Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He was so tired.

Why? Hadn't he been sleeping? For how long had he been sleeping?

He looked around himself... himself? He didn't have a "himself" to look around, he was just a mind, just a conciousness, floating in the dark.

Yet he felt small. He was sure of that. He was smaller than normal, though he didn't know by how much. How big was he normally? Hadn't he been much bigger once? Memories flickered and danced at the edge of his mind, but he was too tired to parse them.

So... sleepy.

Why did he awake in the first place? It was... it was... it was...

So... tired... need to... need to sleep...

It was... a sharp, burning cold... yes... that was it. A sudden cold had struck him. Familiar, yet that didn't daunt him. What could it be?

His memories brought up pictures of grand palaces and shining lights. He had a name... yes... but that didn't matter... what was with this cold? Visions of other people, a bug whose face swam before him, flickered in his mind. He couldn't make heads or tails of it... he was just... so tired...

Need to rest...

Need to sleep...

Need to fade...

He drifted off, held in that endless night, surrounded by that cold feeling... it was oddly calming... oddly comforting... oddly familiar...

Little Ghost had a lot of geo lining their pockets, so that meant a visit to shopkeeper Sly. The little fly had a tendency to overcharge for his wears, but this was ridiculous.

"600 geo? For a charm that does nothing?" Ghost asked incredulously.

"While certainly being mainly cosmetic, it is made of a high quality metal, and was found in the ruins of the old palace. Some cranky fella calling himself a Relic Seeker identified it as a Hallownest seal, probably one that a high ranking knight or follower wore in the kingdom's prime. He offered me 500 geo for it, only 50 more than the regular price of a seal, but this one is made of more expensive material, so the mark up isn't that unreasonable. Besides, it could have powers that have been brilliantly hidden from me. Even if it is powerless you should be willing to pay extra for the work it took me to get, the palace grounds are quite a ways below us and it took me a lot of time and energy to reach them." Sly waved the charm around.

Little Ghost didn't have that kind of money. Sure, they could afford it, but they wanted to purchase the stag markers from Iselda and save up for the unreasonably high priced lumifly lantern Sly had on offer. 

But, there was something about the charm that seemed to call to Ghost, as if an old friend had seen them in the street an excitedly waved them over to catch up. There was also a bit of hesitation there, as if the friend and them had left off on bad terms. Looking at it, they way it shimmered subtly and reflected light, a part of Ghost thought there must be something more to it than just a cosmetic.

They could save up for the lantern later, and how much could the stag pin cost? They slowly opened their pouch of geo and carefully counted out 600. Placing it on the table, they took the charm from the fly.

It felt, tired? As though it was asleep in their hand.

"Oh, I should of told you, it costs 5 notches," Sly said, swiping up the geo from the table before Ghost could change their mind.

"Five?" Ghost said, horrified. They had only 5 notches on their belt, they'd have to over charm to put it on, as there was no way in the wastes that they were taking off the compass.

"No refunds~" Sly replied, dashing away before Ghost could retaliate.

Little Ghost was annoyed, they trusted Sly! How could he be so shady? They promised themself that they would one day get back at him. Maybe they would use their new vengeful spirit spell that the snail shaman gave them.

As they exited the shop, they noticed that the charm was... glowing? It was strange, as though the charm was... waking up. Groggily, yes, but it was waking up. 

It was as if it recognized them, slowly. They stared at it intensely, it started to dim again, as though it was drifting back to sleep. Drifting off to sleep like a child would in the safety of their father's arms.

It happened, so unnoticeable that Ghost was half certain that they'd imagined it. They carefully stowed it away in their satchel, forgetting about it as they dove back in the ruins of Hallownest, their thoughts on the lush caverns that had been blocked off from them by the creature whose name they didn't know, but it could be killed with their new spell!

Chapter Text

The searing pain that ripped through Little Ghost's mask was familiar. This wasn't the first time this had happened. It was probably a problem that this wasn't a great failure, but another annoyance that was making Ghost's void boil.

They had been defeated, again, by the Mantis Lords. They were getting annoyed with how much they were being defeated by the Mantis Lords.

