broken claws, catching her bent arms and pressing them tight to her chest. The nail jolted from Dryya’s grip and dinned against a rock. Ogrim arched his back, lifting Dryya’s tall form and stealing her purchase of the ground. “You will not!” he cried, with words wet and tortured. “So long as I live, you will not slay this one!”

Dryya struggled and twisted, but Ogrim’s claws were locked like a pair of manacles.

“Vessel!” Dryya shrieked. “Hurl yourself into the canyon! Seek out the greatest beast within so that it might devour you!”

The command flooded over me, circumventing whatever barrier might have been. I faltered up from my knees and took a half-step about, in the direction of the cliff.

“No!” Ogrim yelled, “Stop! You must—”

But Dryya flung her head back to slam Ogrim full in the face. She wrenched her body to the side and lashed out with an elbow at Ogrim’s temple.

The grapple broke, and Dryya stumbled free of Ogrim’s arms. “Do as I commanded!” Dryya said, before turning around and clenching her claw into a bludgeon.

Ogrim was already drawing a breath to interdict, but it was lost as Dryya punched him in the eye. He bellowed in pain and reeled back.

“Go!” Dryya thundered.

The word slammed against me like the butt of a lance. My feet lost the ground, and I found myself hurtling into the canyon.

Ogrim screamed something after me, but the growing distance obliterated his meaning.

As I plummeted, black bubbles streamed from my chest like the trail of a shooting star. Though pulsing shadow obscured my vision, I saw a spire rushing up to intercept me. Before I collided and dashed to pieces, the material of my cloak transformed, becoming membranous and sheathed in light. I flapped with all my strength, sweeping my transient wings to one side and altering my trajectory. Wind roared as I grazed the spire’s edge, and pain sheared across my shoulder. With a kick and another flap, I amended my course.

My wings soon shriveled, and my glide returned to a fall. I pierced the canopy, and branch after branch buffeted me. Their sharp edges scratched my mask and tattered my re-forming cloak. I landed without elegance, tumbling into a cluster of ferns and coming to a stop.

But no sooner had I stilled than I rose to my feet. The brand of Dryya’s dictum was seared into my shell, and I could not resist it.

I set off in search of a creature to devour me.

In contrast to the cliffs above, the canyon floor was glutted with life, both plant and fungal. Thick shrubbery and nests of vines occupied the spaces where light could be found, while carpets of mushrooms took up the darker stretches. Overhead, sprouting from the craggy slopes of the spires, were the tall-stalked plants that made up the canopy. Between them flitted winged bugs in many shapes and sizes. Some paused to regard me, venom dripping from their bright-orange abdomens.

Spores rose like fog banks as I trudged over fungi, and stray leaves clung to my cloak as I pushed through bushes. I passed even more bugs as I went, but they were far too small to consume me.

The insubstantial leash tugging at my neck eventually brought me to a clearing occupied by Maskflies. They flinched at my appearance and took flight in a spiraling arrangement before vanishing into a hole in the canopy.

At the center of the clearing was a cavity of stone, within which rested a crystal-pure pool of water. I skirted its edge, but a metallic flash caught my attention. I stopped, held fast by something. Beneath the perfect stillness of the water rested an object, unnatural in such a setting. It was a nail, the very nail that Ogrim had flung off the cliff minutes before. I quivered in place, strung between Dryya’s imperative and another long forgotten.

Take the nail, little one.

Though the leash of Dryya’s will strained against me, I shuffled down the slope of the cavity and splashed into the chilling pool. It was not deep, and the nail’s hilt came easily to my grip. I kept it close to my side as I left the clearing. My wet steps smacked across the stone.

I was directed ever downward and toward the heart of the canyon. Light became less and less frequent, forcing plant life to give way to fungus and rot. Pale, root-like things began to appear in the soil. They sported bulbs at their tips which cast a ghostly glow upon the unnatural night. Creatures skittered and hissed beyond the reach of those bulbs, but their noises were meager and furtive. They were unfit to fulfill my task.

I continued onward, heedless of the long gulfs of darkness through which I walked.

But weakness crept upon me, like frost over the petals of a flower. Strands of ebony smoke wept from the wound in my chest. My legs shuddered with every step, and spinous vines rendered the path treacherous. As a matter of inevitability, I faltered and fell at a dip in the canyon floor. This dip extended into a slope, and the slope into a fissure.

I crashed through putrid underbrush and slime-coated mushrooms. The walls of the fissure protruded like broken teeth, and I ricocheted all the way down. With a crunch of chitin, I came to a stop.

For a time, I could not rise. The world seemed to quake beneath me, and animation would not return to my limbs.

From the scope of my vision, it appeared that I rested in a cavity of soil and loose rock. The wan caress of those glowing bulbs illuminated my surroundings. Beneath me and within the walls, tiny, spike-covered bugs squirmed over one another with a pointless urgency.

Slowly, feeling crawled its way back into my body, and I pushed up to arms’ length. A scrap of moon-white shell fell from the cheek of my mask. Yet that scrap did not belong to me. Though I was wounded, my mask was still unbroken.

I stood, and more scraps thumped upon the soil, falling from my chest and cloak. Something had broken my fall, and in the process broken itself. I looked down.

The tangled strips of a steel-gray cloak.

The shattered remnants of two curved horns.

The stump of a nail, devoured by rust.

And the umbral stain of what had once been a body, so much like mine.

Out of these remains stared one unblinking eye socket, the only distinguishable remnant of a mask. The spike-covered bugs writhed and threshed through the pearly shell fragments, taking them up in their mandibles and grinding them to powder with sedulous attention.

A voice, unbidden, rose from the incomprehensible tendrils of the past.

That thing is… No consequence to you. It is mere refuse…

And again, my purpose ensorcelled me. I strode over the corpse and did not look back.

The fissure was deep, far deeper than my enervated body could surmount. Not even a sliver of natural light reached down from above. Yet ahead, a passage peeked out of the cavity wall. It was little more than a crack lined with fungus, but it foretokened progress. With difficulty, I squeezed through and into the crushing embrace of the earth.

Every step forward was a labor. The scrape and toil of my movements rebounded back at me, for the walls were barely wider than my shell. Stagnation hung heavy, as if the ash coating the land above had seeped down and become the very air about me. My cloak caught on jagged corners. My horns bashed against low-hanging stalactites. At times it felt as if my body would rip in two as I forced through jaw-like openings in the rock. Yet I did not—could not—stop.

Though half-blind and panting, I spied something in the distance. Beyond a bend in the earthen labyrinth stood a beacon, a gap in the wall through which spilled sickly light. I hastened forward, abraded my shell upon talons of stone, and finally tore free of the tunnel’s clutches.

I emerged into a crater with steep, towering walls. It resembled the upturned mouth of some enormous parasite: perfectly circular, and with triangular shelves of stone jutting along its edge like teeth. Farther above, the green of the canopy shrouded the gray sky.

On the far side of the crater was a cave entrance. Littered about it were the hulks of dead creatures. Their shells bore puncture wounds, and what remained of the flesh upon their bodies was desiccated and shrunken. Within the cave, a foul wind blew, expanding and receding in a slow cadence.

The leash of my command grew taut. I had found the object of my journey. The heat rose in me, and I approached the cave, every step faster than the last.

Though the only sound I made was the hiss of my cloak, the wind within the cave stilled. A sequence of tremors disturbed the earth, and a presence revealed itself. Two eyes—lividly orange—emerged from the dark, and with them came the plated form of a gargantuan bug.

Six legs, vestigial wings, and a nail-sharp proboscis greeted me. I beheld a Hopper, many dozen times larger than the one Dryya had slain. It fixed the molten liquid of its gaze on me and approached. The ground beneath it buckled and cracked like the surface of a frozen lake.

As the Hopper drew close, the finer details of its body became clear. Old cuts, bite marks, and abrasions tarnished its armor. The wings upon its back were nothing but shredded flaps, and a hairline fracture ascended its proboscis, reaching all the way to the eye socket. The Hopper’s front-right leg had been severed at an upper joint, causing it to list with every hop. Yet, it still maneuvered around the heaps of its victims with a semblance of finesse. The bulk of its body cast a shadow that stretched ravenously toward me.

But fear was no birthright of mine, and I careened into a sprint, erasing the distance between us. Such was the demand placed upon me.

The Hopper did not bellow or screech. Aside from the crunch of stone, its only noise was strenuous breathing. As I entered its range, the Hopper slid to a halt and gathered its legs beneath it. With a snapping noise that resembled splintering shellwood, the Hopper leapt into the air. It angled its pointed limbs at me and dropped like a boulder.

I did not brandish my nail. I did not tense and prepare to dodge. I did not draw from the well of Soul within me. I merely waited.

In anticipation of my task’s end.

But as the terrible weight descended, a smear of color swept down from the crater’s edge. I was struck, not by the piercing proboscis of the Hopper, but by something soft and warm. Fuzzy limbs wrapped me, and I was spirited into the sky. There was a deafening crash beneath me as the Hopper landed and imprinted a second, smaller crater into the first.

As I soared on delicate wings not my own, the leash of purpose pulled at me. Of all the creatures in the canyon, that Hopper alone could fulfill my goal, yet I was traveling away from it.

Fatigue rendered me sluggish and impotent, but I pushed against the thing keeping me aloft. I needed, above all else, to return to the crater so that I might be devoured.

“Settle down, valiant larva,” whispered the soft, winged thing about me. “Be still. Should you fuss then I might drop you, and we cannot have that.”

The leash snapped. As a dozen commands before it, Dryya’s edict was lost to me with but the passage of a few antithetical words. I stilled, letting the pain and weariness loose from the cage in which I had bound it.

The winged thing chuckled. “There we are. Much better. You might care to rest, we are nearly free of the Matron’s den.”

A few flaps and an easy glide brought us above the crater’s rim. All around stretched the private ecosystem of the canyon, dispersed with similar craters like marks upon a damaged shell.

The winged thing gripped me tightly and returned to the earth in a helical motion. We alighted on one of the huge, stone wedges that encircled the Hopper’s crater. The winged thing flapped one last time to stabilize itself, and fine, ruby-hued powder parted from its wings to sparkle away on the breeze.

I was released from the cushioned embrace with a gentle nudge. But the new mandate of stillness that had been placed upon me paralyzed my limbs, and I collapsed into a heap.

The winged thing made an alarmed noise. “Oh dear, are you alright? Has exhaustion overtaken you? At the least, sit up if you can, I must ensure that you aren’t hurt.”

I lifted my body from the cold rock and crossed my legs. Despite everything, the nail was still with me. I rested it on my lap and looked up.

The winged thing was a moth, with multi-faceted, obsidian eyes and pronounced antennae shaped like the fronds of a fern. Something like fur draped its entire body, in alternating hues of pinks and whites that clashed with the drabness of our surroundings.

The moth reached up to tug at the tips of its wings and pulled them inwardly in an overlapping pattern. In a few seconds, the wings came to resemble a stiff sort of cloak, and the moth sat down beside me. Stripes of fuchsia and cream mingled in a manner that could be called… beautiful.

“You recover quickly,” the moth said. “That is a good sign.” It looked me up and down, from the scrapes on my horns, to the nail in my lap, to the dirt caking my feet. At the sight of my chest, the moth cringed. “That is a ghastly wound you bear. Is the pain dire?”

But I did not reply.

“Perhaps I am being impertinent,” the moth said. “I will begin with introductions.” It lowered its head in a grave gesture. “I am called Seer, of the moth tribe. What is your name?”

Chapter Text

Just as the shining powder of Seer’s wings had drifted away into nothingness, so too did her question. She waited for some time in a posture of polite attention before clearing her throat and reiterating. “What is your name?”

But my response was unchanged.

The white antennae atop Seer’s head twitched. “You have a name, yes?” she asked.

Silence.

“You have a voice. Yes?” she added.

I said nothing and only watched her: the glare of her color; the flicker of her fur.

A black bubble percolated from my chest and Seer tracked its listless course.

“I have not seen an injury of that sort before. How did you come to suffer it?”

I had no answer.

Another twitch of Seer’s antennae. “Do you require help? If so, then you must tell me.”

Speak up, I cannot help you if you do not.

But another reticent moment passed us by.

Seer unclasped her wings and gave them a fitful flap. The bubble caught in the ensuing gust and floated off. “Clearly, you are not the talkative sort. But that wound must be no great danger if you don’t feel the need to discuss it.”

She draped one of her four wings over her lap and began to brush at it with a furred arm. The wing’s resplendence only heightened as the dirt and stray blades of grass fell away. “I am open to other matters if you would rather we speak of something else. Have you journeyed far to reach this place? I imagine it was no easy task for you, being wingless.”

But I had no story with which to regale her.

Seer’s antennae twitched a third time, almost violently. She took a puff of breath. “Very well, then.” Her voice shifted with a sly lilt. “If you will not answer my questions, then I am forced to speculate. Should I err in my guesses, then it is your onus to correct me, wouldn’t you agree? From that shabby attire and muddy nail, I assume that you must be some vagabond Knight on a precipitous quest. You must not be a very skilled one, considering that you required rescuing.” She paused, and the facets of her eyes gleamed like glass.

But I did not defend myself. I had no corrections to offer.

“And to think I was that rescuer,” she continued, a little louder, “a feeble moth. It would be quite mortifying if I were to return to the Kingdom and spread news of this assumption. If I am not amended, then I might stain a certain vagabond’s honor.”

Yet still, I did not speak.

“Why, if the Knights of the King’s court learned of this event, then you would have no hope of ever joining them.”

I maintained a stillness that rivaled the stone of the earth.

Seer huffed and pulled down another wing to preen. “You are imperturbable if nothing else. Perhaps that will be your title if you ever ascend to the rank of the Five Greats. ‘Imperturbable…’” And she waited for me to fill the gap.

But I did not.

Seer completed her cleaning with a shrug and cloaked herself in her wings once more. “But truly now, do you have no words for yourself? I have been about this assignment for many weeks now, and I am loath to find my only company in all this time to be mute. Come now, speak. King knows that I’ve indulged in far too many one-sided conversations already. If you require some promise of secrecy about today’s… incident, then I will gladly give it, so long as you share a chat or two.”

Seer’s desire snatched at me but found no purchase, like a clumsy claw grasping at a curved carapace. I remained as unresponsive as ever. For I could not—and never would—speak.

“Fine, then,” Seer said. “Cling to your silence if that is what you wish. It suits you well enough.” She turned away from me and gazed down into the crater to watch the Hopper’s slow progress back into its den.

With no threat before it, the Hopper was now devoid of that predatory energy that had propelled it. The tips of its legs etched sinuous marks into the ground as it dragged itself along.

Seer rose from her cross-legged position and padded over to the crater’s edge, her wings trailing behind like an imperial cape. “I must admit that it was rather startling to see you challenge the Matron in the way that you did. Your lone charge was brave, larva, but also foolish. Did you hope to slay the most ancient Hopper in this land unassisted?”

With a lethargic sort of grace, Seer leaned out over the crater to better see. “If so, then I have some harsh words for whomever set you on this quest.” She beckoned to me. “Stand up if you can. And come here. I will tell you of this creature that you were tasked with destroying.”

I stood, and though my usual strength had long since wilted, I tottered to Seer’s side.

“Do you see the pain in the Matron’s step?” Seer asked with a downward nod. “It is much like your own. But while you are hindered by only one wound, the Matron is hindered by dozens. Her scars are the product of many lifetimes-worth of struggle. And as a result of that, she will soon die, even without the cruel assistance you had intended to offer her. Be it minutes, days, or weeks, I cannot say, but the end encroaches upon this mighty being.”

Though she made no move to hint at it, Seer’s dark, featureless eyes seemed to fixate on me. “My purpose in being here is to witness the Matron’s death. To chronicle her. And from her passage, to recover what would otherwise be eternally lost. You should know that I did indeed rescue you from the Matron, but I also rescue her from you. For the Matron’s many years of toil, she has earned a peaceful end. I ask that you allow her to pass at her own measure, and not upon the end of a nail.”

The Hopper’s flagging trudge came to a halt before a deep cleft bisecting the crater floor. The Hopper considered the gap and shuffled from side to side, alternately tensing and relaxing its body, as if readying to leap yet thinking better of it. In the Hopper’s earlier advance, that very obstacle had been no impediment.

“Is your silence a sign of agreement?” Seer asked. “Do you pledge a Knightly vow not to quarrel with the Matron?”

I offered neither agreement nor denial.

Seer chuckled. “So, it is settled.”

The Hopper adjusted one final time before tightening like a spring and launching into the air, but its trajectory was poor and its strength insufficient. The Hopper struck the side of the cleft and tumbled in an earth-cracking discord. After a moment of stilling dust, the Hopper teetered upright and ascended the shallower slope of the cleft back to its original position. Slowly, painfully, the Hopper’s scar-streaked legs folded beneath its stomach and the creature settled to the ground. The journey home was abandoned, and with a heaving breath—audible even from this distance—the Hopper rested its head upon a nearby rock and surrendered to sleep.

Seer let out her own sigh and also sat. A biting wave of air made her shiver, and she wrapped her wings more tightly. “Join me, won’t you?” She patted the ground beside her. “My talk of long-sought company was not facetious. It is lonely observing the passage of a life.”

This new task was within my means, so I capitulated. I sat down, the nail returning to my lap, and my arms falling limp within my cloak.

“Thank you, larva. You are kind to indulge the whims of this silly moth.” Seer set her gaze at a point somewhere beyond the slumbering Hopper, and quiet enveloped us like a shell of ash.

High above the canopy loomed a gray rampart of clouds. The winds sheared and tore at it to reveal fleeting glimpses of the night sky beyond, but like water cut by a nail, the clouds reformed in an endless recurrence. For one perfect second, stars and spiraling comets emerged from the roil to scintillate upon a disc of black.

“I was taught not to dwell,” Seer murmured, reclaiming my attention. Her gaze was still set upon the Hopper. “On death, I mean. All are taken in their due turn, it is the way of things. To spend one’s time considering death is to waste it. But, of late, I have had time in abundance, more than enough for wasting. It seems that death has seeped its way into my musings, and it does not wish to leave.” She shook slightly, scattering ruby dust into the wind. “So that you know, I’ve no fear of death. All moths know that the sanctity of memory transcends that sort of trifling thing. So long as memory remains, nothing ever truly dies. Yet…” Seer tightened herself into a ball. “I am afraid.”

Do not fear. Your King and his Royal Knights are here to protect you.

Although no wind disturbed her fur, Seer shivered a second time. “The affliction. If you come from the Kingdom as I suspect, then you must know of it. You must have witnessed its ravages, just as I have.” She shrank further into herself. “The affliction brings with it a different sort of death: a death of the mind. It is a far crueler end than one brought about by nail or claw or time. There is no sanctity in it… No transcendence…”

She tore her eyes from the crater and rounded on me. “Please, I understand that you do not care for chatter, but you must have some news of the Kingdom. In the weeks that I have spent waiting for the Matron’s passage, not one word has come to me. What has happened in my absence? Does the affliction worsen? Has it claimed the last of my tribe?”

Seer’s questions came and went like a river rushing around a stone. She held my gaze, but I had no news to give.

