Chapter Text
Hallownest was a titanic, wretched thing. Like the corpse of a whale beached on the shore, it had been rotting and breaking down for nearly as long as she could remember. Save for but a glimpse in her furthest memories of shining metropolis' and gods among common bugs, the kingdom was now barely even a shell of its former self. The door to the wastes beyond had been walled off, and the gates of the then last city shut even before that. What few people still remained in the kingdom have either been driven mad, or turned to scavenging among the forsaken landscape in search of the grand promises the King had made so long ago. Even her home, far away and through twisting tunnels weaved deeper into the ground, had not survived the collapse wrought by the kingdoms hubris, now the hidden city of her childhood was just as rotten as the rest of the lands.
Miles away, she stood within the last temple, and glanced briefly at the sealed chamber at its center. Within was held the final hope of what was left of this kingdom, an empty being which had barely contained the calamity, freezing the kingdom in a near eternal single moment of decay. Her entire life had been lived in that moment, years seeing the denizens as rotting husks of what they once were, years of knowing she couldnt help her people as they decayed and lost their minds as the hubris from the kingdom spread to her home, and years upon years of knowing that, deep in her old bedchambers lay her mother, frozen in a eternal deep sleep, tied to the containment of the creature within the sealed egg as a guardian within a realm not her own.
After she lost her mother, her life had been tending as best she could to a kingdom rotten to the core, attempting to preserve what little of virtue that remain from the vultures who tried to pilfer it, and from the internal threats that remained from the madness that had struck down the kingdom. That was at least until recently, when something had changed. The few mad creatures left grew aggressive, and began to attack the few sane bugs who visited from the above ground settlement. The air grew heavy and damp, and a sweet scent filled the tunnels. And in a flash, it was as if she had left that single moment, bleary eyed and confused. Things began to happen rapidly, a stream of new faces approached the gate to the kingdom, far more then she could manage, and she retreated to the sub-terranian to try and figure out what had happened.
She traveled to the verdant realm outside the kingdom to think in peace, idly hunting the re-awoken guardians there who showed the same signs of the sickness as the husks of the kingdom. As she wondered through the wilds, the masonry and tasteful architecture of the kingdom gradually broke down further and further, first blending with, then giving way entirely to the natural wilds. The land was ancient, and the god of this area had lived long before the arrival of the king. Totems and temples dotted the landscape, their admirers and craftsmen gone with the god themselves. The acidfalls and gentle wildlife had always made the area one of the few places within the land that she could relax in, though the sickness had begun to emerge in the fauna as well, so that seemed unlikely to last for long. It was in that wilderness that she came upon her first clue.
While she had been tracking a particularly large beastie amongst the highlands, she came across a side path that seemed to be entirely still. Hornet stopped, scanning the path for what had caused the sudden disruption in the vibrant wildlife. After a moment of the strange silence, she entered the path, taking slow steps as she scanned the foliage, weapon at the ready. The sounds of the river transitioned to white noise, then silence, the wind dyeing as she progressed. The tunnel passed through a low archway onto a overlook of a large cavern, the strange sun of the realm filtering impossibly through the endless flora of the celling to illuminate the rune-stone planted in its center.
Far below her, a figure was dragging itself towards the pillar slowly, leaking black ichor behind itself as it pulled itself through the grass. She had hopped down to the beings level and paced over to it, hoping to atleast learn what the small being was before it expired. She slid the last few meters as the figure slouched itself against the stone. "Hello little one" she whispered gently, grabbing the being and rotating it towards her, "My names H-" her breath caught in her throat as she saw their eyes, sluggish black liquid trickling from two large holes in a artificial mask. She dropped them and took a step back, her hands covered in a black hue deeper then any carapace. The being shifted slightly to look at her, where its eyes should have been was only a pair of black abyss'.
She took its nail from its limp arm and finished it off, leaving quickly to search for running water.
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By the time she had gotten to the river, poc marks had been burnt into the carapace of her hands.
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The encounter had snapped her out of her confusion. Her vision gained a new focus, and she had set off at once towards the surface. The tunnels of the crossroads were no match for her, needle flashing and silk humming as she threw and pulled herself up and up, emerging into the straight tunnel that made up the highest of the sub-surface tunnels. She bypassed the great chain most bugs used as their path to the surface, the village above had nothing to offer to her mission. Through another of the kingdom's ever present famous arches, she emerged into the cavern that housed the Black Egg Temple. The temple was the most grand building outside of the old city, a primordial gargantuan bug hollowed out and converted into a place of worship to many, but hornet knew the truth of the place. She passed numerous metal signs erected into the bedrock on her way to its door, many bearing the sigil of the king, a few bearing seals of various major and minor nobles, and the most numerous simply being intricate proofs of their crafters skill. Unnervingly, just as all other metal posts in the kingdom, the signs remained in perfect condition, rustless and erected perfectly straight, not a single one damaged or changed from the passage of time. She paused before the open doorway, the massive face of the ancient bug looked blankly at the hewn stone across the cavern, three symbols carved into its chitin above the door, and the bottom part of its mask carved away and replaced with crystal glass. She pressed through into the quiet and heavy chamber.
Dozens of lights were dispersed throughout the chamber, their light catching on the walls and the floor, luminating the temple in an ethereal blue light only tempered by the pitch black at the center of the room. The titular egg was a large black orb set into the floor. The egg had sat here as long as any record showed or survivor remembered, even hornet wasn't sure if it had been made by the king or existed long before. The Egg was sealed with a large basalt door, uncannily complex runes carved into its surface that merged and flowed with each other beyond the skill of any of the old kingdoms craftsmen. Engraved on its surface were three sigils, each representing the mask worn by one of the three dreamers, important citizens of Hallownest who had been placed into an eternal dream in order to defend the inhabitant of the egg beyond their natural ability and life span. She tried not to look for too long at them, her mothers face starring back at her anytime she glanced at it.
As she approached, she began to feel another presence, not physically, but as if someone was calling out, like a mother calling her kids back inside. The sigils on the door throbbed gently white as she got closer, the calling an almost audible whisper increasing until she all but touched the door, then it died off. Placing her head to the door, she felt the heavy silence in her carapace, waiting nearly a minute in the dead quiet room. Though she her royal blood ran quite cold for a living being, she could tell the door was far colder, sucking the warmth out of the air along with the noise and energy of whoever entered.
It was only as she started to pull away from the stone that she felt it, a gentle, rhythmic pulse. A pulsing buzz she felt in her teeth, she stilled her breath, and it replaced her heartbeat. The gentle sound of a heartbeat was coming from the egg.