Chapter Text
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There was a Voice, carried to Oro by the wind.
It is not the wind itself, for the wind outside whispered in many voices, in languages not understood. No, this Voice, it spoke in his dreams, and it was everywhere. A burning light on his mind’s horizon, whispering, shouting, pleading, weeping, commanding him to listen.
DREAM OF ME, It said, in a voice that belonged to no one. Oro snidely refuses, preferring the dark, blissful quiet of his own dreams.
Until it did.
DREAM OF ME, It said, in a voice that belonged to Mato, then Sheo, then Esmy, and finally, Master Sly. One after the other, they promised they would forgive him. That they would love him once again. That he didn’t have to be so alone anymore. And all he had to do was dream of the light.
(Sheo tended towards pleading, whereas Esmy wept, before fading to silence. Master Sly’s voice, the most distant, was fond at first, then cold and disapproving. Mato’s voice, the loudest, was all of these and more.)
However, if Oro is reliable for one thing, it is persistent, vicious stubbornness (not his own words). He does not bow to anyone undeserving. He does not surrender. Above all else, he loathes being told what to do, by ghosts or otherwise.
When awake, Oro takes action to clear his mind, meditates poorly and restlessly, scarcely eats save for sour hopper draught and pale bitter roots. His clumsy efforts succeed; he manages to sleep undisturbed. For a while.
But when the while runs dry, he finds himself hardly able to sleep at all, if only to escape the voices and their bodies of light.
He had been so sure of what he wanted, once. Between the cycles of sleep and meditation, his dreams begin to infect his very thoughts. Training doesn’t help, nor does neglecting it. Not even counting his piles of Geo manages to lift his meager spirits. Memories of when he was not quite so alone digs claws into his chest, drawing blood. Some things could not be defeated with a nail, loathe of this though he might be.
In the end, lying awake atop his meager bed on the floor, he clings to his own body until it hurts, surrendering to nothing as he grapples with his own madness.
Oro is no fool. He knows in his heart of hearts that the voices aren’t real. But even so, his resolve crumbles as his shamefully soft insides shout and plead no, please, I’m so sorry for everything, come back, come find me, I don’t want to be alone anymore. His inner shell aches to give up, to let the warm light swell into every sharp crack and broken crevice until the pain is gone and nothing of himself was left.
Greedy. Cowardly. Unworthy. Unloved. Losing himself and all that he is was not entirely an undesirable idea. This was perhaps the most ugly truth of all.
After some torturous weeks, when he can no longer stand the sound of his own thoughts, Oro fills a traveling sack with meager provisions, a rolled-up pallet, his thickest cloak, and his severed fifth limb; a dusty nail, as cold as a brother.
Perhaps I miscalculated, he thinks a little desperately. Maybe this ash-swept grave isn’t the end of the world after all.
Perhaps there were places deeper and darker than the one he hid himself, where his dreams couldn’t find him, free from even the occasional penniless wanderers he suffered from. It could be nice, he reasoned, to live in a place without sour-tasting prey, falling armored corpses and their vast stink.
(These days, there is a peculiar taste on the wind, of which has made its recent home on the edge of the edge. Oro was used to the dead and their stench, but this was something alive, a foreign idea among the typical miasmas of the dead.)
At the very least, it would be good to stretch his legs and breathe new air, sour as it was. Oro hardly ever ventures outside except to hunt, and never beyond where the ashen wind blows. (He might blame the cold, if such a thing bothered him under his cloak. Nevertheless, he blames the cold anyway.)
He takes one last look around his tranquil house, the skylight above, the shadowy purple curtains drawn over the walls as if to hide them. Not one of his nails in view, of this he carefully maintained. His substantial Geo cache, of course, is well-hidden deep under the frozen ground. Should he never return, his wealth will remain safe from thieves and scavengers.
The only thing holding him back now was his own cowardice. He takes a deep breath, the dust in the air fleeing from him, and opens the door.
Only to find that his door would not, in fact, open.
Irked, he pushes again. Fails again. Something heavy was blocking the way. Oro summons his strength, shoving his shoulder against the door with great might, and hears a loud scraping as some solid object outside is moved.
He shoulders his way through the door with irritation, frigid air hurrying through the gap, and immediately trips over the corpse.
With a startled shout, he stumbles away as falling ash blinds him, breathing hoarsely as he looks down at the body curled at the foot of his door.