“If you refuse to speak,” Seer said, “then do you at least carry a scroll? A shell? Anything?” She held out a claw to receive whatever I might offer.

But there was no such parcel, and I made no move to suggest otherwise.

The ivory fur about Seer’s neck bristled. “If you cannot speak, then can you at least write?” She snatched up a twig and pointed to a sandy patch on the ground. With a hasty stroke, she inscribed a rune, and then passed me the twig. “Write,” she whispered. “Please.”

Words are ever a toil, thus, this medium shall instead enable our rapport.

I slid a long, horizontal line over the sand, until the twig snapped beneath the pressure.

Seer gasped in pain, as if she herself had been that twig. “You are impossible! Is this some nightmare sent to torment me?” She shot to her feet and began to pace. Her claws wrung one another beneath her trembling wings.

After a wobbly circuit through the sand, Seer composed herself and came to a stop. “I had hoped it would remain unnecessary, but I carry with me a tool that might allow us to converse despite your missing voice. The customs of my tribe demand your consent before I may use it, but…” Her head hung wearily. “You would not offer it.”

Seer stared in the direction of the Kingdom, as if she could peer through the miles of foliage and stone like an open window. “But that cannot be helped. I must know!” She sat back down beside me and rummaged beneath her wings. “Allow me to explain, and then perhaps you will not begrudge me for using this tool.”

Her wings parted to reveal a silken satchel, bound shut by a knotted cord. She worked the knot as she spoke. “My tribe has served as caretaker of this tool since the earliest age. Some think it to be a gift given to us by the dream itself, while others believe our ancestors forged it with a craft long since forgotten. I do not pretend to know its origins, but I do know that it is powerful—and that it is the most prized possession of all moth-kind. Now that my teacher has passed away and I have ascended to her place as Elder, the responsibility of wielding this tool falls to me.” She unraveled the knot and sunk a claw into the satchel’s confines. But as she glanced up at me, she froze.

Seer’s antennae flattened. Her wings formed a curtain over the satchel. And her voice grew icy. “You doubt me. I see it in your look, even though you try to hide it. You think me no Elder at all! I am ‘too young’, correct? You wouldn’t be the first to voice that opinion—if you ever deigned to actually speak.” My reflection danced across her glaring, spheroid eyes. “It may be true that the passage of time has yet to purple my wings or cloud my sight, but I am still an Elder. I have earned that title, and I would not be here, holding this most sacred instrument, if that were not true!”

I refuted nothing. A wind-tossed leaf landed atop my head.

Seer held the stare for a long while—and I returned it. But her intensity bled away with the passing seconds. She looked away. “That wasn’t a reaction fit for an Elder, was it? Forgive me for presuming. Let us continue.”

With another scattering of ruby, Seer swept the curtain of her wings aside to reveal the tool. She cradled it in her claws as if the slightest pressure might shatter it.

The tool was a thin ring of some woven material, ebony-black and of a quality that blurred the line between silk and steel. A pattern wove through the gap in its center, resembling a blossoming flower or a shining star. Attached to the ring’s base was a simple grip like the hilt of a nail.

Carefully, Seer lifted the ring by its grip and held it out for my appraisal. “As is the tendency of ancient things, this tool has borne many names, but I have always known it as the ‘Dream Nail’. For those trained in its use, the Dream Nail is a key into the realm of dreams, a net by which to gather Essence, and a looking glass into the innermost thoughts of the mind.”

As if stirred to life by Seer’s words, the Dream Nail flickered with a pale light. The spectral image of a blade manifested above the disc, and for an instant, the Dream Nail embodied its name. But Seer flinched away, dropping it to her lap with a thud. The blade winked out of existence and the glowing ring dulled back to black. She quickly picked it up again, even more delicately this time, and inspected it for any damage. After a moment, she let out a relieved breath and returned the Dream Nail to the pedestal of her claw.

“My teacher told me much about the Dream Nail before… Before she passed away. And though my schooling was not technically completed, I have learned more than enough.” Seer leaned forward. “In order to perceive your thoughts, I must cut you with the Dream Nail. But do not worry. It will caue no harm—in either body or mind. When wielded properly, the Dream Nail is no malefic instrument.”

She paused to consider something. “You are aware of Essence, are you not? It is common knowledge among my tribe, but that may not be the case within the Kingdom.”

I gave no assent.

Seer nodded. “Very well, I will elaborate. To quote my teacher: ‘Essence is the precious fragments of light that dreams are made of.’”

I displayed no sign of comprehension, and Seer’s shoulders bobbed with a half-chuckle.

“But that is not much of an explanation, is it? I always told her such.” She shook the thought aside. “Well, do you know of Soul: the substance synonymous with life? It and Essence are not so different. Just as Soul is the earthly fundament that animates the body, Essence is the ethereal fundament that animates the mind. In the simplest sense, one might call Essence the root of consciousness. When bound within a living shell, Essence enables thought, memory, and dreams. And when that living shell dies, then its Essence disperses back into the world, just as its Soul does.”

She stood and lifted the Dream Nail like a lit torch. “So, do you see? The Dream Nail holds the power to peer into the Essence within your shell, allowing me access to your hidden thoughts and memories.”

Seer extended a claw. “Is that enough to allay your fears? I dearly wish to know of the Kingdom’s condition, and this is the only means left to me. Please, if you trust me then take my claw and rise. That will be all the consent that I need.”

At her frail command, I reached out, and she hoisted me to my feet.

“Excellent!” Seer released me and took a step back. She assumed the clumsy approximation of a warrior’s stance, and the Dream Nail was once again engulfed in light, as if a flock of Lumaflies had alighted upon it. There came the sound of chimes as the Dream Nail’s apparitional blade erupted into being. But this time, Seer did not shy away. She dug in her feet and took a deep breath.

“Let us begin with something simple. Introductions are easy enough. I have already given my name, now all you need to do is contemplate your own. Hold your name in the forefront of your thoughts and remain still. This will not hurt, I promise you that much.”

My name…

But Seer’s decree carried no weight. Just as her earlier order to speak had been ineffectual, so too was this. Like a climber’s claw on a cliff of smooth marble.

My name…

The Dream Nail swept down with exaggerated slowness, so much so that if it had been a true nail it would have lacked the momentum to even cut my shell. The concentrated light that composed its blade passed through my mask, temporarily stealing my sight. There was a resonant thrumming deep within me, but no thought—no Essence—seeped to the surface.

As Seer retracted the Dream Nail, she looked down and turned the glowing disk from side to side. “Strange. It seems that I have not quite mastered this instrument. I could not fathom your thoughts.” She gave the Dream Nail an experimental swing through the air. “Allow me to try again, we must both increase our focus.”

Without pause, the Dream Nail descended a second time, fast enough to be considered a slash.

Again, a flare of light, a thrumming within my shell, and then nothing.

Seer’s voice tightened. “I don’t understand. When the Dream Nail brushes against a mind, it never fails to sing, no matter how small that mind might be. Yet here, it sees no Essence within you… No thoughts. How can this be?”

A cacophonous sound—one that grew closer by the second—issued from beyond the wall of foliage ringing the crater. It was the snapping of vines and the crunch of trampled underbrush. Seer unfurled her wings with a snap, and the incandescence of the Dream Nail vanished back into the silken satchel.

She shot out a claw and snatched my arm. “Something comes. Make ready! I will—”

But a round, lustrous thing exploded out of the greenery. A shower of torn leaves obscured it briefly, but the distinctive shape and the flash of silver were unmistakable.

Ogrim.

The Great Knight skidded to a halt a few paces from the crater’s edge. He battled against his own momentum and barely avoided toppling. Once stabilized, he readied his claws and scanned the clearing. The pain was audible in his heaving.

At the sight of Seer, Ogrim cocked his head, and his claws lowered a fraction. “A moth?” He asked. “What are—” but the words caught as he spied me.

“Little Knight?” Ogrim whispered. He shook his head as if to banish delusion and looked again. “Little Knight. Indeed, it is true, you live!”

In a fashion that more resembled a stagger than a run, Ogrim approached. “I beseech forgiveness,” he panted. “I could not dispute Dryya’s command in time.”

For Ogrim’s first few steps, a stiff tenacity held him upright, but that drained away like water through a perforated basin. His stagger became a lurch, and his lurch a shuffle. He halted a few paces away and hunched over. No matter how hard he labored, his breath would not return to him.

Seer released her grip upon me. Her wings fell like reams of silk, and the white of her arms pressed tightly against the pink of her stomach. She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Great… Knight? Great Knight Ogrim? Why are you here? Why are you injured?”

Myriad wounds decorated Ogrim’s body, and not merely those that had been inflicted by Dryya. The dignity of his shell was sullied by acid burns, dents, and bite marks. His claws were still a ruin, most of their blade-sharp chitin having already been stripped away by Dryya’s nail.

Though Ogrim nearly tripled Seer’s size, he struggled to meet her gaze. “Indeed,” he said between gasps. “I am sorry, but—” he groaned. “—but I have no time for questions. Can you fly with—those pretty wings?”

Seer looked to her shoulders, as if surprised to find the wings draping them. “Yes, I can, Great Knight. But why?”

Like a wasting plant, Ogrim sank to his knees. The act of lifting his head became too much, and he let it droop. “Dryya comes. Take the Little Knight. Fly far from here. Find the King. Stop for no one.” His limbs spasmed and he crumpled to the ground.

“Great Knight!” Seer exclaimed. “Great Knight!” She knelt beside him and her claws hovered over his body, not quite touching. “What has happened? Why must I fly? What has the Fierce Knight to do with this?!”

“Go,” Ogrim whispered, before the last of his energy faded and he lost consciousness.

Seer shouted several more futile questions before her voice grew hoarse. She overcame whatever imaginary barrier separated her from Ogrim and pressed her claws against his chest, trying to rouse him with a shove.

But he did not stir.

Seer wavered to her feet and looked from me to Ogrim and back again in quick succession. Her breathing came as a strangled whine, high and fast. “You know one another? He spoke to you as if—as if—” She looked to the foliage encircling the crater. Ogrim’s advance had carved a makeshift tunnel through the greenery, the entrance of which gaped with shadow like an open mouth. “He was fleeing. From some beast?” She took a step back and her whole body quaked. “Are we in danger? A danger too grievous for even a Great Knight?”

But just like the questions she had offered Ogrim, these too went unanswered.

“Speak, larva!” Seer cried. “For King’s sake, speak, I do not understand!”

She waited one entire second for her plea’s inevitable failure before wheeling back toward the prone Knight. The Dream Nail seemed almost to materialize in her grip, and she raised it with both claws over her head. Its blade chimed into existence, and she readied to bring it down.

“Great Knight! Before I fly and leave you to this fate, I must know the truth! Forgive this insolence, Please!”

The Dream Nail descended, trailing ghostly hoops of light. Yet as it neared, a voice boomed out of the foliage.

“HALT!”

Seer jerked to a stop, as if a rival nail had repelled her.

With a glint of metal, Fierce Knight Dryya emerged out of the dark.

Chapter Text

At first, all was quiet, not a creature moved, not Ogrim, not Seer, not I. But for the dancing light of the Dream Nail poised over Ogrim’s head, it seemed that even time had lurched to a halt.

From twenty paces off, Dryya absorbed the scene without even a turn of her head. She stood tall and unscathed, the longnail in her grip painted with gore and chitin.

“That is a strange weapon you bear, moth,” Dryya said. “I did not know your kind to be capable of martial skill.” She took a step closer and flicked the blood from her longnail. “You menace a Great Knight with that very weapon. I did not know your kind to be capable of dealing death either.”

“What?” The shake of Seer’s head set her antennae to flailing. “This is not a weapon, I menace no one.”

“Is that so?” Dryya rumbled. “I see the piercing tip of a nail trained upon a bug far too wounded to defend himself. By my reckoning that is no amiable pose. If you are as wise as your race is famed to be, then you will step away from the Loyal Knight. Slowly.”

Seer hesitated but did as Dryya demanded and lowered the Dream Nail to her side. It vibrated with a nervous energy, refusing to revert to that cold, black disc. “This tool can do no harm,” Seer asserted, “it does not pierce or rend. It merely peers into the minds of those it touches, nothing more.”

With Seer no longer in striking distance of Ogrim, Dryya’s stance slackened—but only slightly. She studied the Dream Nail. “You sought to steal the Loyal Knight’s secrets. You are a thief, then? It is a far cry from murderer, but that distinction does you little help.”

Again, Seer’s antennae lashed from side to side. “No, you misunderstand. I merely sought to learn the truth of Loyal Ogrim’s words. He told of an impending danger and warned me to flee, but I could not simply abandon him to an unknown fate.”

“Dangers abound in this place,” Dryya said with a vague gesture. “If you know anything of Kingdom’s Edge, then that should be obvious.” Her predatory gaze shifted to me. “You have stumbled into matters that do not concern you, moth. If what you say is true, then it was likely Ogrim’s intent for you to return home. You should heed that advice.”

Still facing Dryya, Seer sidled over to me. Her trembling claw closed around my arm. “If that is your counsel, Fierce Knight, then it is not my place to object. My—My friend and I will depart now.” Her wings loosed a dusting of ruby powder as they tensed.

“Wait!” Dryya barked. She crouched low as if readying to pounce, but when Seer made no further move, she stilled. “Ogrim and I have business with that… bug. It is the purpose for our journey here. You will depart alone.”

Seer’s grip on my arm was like a vise. “It was Ogrim’s request that I bring this bug with me back to the Kingdom. How am I to know which Knight to obey?”

Dryya crept closer, still in a half-crouch. “I am the elder Knight. You will heed me. Travel on your way, moth. This is no affair of yours.”

The fine prongs of Seer’s claw bit into the shadow of my arm, and liquid-black beads welled up around the punctures. Her voice turned cold. “The Loyal Knight spoke your name before he succumbed to his wounds. He said it with such desperation. Such fear.”

“Mind yourself,” Dryya said, shortening the gap another inch. “A commoner is not meant to overstep.”

“A commoner I may be,” Seer whispered, “but not a fool. I know a beast slavering for the kill when I see one.”

“Release that creature,” Dryya ordered. “Now.”

Seer paused. “No.”

The Fierce Knight was a silver blur before Seer was even allowed the time to flinch. Though Seer’s cream-streaked wings rippled with the intent of flight, they were no more useful in that instant than slabs of stone. The flat of the longnail fought through the air as Dryya brought it down, slapping Seer aside.

With a crunch, the nail took Seer by her shoulder. The force was great, but she did not relinquish her hold on my arm. Together we were sent tumbling over the painful stone. We came to rest in a whorl of colors torn from Seer’s fur.

“Up, little larva, up,” Seer coughed. She wobbled to her knees. “We must away!”

I did as I was bidden, even as the world continued to spin.

Dryya approached, her nail held to one side. There was no haste in her step.

Seer curled an arm up to cradle her shoulder. She spoke to me, low and fervent, as though confiding a secret. “I have not the strength to protect you, flight is a moth’s only ploy. Hold tightly to me and I will—” but a hiss of stifled agony cut her short. She strained to look at the wings that hung from her back. They were bent at unnatural angles. Her breath hitched.

Strength.

The word echoed within me.

I have not the strength to protect you.

Seer stood on unsteady legs. She took my arm and guided me behind the screen of her broken wings. The liquid glimmer of her eyes was transfixing. “Listen. The sky is lost to me. Do as Ogrim asked, flee back to the Kingdom with all the speed you can muster. I will distract the Fierce Knight.”

The order swelled in my chest, but this time it did not take purchase of me. Something ponderous and unformed rose up to contest Seer’s will. It lacked the hard edges and incontrovertible purpose of a command, yet still bore a power that surmounted all else.

Are you frightened, little one? Hurt? Do not fear. Your King and his Royal Knights are here to protect you.

With effort, Seer straightened. Her voice carried in a rasp. “Fierce Knight, please, stop this! Are words so quick to fail?”

“Ha! Quick? This entire day I have trudged a tar field of words. I have long since depleted my patience for them. You will step away from that creature or you will suffer my nail. All the breath in your body will not change that.”

The force within me magnified, bringing with it a terrible heat.

Little one—Little Knight… you proved your worth… You are ever a surprising one.

A tremor ran through Seer’s frame. “I have saved this larva’s life once already. I detest seeing my efforts wasted.” Her chuckle rang toneless and hollow. With her uninjured arm, she shoved me away, toward the wall of greenery and the Kingdom beyond. “Go,” she whispered.

But I did not move.

“What hero’s game do you play at?” Dryya asked. “Begone from my sight! It is the fate of the weak to flee before the strong. Your kind should know this fact more keenly than any other.”

The heat became a fire, and that fire a molten flood.

…Is the King’s civilization not a favorable thing? A place where the strong protect the weak instead of preying upon them…?

Seer pointed at Dryya with the Dream Nail. The blade rippled and sparked. “One of us must be the hero, if not you then me.”

Dryya scoffed. “Blind intransigence assails me from all sides. I have had enough. If you seek to be my foe—” She twisted the longnail, bringing the cutting edge to bear. “—then I will honor you as such.”

It felt as though I would be consumed by the inferno inside me, that my shell would burst and loose bubbling Void onto the stones.

Do you intend to make of me a butcher?

No… The opposite. I will save you from that end.

Dryya’s pounding steps closed the distance. The longnail rose and fell in an attack that seemed to span ages. The metal of the blade did not flash in the light, so stained was it by the blood of beasts and Loyal Knights.

Seer did not recoil or shrink. She did not even swing the Dream Nail. She only braced her back and waited for the end.

The heat vanished. The roil stilled. And that unformed force crystallized.

The strong protect the weak.

My nail surged up to catch the killing blow. The fleeting, angry light of a hundred sparks splashed across Dryya’s mask. Our blades locked, and for an instant there was only the stunned quiet of rattling metal.

Dryya let out a low growl. She leaned into the blade, forcing me back a step. “With every passing minute you fortify the truth of your deficiency. I see the will flickering in the depths of those eyes. It is something that I cannot allow.”

But… you shall not prove… deficient. Do not fear…

I summoned my strength and pushed. The two nails shrieked in the struggle, but this time Dryya was the one to give ground. She ended the blade-lock with a deft flick and darted away.

“Of all the outcomes I anticipated, this was not amongst them,” Dryya said as she settled into another stance. “But in a way, I am fortunate. No matter its need, execution is repugnant. By raising your nail, you have named yourself a warrior. I need feel no regret for ending you in battle.”

Seer reached out with her crumpled arm and clutched at my cloak. “You must not do this,” she hissed. “Flee. Survive. It is my wish, just as it is Ogrim’s.”

But I did not obey. Seer held no sway over me.

Dryya let out a dismissive noise. She circled around to my flank. “The Vessel will not heed you. It has made its first true choice—whatever that may be. Perhaps it hungers after the Soul in my shell. Perhaps it has incorporated something of Ogrim’s lunacy. No matter the reason, it must be destroyed.”

“You are no Great Knight,” Seer spat, “you are a monster!”

“Presume all you like,” Dryya laughed. “I do you a service beyond your understanding.”

With that, the Fierce Knight vaulted into combat.

