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Iselda watches, curious, as the tall stranger the little knight had brought up with him one day struggles to put the brush to the parchment. She knows they can write. She’s seen them do it before, elegant strokes writing out words like Hallownest, Dirtmouth, and Crossroads. The smaller knight’s writing by comparison is far messier, although they have a talent for maps, which Iselda supposes is how they’re all in this situation in the first place.
Her, outside her shop as Cornifer takes up running it, and the stranger in the tattered cloak and the missing arm, struggling to write. And unlike how they usually do this, the little knight is nowhere to be found.
She turns her head away and looks towards the well, just outside the tiny town’s light. She still remembered the time when the subtle stench leaking out of it had suddenly intensified into something horrid. Between that and the distant rumbles of explosions below the earth, she’d been relieved Cornifer had finished up and was already home.
She’d been contemplating talking to him about leaving now that they were done here, when abruptly the little knight had shown up once again, their nail strange to look at and faint white lines drifting down from their back. She’d been confused, as she remebered telling them she’d run of things to sell to them a while back, and they’d nodded and hadn’t been back for a while.
She tried to tell them the same thing then, but they’d shook their head before taking out a patch work of stitched together maps covered with pins and tiny details. She’d looked over it, slightly in awe at the scale, at the corners and paths Cornifer probably hadn’t even noticed. She’d looked up to notice their staring and asked them what they wanted her to do with it and they’d pushed it at her.
Asking them if they wanted to sell it had resulted in a shake of the head, and they pushed it at her even more. You want me to have it? Had resulted in a pause before they nodded. And she’d looked back down at it, and especially at the filled in Deepnest, that Cornifer had mostly left blank. She looked at the pins that pointed out nearly every useful or interesting thing in the ruined kingdom below.
This was worth a lot. She and Cornifer made their geo selling this information to adventures who preferred being prepared over the thrill of the unknown. And everything in here, the pins, the paper, the ink, she’d received geo for. No, she at least needed to compensate them. But when she’d looked up, they were gone.
She’d waited for them to eventually come back due to some reason or another. And the meanwhile Cornifer had awoken and had been absolutely delighted with the wealth of new information and had started on copying it.
It was when the scream had ripped through the town that she’d understood. She’d been lightly dozing against the counter as Cornifer hummed away in the background when the ground had started to rumble again, but this time it hadn’t stopped. And then a scream, piercing, not entirely real had come tumbling out the well and through their town and up the cliffs and flowing into the wastelands beyond. She didn’t know how long it lasted, but the silence after had been deafening.
She’d stayed still after that, awaiting more, something. That had been announcement. Eventually she’d forced herself up and over to check on Cornifer and that’s when she noticed the map and understood.
Even if Cornifer hadn’t told her of the knight’s prowess in combat, the nail they wielded spoke volumes. That kind of craft wasn’t carried lightly. Only they descended into the fallen and dangerous kingdom with such intent to fight and returned consistently. Whatever that scream was, they probably had something to do with it. One didn’t take prized possessions to a fight they didn’t expect to return from. She decided to wait a while before sharing her suspicious.
Time passed and slowly things started to change. The stench went away, and after a while other bugs began clambering out of the well or through the stagway. Most of them left after a while, but some stayed. But the confusion and muted terror never really left their eyes.
Eventually Cornifer finished copying the map, and they began selling to some of the curious ones who wandered into their shop, although a slightly less detailed version as she wanted the knight to keep their secrets. And with that, the longest stretch of time without them popping back at least once to the town, she was forced to acknowledge that maybe they were really gone.
Of course that would be when they decided to return.
It had been a surprise when they’d randomly wandered in when she’d been in the process of selling parchment to a bug. Their mask was as blank as ever but she was sure she saw surprise flash across when they noticed the other bug who noticed them back and promptly left.
They tracked the bug with until he left and whipped back around to face her. And she couldn’t help but feel like a weight had lifted when they stared at her and expected her to figure out. And then she realized they probably had meant for her to hold on to the map while they gone doing whatever had taken this long, and they probably wanted it back.
But she didn’t understand why they looked so surprise when she fished it out and handed it back. They held it and stared at her for a while before simply tucking it under their cloak. And then they’d wandered over to where she kept her collection of pins and, as usual, looked for new ones.
It seemed like things had settled down.
This would later prove untrue when eventually she’d wonder outside to see how things were going and notice a very tall bug sitting awkwardly on the bench next to the little knight, while the latter shoved the back of the map and a brush at them. The first thought had been, no.
She’d strided back in and grabbed a small stack of papers and a new brush and went back out. She arrived in time to pull back the map and replace it with a the papers instead. The tall one had startled at her appearance, but she’d paid them no mind as the little knight stared at her quizzically.
“The ink will bleed onto the front of the map,” she’d explained, and they’d understood. She stopped them when they started reaching for their bag of geo.