They had been switching their charms out like they had been playing a game of charm roulette. Gathering Swarm, Compass, and Fragile Greed were useless, they had broken Fragile Strength and were currently unwilling to break Fragile Heart too, Steady Body and Stalwart Shell seemed useless but that hadn't stopped them from trying them out on a whim, Long Nail, Soul Catcher and Thorns of Agony had brought them far enough to know that they would eventually fight two lords at once and that wasn't fun, so now they were flicking back and forth between Shaman Stone no Thorns of Agony, Spore Shroom plus Steady Body, and Dash Master. Bugs, the fact that they only had 7 notches on their belt was a real Thorn of Agony in their side.

They had not used the strange charm they bought from Sly. The only use they had for it was that it was their 5th charm, meaning Salubra had sold them their sixth charm notch. The seventh they got from defeating a pair of giant mushrooms.

They had no idea what to dub the useless charm. All the others were named for their use, but the useless charm didn't have one, and it was bothering them that it was left unamed. In fact, a lot of things were bothering them, mainly the Mantis Lords, but the strange glow they saw when the charm was purchased was a top contender.

They thought about it, the strange pale charm, and realised that they had never put it on to see if Sly was mistaken about its uselessness, because, well, it cost five notches according to him.

According to Sly, it had cost five notches. That was what Sly had told them, yet, as Ghost sat down on the bench, fidgeting the charm, it didn't seem so. It looked as if they could slot it on their belt for free. Strange, they had never seen, in all their travels, a charm that could be worn for free, but then again, prior to coming to Hallownest they had never seen a charm that didn't break when they released their shade, so maybe it was a Hallownest thing? A purely cosmetic charm being free would make sense, but then why had Sly told them it took 5?

Surely, Sly wasn't a charm expert, but then again, neither was Ghost. And Ghost hadn't actually worn the charm yet, maybe they should ask Salubra about it? If anyone they knew were a charm expert it would be her. And maybe that Leg-Eater fella, he made his charms himself, but Ghost had a feeling that if they gave Leg-Eater the charm that they wouldn't get it back without parting with more geo, and they had already parted with more than enough for it. Purchasing the charm hadn't been their best financial decision.

Little Ghost sighed, or well, the strange being made of void equivalent to a sigh, it sounded like more of a low hum than anything, they had already lost how many times to The Mantis Lords? What was on more. They might as well see if this charm was really useless after all.

"What are you hiding, strange charm," they said to themself, "It's time to see," the charm seemed to shimmer at the words, as if it recognized Ghost. Again with the charm recognizing them, it was odd.

They took the charm, hesitating a moment as spores entered their shell and irritated the void within, and snapped it onto their belt with a click. Like they suspected, zero notches.

They waited a moment, nothing happened, so they took out their nail and got up from the bench, swinging it around at the mushrooms outside their little reprieve. Nothing happened. They thought about fighting the Mantis Warriors they knew were above them for soul then firing a vengeful spirit, but that sounded tiring for the kid who only had half their shade and a broken soul vessel, so they decided to tried other things.

The jumped, wall climbed, dashed into the hole down to where they got the Dash Master charm (not the intended target) sat back on the bench and swapped their charms around, everything. Nothing worked.

"Why won't you, just, wake up!" They half-yelled out of frustration, not wanting to alert the mantises above to their presence, while kicking a mushroom.

The charm responded with a shimmer. Then another. Then a light so bright was blinding.

He was waking up again.

Why? He wanted to sleep, yet kept being tore from its warm embrace, replacing it with a cold one.

"What are you hiding, strange charm," a voice rang out, it was a nice voice, he felt safe when it talked, yet it was rousing also, "It's time to see."

He suddenly felt more awake and aware than he had ever been. He had a name, and that was important to others. He had a kingdom, and that was important to him. He had a problem, and that was important to the survival of his kingdom.

And he noticed that he was small. Small and dark. He was the darkness around him, he did not stretch far. He was small, the world around him was big. He was awake now. No, he was asleep, just lucid. Lucidly waiting in his own dreamless sleep. Why he was lucid now, he didn't know.

He used it to examine his own memories. They wouldn't come to him till analyzed, probably because of how long he had been sleeping before he realized he was asleep. Before he realized he existed.

He wanted to know how he got here, how he got this small, why he was the dark.

He'd been big once.

He'd become smaller.

Though he was still smaller than then.