Unlike those leveled at Seer, this strike fell as a thunderbolt. I lifted my nail flat over my head, and the jolt of the impact nearly ripped it from my claws. Dryya followed with a wide, slow sweep from left to right, as though trying to fell an army and not a single foe. This time I did not block, and instead leapt back, crashing into Seer and bringing her to the ground. Dryya’s nail whistled over us, and the wind of it rippled through Seer’s fur.

I clambered up off the stone, nail ready, but Dryya did not immediately attack.

“It appears to be the latter,” Dryya whispered. She let out a low sigh and waded forward.

Her next wave of attacks was oblique and exploratory, much like the pattern that she had employed against Ogrim. The blows came from every angle at every speed, probing my defenses without exposing her to counterattack. She exploited her height and the length of her nail to approach in ways that I could not easily block. I remained as close to Seer as I was able, but Dryya worked with every swing to separate us.

Nails clanged and the slow burn of exertion burrowed into my limbs. The blows that I could not evade inevitably collected on my person. Nicks marred my horns, and long slashes reduced my cloak to tatters.

Though none of my counter-strikes found Dryya’s shell, the battle took a toll on her in a different way. Dryya’s breathing lengthened, becoming unsteady and loud. The precision of her movements declined ever so minutely.

“It is a great power to be an unliving thing,” Dryya panted. She took a few steps back and swallowed. “Only on the very brink of obliteration do you seem to tire. It has been but a few hours, and that wound on your chest has already sealed. Attrition will be no ally of mine.”

Dryya dropped into a sudden crouch, one knee an inch from the ground, and then lunged, longnail leveled at my eye socket. I flinched to one side, but not before the blade caught the edge of my mask and rent it open. Dryya skidded to a stop several paces behind me, the tip of her nail coated in viscous darkness. Something cold streaked down my neck and shoulder, accompanied by a high, needling pain. I looked at the darkness dripping from the shredded flaps of my cloak.

With only a breath of pause, Dryya returned to a deep crouch and then lunged again, this time the nail pointed at my throat. I parried, running my own nail down the length of the blade. A ringing, almost melodious note carried through the air, echoing into the greenery and over the crater’s edge.

As if in reply, there was a groan. Not from Seer or Dryya, but from Ogrim.

Dryya gave it no mind and continued her assault, bolting past me again and again, every time attempting to skewer me with her longnail. I evaded as best I could, but the act was all-absorbing. No opportunity to counter presented itself. She was simply too fast. Even in the scant seconds that she spent reorienting after a lunge, she was too far for me to reach.

Seer rose and stumbled over to Ogrim’s side. The Dream Nail hung from her slack arm, its blade phasing partially into the ground. She collapsed as gracelessly as she had risen and prodded at Ogrim with her wounded arm. “Loyal Knight,” she whispered. “Please wake.”

But he hardly stirred.

The blur of the Fierce Knight shot past me again. In my distraction I was too slow to raise my nail. There was a sick, slicing sound, and I lurched from the weight of a blow that I did not feel. Dryya came to a halt some ways behind me, hunched and breathing hard. Her back was to me—a state of vulnerability that she had not yet shown. I readied a lunging strike of my own, but something was wrong.

I did not have my nail.

Or my arm.

Dryya planted her longnail into the stone and leaned on it. She gave me a look over her shoulder before lifting my nail high in the air. Still grasping the hilt was my severed arm, midnight liquid trickling from the cut. Dryya pried my arm loose and tossed it to the ground. Already, it was losing shape, melting like a sliver of ice in the sun. Dryya returned my shortnail—her shortnail—to the loop of her silken belt. “Isma was not mistaken when she proclaimed you mightiest amongst the Vessels. Not even a Great Knight would have endured this long.” She took a moment to recover her breath. Spasms of fatigue racked her body. “But we have come to the end.”

Seer’s prodding grew frantic. She shook Ogrim’s limp body from side to side, heedless of both their injuries. “You must wake, Loyal Knight, you must stand. She will kill the larva if you do nothing! You are this Kingdom’s guardian, yes? Then fulfill that oath, rise!”

Ogrim’s only response was incoherent muttering.

“Cease, moth,” Dryya rasped. “Let Ogrim rest. He would not wish to witness what I must do.” She turned, laboriously, and took a step toward me.

I watched my arm deliquesce until it was nothing but an opaque puddle. Yet the cut had been so perfect that I felt no pain from its loss, merely an absence—a hollowness. It was not unlike the sensation I had felt during my duel with Isma, after I unleashed that torrent of Soul upon her.

My heart tells me that I should end you. Here… Before your Void devours us all.

But now I possessed no Soul. I had failed to so much as scratch Dryya’s shell. And even my nail was lost to me. I was defenseless.

…what is Void but a weapon? As quick to cut friend as foe…

Dryya dragged the longnail behind her, as if its weight had magnified many times over. Once within range, she heaved the blade up and readied a decapitating blow.

“Stop!” Seer screeched. She was standing now, the sparkling beacon of the Dream Nail high over her head. “Stay your strike Fierce Knight, or I will be given no other choice but to act!”

“And what do you hope to accomplish?” Dryya tilted her head, just enough for a sidelong glance. “Will you lay me low with that gaudy lantern? By your own words, it has no such power.”

“It may not cut your shell, but if you force my claw, then what I unleash may prove irrevocable!”

“Do not. Threaten me,” Dryya breathed. “I have showered you with warnings, but this is the last. If you interfere then you will die.”

Dryya swung the longnail at my neck.

But something woke within me, not the sweet warmth of Soul, but the antithesis; a fitful, gnashing thing, born of the need to consume.

The ragged stump of my shoulder twitched and bubbled. The gnashing thing within sought an escape from the prison of my form, and I could not deny it. I lifted my stump toward Dryya, and with a wet rending noise, a flood of umbral tendrils spilled from the wound.

The Fierce Knight had no time to counter, no time to escape. She managed half a gasp before being engulfed.

The tendrils scourged her body, cracking the silvered plating and the shell beneath. They encircled her right arm, wringing viciously. There was a shriek of metal as Dryya’s arm broke in three places. But even then, she did not relinquish the longnail.

Euphoria took me. The tendrils siphoned Dryya’s Soul through her fractured limb and filled my emptiness more completely than anything I had ever felt.

With an impossible strength, the tendrils lifted Dryya off the ground. She struggled in terrible silence, clawing at them even as one closed around her throat.

“Larva how a-are you—S-Stop. Stop this!”

Someone far away was calling to me, but the song of Dryya’s Soul drowned it out. I reached up with my remaining arm and slipped the shortnail from Dryya’s belt. The ravening urge was undeniable. I required every scrap of Soul that Dryya could offer. The more severe her wounds, the faster I would absorb. I prepared to slice her from neck to stomach.

“Little Knight?”

Another voice. Someone else, lost in the blissful deluge. At first, hunger pushed it aside, but there was an insistence to it. The reverberations of that voice plucked at me, and I turned my head. Beyond the screen of writhing black tendrils, propping himself up on weakened arms, was Ogrim.

“Little Knight… is that you?” His words were thick and slurred. He shook his head. “What are you doing?”

Little one, do you know nothing of sparring?!… When you approach a fellow Knight in the yard… you exercise restraint… Sparring is the act of bettering one another through gallant combat , one nail sharpening the other…

I looked back to Dryya. Her life was slowly ebbing away. She thrashed uselessly in the air, her legs kicking at nothing, scrabbling for a hold that they would not find.

My nail clanged against the stone. The song of Dryya’s Soul was cut short as the tendrils unwound from her limbs. The hunger screamed defiance, but I retracted the tendrils into the ruin of my arm. Unsteadily, I stepped back, exercising restraint…

Dryya collapsed to her knees, coughing and wheezing. Despite the river of Soul that I had drained, she still clung to consciousness. The plating on her right arm was like a collage of shattered glass. The longnail rested loosely in her grip. “Ve-Vessel?” She fought through a spike of pain. “Why?”

But I had no answer.

A guttural noise fought its way up her throat. “You husk. You flawed shell! You damnable VOID!” She staggered to her feet and swapped the longnail to her unbroken arm. “Accept your death! You are not meant to exist!” With the last vestiges of her strength, Dryya thrust.

“Dryya, wait!”

“Stop! I said STOP!”

The longnail pierced my mask. With it came an explosion of white, and the world was swept away.

Chapter Text

Awareness came in a languid current of sensations: a warmth upon my shell, hard stone at my back, a chiming in my head.

I idled in this state, letting the wash of feelings erode time and meaning. There was no foreign will to bind me here, no threads to puppet my limbs, no reason to push on.

Yet, something faint and furtive pressed against me, beseeching my attention. It was no command but gave me strength all the same.

Rise, Vessel, so that I might see you.

I awoke to an amber sky.

Woven hoops of light drifted in and out of my vision. They peeked through churning banks of clouds as though playing at some game. There was a chiming music that filled the air, originating from nowhere and everywhere at once.

I pushed off the ground, though the act was a challenge with only one arm. I wobbled upright and labored for balance. From this new vantage, I spied islands of stone that dotted the sky, extending off into the blurred horizon. They were topped with cobbled footpaths, iron fences, and clusters of copper grass. Between them were constellations of small platforms, spaced just closely enough to be traversed.

Go.

Where I was bound, I did not know, but my legs faltered into motion.

Due to fatigue or injury, my wings would not manifest. I was forced to leap from platform to platform with all the dignity of a hurled brick. More than once, I slipped and plummeted into the yawning immensity of sky, but every time another platform assembled itself beneath me and broke my fall.

Eventually, I ascended—scuffed and panting—onto a broad tract of cobbles that resembled one of The City’s causeways. It extended only a short distance, but as I approached its end, more cobbles rose up to extend it, continuing with every step I took. Behind me, the path I had already tread tumbled away, so that the causeway’s length never changed. It was like an astral grub inching across the sky.

From time to time, other objects flew out of the ghostly depths to flank my passage. There were glittering lampposts, crumbling statues, and archways decorated with hanging bells.

But no matter how long I walked, the journey went on interminably. My feet caught on every bump and crack. Cold liquid dripped from the stump of my arm. Inevitably, I fell—mask-first to the ground. Barbs of black pulsed in the fringes of my vision. As I trembled back to my feet, there was a grinding sound of shifting cobbles, and I looked up to behold a bench that had not been there an instant before.

It was wrought iron and backed with leaf-shaped filigree, with arm rests that curved inwardly like coiling roots. From its size, the bench seemed as though it had been made just for me.

My body ached. I glanced about, but there was nothing else in sight, just an endless, sunset realm.

Your stalwart conduct is admirable, little one, but do not push yourself to such a breaking point. By the King’s own words, you are a treasure of Hallownest. Always rest when you feel a need for it.

I settled onto the bench, letting the pressure of the journey ease off my back. Slowly, my panting subsided, and with it the pain. I remained perfectly still as my wounds knitted and the cracks evaporated from my shell.

My head drooped.

It was… nice.

…

I jerked, startling awake.

Time had passed, though how much I could not know. Though the world suffused with golden light and half-formed song, something was different. It was no longer empty. In the distance a round, limping figure approached.

Ogrim.

He did not see me. His horned head was bowed, focus set on the self-assembling causeway. His progress was slow, and more than once he staggered beneath the load of his own exhaustion, but he did not fall. The causeway he traveled ran perpendicular to mine, eventually merging into a crossroad at the very bench on which I sat. With the appearance of this obstacle, Ogrim stopped and looked up.

He seemed not to register me at first, as though I were just another object in a meaningless multitude. But something dawned on him, and he fought for words, coughing low in his throat. “Even in dreams we find one another. It is good to lay eyes upon you, Little Knight.”

Ogrim took a few sleepwalker’s steps and sank down beside me. The bench whined in protest but did not break. Ogrim’s bulk took much of the seat, but I was slight, and there was enough space for both of us. He let out a long, pained sigh and stared off into a pinwheeling mass of clouds.

“Never in a dream have I been quite this sore,” Ogrim observed. “Nor quite this weary. It feels as though I have slumbered a lifetime and yet found no rest.”

Ogrim’s broken claws lay on his lap. He absently tilted them to and fro, reflecting gilded light onto his scarred carapace. “Of late, it has become difficult to distinguish reality from illusion. This dream… it is so vivid. When did it even begin?”

I had no answer for him. I could only listen.

Ogrim seemed to take assurance from my attentiveness. “I recall a… debate between the Fierce Knight and myself.” He shook his head. “No, ‘debate’ is too gentle a word. It was a battle. A mortal duel. And you were there, Little Knight, standing beside me even as it raged. Now that I consider it, you were the subject of that conflict. By whatever dream-mad reasoning, Dryya had deemed you unfit, a danger to the kingdom, and that you were to be…” his voice shrank, “destroyed.”

Ogrim loosed a broad, dismissive laugh. “Preposterous, yes? Dreams are puzzling things indeed, where the most bizarre events can seem perfectly sane. Why, in that very dream, an errant moth rescued you from peril, and then you went on to defeat Dryya in single combat. Ha! What a sight that would be!” He pressed a claw to the side of his head. “As I think of it, that was a troubling turn in the dream. You had been sorely wounded, disarmed in the literal sense, and from that wound poured a gruesome mass of living darkness that choked the life from—”

But he stopped. And looked at the stump of my arm. Even now it bled droplets of black onto the bench’s metal slats.

He did not speak for a time. He did not move his gaze.

“In honesty,” he began, speaking softly as though to himself, “‘troubling’ is also too gentle a word. ‘Terrifying’ holds closer to the truth. To witness such hideous might, to glimpse what lurks beneath your shell…”

He paused.

“It was no dream. Was it? This is no dream.”

Again, I had no answer.

“But I do not understand…” Ogrim murmured. “Her life was in your grasp. She sought to destroy you and would have succeeded had that power of yours not manifested. Tell me, Little Knight, if you are so damnable as Dryya believes, then why did you spare her?”

There was a pain in my chest, not the keening sharpness of a nail blow, not the burn of exertion, not the roil of Void. It was a dull pang that longed for a release which would never be.

I did not explain to him. I could not.

Ogrim returned to his cloud watching. The ubiquitous music of the place played a sort of interlude.

Eventually, Ogrim leaned forward and braced his arms on his knees. “There was a time not so long ago, that all I did was in confidence—in faith that the path I walked was righteous. But now it is as if that path takes me down the tangled slopes of a great canyon, and with every step the light recedes. There is an abyss somewhere before me. It is a place from which no Great Knight can escape. But I do not know how to avoid it. I no longer know the way.”

Ogrim stood, and his tired body became rigid. “Dryya believes you a force of evil. The King believes you a tool. Even Kindly Isma thinks of you as an unliving facsimile. But I do not know what I believe. These forces vie within me so violently that I may tear apart. My fear calls you a threat. My code calls you an ally. My heart calls you a—.” Ogrim paused, and that rigidity drained from his body.

He let out a single chuckle. “No. That is enough of that. Forgive my qualms, I should not have voiced them.” He held out a helping claw. “Come along. Friend. The path before us has far from ended. There is yet time.”

And I reached out to accept his claw. Without hesitation.

The journey resumed, and with it the ceaseless cycling of cobbles beneath our feet. But our destination was still unknown. No grand spire loomed over the horizon, and the only means of discerning progress was to track the passage of the clouds.

The brief rest at the bench had done much to alleviate my hurts, but that was not so for Ogrim. Though he made no complaints, tiny, pained noises escaped him like the sputters of a dying torch.

“When I was young,” he grunted, “hardly more than a hatchling, my father regaled me with tales of the distant kingdom of Hallownest, of its resplendent King and his court, of its noble Knights and their grand adventures. I often wonder if my father’s intent was to plant the dream of Knighthood within me. Maybe so, for he seemed unsurprised when I abandoned the nest and set off for that fabled kingdom.”

Ogrim lurched, catching himself on my shoulder. He was heavy but my strength held. With a murmur of thanks, he resumed walking, relying on me as a crutch.

I had no objections.

“I entertained such wild hopes,” Ogrim said. “To brave the endless wastes, to discover the King’s court, and to prove myself a worthy Knight. Fool’s fortune saw me safely to the King’s throne, but had I truly known what was required of me, would I have continued?”

Ogrim’s gaze drifted away from his feet and toward the horizon—to some invisible point beyond. “The Champion’s Call… It was so unlike what I had envisioned. There were no gallant warriors with honorable hearts, just sellnails hoping to claim the King’s Geo. Our battles were not glorious tests of skill and merit, just desperate flailings in the face of death. Yet somehow, through the King’s crucible, we persevered. Together, side by side, the other contenders and I slew beasts and wild bugs. Though many amongst us fell, even more endured. Eventually, the royal pens were depleted, and when nothing remained to fight, the King rose from his dais, declaring that only one challenger could claim the prize.” Ogrim swallowed as though forcing down a shard of glass. “How quickly it changed. Like some perilous spell, that scattering of words twisted allies into mortal foes. The other contenders pounced on one another with all the savagery of the very beasts they’d defeated. And through it all, I simply… watched. I could not move, I could not raise my claws, even if that inaction doomed my hopes of Knighthood. Looking back through the lens of years, I should have stopped that madness, saved them from themselves. But now it is far too late for such thoughts.” He let out a shivering breath. “By luck alone, I was ignored as all the others fought to the death. The strife was so vicious that not one survived. The moment that the last body fell, the King proclaimed the Champion’s Call at an end. I had achieved victory—whatever that might have been—and was Knighted on the spot. As I knelt in that corpse-strewn pit and recited my oath, the King regarded me in such a way that I have never come to fathom. Was it pride in his eyes? Contempt? …Pity?”

With a tortured rasp, Ogrim pushed off my shoulder and righted himself. He gave his head a shake as though casting off a dream. “Apologies, Little Knight. These mawkish displays are unlike me. It seems that I lose my sense of discretion when overly tired. Ignore my prattle, please.” His quavering laugh stretched out into nothingness.

Though he was no less wounded than before, Ogrim did not rely on my support a second time. He marched on with a straight back and even step. Between heaving breaths, he hummed the shreds of a tuneless song.

With time, the scattered islands and tumbling clouds gave way to a distorted approximation of The City. Swaths of cobbled ground and fragmented buildings swirled overhead in a patchwork so dense that it eclipsed the sky. It was as if everything had frozen at the very moment of some great, world-sundering cataclysm.

We passed through fissured plazas and down spiraling alleys. Droplets of rain hung motionless in the air and chilled my shell. But with turn after turn, crossroads after crossroads, all sense of direction vanished, and the dream became a labyrinth.

At first, Ogrim seemed not to be bothered, but as the path grew more convoluted, agitation bled through. He kept glancing about, in motions that grew more rapid with every familiar object that we passed—the same warped curio shop, the same tilted statue. Just as Ogrim seemed on the fringe of an outburst, a minuscule sound warbled into being. It was a voice from somewhere far, far away.

“Did you hear that, Little Knight?” Ogrim asked. “Surely you did. I am not so lost to delirium, am I?”

As if in reply, the voice murmured something, loudly enough to hint at its direction.

“Again,” Ogrim hissed. “I heard it, I am certain! This way!” With all the haste that his injuries would allow, Ogrim hobbled down a slanted street. “Follow me.”

