Chapter Text
The truth of it was, the hollow knight was lost.
What was a knight without a king?
But it had lost that title even before it had lost its king. It lost that when the Radiance overpowered it.
What was left, then, was what it had started with. Something far, far from pure. But so desperate to impress...
What was it now?
Just the vessel- pure vessel, that was what it had been called, what it was intended to be before failing - failing - the impure vessel? It hurt to take that title.
It had the time to think about this more clearly now.
It was not in the mind numbing pain it had been when the chains had just released.
It was not in the realm of safety and consistency that a belief in its father had given it after.
It was just left with reality to face now.
A reality where it was not the pure vessel and it would not call itself the impure one.
She had called it broken too many times for the vessel to accept that title, no matter its truth. This could be one last resistance.
It was left in a world without its monarch and with its destined enemy finally destroyed.
A world with a sister that only resembled the Gendered Child in brief moments and otherwise was someone new. She maintained it and kept it alive and did not…did not press.
Not often.
Which was good.
It would rather hear “Take this” than “Would you like this?”
She would know the latter were pointless motions. She acted, sometimes, like she did know all that which her father (dead, he was dead, how was he dead?) tried to tell her before: the vessel had no wants or preferences.
(She did not always adhere to this.)
(She was adhering less now than before. What had happened at the temple and the hut had shifted her behavior.)
Its father’s advice should have been true.
But it had been faking for him.
It shouldn’t have had the consciousness to choose falsity. It chose to lie out of emotion and it should not have had emotion.
It did not like to have emotion.
Without the panic of just being released and the confidence that father would have a purpose for it yet, the vessel was feeling more and more.
It just wished (why not? It could wish now, it was told. He was dead now, it was told. There was no one left to impress.) Hornet wasn’t encouraging more of that emotion when it did not know what to do with the impurity to start with.
The Grimmchild was beginning to make its presence known more often again.
It was not sure what Hornet had done, but the god-child had been rather absent since the night she’d tugged it back into Dirtmouth. It was also not sure what the returning proximity might mean.
However, it still saw the creature less regardless of the god-child's return to the hut.
The reason was simple.
It was supposed to walk more.
This was Hornet’s idea. Everything it had been doing recently was Hornet’s idea. It would be content to sleep and fade into the fuzzy half-void that deep dreams almost felt like.
(Father wasn’t dead, down there.)
But for all her talk of “let them rest” that had come before, now she pressed them to rise. Aside from a self inflicted injury, most of its former wounds would not become inflamed by light movement. Stretching had turned into walking, then. Slow lumbering steps around the small room. It had to make an attempt to not knock into things. A few tablets had already been shattered and a dusty vase met the same fate. Its perception of its body and surroundings both felt distorted. It was missing the weight of an arm.
The Grimmchild still mimicked its stretches, but did not bother it while it walked its cramped rotation of the house.
Hornet interrupted one day to say she’d meant it should walk more outside.
In the town, not the crossroads.
With the full freedom to stop and interact with anyone there if it felt like it.
She really did not understand the purpose of a vessel.
But it started walking the town now too. It would pace the cavern slowly. The uneven limp did not go away. It missed the weight of its nail. Zote got to have his nail in the town (for all that it could not lay a dent on a tiktik). Why not it?
It was brighter out here than in the hut.
There was grass in the graveyard. It preferred that stretch of the walk best. The opposite went for the tents at the western cliffs.
It was not alone in that, it learned as it went through this exposure to the town and its populace.
Elderbug didn’t like the troupe.
He glared at their tents from his garden. And from the bench. And had almost sat down to listen to Zote to get away from their music, before returning to his garden despite complaints about the noise and aura of the circus.
The vessel could not blame him.
He clearly did not know there was a higher being in those tents, but he recognized that through vaguer means. Discomfort. Bristling defensive senses.
The troupe master did not even seem to ever leave his tent. Still, their music carried over the air and their flames licked against the border of the town unseen. Was it surprising the townspeople would recognize something strange in that air?
The bugs of Hallownest had recognized the Pale King’s light. He had given them mind and thought and they comprehended that sudden shift as best they could.
It seemed well known enough that Unn was a god, above their city. It had heard her spoken of but- granted- those conversations had included a god themselves so perhaps they were not indicative of what most knew.
And the vessel had rarely seen the White Lady, but she seemed unmistakable as well. The ground around her thrummed with life. She had left such beautiful vines spanning the palace and their existence was much like seeing a piece of her.