He thought back. Why was he here? He'd been... he'd been...

It wouldn't come to him.

His latest memories had been blocked from him. His own mind locking them away. His subconscious had decided to keep them just out of his concious's reach. How rude of it. Why would it disobey him and hide his own memories away?

He thought through more of his memories in the hopes that they might explain it.

He had a wife he loved.

He had followers who were loyal. 5 knights who defended him.

He had taken his palace to the dream realm. He had hidden it away to keep from... from... her.

She had arrived and caused problems for his kingdom. She had killed millions. She had fought him for the lands. For the people. For everything he had left after his species had disappeared.

And he... He had... done things... unspeakable things... things he had regretted greatly... he couldn't stop thinking of them.

There was nothing for him in the darkness but to wallow in guilt and regret. To steep in self-hatred. To sleep without dreaming and think of nothing but what he had done.

"Why won't you, just, wake up!" The voice rang out again. It was right. Why was he still asleep?

He woke up.

Little Ghost was blinking away bright spots that danced before their eyes.

A fog had permeated the air, not that of the insidious spores of the wastes that spurred in green and yellow, not that of the pernicious plague of bright orange hues that glowed and spread throughout the forgotten depths, but smoke of white and gold and pink and purple, glowing softly, fading quickly into more of a gentle morning mist.

But the charm didn't just create a bright light and pretty fog, for standing there, not far from the bench, was a bug. 

He didn't look normal, in fact, he didn't look like he was even there. He was completely transparent, save for an outline of purple and pink so pale one could mistake it for white, as if the world around him was a canvas and the painter had drawn him on the background but forgot to color it in.

He was a short bug, with 8 tall horns that sprung from his head, circling it in formation like a crown. He had four arms ending in clawed hands, his feet were clawed too. He had a tail, a long tail. It was longer than his body. He wore long robes, tied up around his middle was a sash-like belt, and a long cascading cape that was almost as long as his tale was draped over him, it flowed in some nonexistent wind. Even as an echo, outlined but not filled in, Little Ghost could tell the outfit was expensive. Ghost analyzed him, his posture and stance was that of someone who was important, shoulders firm, head held in such a manner that showed it barely stooped, he did not let his tale drag on the ground, he carried himself like a noble, even if he was doubled over coughing in the moment.

"Higher beings, that was a lot of smoke!" The bug spat out, having finished his coughing fit, standing up tall, or as tall as he could, he was still short by the average standard, Ghost guessed that the bug was tall to them as Ghost was still as short as a grub. Now that they were properly standing, Ghost could see just how noble he must be, his back so straight it was as if he never slouched once in his life, his legs carrying him up as high as possible, his head raised up straight just as expected.

The bug looked around at his surroundings, confusion and contemplation drawn on his face, though only slightly, he clearly was used to diplomatic smiles and hidden expressions, makes sense if he was indeed a noble bug, and an important one at that, based on his adornments and expressions, "It seems that we are near or in the Mantis Village," they said, almost to themselves. Clearly Ghost wasn't the only observant one, also the bug used the royal 'we', definently stupidly important noble member of the royal court or, more likely, a member of the royal family itself. Ghost, sadly, did not know much about the old royalty of Hallownest.

"You are, indeed, in mantis village," Ghost replied, hoping to get the bug's attention.

The outline of a bug flinched at Ghost's words. Clearly, not as observant as they first thought.

"One got out, oh no, one got out, how did one get out?" he asked himself, clearly perturbed by something.

"I don't know what you're talking about, and honestly at the moment I don't care. Who are you and how did you end up in a charm?"

"In a charm?-" he muttered to himself, Ghost extended their charm belt out, pointing to the strange charm with their nub.

The other bug flinched and finally looked down at himself. He looked at his transparent hand, outlined in pale shades of purple and pink, sometimes gold. He examined his entire body now, then held his his upper right hand to the lumifly lantern, letting the light shine through his hand.

"Are you going to answer me, or...?" Ghost wasn't known for being patient, maybe that's why they struggled so much against the Mantis Lords.

The bug looked taken aback for a moment, before regaining the royal composure and calmness that he was probably used to portraying, "ah yes, right, well you asked us who we were, did you not?"

Ghost nodded their head.

