Chapter Text
My ascension back to the city was quiet.
The sewers that connected the palace grounds to the city were full of broken machinery and bent metal, but the risk of a cut from moving carelessly paled in comparison to the risk of being eaten by the beasts that had moved into the higher levels of Hallownest after the end of the calamity.
Some water still flowed through the old pipes, and along the waterways, but since the floor of the lake above had collapsed down into the city the rains had ended and now it was just a trickle, leaving shallow streams and half filled pipes. The waterways weren't meant for this little water, and the acoustics gave the new flow an eerie whine that penetraited through my head as I climbed.
Here and there were the remains of some bug that had washed away from the city, or even rarer I would find the corpse of one of the long dead inhabitants of the sewers, who had all died during the void rush, but before the acrid substance could consume them, had their bodies flushed into strange cracks and crevices when the sky opened above the city and a lake dropped down. Eventually I found an open grate, and I pulled myself into the city of gleaming towers.
Many wonders of Hallownest were lost to time, but the spires of the city stood tall, their engineering beyond time, and beyond wear. Save for the shattered glass, it was as if they had frozen in time since the reign of the king. But I wasn't here to marvel, and I had heard tales from before the calamity of there being ghosts in one of the towers, a sort of inn for the elite of the city.
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Despite their eloquence from the outside, all of the towers were the same inside. Empty corridors of stone. The layout of each was individual, and some had stone slabs strewn about, or smashed furniture, or gleaming metal nails littering the floor, but they were all empty of the famous decorations the bugs of Hallownest loved so much. The void-rise had eaten their curtains, their wooden sofas and sewn cushions, and now the halls of the towers were empty.
I followed the howling of the wind until I found a room exposed to the sky, a missing wall of glass the culprit. Deeper inside was a large room with a raised platform, and atop it the only organic thing in the tower. A single wilted rose, missing most of its petals.
The presence here was weaker then most, but after a few moments it spoke.
"Welcome, stranger, I am... nothing, not anymore."
"What was this place?"
"A house of innocent vise, of drink and joy. I had sung, while they spoke of me in the quiet corners of the world, after that, and until my voice gave away. But now I grow tired, and my voice echoes..."
And the presence faded, and the wilted flower fell apart, a small puddle of black liquid draining away onto the platform.
And I left once more.