Chapter Text
Beneath the earth in a far away land, lies a kingdom called Hallownest. An old kingdom ruled by gods, kingdom of many insects and bugs, kingdom of different cultures and species, of technological wonders and magic never seen.. A kingdom... bathed in the malicious, dangerous light.
Plagued by the Infection of dreams and body, slowly spreading from the edges of the land. Mindless beasts, villagers and even plants, bathed in the orange glow of the harsh light.
From the Hive of bees to the Distant Village of spiders, unease starts to grow in the hearts of its citizens.
The Great Wyrm, The Pale King, the ruler of the Hallownest and the God of Pale Light, Soul and Knowledge had heard the concerns of his people, and had started his work on the plan.
Locked away in the secret workshop, Pale King began his research. For many days and nights he worked the magics of the soul and bent the powers of the world, peering with his Sight into the ever changing future, until the cause and solution were finally found.
In his visions, Pale Light saw the tall figure, its eyes ablaze with the orange light, bound in chains in the strange black temple. Void of emotions, of will, of voice…
Silently fighting the luminous light of the forgotten god. Keeping the angry dream inside. Locked away.
“Radiance…”, was a soft mutter from the King’s mandibles.
The god of the moth-people. The god they turned away from in order to worship his light.
He was startled from his thoughts by the loud clang of opening mold, letting the new palace guard out into the world.
The living, yet unfeeling machine, programmed by magic of soul into the body made out of void. Empty inside.
The king finally had the beginnings of a plan.
◐ ◯ ◑
Silence. Absolute silence stretched across the abyss. Black jagged rocks filled the “beach” around the dark sea of absolute darkness, that the elders called VOID.
The surface of the VOID rippled in the nonexistent wind and if bugs could see into the absolute darkness, they would’ve seen strange everchanging shapes scatter, shift and turn on themselves splashing on the surface of this eldritch sea. As if it was alive.
Strange monuments of long forgotten civilization were barely seen behind the dark mist. Black particles and smoke rose from the surreal surface of the VOID and danced in the air, swirling in mind boggling patterns.
Until…
The jagged sound of moving stone and a piercing white light brought the stillness into the Abyss.
Pale King walked cautiously to the edge of the platform. He was quickly followed by his wife, the Queen of Hallownest, The White Lady. Her roots glowed with power as she almost floated to the side of her husband.
“Do you really think this will work?”, she asked him.
Following her roots with his gaze, the king slowly answered:
“It must… Or I will not be able to live with myself.”
His gaze full of deep sadness finally fell onto the forty two little eggs, held carefully in the roots of his wife.
“Oh how I wish we could avoid it…”
Pale King looked at his wife, and saw the desperate, pleading gaze of her bright blue eyes. It shook him deep to his core. The king could feel his resolve strain greatly. Bend hard, almost shattering under the weight of the pain in White Lady’s eyes.
He shuddered. his eyes closing behind the white shining mask.
His mind went to the suffering of his subjects, everyday somebody dying to the wild beasts on the roads between settlements. He remembered the family members of infected bugs, begging with tears in their eyes on the floor of his throne room.
“No cost too great…”
Pale King took the eggs from the roots of his wife, and slowly began his descent.
◐ ◯ ◑
He opened his eyes to the absolute darkness, surrounding him from all sides. Short panicked breath was stolen from him by the viscous liquid pouring into his lungs.
The violent coughs and growing panic made it worse, as the same blackness poured into his throat, burning his insides with a chilling cold.
He thrashed, barely moving black oily substance around him. And then, when his mind was beginning to slip away, he suddenly wasn't drowning.
The rush of stale air brought more pain and coughs to his quaking form. Chunks of blackness began to thicken with each new breath he took. With each cough strange lines started to appear beneath fallen off sludge. More and more lines and depressions could be seen on the rapidly solidifying liquid.
Then the coughing slowly settled down into unsteady breathing. His hunched over figure went unnaturally still. Until, with a resounding crack, the black chips fell away from his form. Where before there was skin, now lies a strangely black non reflective carapace. His face changed too: the nose was gone, and in its stead he had two vertical snake-like slits, eyes were now enlarged, solid black and glassy, and in place of his lips were mandibles, covering the maw filled with sharp predatory fangs. He saw it all on the glassy reflective surface of a large black egg.
His first reaction was to vomit.
◐ ◯ ◑
I couldn't help it… The horrific nightmare of chitinous plates and mandibles was too much for me. ‘I… Why was this?.. How?!’, were the first thoughts that entered my mind, that was already crumpling under immense pressure of panic.
This was when I began to shake, and where my breaths grew shallow. The disgusting abomination from the nightmares of demented minds shuddered along with me. I couldn't look away, for my morbid fascination with horror reared its ugly head. So I stared and stared into the eyes of the humanoid insect, briefly looking away to look at it’s… mine , barely visible black chitinous body.
Shakily, it… I slowly raised my arm. Five black exoskeleton fingers with a soft palm pad entered my line of sight. At least it distracted me from my revolting reflection…
‘Reflection?’, I forcefully put down my arm.
My gaze snapped to the glassy black object that housed the visage of my changed form.
It sat in the dark smooth pebbles and just as dark fossilized shells of something that reminded me of ammonites. It had a round form and smooth organic surface, and it’s size was slightly bigger than my body in a hunched over position. Some sort of black… vines?.. veins? peeked from behind this big sphere…
‘Are they pulsating?’, was a fleeting thought in my mind, attempting to grasp the dark form in the surrounding blackness.
Until I noticed this darkness slowly drifting further and further away from the corners of my vision. It’s suffocating curtain was lifted away, stone by stone clearing the space before me of its blinding emptiness. When from behind it I saw another sphere… Then another. Then another, and another, and another…
Until my whole field of view was covered by hundreds and hundreds of shapes.
“Weren't there supposed to be only forty-two?”, was the hissing whisper somewhere below me.
In a mad scramble, I accidentally fell onto my back, right into the cold liquid.
Fear gripped my heart when it started to seep in between the plates of my carapace.
The same deep hissing voice cried out with alarm in the same familiar way, as I bolted upright and away from the shoreline of the VOID sea-
To promptly freeze in my steps as these words opened the floodgates in my mind. Visages of the grand palace, a strange white insectoid being and a mass of glowing roots with a face blinked before my eyes. Words, their meanings, their pronounciations stabbed and buried within my subconscious mind. Only to be abruptly cut off with the mother of all migraines.
So here I was, lying on the shore of the VOID sea in the Abyss, deep below the kingdom of Hallownest. A human with a bug exterior, granted to me by this world. Yes. This, world…
Because in my home Hallownest existed only in the form of a video game.
“What, what the fu--”, cried out this… My voice.
The rest of the sentence drowned in the echoes of this dark eldritch place.