When he manages to calm himself a little, he bows forward, and warily examines the body. It’s curiously unlike the armored corpses he so often encounters; small and thin, with blue shell-like armor. A hood rather than a helmet obscures its face. Overall, it makes for a distinctly foreign look (a shame, to travel all this way just to die).
Upon closer inspection, he finds what he looks for; several large gashes across the body’s chest, washed with clear, uninfected blood. A feeble dark hand clutches a shield (if it had a weapon, it was nowhere in sight), and the other is raised, fingers splayed, propped against Oro’s door as if attempting to get inside. But never succeeding.
He swallows the emptiness in his throat. Watches pointlessly for breath, any sign of life. For a long time, the only thing that moves in the world is the ash, already intent on gathering upon the strewn body to bury it.
His first thought brushes pity. Then, Oro’s heart hardens, and he crushes the feeling between his fingertips.
Fear waning, he sneers at the corpse of the Fool, clearly just another victim from above who only exited to taint the scenery. He turns to look behind, spotting the trail of disturbed ash where the Fool had somehow managed to drag itself down the slope from the cliffs and acid pools, surviving the hopping and spitting predators, all the way to the hidden door of Oro’s hut.
Despite himself, a strong, grudging admiration emerges inside him for the Fool’s strength and determination, even while dying. A warrior’s spirit until the end. Shame it found its demise in such an unworthy place.
“I will bury you,” Oro suddenly speaks aloud, shaming himself as he does so, “when I return. If I return.” If the vermin doesn’t eat you first.
The wind blew. The body did not respond. The wind blew. It was all any of them could do.
“More than you deserve,” Oro mumbles, as if the dead cared for the words of the living. He turns away, treading the path away from his hut. He carefully avoids the trails of dried blood, which shine from youth. If only he had left his house a day earlier, listened a little more carefully to the sounds outside his door. As if he was in the business of nursing paupers who bought their deaths with Geo and called themselves warriors because of it.
Already, Oro’s body is tired, his nail a heavy burden on his back. There will be no one to bury him if he doesn't carry it.
No doubt the Fool carried not a single Geo to its name, either.
✦ ✦ ✦
The world grows darker, more cavern-like, the walls closing in. Oro walks paths familiar only to him, avoiding giant hopping beasts and tiny spitting aspids with ease (the burns on his body ache every time their flying bodies are within earshot, the menacing whir of small wings).
He is led by the arm of the escorting wind, released by its soft fingertips at the day’s end. At his feet, a powerful humming rumbles the ground, and small, hairy flying creatures watch him from nearby. He knows not to get too close, and flees their slow, buzzing approach.
Oro walks farther down, farther than ever before, the sour air heavy in his mouth. The world bathes in a dark brown hue, black plumes billowing from beneath the ground. Remnants of civilization are everywhere, glinting spikes and shining spires defeated by giant roots and hanging filth. There is stillness save for the scuttling of small, armored creatures with bright, mindless eyes.
He passes ruins so large and grandiose that a king might have resided within them once (monuments to the consequences of extravagance; to possess wealth was one thing, but excessive pride was entirely another, he thought).
Oro stops, pondering the ruins around him. Yes, he could make a home here, make meals of the local creatures should they prove edible. It was certainly quieter, emptier of bodies, though the smell was considerably worse and the scenery less appealing. The once-silver roads are covered in dust, no footprints save his own; clearly no one has ventured down here for an age. He wonders if that makes him the foolish one.
The Nailmaster had not ventured outside of the kingdom’s edge for more years than he had left. He occupies his empty days with cycles of sleep, meditation, and of course, training. A physical nail may have a start and an end, but to wield one is endless.
(And he had never truly been alone. One hardly could be, with all the corpses and predators everywhere, stinking up the place. Nevertheless, it was certainly good for business, if one’s business was to be left completely and totally alone.)
Along his path, the few lampposts he encounters are tall and elegant, still brightly lit despite the passing eons. He unrolls his pallet under the light of one, intending to nest in a hollow shell nearby.
A sudden, distant howling from some creature stays his hand.
Quickly, he draws his nail, a beacon in the shadows. The burning eyes of nearby scuttling bugs see their reflection in the steel. If there is some great beast nearby, Oro would not merely sit around, content to be eaten as he slumbered. The dead grass bends from the strangely silent wind, pointing him in the direction of his fate.