The voice grew more distinct with every turned corner, and as we escaped the crush of leaning buildings, it separated into two—one the soft brush of wings, the other the cold burn of iron.

“Then this substance, this Void, will stop the affliction?”

“Indeed.”

“And the larva—the V-Vessel—is composed of it? That is how its arm changed as it did?”

“Yes, unbound Void is protean. And supremely dangerous.”

“But is the Vessel alive in that state? Is it a living thing like you or I?”

“No, it only masquerades as such. The Vessel is an inversion of life, a walking husk that entraps the Soul of those it touches.”

Ogrim paused in a courtyard, intricately tiled and decorated with free-standing pillars. Beyond it, pressing out of the tumult of buildings, was Lurien’s Spire. Yet it was wrong, bent at a strange angle. The enormous sheet of glass that rose to its summit was shattered, but the shards had not fallen. They merely scintillated in the air, revolving like suspended ornaments.

From within, through a wide-flung doorway, echoed the voices.

Ogrim’s panting was shallow and pain-barbed, but he resumed the pursuit.

“Why tell me all this? Why only now?”

“For lack of any recourse. My injuries are too severe, if I am to fulfill my duty, then I require your aid. The Vessel must be destroyed, or this world will surely come to ruin.”

“I was the one that you nearly destroyed when we last met, and yet here you are, asking my help.”

“If I desired you dead, then you would be. Believe what you like, but my only intent was to frighten you away. I made no real attempt on your life.”

“My broken wings might beg to differ.”

The interior of the Spire contained an atrium, just as its material counterpart did. But this one paid no heed to scale or dimension. Its mirrored ceiling was impossibly high and hurled down spears of reflected light. Its floor was sinuous and flanked on either side by floating library shelves and deep, cloud-filled trenches. Chandeliers dangled overhead, but their chains were tethered to nothing.

The voices carried on, originating from a gaping archway on the atrium’s far side.

“Even if I were to agree… I am still a mere commoner. What aid could you expect from me?”

“Do not play the fool, I have come to realize what you are. The Lady told me of a weapon amongst the moth tribe that could pierce the realm of dreams and drain the Essence of the dead. It was no coincidence that you were lingering like a starving carrion-eater beside the den of that dying ancient. You intended to gather its Essence, as you have surely done to many other creatures of Kingdom’s Edge. You possess power, if nowhere else, then at least here in this fictitious place.”

“‘Carrion-eater’? I am no such thing! The Essence I have claimed was at the King’s command, it has never been for me. But that aside, you seem to know of my tribe’s traditions. We are no war-bringers, violence is not our way.”

“Scruple if you must, but I do not require that you assault the Vessel yourself, only incapacitate it.”

“You misunderstand. When this tool was bestowed upon me, I was made to vow I would never unleash its power against those that did not welcome it. I cannot betray the trust of my tribe and my teacher.”

“You imprisoned us in this dreamscape with that very power. To your eyes, was I welcoming it?”

“That was not the same. I was saving a life, not ending one!”

“You know that is false.”

We emerged from the Spire, not to more confined City streets, but to a stony plain beneath the naked sky. The broken buildings and twisted lampposts had been supplanted by a boundless graveyard wreathed in golden fog. As we walked, Ogrim stared fixedly at his feet and the rough-hewn path ahead. Grave after grave passed us by, each one more lavish than the last: pedestals, statues, gilded emblems. Yet, not one among them bore a name.

The voices rebounded off the gravestones, striking us from all sides.

“But what purpose is there in that pacifist’s vow? Why cling to it? Your kind was quick to abandon other, far greater traditions when the King first appeared.”

“What? The King has always presided over these lands.”

“Do you not know? In only a few generations have the moths forgotten? I thought that they prized memory above all else. The King is thorough indeed.”

“If you seek my help, then mocking me is a poor way to go about it. Explain yourself, Knight.”

“Very well, perhaps the truth will spur you to action. At the least, you will come to know your place in all this. And the sins of your ancestors.”

The farther we traveled, the more aberrant the graveyard became. The ground was made treacherous by crags and precipices, yet the graves still paraded on without interruption, rising and falling with the terrain, protruding at odd angles from bluffs and sheer cliff faces. The footpath was soon impassable, and we were forced to weave between the headstones. Ogrim looked up only once to survey our progress, but when he did, something caught his gaze.

On a small rise ahead rested another grave. It was not so different from the others, but for some reason, Ogrim was transfixed by it. The grave was tall and narrow, carved of a glistening, silver-black stone. A thin, upward-facing crescent adorned its summit in a way that mimicked a pair of horns.

Ogrim shuddered. With all the effort of a bug removing its own limb, Ogrim tore away from the grave and pressed on, toward the hiss of conspiring voices.

“Though He makes no effort to quell these rumors, it is believed amongst the King’s most zealous disciples that He originated all things, that the world was but an empty expanse before the King saw fit to change that. This is a lie. The King never possessed such a power. No matter His influence, the King is not the first god, nor the mightiest. The territory and loyal minds that he now controls were stolen from another, far older deity. Your deity.”

“What do you mean?”

“Before even my Lady sunk her roots into the earth, your goddess, the Radiance, molded your ancestors from the very Essence of this realm. For arrogance, for love, or for need of a slave, I know not, but She translocated those dream moths onto the material plane and bid them to worship Her. With the passage of ages, the King rose to threaten the Radiance’s rule. He sought to undermine the source of Her power—remembrance itself—and stole away her worshipers with honeyed words. Your ancestors betrayed their goddess, their creator, and now She has returned to seek Her vengeance.”

“In what manner of vengeance…?”

“You have already surmised that. Feigning ignorance will not soften the blow.”

“The affliction, then? That is Her doing?”

“Correct.”

“But that is absurd! That cannot be the reason that my tribe teeters on the brink of extinction! My teacher cannot have died from the petty reprisal of a slighted goddess!”

“I have offered you the truth and nothing more. What would you have me say? All beings—even the gods—lash out at their enemies. You should expect no less.”

The graveyard diminished behind the oppressive, golden fog, which grew so dense that I could no longer spy Ogrim’s shape, even though he walked only a few paces ahead.

Like a veil being swept aside, the fog gave way to yet another environment, retreating behind wild foliage and contorted towers of stone. All about floated flakes of ash, frozen mid-descent.

Ogrim was beside me, holding still and silent, waiting for the next reverberation of a voice.

“Before you clutch at futile hope, know that the Radiance will not take you back. If She ever possessed the capacity for mercy, then Her time in exile has stripped it away. Only a deranged monstrosity remains now. You and your tribe, just as I and my Lady, are bound to the King’s gambit. Should He fail, then your tribe will perish.”

“And you suspect that the larva will bring about this failure?”

“I am far beyond suspecting. If the Vessel takes part in the King’s ritual, then it will mean the end of Hallownest. No matter how you, or Ogrim, or the King may wish it, the Vessel must be destroyed so that another may take its place.”

“But must we k-kill it?”

“Of course! Have you not heeded me? Void can never again be allowed focus! I will not see this land follow in the doomed footsteps of that ancient empire! Do you understand me? Are you willing to do what must be done?”

“…I am.”

Although there was no road or footpath, the rampant foliage parted before us whenever we drew close, forming backlit tunnels of gray and green. Ogrim’s huffing was loud in the confined space. From time to time he would reach out to the tunnel wall for support, but it shrank from him like a furtive creature.

“Little Knight…” Ogrim rumbled, addressing me for the first time since our pursuit began. “These things that Dryya has said of you… the things that she believes you will do… They are not true. Dryya is wise, I cannot deny that, but she is quick to leap at conclusions. Her verdict is flawed. Perhaps it is indeed possible that you are not suited for this ritual of the King’s, but that hardly means that you are a threat to Hallownest. You are too noble a Knight for that.”

He stopped and knelt next to me. “Dryya put aside her nail for the moth. She will do the same for me. I can convince her that you mean no harm, and that there is no need for you to be—” He swallowed, letting the words trail and die.

Using my shoulder as a brace, Ogrim stood. “Just wait,” he said, “you will see! The moth is a good-hearted bug, I can sense it, she and Dryya will accept reason. Soon, we will all be free of this strange dream. Trust in me.”

The voices did not resume, but this gave Ogrim no pause. He seemed to have discerned the way, as though he had traveled this ever-extending tunnel once before.

Without any hint, any shift of light, the tunnel opened in an emerald burst of leaves. They suspended in the air, just as the ash did, but Ogrim pushed through, taking me with him. Beyond was a stretch of stone that led to the lip of a crater. Ogrim made a noise of triumph, for it resembled the place that Dryya and I had crossed nails, even though the crater and foliage were titanic caricatures.

Dryya was at the edge, looking out to the cloudbanks that whorled in the crater’s center. She turned to us, revealing her ravaged right arm. Pale, yellow blood trickled through the fissures and dripped from the end of her limp claw. She held the longnail with her other arm, tip planted into the ground like a walking stick. A multitude of other injuries marked her shell, each one my doing…

“You have come. Good. These wounds have left me in no state for hunting. Many years have passed since I was last bested in combat, the Vessel is indeed a brutal foe. If it were to attain its terminal form, then it would be a terror.”

Ogrim held up his claws. “Dryya, listen to me! I overheard your words with the moth. I know what you intend to do. Stop and consider, for only a moment. The Little Knight does not need to perish!”

Dryya let out a low sigh and waved her arm, sprinkling the ground with blood. “No more, Ogrim. I will not indulge you any longer.”

A light coalesced high above her head. It began as a point, but expanded upward and outward, becoming something more. Pink wings, antennae, and a slender body solidified in a moth-like shape. It fluttered in place, shedding shining discs with each flap.

“Moth?” Ogrim asked. “Is that you?”

The same soft voice that we had heard throughout our trek greeted us. “Yes, Loyal Ogrim. Now please, step away from the Vessel. I would rather not wield my powers against you.”

Ogrim did not obey, instead planting himself before me, again becoming my shield. “Wait! Wait, I say!”

“No.” Dryya hobbled closer with her nail-crutch. “You have had your time. You have said your piece. Do it, moth. Now!”

There was a sound—a wailing note—as though the wind were voicing some anguish. With that came an overpowering light, much like the first flash that had drawn me into the dream. But this light did not rush forth. It hung from Seer’s spectral form like a cloak, bristling with greater intensity each second.

“Hold!” Ogrim shouted. “You need not do this!”

“I am sorry.” Seer said. “I see no other way to save my tribe.”

Ogrim hunched against the growing light. “But if Dryya is mistaken, what then? Will you have ended the Kingdom’s last, best hope? Will you have brought doom and not salvation?”

Dryya clenched her wounded claw, sending fresh rivulets down her arm. “I am not mistaken!”

“Do you think yourself wiser than the King?” Ogrim asked. “Is he so beyond reason that you must commit this murder behind his back?”

Dryya labored to look up. “Moth, fulfill your promise! Aid me!”

“This is wrong!” Ogrim screamed. “You will doom an innocent!”

Seer wavered in the wind of her own power. “I must do what I believe is right!”

…I must do what I believe is right.

I touched Ogrim’s arm.

He flinched and whipped about to face me. “Little Knight?”

Slowly, so as not to startle him, I guided Ogrim out of the way and stepped forward, presenting myself to Seer’s rampart of light.

“No.” Ogrim’s said, barely audible in the howl. “Not this way…”

Seer’s energy stalled for an instant. The brilliance faltered, and the winds lulled.

“Do not hesitate, moth!” Dryya bellowed. “DO IT!”

And with a sweep of Seer’s wings, the light claimed me.

Chapter Text

The light did not hurt. It did not scorch my shell or grind me to dust. It was like a cradle, silk-soft and warm.

I did not struggle in that embrace. The end would take me when it willed, and that was for the best. That was right.

Like a setting sun, the light began to fade, presaging the dark into which I would return. There was no fear. There was no grief. But against everything, there rose a question.

Would I forget them?

The gray deepened, flecked with black.

Did I not wish to forget them?

The last glinting vestiges died, and I was consigned to the night.

But no, this was not like the place of my birth. It was too cold, too hard, too rigidly defined. A flat plane pressed against my form—my solid form.

And I woke, splayed upon the stones of Kingdom’s Edge. It was all as I had left it: the clambering foliage, the gaping crater, the whirling gray clouds.

Beside me, crumpled and still, was Dryya, bleeding from her many wounds and the wreckage of her arm. If not for the rhythm of her rising chest, she looked every bit a corpse. The longnail to which she had clung so tenaciously in our duel now lay untended.

Some paces off, I spied Ogrim, his head resting upon Seer’s lap. Ogrim hadn’t regained consciousness, but she whispered to him. “Would that we could have met under better circumstances… You were ever my favorite among the Five, I hope you know that. Even from afar, you looked so full of heart. Let us pray that heart is not misguided.”

Though no force demanded it of me, I stood and stumbled over to them.

Seer regarded me in that placid way, even as her broken wings trembled in the wind. “Larva, it is good to see you managed the return. Traversing the dream is no easy feat. Ogrim is not yet upon the threshold, but he is close. Would you care to sit and wait with me until he wakes?”

I did not move.

“You have questions, I’d imagine,” she said, her eyes now upon Ogrim’s scarred carapace. “Or maybe you do not. Dryya enlightened me to your condition. Now I feel foolish for chattering away at you all that time.” She toyed with her silken satchel, once again knotted shut. “You’ll forgive me for that, won’t you? And for what I nearly did in the dream?”

There was nothing to be said, no forgiveness to be offered.

Seer joined me in my silence as Ogrim labored through the pall of sleep.

He awoke in a fitting enough way, bolting upright with a great, shell-popping gasp. He writhed from side to side, claws high and defensive, ready for yet more battle. Only after a long moment did they lower.

“Little Knight?” he whispered. “Moth?”

Seer crossed her claws and inclined her head. “Welcome back to the waking world.”

Ogrim cast a bleary look around. “What happened? Where is—” He noticed Dryya and drew back. “Is—Is she…”

“Only asleep,” Seer said. “I wove her a prison in the dream, but with a will such as hers, I do not expect it to last. There is time for talk, but little of it. Once you have mustered the strength, then you’d best leave. I cannot say what Dryya will do should you be here when she stirs.”

“Wait.” Ogrim labored onto his claws and knees. “That brilliance. Your agreement with the Fierce Knight. Why did you renege?”

Even though it hurt her, Seer chuckled. “It seems I am not the only one seeking an answer to that. Perhaps it was my doubt of Dryya’s words, perhaps my hope for the King’s miracle, or just my sympathy for a lost larva. I cannot say. All and none?”

I helped Ogrim to his feet. Though he was still sluggish with exhaustion, his breathing was beginning to steady. “Good-hearted indeed,” he murmured.

“Before you go,” Seer said, “grant me this. Now that the larva’s fate rests with you, what do you intend to do?”

Ogrim did not immediately reply, and Seer pressed on. “Will you trust in the King and return His creation? Will you trust in no one and hide it away?”

“I—”

Her head shot up, neck craning to lock eyes with him. “Because I do not know. Tell me, how can they be saved? My tribe, the larva, the Kingdom? What must be done?”

Ogrim held very still, as though a nail were trained at his throat. “I… I don’t…”

There was the crackle of a damaged shell. Across the stones, Dryya’s body twitched. She let out a wordless murmur as she groped unconsciously for her nail.

“Our time comes to an end.” Seer whispered. “Go, Loyal Ogrim. Follow that heart of yours.”

“But what of you?” he asked. “We cannot leave you behind with your wings in such a state. Allow me to carry you.”

Seer shook her head. “My duty is to remain here. No matter what you decide, I have sworn to aid the King in his miracle. To that end, he requires Essence, and the Matron Hopper’s passing will provide it.”

“But the Fierce Knight will be furious! What if she were to strike you down? I could not endure that shame.”

“That will not happen.”

Despite his many wounds, Ogrim stood tall. “You cannot know that.”

“In that long dream, as Dryya and I awaited your arrival, we shared much. She is not the wanton killer that I first thought. For all her brutality, Dryya is still a Knight. She will not harm me again. I am no longer an obstacle.”

Dryya’s limbs flexed. She snarled, beast-like even in slumber.

Ogrim shivered, just as he had in that corpse-strewn shaft. “Forgive me. I will ever and always be in your debt, moth.”

“Please, call me Seer.”

*****

The Palace grounds were a tumult of silk tents and shifting bodies. Wounded warriors milled about on stretchers and shellwood crutches, awaiting the aid of the Soul healers that were so few and far between. The gates—normally sealed and sentineled—hung wide. Attendants carrying medical supplies scurried through in an unbroken current. The legions of Hallownest were arrayed upon the Palace’s lone thoroughfare, their formations fragmented and sparse. Scribes drifted among them and tallied those still living upon shell tablets.

Through it all, Ogrim marched, with me at his side. He did not react to the inquiries and curious eyes, instead keeping his head low and feet in motion. It was not until the very steps of the Palace vestibule that he paused, held fast by two gentle words.

“Loyal Knight?”

Isma emerged from the arched portal before us. Her shoulders sagged, and the leaves of her garb were speckled with a myriad of different bloods. She braced her weight upon the portal’s frame with an extended arm. “What brings you here so soon? Has the Vessel’s trial—Oh, Ogrim, you are injured!” She stumbled closer. “Your claws! What has become of you? Is this the Vessel’s doing?” Her eyes settled on me like a scourge.

“No, Isma, there was an a-accident. Wild bugs assailed us at the Kingdom’s Edge. We fought valiantly and drove them off, but as you see—”

“Where is Dryya?” Isma nearly pushed us aside in her haste to peer past. “Has she suffered a similar fate?”

Ogrim coughed, rattling his loose chitin. “The Fierce Knight? Ha, hardly. She is as hale as ever and sustained no more than a few scratches. It was her want to remain behind and hunt the beasts for sport.”

Isma exhaled, long and wavering. “Oh, of course, as I should rightly expect. Please pardon my worry. Since Ze’mer’s loss, I—” She stopped and smoothed her skirt, wiping ineffectually at the blood. “How fared the Vessel’s trial? It has not been destroyed, so I imagine well.”

“Yes, the Little Knight was triumphant once again. It came to Dryya as quite a shock.”

Isma noticed my severed arm. It had ceased to weep darkness, though was otherwise unchanged. “Dryya’s work?” she asked coolly.

Ogrim nodded.

“She is not on to suffer defeat well,” Isma said, “perhaps even worse than I. Did she at least take solace in landing that blow? I would hate to see her cross.”

“That is difficult to say. She was certainly distressed by the battle’s end.”

Isma hummed. “Let us hope she does not grow despondent again. When the Palace has settled, I will weave her a fine bouquet. That will surely cheer her.”

A cry carried from a nearby tent, claiming Ogrim’s attention. Within, a bug writhed upon a stretcher, clutching at the bandaged stump of its leg. In high, keening notes the bug voiced its pain.

Ogrim averted his eyes. “The flow of wounded continues, I see,” he mumbled. “No small part of me hoped it would have ended before I returned from the trial.”

“The rogue Mantis were even more fearsome than Dryya warned. They slew the legions’ scouts and laid the most devastating ambushes. The legions were successful in repelling them to a far fringe of the Garden, but the cost was steep.” Isma’s arm reached out and settled on Ogrim’s shoulder. “So often, I forget how unknown the King’s realm is to you. This is your first war, is it not?”