"Well, we are known to bugs and beasts alike as 'The Pale King' or 'Pale Wyrm', the kingdom of Hallownest, which we are currently just slightly below, is our kingdom that we rule as resident higher being," he stated in a powerful and commanding voice, one that contained authority, even if it was rather quiet.

Ghost nodded at this. They could see it, this bug - er - wyrm, Ghost had heard of wyrms before, always about how the species was great and powerful, revered by many and founders of kingdoms before they went extinct, looked the part of a king, he could also see them being a higher being if you squinted at him and tilted your head just the right way. Ghost was sure he probably was mythologized by the public if he looked like this and was considered a powerful mighty higher being. Only if he was considered a laughingstock of the higher beings could Ghost see him not being mythologized.

"And... how did you end up in this charm?" Ghost really wanted to know.

"Ah, that we do not know..." the so called Pale King responded, "now, some questions for you. How did you come across this charm? What do you know about it? And what do you want with us?"

Ghost looked at the Pale King, he didn't seem like a threat in his current form, "I bought this charm from a shopkeeper who came across it in the ruins of the old palace," The Pale King looked shocked at this, he probably was wondering why someone would sell the charm, or maybe he didn't know the palace was ruined, being cooped up in the charm for so long, "I know little about this charm, other than an oddity with how much notches the charm costs, and what I want to do with you... why would I want to do anything with you? I barely even know who you are."

The Pale King though for a moment, "tell us about the notch oddity."

"Well, according to the shopkeeper who sold me it, it was supposed to cost 5 notches, but for me it costs none."

The Pale King nodded at this, "Ok, that might mean something. Anyways, as for my previous question, you have a charm that we are clearly locked into, and we don't seem to be able to do much in this form," he demonstrated this by trying, and failing miserably, to pluck a mushroom out the ground, "Which means that, unfortunately, we are entirely at your mercy."

Ghost looked at him, "just because I have power over you doesn't mean I want to use it. Again, I barely even know you."

The Pale King looked them up and down, there was an intelligence, authority and something else in those eyes that they couldn't quite read, and Ghost felt so small beneath his gaze. They had heard of higher beings that had magical thralls that can influence emotions, and this felt like something like that.

"Well then, if you have no use for us, pass the charm off to someone else-"

"The shopkeeper who sold me it said the charm was useless and purely cosmetic, I assume that he had to of put it on to come to that conclusion, meaning I don't that anyone but myself can use it. But that needs more testing."

"Interesting," The Pale King muttered, contemplating for a few moments, "well then, we don't know what to tell you to do with the charm if you have no use for us."

Little Ghost just shrugged before moving to the bench to swap out charms when they suddenly had an idea.

"You know, I might actually have a use for you!" They said.

The Pale King looked at them, "speak your request then."

"Can you help me fight the Mantis Lords?"

Chapter Text

Ghost had learned many things about The Pale King and the charm he was trapped in: he could not be seen by the Mantis Warriors, so Ghost was probably the only one who could see him. The Pale king could not use any of his attacks, he tried to channel what he called a "soul spear attack" but it appeared just like him - an unfilled outline of extremely light pink, purple and gold - and went through the warriors leaving them unscathed. And lastly he was terrible at helping out with the fight of the Mantis Lords.

"No, dodge UP"

Ghost bit back their retort that they were trying to dodge up, because only they could hear The Pale King and it would look weird if they were to talk to no one.

"Fire soul at them"

If they had the soul to do that, they would.

"No no no, you need to jump when it goes up."

Their leg was obviously badly injured and broken, what did he expect them to do?

These were the coherent pieces of advice, by the way. Most of his advice what stuff like, "dash that way!" Not pointing in any direction in particular, "you just gotta eh, eh, eh rrrrrrrr," ??? "NOW!" NOW WHAT? THEY HADN'T CREATED ANY QUE FOR ANYTHING! WHAT WERE THEY SUPPOSED TO DO? "Swivel round and dodge," very helpful, "yeah do more of that," more of what? Stabbing and slashing, cause they were. There were multiple sets of incomprehensible noises and grumbles and mumbles. The Pale King's voice extremely quiet, and he seemed to be unwilling to yell, so most of his "tips" were covered up by the noise of the battle.

Ghost eventually tuned out The Pale King's "support."