He crouches along quietly with light footsteps (not an easy feat for one as admittedly bulky as himself), eyes narrowing at every shadow and shivering root. His path ends when the tunnel leads to an enormous cave, the ground falling and relinquishing to a vast sea of shining teeth-like spikes, as if Oro had just entered the maw of the caverns.
Clearly he can see the other side in the near distance, where the path reforms and leads beyond. It would be impossible to cross for ordinary bugs. Oro may sleep contentedly knowing no beast could get to him here. But still, something calls him beyond.
Oro could see it in his mind, the figure of Mato lecturing him on the foolishness of even trying, hiding behind a veneer of concern and support for his brother. In reality, Mato would have been too frightened to attempt such a journey. He was difficult like that.
Had he not been alone, Oro wouldn’t have done it even for a reasonable sum. Unfortunately, the only thing stronger than his love of Geo was his hard-shelled pride.
He makes doubly sure that no one is around (and checks again after that) before he lays his supplies on the oddly warm ground. He grumbles and mutters to no one as he gathers his nail and cloak in his arms. With an audible crack, he opens the broad elytra at his back, reluctantly revealing a pair of dark wings underneath.
As Oro has not opened his wings in an age, it takes some moments for the stiff appendages to get blood moving through them. Usually he preferred to spend his days pretending they didn’t exist. Never would they aid in a fight, Master Sly informed him once. And only served to make him look more oafish than he already was.
In another moment, Oro is suspended in something resembling flight, making his rather slow and sluggish way across the ravine. At first, he stumbles and drops down, almost killing himself, but manages to save himself. The sheer wind bites and scratches at the thin appendages, but he endures.
Throughout, he feels extremely foolish, like a fat, stupid Boofly hovering in clumsy flight. If someone were to witness him now, he would grant himself a favor and allow himself to plummet into the pit of spikes below.
His feet touch the path, safely on the other side of the pit. He indignantly throws his cloak over his back and tries to regain an ounce of composure.
The caverns are aglow from the soft light of large, bloated… membranes, of some kind, ones filled with orange liquid, disgustingly pulsing as if the organs of some enormous creature. The more he looks, the more Oro finds, vesicles nestled in every corner where there was space and accompanied by orange roots that resembled veins.
Growing increasingly disturbed, he resolves to slay the source of the beastly noises as quickly as possible and promptly flee in the other direction, never to touch the ground of these caverns again.
The howling grows more powerful, and with them, an occasional shriek, frenzied and desperate. Oro is surprised when the familiar steel whine of a nail cutting air touches his ear. He readies his own weapon, stiff and poised, and enters the cavern from where the howling is loudest, the uproar seeming to shake the very ceiling itself. The Nailmaster conceals himself poorly behind a shell outcropping, and sees It.
A bug of Hallownest, in a furious blur of a swinging nail and billowing cloak, is currently in the throes of battle with one of the small mindless creatures, of all things.
The shadow creeper, completely oblivious of its current situation, merely sits there unmoving. However, its tough shell seemed to be giving the other bug some trouble, who was unable to pierce it, try as it desperately might.
After a moment, Oro then notices (how could he have missed it?) the bulbous orange sack resting atop the bug’s horned head. It appeared quite heavy, weighing the bug down as it was forced to stagger and stoop.
(It is with growing horror that he realizes the orange membrane was not merely resting on top of the bug’s head, but rather emerging from inside of it.)
Mouthless, the bug of Hallownest howls and howls, mad with fear. Its puppetlike movements are crazed yet becoming increasingly sluggish, swinging and beating uselessly against the shadow creeper like a child who had just picked up a nail for the first time.
“Oro, you oaf,” Master Sly chastises from deep inside an unbidden memory. “You wield your nail like a club.”
Oro steps forward. There is a sickening crunch as he drives his broad nail through the paper shell of the small creeper with ease.
A weighted silence follows as the wind holds its breath.
Warily, Oro pulls his nails back and straightens, staring down at the other bug. He waits expectantly for it to speak, to thank him profusely, even offer Geo for his trouble (alright, that may have been overstepping it).
The bug of Hallownest, it’s a small yet solid thing, thin limbs trembling from exertion as it stares expressionlessly up at Oro, two empty eyes that held nothing within. It seemed barely capable of even holding its nail. Oro is merely impressed that the creature hasn't yet collapsed.