“Yes, but I am no tenderfoot,” Ogrim blustered, “no stranger to a warrior’s fate. I have seen my share of death and battle, but…”

“But?”

“This is different. Do all the King’s wars end this way, with weeks of wailing and burials?”

“All? I would not know. But of late, yes.” Isma leaned in, her voice fond and without reproach. “War does not share the elegance of a Knight’s duel. It is unfair to expect that.”

“I suppose.”

“They may be frequent and vicious, but these wars are not frivolous. A kingdom is a precarious thing, ever on the brink of toppling. To ensure Hallownest’s survival, the legions sacrifice just as we do.”

Though not unkindly, Ogrim shrugged Isma’s touch aside. “I must speak with the King. Is he within his quarters?”

“Somewhere about, but before you go, rest a while. I have not seen you this battered since the Champion’s Call.”

“I cannot, I’ve tarried too long already.” Ogrim sidled past Isma, guiding me with enveloping arms.

“Let’s have none of that stubbornness,” Isma said. “Tending to the legions’ wounds has drained me, but I’ve more than enough Soul left for you. Come.” With a sudden surge of energy, she snatched Ogrim by the horn and pulled in the direction of the closest tent.

“There are others here in greater need than I!” Ogrim protested. He whipped his head from side to side but failed to loosen Isma’s grip. “If you are to heal anyone, then the Little Knight is in greatest need.”

Isma let out a short, sharp laugh. “I will teach you more of triage later, but know that the living always precede the unliving. Now stop struggling, you will aggravate your wounds.”

Though Ogrim yelped more denials, they did him little good. I trailed behind as Isma dragged him into a tent lined with makeshift beds. They were tiny by Knightly standards, but Isma pressed three together so that Ogrim would have a place to lie down. He squirmed to the very last, but once he touched the silk, his body went slack.

“You do me a disservice, Kindly Knight,” Ogrim groaned. “You’ve stolen my strength. How am I to stand now?”

“I have stolen it? Are you so certain? Was it not the savage beasts and the hours spent roaming inhospitable wilderness?”

“Well… perhaps…”

Isma retrieved a chair and sat beside Ogrim. For a quiet moment, she studied his wounds, running a claw over the blemished surface of his shell. “What manner of beasts did you encounter? They left quite a mark.”

“Oh, just Aspids and Hoppers, the usual sort one sees at the Kingdom’s Edge.”

A ghostly ripple of power distorted the space around Isma. She pressed down on Ogrim’s most heinous-looking injury, and the sweet taste of Soul filled the air. “Really? They caused you such trouble? I would not have expected such creatures to be a threat, especially with Dryya so near.”

“Th-They struck when we were unprepared. And there were many!”

“I see.” Isma shifted her claw, and the mark was gone. She repeated this process, once, twice, thrice, each time her breath growing more labored.

“…Why do you ask?” Ogrim whispered.

“Some of your wounds are… unusual. They are not the burns of Aspids or the punctures of Hoppers.” She paused, seemingly intent on a difficult spot. “…They are the cuts of a longnail.”

Ogrim bolted upright, the fragile beds cracking under the force. He lurched to his feet and exited the tent. “It is time I depart. Much thanks!”

“We are not finished. You are not yet healed, Loyal Knight, and I have many questions!”

Ogrim waved a claw over his shoulder. “No, no, we wouldn’t wish to exhaust you. Come along, Little Knight.”

I set after him at a pace just shy of a run.

There were no beds or stretchers lining the walls of the Palace vestibule, no sign at all of what lay just outside. The King’s throne, that jagged fortress atop its onyx pedestal, sat unoccupied. Ogrim strode down the silk carpet, intent on a tunnel at the far side.

“Stop!”

Though the word had no power over Ogrim, it brought me to a stuttering halt. He turned back to retrieve me, but Isma was quicker to the task. Her claw clamped hard upon my remaining arm. She hovered over me, a shadow in the bloom of the vestibule’s vertex.

“Please explain yourself, Ogrim,” she said, low and urgent. “What took place at the Kingdom’s Edge? What has become of Dryya?”

“I have already told you.”

“Did you clash? Over what, this thing?” She shook me like a cheap doll. “Did you strike her down? Did it?”

“No, of course not!” Ogrim said as he reached for me. “We performed the Little Knight’s trial, that is all.”

Isma pulled me back. “You are a most terrible liar. Surely you hear the ache in your own voice.”

“It is no lie!”

“Are we not allies? Are we not friends? I have told you of my secrets, but am I unworthy of yours?”

Ogrim fell quiet, allowing Isma to catch her breath, and for the hiss of her accusations to ebb away. “Yes, you are worthy, of more than I could ever hope to offer. But I cannot explain, not yet. First, I must have words with the King. Whatever comes of that, my path will be set, and then I will tell you all that you wish to know. Until then, please, trust me, if only for this final time. Release the Little Knight, return to those in need of your healing art.”

“You are in need of my healing art, you great, silver fool!” Isma cried. “Let me aid you!”

But Ogrim only chuckled and shook his head.

The strength drained from Isma’s grip. “It is a promise then? An oath?”

“It is.”

Isma released me, nudging the small of my back. “At least grant me this. Does Dryya still live?”

“She does. The Fierce Knight is not so easily felled by the likes of we.” Ogrim placed the flat of his claw upon me. “Let’s be off, Little Knight.”

I watched Isma diminish over my shoulder, her soft, green features becoming blurred with the distance. She did not turn away, even as we rounded a corner and vanished from sight.

The King’s quarters were dark, more so than anywhere else in the Palace, for that strange, ubiquitous light was nowhere to be found. In its place served hanging Lumafly lanterns, though they were sparse and caked in dust. The domed walls were rough-hewn and unnaturally black, impressing the feeling of a toothy maw poised just over one’s head.

It was… not unfamiliar to me. I had beheld much of it while in the King’s company. He had paced these chambers in ceaseless contemplation, never stopping, never sleeping, myself as his shadow.

Had he been thinking of me? Of the things I would be made to do?

Ogrim pressed through the murk, claws forward to feel about, bumbling into metal canisters. After a collision that left him cursing, there came a faint light in the distance. It crept across surfaces like a rising sun, bathing everything it touched in clarity.

But the light began to recede as quickly as it had come. Ogrim wasted no time in pursuing it, hopping over low tables and scrap. We passed through a denticulated archway into another chamber, and Ogrim shielded his eyes against the flood of luminescence. A bug-like shape—crowned with seven horns—bled through the glare.

“You return. Felicitous.”

Like a candle being hooded, the light abated, and the King’s regal visage became clear. He stood before a workbench strewn with armor fragments and fine tools. Beside it was a basin, carved into a shape like the casts in The City’s forges, though this shape was not of a lance or a nail, but something else.

In his claws, the King held a creature, spherical and winged. Its body was opaque and pliable, bordering on liquid. As the King looked at us, he screwed a metal plate into its flesh. The creature did not flinch.

Ogrim inhaled, but no words emerged. He cringed with every twist of the King’s claw.

“Speak, Loyal Ogrim,” the King said. “A message burns within you, and I shall hear it.” He retrieved another armor fragment from the bench and affixed it to the creature.

“W-We return from the Kingdom’s Edge, my Lord…”

“So I behold. Maimed though it is, the Vessel endures. It has surmounted a trial beyond the means of its kin. Most felicitous indeed.”

“Yes, Lord. It is of that trial I wish to discuss. Dryya had reservations regarding it.”

The King applied a silver-silk mesh over the creature’s wings, pressing it delicately into place. “Tell me of the Fierce Knight. The winding fates implied her survival to be… remote. Events of late have grieved the Lady deeply enough, shall she be further harmed?”

Ogrim recoiled, as though he had been slammed in the chest. “What? You divined Dryya’s death? Why was she sent forth?”

The King paused in his work and fixed Ogrim with a look. “I divined many things in the future’s infinitude. Your demise. The Vessel’s. But the Kingdom’s calamity impels me to action, and I have not the time to scrutinize every divergent thread. Thus, I implore you, speak.”

“She lives,” Ogrim choked.

“Splendid. Destiny smirks, if fleetingly. I shall inform the Lady.” The look broke, and the King occupied himself with the creature once more. “Well served, Knight. You may depart.”

Though Ogrim nearly obeyed on reflex, he held his ground.

The King applied the final armor fragment to the creature and then nodded his approval. He glanced up and startled. “You remain? Have you more to report, or does curiosity still your feet?”

“Lord, I—”

“Come closer,” the King said, almost warmly. “Behold.” He cradled the creature so that its face was visible, white eyes burning in a pool of blackness. “I shall name it ‘Wingmould’, the first of its kind: immortal, indefatigable, vigilant, a superb tool for the legions. As a scout, it shall ensure they never again suffer needless deaths from lack of knowledge.” The King released the Wingmould as one would a Maskfly, claws flat and extended. Falteringly, it whirred into the air and hovered, its wings a silver blur.

The King crossed his arms and leaned against the workbench, quietly observing the thing as it patrolled the workshop.

“Is it, too, forged from Void?” Ogrim asked. “Just as the Little Knight?”

The King was rigid once again. “Few living could claim to be acquainted with that word. Who amongst my court told you of Void?”

“Dryya. At the trial.”

“It is unlike the Fierce Knight to partake in banter, let alone the divulgence of secrets.”

“She spoke of many things, Lord. She claimed that the Little Knight was flawed—dangerous. She attempted to execute them!”

“The arrogance of eons. I have witnessed it before. Due to her years, she assumes beyond her station. There is no defect within the Vessel.”

“She claimed you would say that as well.”

The King shook his head, suppressing a tremble. “I have peered within the Vessel. It is sufficient in both function and prowess. This most recent trial affirms that. The Vessel shall fulfill its purpose. It shall safeguard this Kingdom.”

“From the Radiance? The god you usurped?”

The King turned to his workbench and straightened the clutter, shifting the armor scraps aside and placing the instruments in parallel lines. “The events of the trial were surely dire for Dryya to speak so openly. Her carelessness has hurled you into disarray.”

“Better this than ignorance! Please, Lord, if I am to serve you, then grant me the truth. What is the Little Knight? How are they meant to rescue us from the Radiance?”

His task finished, the King drifted from the workbench and over to the basin. His face was averted, and he spoke low, as if to himself. “You bore such promise when first I beheld you, such sparkling potential. You were to be the most stalwart, most unflinching of my Knights. But that future is dead now. I could not previse the path.”

Ogrim drew closer. “What?”

The King straightened. “The Vessel is damaged. I shall repair it, and in doing so reveal all that you desire.” He turned to me and extended a claw. “Come, child.” As I stuttered forward, slow to absorb the command, he tilted his head.

“Do be gentle,” Ogrim whispered. “They have suffered much.”

“As was the cursed intent.”

With a strength inexplicable for his frame, the King lifted a nearby decanter half-again larger than he. It was shaped like a rounded hourglass, the lower bulb composed of crystal and filled with a dark liquid, the upper bulb of ornate metal and topped with a hollow spike the length of a nail. He gripped the decanter by the center and inverted it, carefully pouring from the spike’s tip into the basin. The liquid did not ripple, becoming perfectly still the moment that the pouring ceased.

“Void,” the King said, letting the word soak the air, “covetous nemesis to life and mind, primordial embodiment of hunger. To the ignorant, it is a danger, but when wielded precisely, it is an unrivaled tool.” He grasped the stump of my arm and guided it to the liquid’s surface, holding it there for some time.

Though Ogrim fidgeted, he did not intervene. “Dryya spoke of an ancient empire brought low by this Void. Was their aim like yours?”

The King scoffed. “I consider myself neither a fool nor a zealot, so no, we bear little in common. The Empire sought a god from the Void, not an instrument. They embraced it; they did not shackle it, and for that folly, they were consumed.”

“I see…”

“Retrieve a spool, Loyal Knight,” the King ordered, jerking his head toward the far side of the room.

Though difficult to discern among the clutter, several tall cylinders—wound in silk—were pressed up against the wall. Ogrim huffed and grunted as he negotiated one of the spools across the room. With a final heave, it clanged to a stop beside the basin.

“My thanks,” the King said.

I felt nothing from the liquid, not heat or cold, not pleasure or pain. It hearkened to my birth, to the sea of absence through which I had once floated.

Slowly, the King lifted my arm, but the liquid clung to it, having become viscous and semi-solid like a secretion of mucus. With his bare claws, the King shaped the mass as a potter would, rolling and pressing, pinching away the excess. As the liquid touched him, it sizzled and evaporated, warded off by his sheath of light.

Once the King’s sculpting had begun to resemble something like a limb, he reached out to the spool and plucked a strand. To the squealing of an internal mechanism, the spool unwound. Swift and surgically, the King knitted the strand through the viscid substance affixed to my stump, creating elaborate runic shapes in a matter of moments. The strand glowed, mimicking the King’s own light, and I felt pain—burning—along the surface of this foreign limb. It recoiled from the searing strand, growing solid and still within its net.

With his free claw, the King snipped the trailing end of the thread, and I was whole once again.

“Lift the arm,” the King ordered, and I obeyed. It moved as a perfect extension of me. It was me.

“Miraculous,” Ogrim murmured. “Is this the means by which you forged the other Vessels? Those in the pit?”

“Would that it were so easy. No, the Vessels are not forged as my other works. They are born.”

“…What do you mean?”

The King took a breath. “They are my children.”

Chapter Text

Ogrim moved like a storm through the Palace halls, the courtiers and nobles fallen leaves before him. I trailed along as best I could, but my legs faltered, and my shell ached. The duel of commands still lingered on inside me. To leave, to remain, to halt, to go. Ogrim’s booming had superseded the King’s murmurs, but only just.

Ogrim stomped a harsh melody over the silver tiles. His fatigue had vanished, replaced by a radiating fire. It hurt to be so close, to feel the raw heat of what had been said.

You are no King of mine.

None impeded us as we passed from the inner chambers to the grand hall. Pearl light filtered through frosted windows and onto the fissures of Ogrim’s armor, but those in attendance were too occupied with bowing to notice his wounds.

Ogrim rounded a corner, and there was a sudden tolling like a bell. He staggered back. Before him—barricading the hall with his mass—stood Mighty Hegemol.

“Pardon me,” Hegemol laughed. “I am so often clumsy after torpor. Are you alright?”

“Y-Yes, quite,” Ogrim said. He did not meet Hegemol’s eyes, and instead leaned to one side, as if that might reveal another path.

“Where are you off to in such haste?” Hegemol asked. “Has something occurred?”

“The King… commanded that I deliver the Vessel to Kindly Isma. It has not yet recovered from its injuries.”

Hegemol scanned Ogrim’s shell. “And neither have you, it appears. The trial must have been formidable to mark you so.”

Ogrim leaned to the other side and said nothing.

There was a pause. Hegemol showed no intention of moving. “You seem troubled, Ogrim. A moment’s repose might do you good. I intended to cajole the Palace chefs into preparing a feast. Perhaps you would care to join me? As they ready the food, I could ease your worries with a tale or two. Has word spread of my clash with the Traitor Lord? Not to boast, but I dealt a blow that he will not soon—”

“No! I—no, I must not tarry. We will trade tales another time. If you would please excuse me.”

Hegemol’s frame sagged as though burdened by a great weight. “Oh. Yes, certainly.” He stepped to one side, granting Ogrim and I enough room to pass. “I would not wish to divert you from your Knightly duties…”

Ogrim lingered as though in search of something to say. But he only shook his head and ushered me down the hall.

Despite the vestibule’s proximity to the courtyard, no moans of pain carried in the air, no healer bugs scuttled about. We crossed through the vertex’s beam of light, but at the far entrance, Ogrim stopped. He turned and I followed his gaze. Isma was seated at the foot of the throne, hunched against its staircase. She rocked, trapped in fitful sleep.

Ogrim neither approached nor fled, remaining that way—statue-like—as he deliberated in his private realm. I waited for him, as I always did, for I could give no counsel.

You dare a dread precipice, Loyal Knight. Consider your path, for there shall be no regress.

As though feeling eyes upon her, Isma stirred. She wobbled upright. “Ogrim…”

Something settled within Ogrim, then. His fire guttered, and the invisible wires that had bound him taut fell away. With a voice made thick by so much unspoken, he said, “Do not follow me, Isma,” and strode out of the Palace.

She did not heed him for a heartbeat.

Isma was beside us instantly, panting, but keeping pace. She did not demand that we stop. She did not speak at all, not until the courtyard was far behind and the only sound was of our feet upon the elevated causeway.

“You swore me an oath, Loyal Knight,” she finally said.

“I did.”

“A broken oath is a grave stain on a Knight’s honor.”

“It is.”

“Well? Will you speak?”

“Perhaps I won’t.”

“Ogrim!”

“Perhaps I am no Knight. Perhaps honor means nothing to me.”

She stopped then, as though she had struck a wall. “What did the King tell you? What has happened? Tell me, please. This is not like you!”

Ogrim hesitated. The Palace causeway had come to an end, and the Ancient Basin loomed ahead, unnaturally still. “The Little Knight and I are leaving the Kingdom. You will not see us again.”

“What? The King could not have decreed this.”

Ogrim turned to go.

I was to… leave? Was that my purpose?

Isma seemed about to snatch at my arm, to hold me fast as she had done in the vestibule, but her claw curled toward her chest and she instead fell into step.

The Ancient Basin was a dry, dead thing. Though the Palace’s adornments covered every surface, drifts of black fog and hanging vines stole away the glimmer. The filigree resembled crude iron, not silver, and bristled with menace. We passed a statue of the king coated in a soot-like substance. Dark rivulets ran down the face like tears.

“So… it is betrayal, then?” Isma asked.

She waited for Ogrim’s denial, but none came.

“Will you tell me nothing?” she continued. “Am I to grasp in the dark while you keep to your silence?”

Ogrim slashed at a cluster of vines blocking our path, but his ruined claws could no longer cut. He pressed through them instead.

Isma trailed just over his shoulder. “It is a bitter riddle you lay before me. I fail to imagine what could bring you to abandon everything, to steal away into the wilds and leave this Kingdom to rot. Do you no longer care for its subjects? Do you no longer care for me?”

Ogrim bowed his head as though leaning into a gale. He did not stop. “You would be wise to return to the Palace before your absence is known. You are needed. Far more than I.”

“Every Knight is needed now! I have already lost Ze’mer, I will not lose another! Follow me back to the Palace, please. Whatever has transpired can yet be undone. I will vouch for you.” She reached for Ogrim, but he pulled away.

“More words cannot veil what has already been said. I have made my choice. Revile me if it so suits you.”

With two swift steps, Isma closed the gap. She wrapped Ogrim in her supple arms, claws locking over his chest. She pressed her cheek tight to his neck. “Never,” she said. “I will never revile you.”

Ogrim fought her pull, his paltry strength against hers. But he could not tear free. He sank to his knees like a failing machine, and she knelt beside him.

Then he wept.

I could not fathom this: the pain. It flowed from Ogrim like a mortal wound, and I could do nothing to staunch it. There was no foe, no threat before us. I could bring no power to bear here.