They focused on dodging the lord's attacks and getting in hits on them. Swing, skip. Jump, hit. Pogo, pogo, pogo. Jump to dodge, heal with soul now that you have enough, go beneath the disks, pogo over the next disks, dash over their dash, avoid them as they drop down. They focused, dodging and swinging. Take it slowly, be patient. You got to wait to get an attack in, you don't need to dash into danger, especially with how hurt you are. Your mask is dangerously cracking, take it slow. Don't rush.

When it was all over, Ghost was on their last leg, one more hit and they would let loose their shade, had no soul in their reservoir to heal and was out of breath. But they had won. And not because of a king's terrible fighting advice, but because they had finally been patient. They felt like they could dance if they weren't so badly damaged.

The Mantis Lords gave a bow to Ghost, who shakily bowed back. The Mantis Lords looked at each other at this.

"You don't need to bow to them," The Pale King said.

If that fucker wasn't incorporeal Ghost would have hit him. These noble sisters were showing them a great respect, they should, of course, show them the respect back. This idiot was just too stuck up to realize that this was basic manners.

The middle lord gave a flick of her claw and the gate beyond opened to let Ghost and their unseen companion through to the otherside.

It was dark and cold on the otherside, perfect for Ghost honestly, void liked the cold and dark, according to the alchemist who taught them all they knew about void. They vaguely wondered where the alchemist was now.

The caves on the otherside of the door were winding, claustrophobic and wet. There were piles of bodies with long nail-lances sticking out of them and spiderwebs everyone. This was less than preferable for Ghost. 

They stumbled through to gate, void leaking dangerously out from the cracks in their mask. When they got to the otherside, they collapsed on the ground.

They laid there for a few moments before getting up and cheering

"Fuck yeah! I finally beat the Mantis Lords!"

The Pale King made a noise of annoyance, "please do not use such fowl language in our presence."

"Fuck you, I beat the fucking Mantis Lords without any help from your useless ass! You can fuck off with that language policing!" They shouted.

"We do not care what you say in you privacy, but you shall not speak to us in such an uncouth manner, we are a king and will not accept being called names using such unrefined methods!" The king was looming over Little Ghost, his voice dripping with unmistakable authority, clearly infused with his own magic thrall.

Too bad for him, Ghost wasn't the type to listen to authority, "FUCK OFF! You don't control me, you're not my teacher, you're not my dad!"

Oh, if Ghost could only understand what emotion flashed across the king's eyes at these words, as it wasn't the expected anger, then maybe Ghost would feel less off.

He muttered something vague at himself that Ghost couldn't quite understand, though they distinctly caught the words "like" and "sister" from it.

Strange, they didn't think the king was the type to have a sister, maybe he had a spouse of some sort who had a sister? Either way, there was a female probably bug out there who the king knew that liked cussing when emotional just as much as Ghost it seemed.

They decided not to dwell on it and continue into the dark tunnels, stumbling a few steps forward before collapsing onto their face again, still to damaged to move far.

They laid on the ground, needing to rest for a moment. Strangely, their soul reservoir filled up. They turned around to see the outline of a wyrm standing over them.

"Did-did that work? We weren't sure it would, and we don't want to have destroyed your soul vessel," he said, a little sheepishly which surprised Ghost.

"You can fill my soul?" They asked incredulously.

"Yes, it seems so! We didn't do it earlier cause we weren't sure it wouldn't break your soul vessel, so we waited to try until now!" He nodded.

"Why did you think that would happen? How did you even do that? Why did you wait so long to test it?" They were a little miffed, thinking about how helpful it would have been in the fight against the Mantis Lords.

"Well, every time we've tried to channel soul, we've channeled essence instead," he demonstrated by once again summoning a set of soul spears, the small projectiles outlined just like before, "We didn't like the idea of filling up your reservoir with the wrong substance as it might damage it, so we held off until after the battle as it would've been much harder to beat with a shattered reservoir,"

"So, that stuff you channel is called essence?" Ghost had never heard of essence before.

"Of course! What else would it be?"

Ghost looked at the wyrm, "I don't know, literally anything, I don't know what essence is."

