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Hornet stood in front of the corpse of her mother. The room had become eerily quiet, the skittering of infected weavers no longer permeating the Beast’s Den. Hornet had lost so much in her life, but right in front of her was one of her greatest losses. After the defeat of the Radiance and the presumed death of the Knight, Hornet didn’t know what to do with herself. Hallownest no longer needed any protecting, the one thing she knew she was capable of, and it wasn’t as if she had any greater aspirations, any of those had been snuffed out long ago. As such, she took to wandering the now silent ruins of Hallownest, and eventually said wandering had brought her back to the depths of Deepnest, the Distant Village. It wasn’t as if there was anything to do in the Distant Village anymore, but Hornet found some sense of inner peace at coming home. It felt nice to see the places she remembered from her childhood, even if the buildings were dilapidated. Eventually, she found her way to the resting place of her mother, Herrah the Beast.
Any chance that Hornet had at living a normal life, or even a normal childhood had been taken from her, and at no point was that more apparent than when she looked upon the lifeless corpse of her mother. Herrah, as one of the dreamers, was tasked with falling into a deep sleep to seal the Hollow Knight into the Temple of the Black Egg, all to protect Hallownest from the horrid infection that plagued the kingdom.
“Lot of good that did.” Hornet mused to herself dryly.
As a result of Herrah’s pact as a dreamer, Hornet was deprived of the one person who truly cared for her the most in her life. It was an inevitability that she would be left alone, from the beginning of her life Hornet’s time with her mother was limited. Such were the circumstances of her birth. Even still, Hornet couldn’t help but imagine a world where her mother wouldn’t have been taken from her, where her mother could still care for her, where her mother wouldn’t have had to die for nothing. Unfortunately, these daydreams were nothing more than that, daydreams, and Hornet was left stuck in her own crumbling reality.
She could feel the tears prick at her eyes. In her time left alone, she had learned that sadness and anger were vulnerabilities that harmed her chances of survival in this cursed kingdom, but in spite of her own rules she couldn’t help but cry over the life, and the people, she had lost. For once, when she finally had someone in her life: her sibling, the Knight, even that connection was taken away from her. Hornet felt cursed, cursed to never have anyone to love her in her life, and that made her cry even harder. She was born into a dying kingdom, doomed to watch it and everyone in it die too.
At this point, she was doubled over, hands resting on the plinth her mother’s corpse was lying on, crying harder than she could ever remember crying before. Everything in her mind came tumbling down, all the years of suppressed emotions and anxieties hitting her like a rock slide. She feebly pawed at her mother’s corpse in desperation, for something, anything to reassure her, but the ice-cold touch of her mother’s lifeless body only further reminded her of the tragic life she was forced to lead. She could only cry even harder. Her wails echoed throughout the Beast’s Den, filling her mind with the sound of her own misery. It was too much to handle, she was in unbridled emotional agony, and her body went totally limp, causing her hold on the plinth to slip and for her to fall onto the ground. Curling up into a ball and shaking back and forth, she cried and cried until she passed out from exhaustion.
There she laid, sleeping right next to the mother she had lost. Hopefully her dreams would be kinder to her than the harsh reality she lived.