“No need. We’ve made more than enough, thank to your map,” she said. They seemed to accept it and returned both the map and the pouch back to wherever they kept their things. She made to return to the shop, but the whole reason she was outside in the first place was so she could take a break. And the bench was taken with these two. But they didn’t really seem to take up much space. And well, she remembered the girl that had been around a while back and how the knight hadn’t seemed to care sitting that close to her.
She sat on the edge, stretching her arms and leaning back on the bench. As she looked around she wondered how long it had been since they’d come to Dirtmouth, to Hallownest. Time was weird here, and for a while, the tool she’d used to count it was Cornifer ’s and the little knight’s visits. The skies never seemed to change, and the air had always been still.
But that wasn’t true anymore, she supposed, after whatever the knight had done down there.
She stayed there, eyes closed, enjoying the mild breeze that wandered along the town. Until a shuffling caught her attention and caused her to look right.
The little knight was on the ground doing their best to destroy a crumpled paper, the brush fallen to the way side, their form radiating fury, while the taller one, who on a closer look resembled the other, was hunched over at the edge of the bench, trying to appear as small as possible. Eventually, the little knight stilled. She expected them to be breathing heavily, or something, for how much effort had been exerted in that display. But there was nothing.
They gathered up the tiny pieces of paper strewn about the ground and after a brief moment of staring at their taller companion, who was still hunched over, they took off in the direction of the graveyard.
She looked back at the other. They hadn’t moved from their position, or given any indication to having noticed the little knight leave.
“I am Iselda,” she offered, by the way of greeting. There was no reply. The similarities grew.
Eventually that would change, and she’d be tasked with watching over them while the little knight went on their ventures. Even though she was sure they were capable of looking over themselves.
Still, it gave her something to do. And she suspected she might stay here a while, as the shop was somehow making enough geo to warrant settling here.
She helped them find and clear out a house to stay in. They were silent the whole time, but it was markedly different from the little knight’s silence. With the smaller one, regardless of how stoic they appeared to be at times they projected themselves into the world, it was difficult, but not impossible to gather what they meant from their actions alone.
With the taller one, it was like dealing with a wall. They would find some corner and fade into it, if she wasn’t paying attention to them. They were taller than nearly everyone she could name, but it always felt like she was bigger. The fact that they were missing an arm didn’t help, and their cloak, a tattered, dirty thing didn’t even go past their chest.
She’d come over every once in a while to check in on them and find them curled up in the same place she left them, by a window looking out over the rest of the town. This would go on for a while before she realized she wasn’t comfortable seeing them like that, and she’d recruit them into helping out.
It was simple stuff, copying names of areas into blank pages that Cornifer would later fill out, but at least it gave them something to do. She didn’t know their name or their story, but she recognized the hunch of their form and tired, emptiness in their eyes and even if she didn’t really know how to help, at least she could provide company.
After a while, another similar looking bug clad in red would show up and she’d get her answers. Ghost, the little one was called, and the taller, Hollow. The name rang a bell, but she decided to ignore it in favor observing the new arrival.
So similar but so different. For one she could talk. And it had been a shock to hear it, after a expecting yet another mute companion.
“Thank you for looking after them,” she’d said out of nowhere after following her to the house the Hollow had been residing in. And while she was still busy getting over the fact this masked stranger talked, could the little knight do too, surely not, the other decided to introduce herself.
“I am Hornet, their sibling,” she said.
“And Ghost was supposed to look after Hollow,” she continued, turning to glare at the little knight, ghost?, while crossing her arms, “but for whatever reason they have decided to leave push this duty off onto you”
On their part Ghost didn’t seem to care at all that they were being rebuked, instead busy inspecting the map templates Hollow had abandoned when the two of them had walked in.
She looked back at Hornet, while still keeping an eye on the two. That outburst hadn’t meant much when she’d originally met Hollow, but somehow, over a month of regularly showing at their ‘house’ and talking at them, as they dutifully wrote down names with a pretty, elegant script, she’d gotten attached. And though she knew Ghost for longer, she’d probably spent more time with Hollow.
She wondered what they’d written for the little one to react with such emotion.
“It really is no trouble. Between the copies we have of ghost’s map, the increase of bugs travelling through the Dirtmouth and Cornifer being present I have time to spend as I please,” she replied.
Hornet seemed to accept this, before turning to face Hollow, who was hovering with slight agitation near Ghost who seemed to scribbling something on an empty paper.
“Still, this does not mean it can continue,” Hornet said, “Ghost, you can not keep avoiding them. It would have been kinder to not save them at all if you were going to cruelly abandon them later”
At this the room froze, and Iselda got the urge to leave. But moving would be drawing attention, which was the absolute last thing she wanted now.
Eventually Ghost turned around, their gaze intense. Hollow seemed to shrink into themselves. Hornet continued, unaffected.
“They’ve recovered only in body. You know this more than anyone. I expected you to assist them in that regard, not leave the moment you encountered proof of it,” she said. Ghost stared back, and the air in the room grew oppressive until they broke it by getting up and leaving.
Hornet simply narrowed her eyes before going after them. And then it was just them in the room.