The Pale King cocked his head, "really! Well, essence is what minds, memories, dreams, hopes and thoughts are made of. You can clearly identify it by its pink, purple, gold and orange hues. Well, basic essence anyway, sometimes essence comes in different colors because it was channeled by a higher being, the essence we normally channel is pure white, though you can see that the apparition of us wasn't entirely channeled by our essence."

"Wait, so your not the outline I'm talking to?"

"No, at least we don't think so. We're pretty sure we're either in the charm or are the charm, but it is hard to tell, we see and hear from the eyes and ears of this apparition, but we can't seem to experience any other senses."

Ghost was interested in this, they didn't really know why it interested them, they guessed this charm was just another mystery that existed in this kingdom's corpse, and this kingdom was full of mysteries, all of them equally intriguing, but an old king trapped in a charm was especially so.

"You know, I happen to know someone who knows a thing or two about charms. Maybe she could look over this charm to find out what is going on?"

The king looked somewhat thoughtful, "yes, that sounds like a good idea," he nodded.

Ghost though for a moment, "how did you even fill my reservoir?"

"We have always been good at channeling soul, in fact, it is our main form of attacking, and the main power we use to get things done. It seems to have diminished in this form, any time we try to channel a lot of soul, we don't have a lot of access to our reservoir and thus can't channel enough, muscle memory makes us accidentally channel essence instead, as we seem to have a lot of access to that, but a little channeling seems to work perfectly fine, though we don't know what the limits are yet, we'll need to test some more of that."

Little Ghost nodded at this. Suddenly, this king has gotten a lot more useful.

They decided that they should probably use the soul they have gotten, so they focused and healed themself. Once they were fully healed, they stood up and started down to dark tunnels.

"You know, we never asked, what is your purpose for coming to our kingdom?" The king asked them.

"I'm a traveler, I came here out of curiosity. An entire kingdom stretching underground, waiting to be explored! Who could resist the temptation! The compulsion! I just one day realized I needed to come here, drawn here by my curiosity, I came right away! And look at all the mysteries just waiting to be solved!" Little Ghost was excited! Everything they had seen, verdant caverns, caves of fungi, fierce warriors, winding routes, ancient shaman mystical grounds, giant lakes of acid, everything was interesting! So many mysteries! "It seems this charm debacle could be another one to explore and understand! I can't fucking wait to dive in!"

They ran down the tunnel, what little light from Mantis Village fading away as the silken caves twisted and turned.

"We know you're excited about exploring, but maybe you should watch were you're going? Deepnest can be pretty intense and there isn't anything interesting down there!" The king shouted from where Ghost had left him.

"You don't control me! And stop fucking trying!" They barked back.

They were just examining some interesting looking bioluminescent flora when suddenly, a bright pale flash appeared and The Pale King appeared next to them, before stumbling and falling on his face, arms flailing.

"Woah, sorry!" Ghost called out, flinching backwards when he appeared.

"It's fine! It seems you got out of some sort of rage and we were forcibly teleported here," he said, getting up off the ground.

"Oof, sorry," They said again.

The king was just unnecessarily wiping off nonexistent dirt from his robes when a screech broke the silence. A small, armored creature with four eyes, two mandibles and too many tiny little legs rose from the ground. Ghost drew their nail getting ready for battle.

The little creature had a subtle orange tint to it, usual for the bugs of Hallownest, always affected by the plague that permeated the caverns. The mantises were an exception, of course, and Ghost had always felt a bit bad about attacking them, but they did slice first. 

Ghost dashed into battle, moving their hand around to line up the tip of their long broken nail to stab the beast right in the face. Orange gunk spewed everywhere as the being fell.

Easy, laughably so. They were a little disappointed, the king's talk about Deepnest being intense had made them ready for a challenge. Oh well, they should still learn about the little creature.

They rummaged around in their satchel, after safely stowing their nail in the sheath they attached to their charm belt, and pulled out a journal that had been given to them by some strange looking fella who called himself The Hunter. They hurriedly flipped through the pages, finding a sketch that matched the creature they just fought. A Dirtcarver, eh? Fitting name, they burrowed through to ground to surprise prey, according to The Hunter.

It was only when Ghost had closed the Hunter's Journal that they noticed something was up with their acquaintance.

