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Artist
His Vessel was always silent. They did as they were told, without ever hesitating or refusing to follow his orders.
They had no voice nor a will.
They were the perfect Vessel.
The Pale King knew he had made the right choice.
Or so he had thought.
When it came to their mind, there were moments when the Pale King found himself doubting the purity of his chosen Vessel.
A drawing of himself had been the first of many signs that proved his fear was justified.
His Vessel handed the drawing to him, and maybe it was only a trick of his mind, but the Pale King could have sworn he saw expectation in their expressionless eyes of Void. He had given them only silence in return, not without first forbidding them to draw again.
As for the drawing itself, he knew he should have destroyed it, but he didn’t. Instead, it remained safely guarded in a chest only he could open.
Long after Hallownest fell, the Vessel failed and the Pale King departed, the drawing remained safe inside that chest, long lost to time and memory alike.
Back
“Are you tired?”
The question was redundant. His Vessel, though lacking a soul and a mind, were still susceptible to the exhaustion and many other setbacks of their physical body.
Their training session with his Royal Knights in the art of wielding a nail properly had been long and excruciating.
Of course they were tired.
“Here.” The Pale King said. He knelt before his Vessel with his back turned to them. “I’ll carry you.”
His Vessel did as they were told, but the Pale King felt a certain eagerness in their movements. It was almost as if they were happy.
Such nonsense.
Still, he carried them.
By they time the Pale King reached his Vessel’s room, they had already fallen asleep, with their head softly resting on his shoulder.
Choose
“One of you will be chosen.” The Pale King told the two Vessels that stood before him. “Fight each other to the death. I’ll take the victor with me; the loser will remain in this abyss forever.”
The Vessel with a particularly large horn on the right side of their head looked at their sibling, who remained unaffected by the King’s statement.
They did not move or reacted, not even when their sibling lunged at them with murderous intent.
It was then the Pale King made his choice.
“It is you.” He told the stoic Vessel as he held the other failed Vessel with irregular horns by their head. Without dedicating a single glance to them, he threw them back into the endless pit below.
His chosen Vessel didn’t even try to look at their sibling as they fell and were swallow by the darkness.
The Pale King smiled.
“Come,” he ordered the Vessel as he turned his back on them and walked towards the exit, “my Hollow Knight.”
Decorative
“Why did you put laces on their horns?” The Pale King said to his beloved Root after handing to her the elegant but useless decorations. He had taken them off his Vessel as soon as he had seen them wandering around the palace with their horns adorned. “My Root, please, do not do anything of the sort again... you know well what’s at stake.”
“I just thought,” his Root replied as she held the laces closer to her, “that our Vessel looked cute with these decorations. I think they liked it. I think they were happy.”
The Pale King knew it too. Despite their expressionless face, his Vessel had other ways to convey the subtle changes in their nonexistent emotions.
He had noticed it long ago, but he had said none of it to his Root. The least he wanted was to burden her with such ideas.
An unnecessary precaution.
She had noticed this aspect of their Vessel long ago, perhaps before the Pale King had.
Entertainment
“You win... again.” The Pale King said to his Vessel as they stared at him from the other side of the table.
For a being without mind, they were more than proficient in chess.
That, or the Pale King was not as good as he believed.
He didn’t know which option upset him more.
Family
The family portrait hadn’t been his idea, it had been his Root’s. The Pale King had thought of refusing to go through with the whole thing at first, but he didn’t have the heart to deny his Root a wish so simple and pure.
“Come, my King.” His Root held his hand. She guided him to the chair where their Vessel was sitting. They had grown quite a bit, but to the King’s eyes, they were still as small as they had been when he had chosen them at the Abyss.
What a silly thought.
It belonged in the mind of a parent, not in the mind of a king.
A king who had willingly sacrificed—
“Stand right here.” His Root said as he positioned him by the right side of the chair.
The King thanked her in silence for interrupting his thoughts.
Gently, his Root guided the Pale King’s hand to their Vessel’s shoulder.
“Just like that.” His Root nodded and smiled at him. Then, she stood at the other side of the chair and rested her own hand on their Vessel’s free shoulder. She looked at the painter and said, “you can start now. We are ready.”
