Chapter Text
Within the kingdom of Hallownest's most crowded city, at its busiest hour, there is one bug who stands alone.
It is impervious to the people going about their day all around it. Cacophonies of bugs hustle by with nary a glance in its direction. Some are on their way to work—others are heading home for the day. Many yet are taking a leisurely stroll or going about their daily errands. Time itself could stop—and with it the crowd could still, and the lone bug wouldn’t notice.
This bug's attention lies solely on the city's centerpiece.
A fountain crafted from intricately carved, fine metal looms above the city's inhabitants. Some may see it as a blessing. Others—perhaps, an omen. A work of art that means many different things to each of its onlookers.
Some bugs stop and direct whispers in the loner’s direction. Their words are quickly lost in the crowd and emerge silently on unwilling ears. They continue on with their day after the subject of ridicule doesn't so much as glance away.
Nothing matters to the lone bug except for the four figures standing tall and motionless at the top.
The smallest statue depicts a young spider with two long horns. Less than half the height of the other statues, the stony facade betrays no fear or doubt in her countenance. The only personal item she holds is that of a mask with six eyes. She cradles it close to her chest, almost as if she were to let go the solid stone mask would fall and shatter.
Two of the other statues depict bugs standing similar in height to each other, but much taller than the spider. Despite the height similarity, the bugs otherwise appear very different. One of them has two short horns protruding from either side of their head which could almost be mistaken for spikes. The bug holds in their claws a book opened to an undefined page. Even from a distance it’s clear how the sculptor took care to carve out the individual grooves that would indicate the book’s texture.
The other statue of similar height is that of a bug with three total horns. Each is imbalanced in their placement and are of varying sizes, leaving one to wonder if the bug they belong to ever had issues keeping themself upright. They hold a nail in front of themself pointed directly into the ground, their confident stature implying the act to not be just for show.
Standing far taller than the others, the fourth and final statue's depiction is that of a bug with two incredibly large horns—three notches in each. They wear two cloaks, with the one overtop being shorter and more intricate than the one below. Whomever the sculptor was did well in capturing whatever air of sadness surrounded them.
Draped in elegance, It is the only statue to not hold anything.
The lone bug longs so desperately to reach out to this fourth and final statue and rest its claw gently on its face. Perhaps in a gesture of comfort to itself, or to the figure depicted, it’s not entirely sure. All it can distantly pray is that maybe, if it stands here for long enough, the statue will come to life and grant it that wish.
A singular drop of water falls from the cave ceiling. It lands on the statue’s head, trailing down its face to rest within its eye socket for a moment, before continuing its journey down to join the rest of the fountain water. If the statue notices the intrusion, it seems to welcome it.
Beneath these impartial statues, the solitary bug finds one truth.
It is not alone.
In a graveyard far below, a ghost walks atop the corpses of bugs long departed. Brittle chitin cracks beneath its otherwise silent footsteps and briefly break the raw humming emanating in the air. It stands within a confined prison—an Abyss so far down in the gaping maw of nothing it has never known an inkling of anything else.
The ghost will leave today, and it doesn’t know when it’ll return.
It has a couple things to do before its departure. Namely, it needs to check that it's not leaving behind the few trinkets it's managed to scrounge up, but if all goes well (and it should go well. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happens down in the Abyss) it should be out in no time at all.
A funny, wriggling feeling settles its way into the ghost's chest. It's strange to think that after an eternity of probing its small world for a chance of finding something greater, it's finally found just that. And none of the prison's other inhabitants ever cared so much as to question its behavior.
A plethora of wispy black specters litter the graveyard. Most of them float aimlessly and without acknowledgment of anything around them, but a small group gathers in the center of the prison, their glowing eyes pointed up toward a distant platform—far too high for any of them to reach.
The ghost casually approaches the shadowy forms. One of them- a shade with downturned horns, turns to investigate the sound of crunching chitin and visibly perks up with recognition. It leaves its spot within the group and float gently toward the ghost, who tenderly presses its forehead against the shade in a silent greeting. The shade reciprocates warmly even with its lack of a solid form.
(At the beginning, the ghost used to watch as the others—siblings, something in its head told it, ran around excitedly performing similar actions to this, clinking horns together in displays of affection like it was both the first and last time they’d ever get to see each other. For many of them, it was.
It wasn’t long until the door up at the top opened, and the Light filled their heads and-
Well-
There’s a reason the ghost has spent its entire life clawing tooth and nail for a way to leave)
With a final languid spin of contentment, the small shade departs from their sibling and drifts back over to the group. The other shadows barely even flinch at the reapproaching figure, begging the question of whether they’d noticed their sibling’s wandering at all, or simply hadn’t worried.
Floating next to the others, the shade gazes back over at the ghost and tilts their head in an unvoiced question. Wait with us? It asks.
The ghost shakes its head wistfully at its sibling’s request. It cannot join them. The sibling drops their head slightly in clear disappointment but accepts the answer regardless of its personal feelings. A couple seconds later they’re back to staring at the platform with the same intensity they had before, like there was never any interruption at all.
The ghost leaves them to it. There’s not much point in dragging their siblings away. It knows once they’ve set their minds on a task it’s best to let the shades continue with said something until they get bored of it. A lot of them are single minded like that, having been as young as they were. Not like there’s much else to occupy them down here.
(It was like that too, when it was small. It doesn’t know just how long it itself spent staring up at that platform waiting for the light to reappear and take it away from this grave, but it was long enough that its palms stung harshly with the weight of death itself digging deep into them. Chitin can be cracked in such a way as to be sharp to the touch, it had learned.