The Pale King was standing over the dead dirtcaver, a look of absolute horror in his eyes. This expression wasn't like his others. All his other facial expressions felt like they implied emotion, as a diplomat would would imply a threat or secondary meaning in their words as a way to not cause war, hiding the truth in subtext. No, this absolute fear was plainly written on the king's face.

"You... you good?" Little Ghost didn't know what else to say, but their voice seemed to snap him out of his silent horror.

And drop him into a vocal one.

"No, nonono, no no, NO! It's back? Why must it be back? I spent so much to get rid of it just for it to be back? Why, oh why? Why must I be tortured this way?" He was pacing the tunnel back and forth, "WHY? I DID SO MUCH, TRIED SO HARD, SACRIFICED SO MANY JUST FOR TO HAVE NOT WORKED! WHY? WHY! WHY MUST YOU ALWAYS FIND A WAY TO RUIN ME! WHY!"

He fell to his knees, sobs outlined in essence running down his face, "why?" His voice was much weaker now, even if it had always been quiet, it was still always strong, "why... after everything... everything I'd sacrificed... everything I'd... everything I'd done... every mistake... why? WHY! WHY DID IT ALL HAVE TO BE FOR NOTHING! AFTER EVERYTHING I'D DONE!"

He stared at the floor, "after... everything... everything I'd done... every... crime... I committed... it was all pointless? It was all just some cruel joke the world had played on me when I looked for a prosperous future? Or was it some stupid trick I played on myself when I convinced myself that it would work?"

Little Ghost had no idea what to do, so they just stood there awkwardly as he continued on.

"It should of lasted eternal... Hallownest was supposed to last eternal..." he curled up into a ball on the floor.

Ah, so that was what was happening. Little Ghost was watching as The Pale King, The King of Hallownest, had learned that Hallownest had fallen.

And they had no idea what to do.

"Umm... look I don't know what to say, but-"

"Go away vessel, this has nothing to do with" he mumbled.

"I - um... ok - wait! 'Vessel'?"

The Pale King snapped upwards, tears still streaking down his face, "heheh, um..."

"Why did you call me 'vessel'?" Ghost asked.

The king sprang up off the floor, "vessel! Vessel? Why would I have called you vessel? No no I totally just called you, um, vassal! Yes, definitely 'vassal' it was a mistake that I, um, made because as a king I would call people 'vassal' all the time! I have no reason to have called you 'vessel' you just heard me wrong!"

"Yes, totally convincing..." Ghost rolled their eyes, imperceptible to the king before them, "but really, why did you call me 'vessel'?"

"What? Nooo... I told you! I called you 'vassal', honest mistake on my part, being a king and all, and you heard wrong! It's understandable really, 'vassal' 'vessel' they sound the same!"

"Not with your accent, they don't, I know what I heard!"

"Well, this reminds me, I, um, never got your name! What is your name, if it's not vassal or vessel?"

"It's Little Ghost, just Ghost if that is too long for you, but that's not the point!"

"Well, 'just Ghost' glad to meet ya! Because of course this is the first time I met ya! Mmmm hmmmm, definitely!" He was fidgeting with his cloak, "it's not that this is important anyway, I don't know why you're so hung up on this!"

"If it's not important, then why did it cause you to break use of the royal 'we'?"

He made a sound like than of a Yormp from the kingdom of Redscale being deflated.

"You are acting weirder and weirder by the minute..."

"What? pfff, noooo... um..." he paused, looking a Ghost, "...can we not talk about this?"

Direct, classy, you don't see people who don't want to talk about something straight up ask you to stop prodding them for answers that often. Ghost had to give it to him, The Pale King was being direct.

"Fine..." he seemed to relax at this, "for now. I'm only letting you off the hook because you just broke down into tears a few moments ago. I'll start asking you again later," the king tensed up again.

".~.~.oK~.~.." he half-sang wearily.

The two continued down into the tunnels. Ghost really didn't know what to think. Should they be surprised that a magical god king has some secrets? No. Were they anyways? Yes. Probably because they showed up so soon, most stories wait until to middle to dramatically hint at the secrets in the mysterious character's tragic backstory. Well, real life isn't a story, they supposed.

"You know, Deepnest really isn't the sort of place you should explore with a broken nail," The Pale King started after Ghost had purchased a map from Cornifer, the two had agreed that the king shouldn't talk to Ghost in front of other people as Ghost can respond to him without looking weird.