The portrait took much longer than the Pale King had expected; but, for some strange reason, the time he spent by his Vessel’s and his Root’s side felt peaceful and soothing.
Perhaps, in another life where the infection never existed, he would be allowed to share more moments like this with his family.
If only.
Ghost
They dreamed of their sibling at times.
Not of the sibling that had tried to attack them to be their father’s chosen one; they dreamed of the sibling they had seen before leaving the Abyss.
They had done nothing to save them. They had simply turned their back on them.
Were they still alive?
Did any of their siblings still exist, in some form or shape amidst the depths of the Abyss?
They didn’t know.
They didn’t want to know.
Still, the thought haunted them like a shadow.
Or better said, a ghost.
Height
“You’ve really grown.” Their father told them.
The Vessel had been watching a sparring match between Ogrim and Ze´mer when their father had dropped the comment casually. As always, their father did not elaborate further.
There was no need to.
His short and rare comments about their height, power and growth were more than enough to brighten the rest of their day.
Simple and dry as his observations were, they also were, the Vessel knew, their father’s unique way to show them his love.
Introduce.
“This is Hornet.” It had been the White Lady who had first introduced the Vessel to the little spawn of their father and Herrah of Deepnest. “Your sister.”
Though convinced they would never enjoy the presence of that little creature, the Vessel warmed up to their little sister more easily and faster than they could have imagined.
Even then, with chains holding their body in place for all eternity and with the Infection festering inside him like a disease, they continued to think of her.
They could only hope that their sacrifice had allowed Hornet to live a happy, peaceful life.
Journal
“Write down your memories, your feelings and your thoughts.” His Root had told him in one of his many sleepless nights when the weight of his actions deprived him of rest. “Our burdens tend to become lighter when we share them, even if it just with a piece of paper.”
The Pale King had not been hopeful about the effectiveness of this suggestion, but he had given it a chance. He trusted his Root, and he lost nothing by trying.
To his shock and surprise, the habit of writing quickly became his favored method to ease his heart. For the Pale King, the process felt as if he was sealing his pain away within the sheets of paper through the ink of his quill.
Yet, as much as he wrote, his private study never became repleted with the many scrolls he filled with his wisdom, musings, and personal pains.
No one, not even his Root, ever asked him why, and the Pale King never brought the subject up.
“What good would that do?” he asked to himself as he stared at the scroll filled with his writing. The information stored in it could be considered invaluable.
But if the Pale King wrote, he didn’t do it for others.
He gave out a small chuckle. Then, just like he always did, he fed the scroll to the fireplace before him.
If he wrote, it was only for himself.
Knowledge
"I know what you did."
The Nightmare King said, just like he always did every time the Pale King unwillingly ventured into the Realm of Nightmares.
He always woke up before he could decipher with what tone the Nightmare King had addressed him.
Was it mockery?
The Pale King liked to think that was the case. Dealing with sarcastic derision was easy.
It was hatred which he couldn’t endure.
Not from some wandering king, and especially not from his subjects.
Literature
"Did you like the story?" The White Lady asked to her Vessel. They were small, tucked in bed as if they were a normal child.
It scared her how easily she could delude herself into thinking that they were one, but that fear did not stop her from visiting her Vessel once every three nights and read them a story before they fell asleep.
Her King knew nothing about it, of course.
"Do you want to hear it again?" she asked softly to the Vessel.
They nodded a "yes" to her in response.
Music
The music kept playing, but both the Pale King and his Root had long stopped listening to it. It was little more than fading sound in the background.
They continued dancing and clinging to each other. The occasion was meant to be a celebration. Their Vessel had fulfilled its duty, the Infection was sealed away for good.
Hallownest was safe; but as they both rocked slowly to the rhythm of the music, the Pale King and the White Lady realized they were only going through the motions, as if they were moths instinctively flying towards the light.
Sealed inside the Black Egg, the Vessel moved their head and looked up.
They thought they had heard a distant sound, something that resembled a song.
But all they had heard was the Infection.