Chapter Text
A flicker of red light passed through the silver halls of the White Palace, too indistinct to be properly observed by the royal retainers, but too strange and vibrant to be written off as something imagined. The servants, so devoted to and blinded by the king's pale light, scattered and ran immediately from the fearful shade of red, then shook themselves and laughed in fear and embarrassment once it had passed. It was just a little light, after all! Just the sort of glimmer that comes from a lumafly lantern shining through a red stained glass window. But it unnerved them, and they could not shake it from their minds until they stood in their monarch's light again.
The red light continued down the hallway and into a dimly lit room- a bedroom, though a bare one, and empty. There it resolved into a shape, a batlike, spiderlike thing that would terrify any bug in Hallownest.
"Clever," the nightmarish bug-thing rasped, addressing a shape in the corner. The room was not empty after all; its tall, stationary occupant chose to stand in the corner rather than sleeping in the bed, leaning on their greatnail, head hunched down between their shoulders.
"Wonderful craft," the terror continued, "excellent vessel the wyrm has made. Shame to waste it on a prison. Especially when..."
He reached out to touch the mask of the room's other occupant. They did not move, but he seemed to notice something change in their expression. "I cannot see inside," he mused, "But you are living, to an extent. You do have a mind, though one hidden."
Their expression changed again, difficult though it was to see in the shadows, and the terror responded, removing his claw from their mask. "Do not get so defensive," he said, casually. "I won't tell. And it isn't me that you're afraid to disappoint."
Putting a little more distance between himself and the statue-still figure, the visitor sat down on the edge of the empty bed. The cushions and blankets did not so much as shift, giving the eerie impression that he was not entirely real.
"It won't end well, you know," he said conversationally. "All this lying. You may get there without anyone suspecting a thing, but you won't be able to keep Hallownest safe for long. And once she finds your fears and hopes and love... you'll wish you had let yourself be found out. You'll wish that the Abyss had been your fate."
The figure in the shadows stared in his direction, not so much glaring as filling the shadows around it with subtle anger. The bug-thing on the bed seemed unbothered.
"And so, I offer you a way out," he said, and a mask materialized in his hands, with two lines through the eyes. "Hallownest's end will not be your doing, nor will you be thrown to the abyss, nor will you suffer under the one your creator calls the oldlight. Do not be so foolish as to ignore me in favor of maintaining your façade. What good will pretending do? Nothing- not for your father, nor for your kingdom, nor for yourself. Join my troupe and leave this pressure behind."
Slowly, finally, they moved, straightening their posture and seeming to unfold like a flower. They extended one hand, keeping the other on the hilt of their nail, and accepted the mask. Then they stood there for a minute, like they weren't sure what to do next.
"Wear it," he encouraged them.
Just as slowly, they raised the mask to their face, until it snapped into place as if by a magnet. Then, silently, they followed him out of the room.