I was useless.

Ogrim tried to speak through his quaking, to articulate all that had transpired, but Isma hushed him as though he were a hatchling. She held him close, and a muted wind of Soul rose about them. They glowed like a great lantern as Isma eased his hurt. The cuts in Ogrim’s shell faded to scratches, and then to nothing at all.

Isma slumped, but Ogrim caught her by the waist. He rested her heavy head on his shoulder and bottled the last of his anguish.

After a long exhale, he said, “The truth you seek will do no good. It will end your faith. It will lead you down my path, and I do not wish that.”

“But still, I will hear it,” Isma whispered. “I must know what tortures you.”

“…They are his children.”

“What?”

“The Little Knight, the Vessels. They are the King’s own progeny, his shell and blood made hollow by Void.”

Though she could hardly lift her head, Isma looked at me. “I slew children?”

“No,” Ogrim snarled. He shook her, as if trying to draw her from a dream. “Stop!”

“Those broken shells… He called them tools…”

“Hear me, Isma. You are not to blame.”

“I slew children!” A crazed energy took hold of Isma. She pushed free of Ogrim and skittered away from me until her back dug into the tunnel wall.

Ogrim pursued her, claws out and pleading. “This is no fault of yours.”

“I never pried… So many years and I never pried…”

“You did not know.”

“But I suspected!” Isma crumpled in on herself, drawing her knees to her chest.

“This rests on the King, no one else. You must understand that.”

Isma’s wail diminished to a murmur. “I hid. I could not bear to ask, to learn I was a lie.”

Ogrim crawled over to sit beside her. “If you are not the Kindly Knight, then nothing in this world is true.”

At that, Isma flinched. She drew her eyes away from me, and the horror-spell waned. She went quiet and gripped Ogrim’s arm as though he were the edge of a cliff.

The exchange lulled, and the basin’s sober aura shrouded them. Ogrim did not stand. He did not bid us to leave, despite our purpose.

I watched Isma, watched her toil to avoid my existence, her eyes burrowing into the stones.

Like so many others, she feared me, but not for my power. She feared my being—what I represented. Was I at fault for sowing this fear? Was that unbecoming of a Knight?

After a cold, windless time, Ogrim spoke. “Do you recall when first we met?”

Isma made a flat noise, the sound of a mind far away.

Ogrim took it as encouragement and continued. “It was in the Palace garden following the Champion’s Call. You remember, yes? Even now, to me that moment is a clear window.”

“You were wounded,” Isma murmured.

And Ogrim dared a laugh. “I was indeed, so much so that Ze’mer had been forced to haul me halfway across the Kingdom. I never did repay her in full.” He let the memory percolate—to collect color and form. “The King had not yet silvered me. I was a Knight in name but not appearance. What a dull shell I sported, the sort fit for a vagabond. When Ze’mer left me there, without a word’s introduction, do you recall how you treated me: the sudden stranger?”

Isma did not respond, but she looked at him.

“Exactly as you always have,” Ogrim said. “With kindness. With love.”

“Fleeting courtesy does not make us who we are,” Isma said. “Our deeds do.”

Ogrim nodded. “Quite so. It was not your gentle manner that earned your name, it was from those innumerable healings, of Knights and nobles and common bugs snatched from the jaws of death.”

“But what of the Sanctum?” Isma asked. “What of the innumerable bugs stripped of their Soul? And what of the princes and princesses I cast to the pit? Would they not earn me a different name?”

Ogrim faltered. He glanced about as though he might find the answer in the basin’s murk. He settled on me. “We are none of us without flaws. I know that now. The most noble intent can molder. The most flawless shell can crack. But we cannot hate ourselves for our failings. That way brings only despair.” He pulled Isma’s arm nearer, enclosing it between the flats of his claws. “At the vestibule, I ran because I could not bring myself to tell you of what I must do. I could not suffer the loathing of the one I prized above all else. But you forgave me, for even this. Why can you not forgive yourself? If anyone is deserving, it is you.”

Isma laid her head on her knees and said nothing.

Do you truly expect some manner of apology?… I—Perhaps I do!… Mutual amends are in order between you and the little one… With a few earnest words, any rift can be repaired.

Though I had no words, I was not without deeds. I drew close. My arm—the very limb that the King had reforged—hovered over Isma’s head. Ogrim tracked me but did not intervene. My claw descended to brush her brow, the faintest caress, the only apology I could muster.

Isma startled and let out a quavering gasp. She straightened to look me in the eyes.

Did she understand? Had the rift been repaired?

…I hoped so.

“It is not hollow.” Isma breathed.

“Yes,” Ogrim said.

“How long?”

Ogrim lifted a shoulder. “From the beginning?”

As though pressing her arm through a flame, Isma reached out and touched my cheek. She was quiet for a moment. “And this is why you will leave us. You cannot abandon a Ves—a child to their fate…”

Ogrim squeezed Isma’s arm, then let it go. “Yes.”

Before Ogrim could stand, there came a sound from beyond the haze of black fog, a rhythmic clanging that rose with the passing seconds. The ground tremored as something approached, and through a curtain of vines emerged a massive shape—Mighty Hegemol. The head of the Mighty Knight’s mace crashed into the earth, and then all was very still.

Infinitesimally, Ogrim tensed. He shifted his legs beneath himself, readying to spring.

But Hegemol lifted a claw. He stepped away from his mace and sat upon a giant, fossilized shell. It cracked beneath his weight as he hunched to breathe.

“It has been—a turn or two—since—we three last convened,” Hegemol said. “I’d hoped—our next meeting—to be of finer fortune—but—”

“Why have you come?” Ogrim asked.

Hegemol took a last gulp. “You know very well.”

“The King?”

Without looking up, Hegemol nodded.

“I will ensure the Loyal Knight’s return,” Isma said. “Leave this to me, Hegemol. I will bring him back.”

Hegemol’s claws were clasped between his knees. They shook as though in the throes of a duel. “My task is to collect the Vessel,” he said. “Ogrim is left to his own ends. He is no longer welcome within the Kingdom…”

From the farthest realm you emerged, and to the farthest realm you shall return. Go. The Loyal Knight is no more.

“That-That can’t be so,” Isma said, “You jest. Tell me you merely jest!”

“Today is not a day for such things,” Hegemol murmured.

Isma turned to Ogrim, as though he might refute it, but he did not. Isma receded into herself, staring blankly into the distance.

Hegemol planted his claws on his knees to stop their shaking. He lifted his head. “Why did you not listen?” Pain warped his voice. “Did you think my proverb so foolish? I urged patience in the face of doubt, yet so quickly you acted. Why?”

Ogrim thrashed as though the questions bit into his shell. “Why did you lie?” he countered.

“What?”

“In the pit—those children, that grave. You lied to me in full.”

Hegemol straightened. “I did not. The Vessels are not children. The Void renders them less than bugs. When they hatch from those ebon eggs, they are not living things.”

“Does that pedantry bring you peace?”

“No,” Hegemol said, without pause. “But peace is not the claim of a Knight. Our claim is duty and strife. What has caused that to slip your mind?”

“Duty. Again, we bandy that word.” Ogrim sank back, elbows on knees. “To whom is a Knight sworn, Hegemol? To what?”

“King and Kingdom… Do you no longer find that to be true?”

Ogrim did not reply. He stood and dusted his shell as though readying to leave.

Hegemol stood as well, unfurling his shadow over the tunnel. “Wait! I see it in you: the scorn. You think the King a villain. You think him unworthy of fealty. His methods are too distasteful, is that so? Even if those methods are the only means of saving this land? You would flee from responsibility all so that your sterling chivalry might not be muddied? Is that not greed? Is that not arrogance? Tell me, would you rather keep your righteousness than see this kingdom live?!”

Ogrim shook his head, looking so small, so tired.

Hegemol shrank. He let the echoes of accusation fade. “I am—I am sorry. In this last parting I should offer condolences, not barbs. It is only that—that I had such fond hopes for you… Truly, you were a grand Knight, Ogrim. And now…”

Isma shook from her stupor. She fought to her feet. “Can he not be again? The Pale Court has faced crises of this sort. Were we both to defend him before the King, then surely—”

“No,” Hegemol said. “We are beyond that hope.”

“Indeed.” Ogrim took me by the shoulders. “Farewell, my friends. Perhaps we will meet again.”

Before Ogrim and I managed a step, Hegemol was beside us. “The Vessel, Ogrim. Please.”

“The Ancient Basin is a tangled place,” Ogrim said. “The King would not fault you for returning empty-clawed.”

“You know that I cannot do that. All the Kingdom pivots on this Vessel.”

Isma flanked Ogrim defensively. “It is flawed, Hegemol. The Vessel is not hollow.”

“It is not our place to refute the King,” Hegemol said. “He asserts its purity. For me, that is enough.”

Ogrim steadied himself. He faced Hegemol as he had faced so many before. “You will not have them.”

“Think, Ogrim! You beheld the lighthouse keeper as surely as I. Within the pit, you saw what Void had made of him, how he liquefied within his own shell! Yet knowing that, you would unleash this thing upon the world? Are you so confident that you can restrain it? Forever?”

“The Little Knight is no beast upon a chain. Whatever their birth, they are no more a threat than you or I.”

“None but you hold that confidence.”

Hegemol surveyed us as though we were far away: a distant place, a distant memory. “We come to the end, then. Beyond words, beyond reason.”

“So it seems,” Ogrim whispered.

“Very well. Goodbye, my friend. I will remember you.”

He grasped his mace and turned away, dragging it for a step across the stones.

Then he planted his feet.

All the world slowed: the beating of hearts, the drift of fog, the swing of the mace. Hegemol’s body spun, all his mass behind the motion. Though something pulled at me, shapeless and veiled, I did not react. I was not fast enough to find the will. The blow encroached on Ogrim, to snuff his life in one terrible stroke. His claws hung limp, his defenses low. For all the King’s warnings, he had not foreseen.

And then he was falling, thrust aside by a slender arm. Isma interposed herself between Ogrim and his death. And for a sheer, crystal moment, she was triumphant, a Knight as I had never seen.

Then her chest collapsed like a dome of glass.

Chapter Text

Ogrim screamed. I had not heard such a sound from him before. It was not a battle cry. It was not a roar of defiance. It was not a railing against injustice. It was too raw for that, too unformed. It was like breaking.

Isma’s body struck the ground with such force that it bounced, grotesque and doll-like. She did not move. She did not breathe. She lay so very still.

Hegemol stepped back, once, twice, a shiver running through his body. The mace—speckled with chitin and slick with blood—slipped from his claws. He made no effort to catch it.

“Isma, I did—I did not—” Hegemol steadied himself against a wall as though the whole world were shaking.

Ogrim crouched and lifted Isma’s head. “No, no. You mustn’t go. Not now, please, not now.”

She nuzzled the crook of his arm. It looked like so much effort, a final flare before the dark. With a dreamy voice, she whispered, “Ogrim, there’s no time.”

“Don’t say that. This is no different from the mustering ground. The wound is no worse than—” He looked at her mangled chest and the words caught. “Little Knight!” His head snapped up. “Little Knight, she needs Soul. Grant her some, all that you can. You’ve taken it in the past, you can give it now!”

I padded forward. The agony in Ogrim’s plea formed within me. It was like a fault line on the brink of rupture. I lifted my arms, extended them toward Isma.

“Please, do this for me!” Ogrim said. “If nothing else in this world, grant me but one thing.”

I searched for the power. I did. I longed for it as I had never longed. I felt the Soul within me, trapped and churning, but it could not emerge that way, no healing stream, only a smashing flood. I could not give, not as Isma needed it. I was not that manner of thing, only—

Void… nemesis to life… embodiment of hunger.

“Little Knight!” Ogrim shrieked. “Little Knight!”

My arms shook—thrashed—as though force alone would free the Soul inside. I fell to my knees and placed my claws against her chest, but it did not flow out, only in. The pale motes that escaped her wound settled on my shell and were absorbed. They were sweet, deeply, warmly sweet. And yet why did they hurt so? I hovered there, sipping at the last of her, for I knew not what else to do.

I could not cry out.

“What are you doing?” Ogrim asked. “Stop that. If you can’t heal her, then get away!” He pushed me with the back of a claw. I fell to my side and did not rise. “Her grove, we’ll take her there. Just as with Lurien’s garden. Hegemol, help me carry her!”

As though reminded of himself, Hegemol took a rattling breath. “She is dead.”

“No, you are mistaken. She is too grand a knight for that, too hale, too goodly. She is not dead. She cannot—”

“Look at her!” Hegemol’s voice sent shockwaves through the crowding of black clouds. “She is dead!” He clenched his claws, strangled them together into one armored mass. “And it is your doing! Your conceit has brought us here! Had you kept to your name, had you held loyalty above all, then a Great Knight would not be dead upon the ground. You did this! You!”

Ogrim choked. A piteous sound escaped him. In that moment, he was as one of the King’s baubles, a metal shell of clockwork held in the palm. His key wound and wound, each turn another whimper, each turn a swallowed scream.

“I had not meant for this.” He drew Isma closer, pressing her crumpled chest to his own. “I had meant to help them, to help you. But it all went so wrong.” He gasped, letting out something like a laugh. “Can we not go back? I will be whatever I must, believe whatever I must, just please—please return to me.”

Hegemol averted his gaze. “Stop, Ogrim. Words cannot change this. She is beyond—”

“SHE WILL LIVE!” Ogrim lurched upright, bundling Isma in his arms. “She is a master of Soul! This is nothing! I will ferry her to her garden. She will mend her wounds, and I will safekeep her, no matter how long!” He staggered, fighting the dead weight. “It will be well! It will all be well! As before the plague, before the war, we will be whole—The Five Greats—together! Laughter will fill our hearts again!” And he did laugh, full and loud, but then Isma’s blood began to stream down his arms, and the laugh became a wail.

He turned his back and shuffled away. He did not call for me to follow. He had forgotten. Again.

“Wait,” Hegemol said, but there was no strength in it.

The clash at the mustering ground came to me: Isma’s wounding, Ogrim’s fixation. He had left me there, just as he was leaving me now. Were we no longer meant to travel together? Were we no longer to be free of duty? Were we to remain Knights forever?

If this was Knighthood, I did not wish it.

I moved. I stuttered after him. I reached for his diminishing back, but a silvered claw enclosed my arm and held it fast.

“Stop, Vessel,” Hegemol said. “Just stop.”

The chains settled over me, and I watched Ogrim go. Had I failed somehow? If I had possessed the power to mend a shell, would he not have gone? If I had found the will to stand before that killing blow, would I still have meaning in his eyes?

I did not know.

I looked to Hegemol, but he had no answers for me. Instead, a jolt seemed to run through him, and he turned away. Pain bloomed in my shoulder as he tugged. I tried to plant my feet, tried to gain purchase. I did not want to leave. But his strength won out. He snatched his mace by the hilt and let it drag after us. It skipped and sparked over the uneven stones, playing an anguished song. We disappeared down the tunnel from which he’d emerged.

I would not see Ogrim again.

At first, Hegemol did not speak. He only stomped, head down, body swelling with every breath. The basin threw the sound back at him like a jeering audience. He lumbered over a rough patch and let out one watery sob.

“Ruin,” he said between gasps. “I’ve brought us to ruin—hadn’t the words to counsel Ogrim—hadn’t the sense to stay my arm. Two Greats in one fell moment! King, would that I had your sight. Would that I—”

He slowed, fighting his own momentum, and came to a stop. With the faintest fraction of strength, he threw me forward. I tumbled, landing in a heap amid a spiral of dust.

“Go, Vessel,” Hegemol said. “Return to the King. He will know what has transpired. I—I cannot follow. I have failed. I am false.”

Like the other commands before it, this one burrowed into my shell, but unlike them, it could not find my core. There was a vastness separating us, a dark liquid depth into which I was sinking.

Through the curtain of dust, Hegemol clutched some object. It was egg-shaped and intricately carved. He pressed it to his heart and murmured something. Then he walked away.

I was left alone for a time. I lay as Isma had, lost to the world. There was a reason to rise. I felt it, somewhere far above. I could reach it if I willed. But was that any better? The depths demanded nothing of me but to keep sinking. My shell was not damaged, my Soul was not drained, yet I had never been so tired. There was peace in the sinking. There was rest.

Peace is not the claim of a Knight. Our claim is duty and strife. What has caused that to slip your mind?

Anchor-like, the purpose plunged. It was blind in its seeking but steady.

You husk. You flawed shell! You damnable VOID!

It drew close, but I turned away.

To whom is a Knight sworn…? To what?

…King and Kingdom…

The purpose shadowed me, always in reach, spurring me with its presence.

You are the Vessel. None other shall rival your merit.

Tentatively, I reached.

You are the Hollow Knight… You are my child…

And I took it to my core.

*****

The King stood at the platform’s edge. It overlooked a deep pit of brambles. Beyond, cast in the unrelenting light of the White Palace, was a sequence of similar platforms. Some were elevated, angled, or inverted, and they all sported contraptions of death—spinning blades, thrusting spears, crushing pistons. They moved with mechanical regularity, animated by a force I did not understand. More brambles hung from the walls, they were chalky white and covered in thorns the length of shortnails.

At the wall behind us, on a wide, low bench sat the White Lady. Her roots were curled beneath her, and her tendril arms rested modestly in her lap. Beside her stood Dryya, vigilant as always. She did not have her longnail, only a shortnail at the hip. Her right arm—the one I had savaged—hung from a sling and was bandaged up to the shoulder. It had been that way for some weeks now. She had made a habit of snarling at me whenever she caught me staring.

“You are certain?” the Lady asked. She nudged the question into the quiet gulf born from the King’s most recent introspection.

He startled, as though having forgotten her. “Long has the Path of Pain gone unchallenged, and never before by a Vessel. But yes, of what certitude I can glean, it shall survive this.”

“If so, what then?” Dryya asked. “Will this display of acrobatics gouge the will from its shell? Will it render the thing any less broken? I have driven myself hoarse tallying the Vessel’s defects, and yet here it stands. Am I the lone, sane voice in this sea of madness? You cannot—”

The Lady lifted a tendril and enclosed Dryya’s claw, bringing her to silence.

“Those defects against which you rage are mere echoes,” the King said, “reiterations of the many wills inflicted upon the Vessel. They bear no more significance to its composition than a dark drink does to a crystal glass.”

Dryya said nothing, but even that seemed like a form of defiance.

Laboriously, the Lady rose. Her roots rippled over one another as she crossed the platform to stand beside the King. “Shall you demonstrate to it?” she asked quietly.

“Is that not my lot? To lead?”

The Lady surveyed the obstacles. “It is a harrowing trial. Have you the strength?”

“I shall yet endure.”

The King stepped away from the Lady. He rolled his shoulders, eliciting a crackle, and then cast his cloak wide. Just as they had in the place of my birth, the King’s wings erupted into being, luminous and ethereal. They vibrated there, an inch from his back, part of him, and yet not. He turned, pinning me with intent. “Observe and follow.”

Then, with a flap, the King hurled himself into that whirring metal maw. He moved with the grace I had come to know, a leaf set loose upon the wind. The blades and spears struck at him, but he remained ever just out of reach. He would alight seldomly, and then only long enough to adjust his stance. But as he progressed from one platform to the next, I began to see. This was not the same, not entirely. Where once had been absolute control, now there was toil.