If this was a bug of Hallownest, it was unlike any other he had ever seen before. From above, Oro could see thick cracks in the face of its shell, the orange burden it carried oozing thick liquid out of every crevice. He might have even pitied it, if pity were not a waste of time.
“Well?” Oro demands impatiently, his clear voice cutting swiftly through the sickly air. “Speak up, then. Aren’t you going to thank your savior? You certainly possess the voice for it, noisy thing.”
The bug stiffens, head sagging to the side from the sheer weight on its head. With a sudden cry, it hefts its nail into the air and attempts to bring the blade down upon Oro’s face, the highest point it could reach.
His body hardly moves as he expertly brings the flat of his broad nail down upon the bug’s head, aiming for the orange membrane, which weakly deflates like a vile balloon. The bug immediately collapses backwards onto the ground, dust rising to catch its fall.
“Hmph. Ungrateful grub,” Oro mutters critically.
Truthfully, he does not know why he didn’t just slay it out of mercy. As he walks away, he finds himself hesitating. Oro turns back to the bug, unsure of his intentions, but then freezes.
His helpless eyes can only watch as tiny, orange seed-like creatures spill from the orange sack, squeaking and stumbling, blindly fleeing into cracks in the rock walls. The head of the bug is quickly emptied, leaving behind a broken shell that looked almost… hollow. As if nothing were inside.
It seemed, then, Oro reasons numbly, that the repulsive things were a cluster of parasites forming a mass with the bug as their vessel. Without them, the bug looked smaller than before. Almost dead. Perhaps left without even a life or will of its own.
With a grunt, the Nailmaster startles backward as the vessel’s eyes stare up at him. Achingly slow, it raises its broken, unburdened head, raises a hand to reach weakly for him before its head hits the dirt, unconscious. Its small chest rises and falls, nearly invisible to Oro’s eye.
He is unwillingly reminded of the corpse he’d left behind in the kingdom’s edge, the one lying dead in front of his door, frozen hand reaching for a savior that would never come. Oro looks around, spotting the glow of the seed creatures lingering in the walls, perhaps waiting for a chance to infect the hollow bug once more. Cruel it might be, then, to leave the body where it lay, but Oro has never once claimed to be otherwise.
He sighs, and the air swallows the sound.
Why is it always the destitute that come to him for pity?
“You had better be carrying Geo in your cloak, or I’ll drop you in the pit,” Oro threatens the prone vessel.
Of course, he is no honorless thief. Only the very lowest of creatures looted from the sick, or the dead.
Grumbling, he gathers the strange bug and its unremarkable nail, both weighing less than his own rather more impressive weapon. He hopes very hard that no creature with a mind is around to see him, shamefully cradling this creature as though it were his child.
The return flight over the sea of spikes is swift, as Oro’s wings grow used to being used once more. Once safely on the other side, blessedly free of sickly orange monstrosities, Oro dumps the body and its nail on the ground, a little more harshly than he intends.
“There. Perhaps you’ll be safe here… or, perhaps not,” he sneers at the unconscious vessel. He was beginning to regret doing this; charity always left a bad taste in his mouth. “Regardless, your fate is your own, now.”
Good riddance.
With that, Oro stalks away in the direction he’d come, intending to think not on the previous events a single second longer. The echoes of howling, long since silenced, rest heavily on the abated wind. Like a stale breath in the mouth of a dead creature.
He finds his sack and rolled-up pallet where he’d left them, dust already gathering. While eating and outfitting himself, Oro comes to a grim decision. Relatively peaceful as these ancient caverns seemed, it appeared there were nasty surprises hiding deep within unexpected places, and he would be loath to discover creatures bigger and more skilled in combat than that broken creature had been. Not that any beast or warrior alike could hope to face a Nailmaster and triumph.
(Those engorged cells pulsing in every crevice as if alive, bright orange roots growing like weeds, odd seed creatures without mouths or eyes, scurrying out of the empty head of that vessel… such things frightening and familiar, perhaps, is what truly scared him. Things a nail alone could not defeat.)
It would seem, then, that a long and disappointing journey home awaited him.
He travels dourly to the awaiting lamppost, makes his bed in a hollow shell, attempting to meditate out of obligation and failing out of routine. Memories of shrieks and howls nestle inside his shell as empty eyes watch him in the dark. Oro sleeps, for once, without a light in his dreams.
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