It did not dare move.
Maybe it would’ve stayed there forever if a sibling with a deep gash in their mask stumbling around like they didn’t know their up from down, liquid void trailing down their face and staining them with sadness, hadn’t tripped and fallen directly in front of them. Injured, but alive.
The ghost had cared for them to the best of its abilities, dragging their injured body over to a clearing in the ash and taking trips back and forth to a nearby lake to pour the familiar liquid through the gash in their mask. It continued with this routine right up until the sibling lifted their head, raised their left claw to brush softly against its face, and promptly went limp.
Sometimes it still sees their shade wandering around the Abyss aimlessly, a distant stain of mournfulness trailing behind them like a haze.
It never waited for the light again. Not after that.
Maybe if it had been able to save them, the light would have returned and taken them both. Maybe if it could have saved-)
The ghost shakes its head and the thought dissolves back into familiar darkness. Idle contemplation has never gotten it anywhere, especially not when all it has left to do is to gather up the few possessions it has and go.
The distant cacophony rings out loudly in its mind. Help me, help me, it says, urging the ghost forward in time.
It wants to tell it I will be there soon, but the voice it lacks sits idly in its chest.
Thankfully, the few objects of interest the ghost hadn’t already tucked away into its void were stacked in a neat pile near its intended exit. A circular stone with strange, intricate carvings made its way into storage, along with a glowing blue seed. In all its time down in the Abyss, it has never seen anything quite like them. It hopes they are not the only remaining trinkets of their like. It would like to find something the shades would appreciate.
We would have something in common, it thinks briefly, surprising itself with its own deliberation. The thought is shaken off even quicker than the first.
In the corner of its vision there is movement. Another bunch of shades loiter nearby, a group of five. Two of them hover to the sidelines while the other three run around. One of the shades follows after the others, a trail of black tendrils shooting forward to catch them off guard. The other shades dodge gracefully until one of them makes a mistake- a small stumble, and the chasing shade manages to grab them. They float triumphantly around the other sibling while the captured one looks on in annoyance.
The two on the sidelines both have curled horns branching outward. Almost identical. A pair of masks lay just a few paces away, their curled horns exhibiting familiarity in the most unsettling way. Both are missing large chunks where they should contain more mask.
In all its time here, the Abyss has never felt more suffocating than it does watching moments like these.
The ghost doesn’t look back.
If there’s one thing the ghost knows, it’s that it despises narrow passageways and unknown destinations.
It had a few unfortunate incidents with mistaking a crack in the wall for a passageway into freedom, and only after squeezing half of its body through did it realize they would lead nowhere for a creature larger than the armored crawlers it tore apart for sustenance.
Getting an arm or leg stuck was never fun, and even less so was using its precious reserves on injuries so easily avoided.
Unfortunately, its chosen method of departure just so happens to be a narrow passageway to an equally unknown destination.
Sharp rocks snag on its cloak, tearing it in places and stinging with the sensation of further scraping as it spends a few seconds untangling itself. Loose pebbles catch beneath its claws and cause it to lose its grip, all the while the ghost mentally curses itself for its shakiness and hesitance to crawl toward freedom.
The only consolation in the situation lies in the repeated promise of not much longer, now.
After exhausting all the dead-end alcoves and crevices it could find, the ghost had tried several times to chip through stone and forge its own path. Those had all ended quite quickly, with each tunnel either proving itself to be prone to cave-ins or being made of stone far too tough to scrape away.
It had really only gotten lucky with this section of the Abyss. It could not for the life of it guess why, but the stone here was softer—looser and more able to bend to its will. Compared to every other area it had tried, this was the only one that held an inkling of success.
It wasn’t an easy or clean process by any means. It was excruciatingly slow, for one, and had taken it the latter half of its previous molt to carve through. Another roadblock it had encountered was fatigue and injury. Regular breaks were to be required for it to seek out the strange crawling creatures that sometimes made their way down the Abyss to extract the healing life force from their bodies. In times it couldn’t find any, it had to wait lest it injure itself any further.
(It had all but given up and resigned itself to eventually befall the same fate as its siblings. It could see it now: It would land headfirst on a nasty spike or push its body too far or just.. Death was inevitable on its current course. It had seen enough from the bodies hailing from above and void dripping from now empty faces to know that for fact. Siblings it had thought for sure to be resilient enough to survive the climb always succumbed the same fate. Sometimes, it wished, it had been among them.
It was in one of those thought spirals that it felt the still air changing for the first time, drawing its attention to the wall of softer stones and asking it only one request.
Dig)
It stops abruptly at the very end of the tunnel, and wonders briefly if it had somehow looped around and dug into another section of its prison with the sight of the incoming darkness.
Something deep inside tells it that no—this is not the world it knows. It is dark, yes, but it is a darkness unfamiliar and unwelcoming in all the ways its birthplace is not. The shadows here loom like a threat and promise only danger, whereas the shadows from home whisper only of regret.
The ghost spends a few minutes sitting at the edge of the tunnel, willing the void within it to stand motionless and for its claws to stop shaking. Eventually, they listen, and in this new stillness the darkness seems to offer it something new.
Challenge.
It takes a step forward, and the ghost stares down into the dark. Terrified and alone, it will continue—for all those who couldn’t.
Underneath Hallownest, there lies a graveyard. Within this graveyard, there once lived a ghost.
In an uncharted territory full of danger, the ghost becomes a bug.
The lone bug gathers its courage and wanders into the unknown.