The King began to falter.

“Must He always endeavor to make a spectacle of Himself?” Dryya asked. She marched over to the Lady and blocked my view of the King. I sidled around her, and she stiffened at my proximity.

The Lady craned her neck, tracking the King’s progress. “A beacon must make itself seen to be of use, would you not agree?”

“I would not liken Him to a beacon, more a performer upon a stage, a braggart seeking the ardor of a crowd.”

The King came upon a passage barely wide enough to accommodate his wings. From gaps in the wall emerged a sequence of spears. They followed a pattern that allowed a momentary gap. To my eyes, the margin of error seemed miniscule. The King paused—hesitated—then shot forward. He landed upon a platform on the other side.

A banner of phantom feathers hung from a spearpoint. It quivered briefly then crumbled away.

Dryya chuckled. “And the braggart stumbles.”

“He is dying, Dryya. You will forgive him for the lapse, I trust.”

Dryya flinched, as though shocked by an Ooma. “Forgive me, my Lady, I did not—” She looked away. “I did not know.”

The King stood, body swaying, mismatched wings fully extended. He seemed at war with his own breath, barely able to suppress the gasps in his chest. After a moment, he straightened and disappeared through a hole in the ceiling of the chamber.

The Lady turned and crossed the observation platform. She ascended a staircase with torturous grace. Dryya and I fell into step.

“When did you learn?” Dryya asked.

“A sickness of that sort is not a trifle to conceal. During our courtship, I was not without suspicion. Had I acted upon it, perhaps time enough would have remained to staunch the wound.” Her chuckle was little more than a cough. “Not that He would have acquiesced.”

The staircase spiraled upward. The close, curving walls were like the bowels of an enormous creature.

“What will become of the Kingdom?” Dryya’s question echoed, as though all of Hallowest had broached it.

The Lady did not respond. She passed through a doorway flooded with light. We followed, and on the other side beheld another chamber like the first, though even more treacherous. Sawblades raced up dizzying cliffs, platforms rose and fell over spiked chasms. The King waited on the far side. Once he spied me, he resumed the challenge.

“What will become of you?” Dryya persisted. “Of us? Will you claim the throne?”

For the first time, the Lady tore her attention from the King. Gently, she ran a tendril down Dryya’s bandaged arm. “Does it yet pain you?”

“My Lady, no deflections. You must consider what need be done.”

“The Vessel is an exceptional thing, possessed of a power tantamount to the eldest Knight. I had not considered—not truly—that my spawn might inflict such injury.”

Dryya’s claw twitched within the bandage. “Had Ogrim not already taxed me so, my duel with this thing would have concluded quite differently. But that is not the matter before us. Lady, please, will you seize the Kingdom? You may yet amend its course. If infirmity clouds the King’s mind, then by right, you—”

“No, Dryya. This land shall not fall to my care.”

Dryya bristled, her rebuttal poised like a nail, but there came a deafening shriek.

The King had grazed a sawblade. Shreds of steel-gray cloth tumbled through the air. They caught on the many serrated edges and dangled like the freshly dead. The King retreated to a safe platform and studied his chest. A scratch ran from collar to abdomen. It glittered, as though it might shed diamonds instead of blood.

Dryya did not look up. She barely registered the sound. With effort, she compressed a shout into a whisper. “Why will you not take what is yours?”

“Such was his plea.”

“The foulest curse upon his plea,” Dryya said. “This realm must change if it is to survive. My Lady, you must be the bringer of that change. This weakness that the King has fostered in his subjects is the very reason they skirt the abyss. I beheld the Mantis. They did not fear the Radiance. Her light could not claim them without consent. It was their strength of body—of will—that shielded them. Were we to heed their example, we would have no need to tinker with these evils!” She leveled a claw at me with such force that it rippled my cloak.

The Lady’s voice grew wistful. Her crown of branches bent under its own weight. “Never has a Knight possessed a truer namesake. No matter the onerous ages, your heat finds my heart time and again. It reminds this old Root that she can yet shape the world in beautiful and terrible ways. But though it grieves me to fail you so, I shall not act. Senescence is my fate.”

“Enough!” Dryya choked, “Enough of this forbearance! Are you not the White Lady, prime among the gods? Was it not you that laid Unn low? Was it not you that claimed her lands and threatened dominion over all? Did the King’s perfidious words steal that away?” Dryya pressed a bandaged claw over her eyes. Blooms of blood darkened the wrappings around her arm. “To possess such power and not to wield it. My Lady, I do not understand. I have never understood.”

The Lady drew close to Dryya. She draped a tendril behind the Knight’s neck and bent low, bringing their foreheads together. “My Dryya, ever has strength been the vanguard of your thoughts. Ever has weakness been abjured. When a doleful mood finds me, I am sometimes made to wonder if you would still have borne me such love had I sprouted as a frailer thing.”

Dryya took a long, wet breath, but did not speak.

“Beyond the ken of any but Himself,” the Lady said, “the King has sacrificed for this Kingdom. For all its frailty, its decadence, its conceit, the King has made his love for this land clear. No right of mine is it to deface something so cherished. I shall not tarnish his memory by rendering it unrecognizable.”

The Lady straightened and returned her attention to the King.

“Grant me this much,” Dryya whispered. “Why aid Him? Why deny a potential so vast just to placate a dying fool? In all the ages of your union, He has not once offered you anything.”

“If to Fierce eyes love is nothing, then perhaps that is so. But of you and I, how does that liken? Tell me, of what aid have I granted you? Of your ennoblement, your empowerment, how have I accorded? At my side, on what have you supped? Pain and worry, indignity and peril. Yet here you remain. Why?”

“…I vowed to follow. Is that not sufficient?”

“And to a wretched end that vow might yet ferry you. Mayhap the time arrives that your vow be annulled. Before you are lost as all the other Greats.”

Dryya shook her head as though every movement were an agony. “Do not ask that of me. Please.”

The Lady hummed, a sad, slow rumble. “To give without expectation is the truest love, the maddest love. It is a fever not unlike that mothered by Light. In every bug it festers, waiting to spill forth, to change us utterly. Had I not ensorcelled you, what wonders might you have achieved? Had He not ensorcelled me, what horrors would I have unleashed?”

The King’s pace diminished to a crawl. Though he had initially taken several obstacles at a time, now he lingered before each one, panting and hunched. Eventually, the final hurdle of the chamber came before him. It was a tunnel lined with spikes. But for a pair of sawblades that ran down its length, the tunnel was otherwise featureless. There wasn’t a single place to rest, just a long, barbed throat to swallow you.

“Come,” the Lady said. “This tormenting play nears resolution. We shall not dishonor the cast by failing to witness it.” She ushered us down a hall festooned with silk. The Lady bent low to avoid snagging her branches.

“What of the heir you had hoped for? Dryya asked. “Was that not the foundation of your compact? And yet He coerced you into casting it aside.”

The Lady paused. In the low light of the hall, she was but a silhouette, an unearthly frame. “You speak of that sterling seed? What a marvel it would have become. A power to eclipse all others, to stride the world, a colossus among specks.” She knelt and patted my head. “In its features, I oft ponder what I might have seen. My Wyrm’s slender face? My own stately horns? Perhaps the hollow eyes of my thousand, thousand dead.” She stood and carried on. “I see now that I shall have no child, Dryya, only penance.”

We came across a balcony that presided over an arena. Towering metal reliefs of the Hallownest seal covered the walls. In the center stood two armored creatures. I recognized them to be the same manner of thing that I had encountered while in Lurien’s company. The creatures faced a portal in the ceiling from which emerged the ghostly sigh of the King’s beating wings.

“Kingsmoulds?” Dryya said. “This is a combat trial?”

“Yes.” The lady approached the balcony railing and wrapped it with two tendrils.

The King descended through the portal in a tempest of molting feathers. What remained of his wings fought against the descent, adjusting wildly to reverse the spiral. He landed in the arena center with a force that sent fractures through the tiles. He pushed off with trembling arms and rose, resuming a semblance of his majesty.

The balcony railing warped under the Lady’s grip. Every fiber of her tensed, as though she meant to hurl herself into the arena. “Be stalwart, Wyrm, for but a moment more!”

The King managed half a nod before the creatures—the Kingsmoulds—lurched into motion.

Their attacks were plain, bordering on novice. They swept their scythes from side to side, rarely altering the trajectory. If not for their tirelessness, they would have been trivial to avoid. But they advanced without pause, never granting the King a chance to recover.

He darted out of their range time and again, but his wings were little more than stumps, and the space narrowed with every swing.

Would he survive?

I gazed through the bars. And I felt it then, the resonance of the Lady’s will. It was as my own. I did not wish for him to die, to leave me… as Ogrim had. I looked for the blow, that which I had failed to prevent once already. It would not pass me again. I would not lose another. I readied.

But a claw found my shoulder. It tightened, almost to the point of fracture.

Dryya leaned down. “This is no fight of yours, Vessel,” she whispered. “You haven’t the right to interfere.”

In clockwork tandem, the Moulds worked to corner the King. They alternated strikes, covering each other’s vulnerabilities. Not once had the King countered. Was it for lack of a weapon? How was he meant to defend himself without a nail?

It was not fair. I saw no honor in this.

Like a dull bell, the King’s back struck the arena wall. Hallownest’s seal hung over him, bearing down like a judge. His wings, at last, flickered and failed, reverting to a shredded cloak. He went still. His shoulders slackened.

A scythe descended on him. The railing snapped in the Lady’s tendrils. I strained against Dryya’s hold.

There was a rending scream.

Snow-white blood puddled at the King’s feet, but he did not fall. The scythe blade rattled in his claw. The Mould’s body bulged as it tried to wrench the weapon free, but the King held fast. The second Mould, seeing a chance, leveled a blow at the King’s brow. But it did not connect. It had no time.

Through the silvered plating of the King’s claw issued a light. It began as errant prisms but widened—surged. Like a bursting dam, the plating fell away, and the light slammed against the Moulds. At first, they held. Even as their feet dug trenches into the tiles, they stood against the torrent. One reached, groping at the King’s face, but the King let out a roar, and the light redoubled. A heat filled the room, as though we had been cast into the Palace forge.

The Molds burned. The walls burned. The floor burned. And yet the light continued. It bore the Moulds to their knees, shearing away at their armored bodies, reducing them to blackened heaps, and then to nothing at all.

The light winked out. The heat dispersed. The King’s arm remained extended, grasping air. It was gray and withered now, as though sapped of all moisture. The lustrous plating that had once covered it lay on the ground in molten heaps.

The Lady stifled a sob.

Across the arena, one of the reliefs swung wide, revealing another pair of Kingsmoulds. They marched forward and planted their scythes, ready for the next challenger.

The King pressed his desiccated arm to his chest and limped past them. He paused below the balcony and looked up at me. With all the breath left to him, he said, “Follow.”

Chapter Text

I sat at the edge of an ornamented dais and gasped. No matter how long or how deeply I heaved, relief would not come. I stared into the black puddle beneath my dangling feet. Though the Palace air was mild as always, I felt so terribly cold. With numb arms, I hugged the mutilated remains of my cloak.

The King stood over me, waiting. His injuries were no less grievous, but he refused any rest. Instead, he stared into a corner of the chamber, mind elsewhere.

This room—the terminus of the Path of Pain—was a small, sheltered place, wrapped in a garment of silvered leaves. It was quiet here, no thumping of pistons or whining of sawblades, just my breath and the dripping Void.

“Again, my spawn demonstrates its aptitude,” the King finally murmured, “its eminence of form. A sort now beyond my own.” The King shifted beneath his robes, further concealing the wounded arm. “There was an age, not so long in reckoning, that this trial proved a mere diversion of sport—a game. But now… the many extortions of Time weigh heavily on me, it seems.”

The King turned and crossed the dais. It gave way to a yawning balcony that overlooked a garden exultant with life. Giant roots spiraled toward a steepled ceiling. Cataracts of vines descended the walls.

It scourged me to do so, but I rose and followed the King.

The floor of the garden was dotted with pavilions and objects of leisure. In the shadow of a swing set rested a wide box. Though tiny from this distance, I spied within it silken dolls and shellwood nails. They seemed to have long lain undisturbed.

The King tracked my gaze. As though rifling an old tome, he began to speak. “Long was it the Lady’s hope for a child, not a fleeting, thoughtless thing, but an heir, well and true. She commissioned this sanctum in anticipation of that end.” He bent—wilted beneath the weight of his own horns. “Pity that it shall find no use.”

Not since my birth had the King spoken to me this way, regarded me with all his intent. He seemed to bear a dreadful anticipation, seeking something—fearing something. I felt it with every thrum of his voice.

Could I alleviate that dread somehow?

“Before Palace or City, before my meager domain propounded itself a true Kingdom, I struck a pact in the Lady’s rampant glades. An alliance was fashioned, a child promised. In my folly, I believed her self-made spawn, those agamic blooms, could be elevated to that role. By spell, binding, or Essence, my prescience intimated that it might be done. Yet for all the marching years, all the experimentation, I accomplished nothing. Inevitably, she entreated me in her gracious way, asking an amendment to our pact: a child born from both our beings—our union.” He let out a hitching breath. “The path I walked allowed no such distraction, no complication that might unfurl into threat. I denied her, but in a manner utterly undeserved. With evasion and artifice, I coaxed her, trawling the embers of her hope until they grew cold. I could not suffer the alliance to founder, for her to quit my halls forever more.”

No, no, you mustn’t go. Not this way. Not now, please, not now.

“But of late, I see it in her aspect, in the languor of her roots. Her aspiration lies abandoned, subsumed within my own. Had I not so anchored myself to this destiny, this Kingdom, what life might we have conceived? It is too dim now. I can hardly previse that bygone road. But I would not have despised it, I think. An heir.”

Upon that balcony, he turned to me, met my eye, and saw me—I knew. The ache returned to my chest, the same that had lodged there so many times before. With Ogrim and Isma, with Dryya and Seer. I understood it, the need there, the want of a voice. I reached out for my father’s claw and took it in my own. With every fiber left to me, I sought to impart something, a hot tumble of all that I had learned, of pain and honor, of love and sacrifice, of hope and loss.

He flinched. I had grasped his withered arm. Fearing him injured, I released, but he caught my retreating claw and held it there, a fretful Maskfly in a filigreed cage. “‘An idea instilled,’” he whispered. “Yes, Root, now I fathom. Perhaps it was not I that should have dared to claim prescience.”

Slowly, he sank to the ground, and his saw-shredded robes draped the balcony’s edge like an old banner. I knelt beside him, assuming a posture I had seen from the Greats many times before. He seemed to shrink with every passing second, his luster fading from silver to white, from white to gray.

I had done this somehow? I had harmed him? But, no. I had not siphoned his Soul or shattered his shell. Why, then, did something inside me say I was to blame?

“It is a strange vantage,” he said, “the summit of a throne. A place of certitude, both real and imagined. To wield the might of a kingdom, to manifest a dream more fabulous than the grandest sorcery. Atop that peak, doubt is anathema, for to doubt is to waken. To plummet.” He made a choked noise. “I am sorry. I have failed.”

I am false.

The King parted his robes, displaying the slash across his chest, the decay of his arm. He flexed his claw, grunting with the pain. “The slightness of this shell, its brittle transience, never ceases to perplex. Before death and transposition, I was titan. I was Wyrm. My kindred and I delved the secret places of this world, supped upon their knowledge, attained divinity unrivaled to this very age. We professed ourselves sovereigns of fate, of entropy itself. What horrors and wonders did we wreak. Kingdoms erected and shattered on naught but whim. For eons we trifled at this game, this dominion, bending matter and mind, contriving bliss and nightmare in equal measure. It was our right, you see. None other possessed the power, the foresight.”

He chuckled, shook his head. “But ever and always, force was the vehicle of our rule. It is no great challenge: subjugation. It was not, for us. The bugs of the earth, the furtive, desultory masses, were mere implements by our deduction, tools to be utilized and discarded. Like hated Light, we seized their unshielded minds, devoured their Essence, bound their bodies to our will, and with them constructed monuments to vanity. We believed this game one of perpetuity. We were immortal, until the very moment we proved otherwise. By war, by sickness, by mere ennui, the end claimed us like any other. Divested of their strings, our puppets toppled, first to chaos, and then to dust. What legacy did we tender beyond the rot of our own flesh?”

His clenched claw went slack. It crackled—oozed that peculiar blood. “Yet, as I lay spent at the border of a far-flung land, the future came to me once again, an incandescence, a promise. I rose from the pit of death, transformed, emboldened with epiphany.” He held himself, arms intertwined, pressing in as though struggling not to fall apart. “Before me clarioned an opportunity, to amend my conceits, to found a kingdom unlike any before, one not of puppets and tools, but of disciples and allies, those that shared in my vision, not by domination, but by inspiration. I would not trove power as in the past but sow it. Thus, I became Beacon! Onto the land I spilled Soul and Essence, splayed my veins, bled potential into the shells and minds of those that too believed perfection might yet be achieved in this mortal world.” His breath grew erratic. He stared into space, electric, delirious. “To my side, I summoned the meek and mighty alike, founded the Pale Court, championed chivalry, tamed the wilds, won allegiances, dredged prosperity from the barren stones. Even the moths, beings of Light’s own craft, flocked to me. One and all, these hopeful creatures pledged themselves to Hallownest, to what it could become.”

He paused, waited, as though I might dispute him, might dismantle the last source of his strength. But I only watched. It was not my station to voice dissent.

“Soon into my tenure of this form, I perceived the imminence of its demise. As retribution for my improvidence, Time saw fit to grant me but a moment, a single chance. I cowered from this knowledge. To have lived innumerable ages, to have pierced the veil of death only to persist for but a heartbeat more, it seemed a vicious farce. Upon his own transposition, the Blackwyrm, my kin, came to a similar revelation. But while I resumed my game of crowns, he cast all propriety aside, descended into barbarism and impulse, perversion and indulgence. He formed a court of his own, appointed himself King of Fools. All this, I deemed mad railing against the second end… But am I any less mad? Has my quest any more meaning?”

The King placed a claw to his head. “It is the want of any mortal thing to find faith in permanence, chimerical though it may be. With every creation, we strive against eternity, believing that if we forge with enough resolve, flood our works with enough ambition—our very life’s blood—then they shall remain when we do not. As it is with the Lady and her long-sought heir, so too is it for I and this kingdom.” The claw pressed down, and the King’s shell shrieked. “Do you not see?! If I could have vanquished Light, erased the final obstacle, then Hallownest would have been free! Delivered from kings and gods, equipped with strength enough to seek whatever destiny it saw fit!”

He lowered his arm, held it close, as though abashed by the outburst. “And to what depths did I plunge in that pursuit. For my unwillingness to yoke the bugs of this land, I consigned my offspring to that fate instead. Shells hollowed, minds destroyed. Forever, it seems, I am enslaver. I am Wyrm.”

For arrogance, for love, or for need of a slave, I know not…

“And behold,” the King said, gesturing at himself, “now I sit a bleeding pretender, stricken with a wound—a hemorrhage of Essence—that I can no longer stanch. What little Time granted me, I have already squandered.”