It was born of god and void. Even before its overexposure to the burning sun, it would sense what others might not.
So others did not sense that the elusive moth in his red tent was a higher being. Or...related to a higher being, in some way.
But Elderbug called them “sinister” and complained about them being there. It knew because it had needed to sit on the town’s bench after a single pacing of the cavern, a few of the early times. When it sat, the stooped bug would wander over and just…talk.
It didn’t really understand. It wouldn't speak back to him. He never seemed to mind.
He rambled about many things.
The days this town was much smaller.
Gossip that one of the shop owners here was frustrated her partner had not returned to stay in the house they’d claimed.
His distaste for the circus nearby and insistence that it should not have come back considering no villagers had participated in whatever “acts” it “put on”.
The many questions he had on Hornet and the vessel both, but seemed to hope the latter would give away about the former.
And sometimes…
Sometimes, his rambling centered on someone he claimed “reminds me much of the both of you”.
He never said that traveler’s name, but it knew that was because that traveler would not have had a name. Hornet may have named it, but a vessel itself would not walk about associating a name to itself and telling it to others.
He did seem more supportive in his reminiscences of the other vessel than he did while talking about some of the other long term guests here.
Elderbug, it turned out, had multiple things to complain about:
It was too loud these days.
(It was not nearly as loud as the dream it had been trapped in. The Light was very, very noisy. Even if she hadn’t known it, her mere essence was blaring sound where the void was the absence of sound in totality.)
That knight would not shut up and had, before its arrival here with Hornet, had a streak of a week straight where he’d talked.
(Sometimes, it could hear the muffled sounds of those monologues through the open skylight. Elderbug’s frustration seemed fair.)
The circus music was eerie and he felt like the entire group was dangerous.
(Not incorrect, though he was more suspect of murderers than of fiery moth gods capable of widespread destruction on par with the infection.)
But he didn’t do much complaining about the other, missing vessel. He would say that one was quiet and respectful and had helped each shop here. He even asked if the vessel wanted to see the flower that the other one had given him. As with any question about “wants”, the vessel couldn’t really answer that it didn’t have an answer. It was used to following now, though. That was what sister expected of it, wasn’t it?
It followed the stooped bug over to his garden and looked at the delicate little flowers growing there. They were very light, it thought.
Very light.
They reminded it of the White Lady. She had a strong affinity to plants and was a being of Light, just as father and the Old Light. These little flowers all faced upwards to a sun that was not there and their petals spread open to exude that faint touch of power unrecognizable.
Elderbug did not seem to notice a thing, no matter if he had sensed the thick aura of not-dream and fire carried by the Grimm Troupe.
The bug had offered one to it, but it had no use for a flower (it felt unease at the idea of accepting any sort of gift for itself, especially one so delicate, like its mother, who had never wanted anything to do with it). It would take it back to Hornet because maybe she had some idea of what to do with the gift.
It worried that the Grimmchild might light it on fire before she ever got home to see it.
The vessel was helpless to come up with anything else. Elderbug did not have to know what became of his gift anyways and- infant or not- the vessel did not feel like standing up to a god right now.
Hornet was not there when it returned. It had held the flower by its stem between two fingertips and realized a petal had come off during the short walk. Were they not supposed to be held with their heavier tops faced down? But it would bend the stem otherwise, wouldn’t it?
It awkwardly placed it petals down on its sister’s favored table.
Sure enough, the Grimmchild spun into the air nearby. The vessel flinched.
The child just flapped in the air looking at the flower rather than landing to chew on it or burn it or whatever else it imagined a thing so closely related to Her might do.
It stared.
For too long, when its other actions did seem rather restricted to infancy.
Almost like it would stare-
Ah.
And there the Grimmchild went: landing, poking its head into the flower and recoiling, then looking up at the cracked face of a vessel that wanted nothing to do with it.
And staring.
Its red eyes held too much intensity. The vessel turned and heard only a small whine from behind as it dropped to the room below.
When Hornet returned late that day, it went back up. While its focus (it tried to focus, to see the room, to hear what those around it were saying when they spoke) was on her, it did notice that Elderbug’s flower was not a crisp.
The Grimmchild hovered and made its odd sounds as Hornet unpacked her meal and slumped in her seat to eat it.
She was tired.
Father was dead.
Her mother was sealed in dreams.
How much of either kingdom was she trying to carry without them?
The vessel sat on the floor next to her stool and let itself wonder that.