He trembled, and I braced him, worried he might fall from the balcony. At my touch, he stilled. “Long ago, as I wended the tangle of my prescience, I spied a path most abhorrent. Like a great canyon, it stretched ahead, foreboding only misery, a collapse absolute. To this very moment, I shunned it as mere phobia, as the end I sought above all to avert. But perhaps it alone was truth, and the uncounted others blithe fantasy.”

With my aid, the King stood. “Beyond that canyon lies fortune, sanctuary, ease—a world not unlike perfection. But it is not for Hallownest. My beloved land shall be the rot from which this new one blossoms. And it is… fitting, I suppose, that my wish be made subservient to another. Is that not the fate I demanded of my Lady? Of my children?”

Though it seemed an agony, he inched to the very edge of the balcony and transmuted his cloak into wings. There was so little substance to them now, mere imprints. “To see this future brought about would demand much—everything. A second curse would need be lain upon your brow: to fail, to suffer, so that another may one day succeed you.” He extended his good claw. “From mind springs choice, and it falls to you. Adjudge what shall come to be. No right have I to reprove you now. Is there strength enough in you to bear this weight? Is it even preferable to doom?”

Come along… The path before us has far from ended.

I accepted his claw. Without hesitation.

“Very well,” he said. “There shall be much to do. However, the garden is before us. Perhaps a stroll, first. I foresee it shall do us good.”

My wings took shape, and I guided my father into the verdure.

Chapter Text

“A bit ominous, don’t you think?” Seer sat beside me, her softness an oddity among the sharp edges of the cavern.

Before us slumped an enormous corpse, the remains of a creature that had long ago been hollowed out and made a temple. Its head served as an antechamber, and the remainder of its bulk a sanctuary. Haunting white light spilled from its window eye sockets and doorway mouth.

I sensed something deep within that temple, a darkness, a stillness, a whisper of home. Was this how Father meant for me to serve? Would I return to that midnight sea, become one and all once again?

“I see you still cling to that taciturn habit,” Seer said.

I turned, craned to look down at her.

“Unwilling to offer a single word of greeting, even to a friend dear as I.” She crossed her arms in a show of offense. “Given that your life rested in my claws on not one but two occasions, I’d expected at least the barest amenity, larva.”

Do you have no words for yourself? …can you at least write?

I pressed a digit against the cavern floor and dug a long, horizontal line into the dirt.

Seer watched me, puzzled, but then understanding dawned and she laughed. The sound of it was a ticklish feeling, not unlike her first embrace when she delivered me from danger.

The laughter subsided, and Seer spent a quiet moment appraising me. “How you have grown. With only a few passing years, you are already a tower. It seems we will not be sharing another flight. I could hardly carry you when you stood to my chin. Now…”

I shifted my shoulders, something like a shrug. The links atop my silvered pauldrons clinked, and the silk of my cape whispered. I had indeed grown, startlingly so. With Dryya’s tutelage and Father’s bindings, I had burgeoned within my shell. Yet, conversely, the world had shrunk. It was… troubling seeing those that had once embodied strength and aptitude be so diminished. I thought of Seer’s valiant stand, how she had shielded me from Dryya with her effulgent wings. Now those wings did not rise to my waist.

Seer flapped, scattering soil and bad air. “I do not care for this temple. It shows little respect for the dead. But I must admit, there is a… peace about it, a sobering aura, like donning a chill cloak. This will be the site of our ritual, I surmise. There seems little other reason for my summons—for this assemblage.” She inclined her furred antennae.

About us milled a glittering multitude of bugs: palatial courtiers, guards and legionaries, scholars and Soul manipulators. The full might of Hallownest had come to this cavern, this temple, united under a single will. Among them I spied the Watcher, though his Knights were nowhere to be found. He appeared to be in conversation with a creature I had not seen before. It hung in the air, swaying slightly as though fighting a tide. Much like Lurien, a cloak and mask adorned the thing, but they covered little. From the thing’s green, bell-shaped body, four luminescent tendrils descended like braids of silk. Beside it was another bug, earth-bound, with a shell of dusky blue and a matching cap. It maintained a posture of quiet deference. An assistant? Apprentice, perhaps.

“Have you met Monomon the Teacher?” Seer asked, gesturing at the floating green thing.

I gave no positive sign.

“She is well-loved in these lands, steward of a great archive. Her, hmm, form, fails to impart it, but none save the King or Lady possess an acumen the likes of hers. She once sought me out on matters of Essence. I quite enjoyed her company. It harkened to a gentler time, when my own teacher and I…” but she let the thought go, as though abraded by its touch.

I resumed my watch.

Above all others in attendance loomed the White Lady. She presided over the crowd, her branches extended as though seeking embrace. Beside her stood Dryya, claw hovering at longnail as though ready for betrayal.

Sensing it somehow, Dryya turned and met my gaze. She offered a brief word to the Lady before striding over. The royal host parted like a curtain.

“Is that the Fierce Knight?” Seer muttered, straining to see around my torso. “She is approaching? Oh, of course she is. Let us hope all my parts remain unbroken by this meeting’s end. It would be a first.” She bundled her wings and hunched low, hiding behind me.

Dryya halted a few paces away and crossed her arms. Though the bandage had come off long ago, her right arm was still a ghastly thing to behold, a patchwork of armor and shell, scarred black all along the length. It was like a fractured sheet of ice, like a malformed mosaic, like Isma’s chest.

I flinched. Looked away.

Dryya studied me as was her custom, probing for weakness and how best to exploit it. She said nothing. This too was her custom.

Aside from the commands and corrections barked in the sparring chamber, she had offered me little over the years. I knew it was not her way to partake in banter, but I sometimes wondered if there was a deeper meaning. As I’d been taught, I had once sought to mend the apparent rift between us—a claw upon the shoulder, a nod of the head. But she had struck at me as though I held a nail to her throat.

Had I erred somehow? Again?

Seemingly satisfied with her inspection, Dryya turned to leave, but she paused, having caught a glimpse of Seer’s color. “Moth,” she said, leaning around me, “has your corpse-feast concluded? I imagine as such, given that you are here. Let us hope you are well sated. This ploy will demand a trove of Essence if there is to be any hope of success.”

Now exposed, Seer unfolded herself. She stood and offered the faintest bow. “Fierce Knight, you look well. Still mingling greeting with indignity, I see. Had I less sense, I would waste breath defending the honor of my King-ordained task, but, well…”

Dryya chuckled, a rare sound of late. “Have your wings mended, Moth?”

Seer gave them an affirming flap.

“Good. As chance would have it, we find ourselves shoulder to shoulder on this battlefield, not nail to nail as in the past. I would have you in good health for what is to come.”

“Are we expecting bloodshed today?” Seer asked. “Had I been forewarned, I might have better dressed for the occasion.”

Dryya dismissed the quip and looked up at me. “You were speaking with it?” she asked.

“Acquaintances do that from time to time,” Seer said.

I could feel Dryya harden, the argument accumulating inside her. But she let out a slow breath, and the fortress of her arms fell. “I anticipate in this stratagem nothing but failure. That is a sentiment I have made no effort to conceal. But at this threshold, little remains to me other than hope, and I will wield it like any other weapon. To the furthest extent of my abilities, I have educated this thing, sheared the excess from its shell, honed it to a cutting edge. I may yet be proven wrong. The flaw within this one may be no flaw at all, rather a secret strength.”

“Has that not already been observed?” Seer asked quietly. “The larva’s secret strength, I mean. In your death duel at Kingdom’s Edge, had they not displayed their nobility of character, their restraint, would you be here to share in this discourse?”

Dryya made a flat noise, neither reproach nor accord. “Take care, Moth.”

She marched away, and I tracked her progress, the implacable tempo of her stride. Among the Greats, I had known her longest, yet why did it feel as though she were every bit the same bloodstained stranger that had stormed through the Palace vestibule those many years ago?

Seer resumed her seat. With exaggerated movements, she counted her limbs, her wings, her antennae. “A first for everything indeed,” she said.

We lounged there for a time, two stones in a torpid river, attendants and nobles flowing around us. All the while, an expectation blanketed the crowd, clung to their shells, fettered their steps.

Eventually, a note resounded from the cavern’s far passage. It rose over the ambient voices, mellifluous yet somber. Several more notes joined it, melding into a simple song that lulled all else to silence.

Into the cavern, on eight, reedy limbs, stepped a swollen form. It was a creature not quite as tall as I, but many times my mass. Around it skittered a diminutive retinue of similar beings. They bore instruments of shellwood and silk upon their backs, plucking at them in chorus.

“The Beast,” Seer whispered. “Why has she come? I’d heard that crisis acquaints a bug with strange bedfellows, but what dream is this? Hallownest and the Deep in alignment? Will Hive Queen Vespa be the next to bumble through that passage? The Mantis Lords?”

The crowd gave this ‘Beast’ ample room. She stalked like a predator, hooded head pivoting from side to side. She too wore a mask like Lurien’s, though with six eyes rather than one. At her side, barely visible among the shuffle of bodies, was a tiny, red-cloaked thing—a child. It shadowed the Beast and mimicked her vigilance but lacked even a crumb of its confidence. With tiny claws, the child clung to the silk filaments draping the Beast’s body.

The procession came to a halt before the White Lady, its music fraying first into echo and then nothing at all. The crowd hardly breathed. Low greetings were exchanged, the Beast’s voice like a slither through underbrush, the Lady’s like a distant hymn.

Seer leaned forward, antennae twitching, but nothing could be gleaned from this distance.

I stood to better see, and the child noticed me. It wavered as though struck by a frigid wind and hid behind the Beast. I thought to draw closer, to hear their words, to learn. There was a meaning to that child. It scrabbled against my shell but could not burrow through.

I took a step, and the bugs about me startled. I had not yet moved in their presence, and perhaps they perceived me a threat.

An order had been given to me: to sit, to wait. I strained against it, against Knightly decorum, against my own oath not to propagate fear.

But in the end, I sat, and Seer’s prismatic eyes danced over me for a long while.

On some unseen signal, the Beast pressed a claw to the child’s back and coaxed it before the White Lady. With all the grace at her disposal, the Lady inclined her head and extended a vine, but even this seemed to daunt the child. The Beast made a sound, a deep-throated click. Laughter? Rebuke? She bent down, expending enormous effort, and enveloped the child with four willowy arms.

Even from here, the child’s intake of breath was audible, as though it had been dropped in a freezing pool. But no sooner had that breath faded, than the child changed, straightened. The Beast let go, and the child stepped forward. It took the Lady’s proffered vine, first in one claw, then in both, grasping with all its strength, as though the earth was about to fall away, tumble into apocalypse, with this hold the only anchor in a swallowing abyss.

Gently, the Lady took the child aside, a vine on each shoulder. Was it warm, her touch? I remembered it being warm.

Without further ceremony, the Beast stepped into the temple, leaving her retinue and the child behind. The floating thing, Monomon, lingered a moment. She produced a mask identical to her own—four eyes on unblemished white—and handed it to her follower. In a bubbling voice not quite language, Monomon gave some instruction. The follower pressed the mask to its chest and bowed. By the time it rose, Monomon was gone.

Lurien remained, perfectly still, resembling something unliving—resembling himself. With an intensity I felt like a leveled nail, he watched me. Did he seek my weakness as Dryya had? No, that was a thing with which he was well acquainted. What, then? Was he imparting something, a message beyond words and reason? Did he worry? I thought to console him, embolden him, but what could I do? I only returned the look.

Serve… Eternal. For King. For Bug. For Hallownest.

He jerked, breaking the trance, and drifted through the temple door.

“We come to the end already?” Seer asked with a dry cough. “How can a moment be equal parts whirlwind and morass? I thought I might rend my own wings with frustration for the sheer eternity of it all. And yet in a blink we are done. Oh, King…”

A familiar satchel had appeared in Seer’s lap. She picked at it like a scar. “What a wretched word is ‘goodbye’, in use sowing misery, in avoidance, something worse. With my teacher, I had no chance at goodbyes. She was gone before I even understood. With Ogrim, I—I could not find the strength. In our final meeting at the Kingdom’s Edge, it was as if I stood in a ring of thorns. So long as I took no step, so long as I held fast and denied the truth before me, did not voice that terrible word, my shell might remain unpierced.” She hunched. “My condolences. For Ogrim. For Isma. So often of late, I wonder what I might have—” but it locked up inside her.

When peril steals the strength from your legs, laugh. So that you might take a step forward.

I lifted a claw, let it hover above her head. In one careful motion, I ran a prong up the length of her antenna, feeling the faint dance of fur.

She twitched, then pulled away. I repeated with the other antenna, and she fought a snort.

“Stop, larva,” Seer said.

But I evaded her command like a lobbed pebble. By the fifth brush, she let out a giggle, by the eighth a full, true laugh. She raised her defenses, and like a duel of nails, our claws darted about, but with every landed stroke, she slackened, trapped in a tremor of mirth.

Finally, Seer flattened her antennae against her head. “Have you gone mad?” she panted. “Cease! Do you seek to sabotage me? How am I to say this in the midst of your child’s game? This is the end, this is goodbye—forever! Do you not understand that, you great oaf?”

And there it was. The step.

I ceased my offensive, and Seer swallowed a sudden sob. I granted her what space I could.

After a deep breath, Seer rectified her antennae and stood. “You were always a thing of mystery to me. What alien thoughts I imagined darted through your head. Even after Dryya informed me on your being, I never ceased to wonder. But I see now that we are not so different. You were ever a goodly bug, larva. I will remember our chats for all my days. That is a moth’s promise.”

She walked away, vanishing into the light of the temple.

Goodbye, my friend. I will remember you.

And I was alone, as I’d been in my earliest moments, as I was destined to be for all time. I waited, still bound to that command.

The crowd grew anxious, agitated. They felt the coming change as surely as I. And eventually, inevitably, a claw settled upon my back.

“It is time.”

The King circled around me, soundless and spectral. How long had he been there? Did he witness my exchange with Seer? Did he disapprove?

The King paused at my side and observed the congregation. He made no spectacle of himself, but a hush crept in, and all eyes present settled on him. With his good arm, he gestured at me, and we set off.

Like odd, chitinous grass, the wavering claws of the gathered bugs rose before us. With them came voices: prayers and adulations, impeachments and threnodies. The King did not acknowledge them. He could not, for to linger, to immerse in their anguish was to risk suffocation. He stood tall, bathed the chamber with the glow of his conviction.

Reluctantly, the crowd gave way, and we approached the temple.

…No cost too great…

The words wove through my head. They did not boom as they once had. There was no weight to them here. The King gave me a glance, and like a whisper, like an apology, the words resumed.

Of cost, you and I are thoroughly versed: the legions, the Great Knights, the blameless seeds hurled to the fire. Only one payment remains, paramount to all others. As you shall be oblation to Light, so shall I to the dark. Victory demands far more than we can marshal. Another power is required, one I feared to believe could even exist. But stand firm, that challenge is mine alone. When all is done, when I have played my final part, for you there shall be something like freedom, for me something like death.

I faltered. What manner of freedom? Would I one day reside in a world beyond my King, beyond duty? How?

He grasped the hem of my cloak and pressed on.

…No mind to think…

I am led to question: do you resent the mind within you, the catalyst of our decline? If so, banish that sentiment from your shell. A mind, even unsought, is a marvel still. And in a way, that mind comes as strange relief. Despite all effort toward the contrary, my offspring were not wholly destroyed. A part remained, and I am blessed that it did not offer me the enmity I deserved.

The temple loomed close now, seemed to tense at our proximity, as though still a hungering predator, not an inanimate hulk.

…No will to break…

And you shall fail. You shall break. No matter how we may despise it, that fate cannot be precluded. But know this, I burst with pride at your defiance, at your choice to stand before the impossible. When the moment comes, when you skirt the limits of will, do not succumb to despair. In the attempt lies honor, even more when the outcome is foregone.

We passed Dryya. She took note of the reservation in my step. As I had never seen, she softened, and the strife bled out of her. She said something, low and earnest, then offered me a gentle nod.

…No voice to cry suffering…

What is a voice but a vehicle of intention, a means by which we mortal beings strive for self. You do not speak, but you are not without voice. From the beginning you have pursued your goal, of knowledge, of understanding, of an ideal deserving your great strength.

We reached the Lady, but she would not look at me. Was there to be no parting between us? Had it already transpired long ago?

…Born of God and Void…

The union from which you claim descent shall soon be no more. Once her stewardship of the Beast’s spawn concludes, the Lady intends to quit the Palace, to recede into solitude. In herself, she has found fault, culpability in a vile deed. Yet, that is not what I perceive. She remains the untarnished queen that found in me a thing worthy of love. Could it be that in her eyes I am, too, beyond reproach? Justified in my monstrosity?

The child stood beside the Lady, shoulders squared, head high, yet still she wept. Was it for me she mourned? For herself?

…You shall seal the blinding light that plagues their dreams…

In time, you and Light shall come to a rapport. Perhaps you shall learn more of her being than even I. And from that knowledge something like compassion may bloom. It is yours to do with as you see fit. Who am I to judge her unworthy of it?

We lingered in that liminal space, between cavern and temple, between conjecture and fruition.

…You are the Vessel…

Chalice of all our hope.

And we stepped through.

…You are the Hollow Knight…

My child.

The glare gave way, and I beheld the Black Egg, my Void-bound prison—my fortress, my home.

Dwarfed before it—reposed in slumber upon three stone plinths—were Lurien, Monomon, and the Beast. Seer stood over them, and the Dream Nail danced like a candle in her grasp. Essence, a singing river, rose from the blade and wheeled through the air.

For the briefest span, the King held my claw, absorbed the wonder of unbridled dream, then he let go.

*****

…Father?...

Oh, it is only you.

I am not yet blind. It is bright now, so achingly bright, but I still see you skulking about my chains, surveying the wreckage of my form. In your gaze, I find nothing. No interest, no malice, no warmth. It is as he promised. You are perfection.

It is for her you have come, yes? She is within me—Light. Can you hear her? Do you feel the infestation of her hate?

For how long have I suspended here? How long have I festered? Do you know? Would you tell me?

The egg is open. The air shifts, the world beyond yet remains. Have I fulfilled my purpose? Am I a Knight, now, well and truly? Would Ogrim find me noble? Would Father find me adequate?

Light has claimed much of me. Her tumors make a home of my limbs. We are so close, so nearly one. I fear what I will do when I am unbound.

Have you come to destroy me? To usurp my charge? I would not begrudge you that. This vigil must end. I am not the sterling sentinel I once was.

But do you have the strength for this, the emptiness demanded? How could you? Have you not seen the very same things as I? Did you not learn of devotion, of endurance, of faith? Did the ambitions of those you came to know not seep their way into you? Did they not fill you with their own sort of light? To her, these treasures are only weapons, to be turned back upon you, a means to twist your mind, to shatter your will, to fill your throat with her shrieking voice.

How could you have remained untouched?

How did I fail to?

That thing in your claw, that disk of light, that shining star. What do you hope to do with it? What is it our father saw? Come, little ghost. Show me the freedom of which he spoke.

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