Ghost rolled their eyes, not that the king could see it beneath their mask, all kings were the same, insisting that their right all the time.

"Just saying, you should get that nail repaired, if there is... anyone... left... to repair it."

"There is, a fellow traveler who I meet down in these ruins every now and then told me about a nailsmith in the ruins of the old capital city," Quirrel was a nice pill bug, always giving Little Ghost tips whenever they met.

The king seemed to be disheartened by these words, "yes, yes, we should leave these wretched caverns and go to the capital city."

Ghost nodded, and the two turned around back to Mantis Village.

Chapter Text

To The Pale King's dismay, the Queen's Station, in which the little vessel - Ghost, their name was Ghost, he was going to have to remember that, he has no room for another slip up - had decided to take a break, had fallen into ruins.

This grand station, built in the name of his beloved root, was meant to stand as a testament to Hallownest's reach and greatness. And yet, here it was, overgrown and in ruins.

Ghost had brought him down to the only stagway that was still clear, the others had been overgrown with thorns or had caved in before getting inhabited by some long necked bug. If the room hadn't been scuffed, covered with dust, and reclaimed by nature, then maybe, just maybe, The Pale King could pretend that Hallownest was in its prime, if only for a fleeting moment. 

That fleeting moment of remembrance taunted him, an unobtainable echo of bygone times. Just close enough for him to see, but not grab, not that he could grab anything in this form. 

He didn't want to be here.

But, this was the closest bench they knew of when the lumiflies started to sleep, so it was where the vessel went to rest for the artificial night. 

He did have some questions, though, as the vessel settled down on the bench, "Do you even need to sleep?"

The vessel looked confused, "What kind of question is that? Of course I need to sleep! What bug out there doesn't need to sleep?"

He was just about to remark that The Pure Vessel never slept but caught himself. They, off course, didn't know about that. No, this wasn't a vessel, a lone child, cursed at their own father's hand, this was a foreign traveler, an explorer from distant lands who knew nothing of their terrible family history. They weren't his child. They were just Little Ghost. The Pale King needed to act like it or else he would might accidentally reveal his crimes to them.

"It's just, that, you know, not many foreign bugs come to Hallownest, so, we don't know much about them, and we've never seen a bug like you before," good save.

The vessel- er Ghost - gave him this look that said, you really are THAT sheltered? Better to be thought ignorant of the outside world than let slip his atrocities.

The vessel looked down at their charm belt and made a move to take off-

"Can you please keep the charm on?"

They looked at him, "Why? Shouldn't you rest?"

"Yes, but we can rest out here, and besides, we've been sleeping cooped up in that charm for who knows how long, we aren't inclined to sleeping just yet. And it would be a good idea for us to keep watch."

The ves- Ghost shook their head, "nothing comes down here, we don't need to keep watch. And every bug needs rest."

"We can manage one night, and you never know, that infection is unpredictable, and she might've seen us enter this place."

"I get that, but... you've had a long day, and I think you should..."

Didn't they get that that was the reason why he didn't want to sleep? He needed time to think.

"... wait 'she might've seen us'?"

"Oh, of course. You wouldn't know... wait till morning. You need rest."

The v- Ghost gave him this look of absolute incredulity at this, but laid down on the bench to sleep.

Or well, he guessed that they slept. He couldn't see their eyes below their mask, but their breathing slowed as a normal bug would when sleeping.

A part of him, the part with insatiable curiosity, wanted to investigate the sleeping vessel. The Pure Vessel never slept, yet this one talked about needing to sleep. There had to be a reason for the difference. Maybe it's because sleeping was a thing bugs did to rest their minds and The Pure Vessel didn't have one? But if it didn't have one, if it was truly pure, then how did the infection return? The Pale King realized that his Pure Vessel might of been horribly sleep deprived. No wonder it fell to The Radiance, with how much it must've been dreaming after it finally got to sleep for the first time.

The other part of him, the one that felt guilty for ever making the vessels in the first place, screamed at him that he should abandon the idea of caring about vessels entirely. He had no need of vessels anymore, he should probably just forget about vessels. They can't help now.

They couldn't help back then either.

Hallownest has fallen anyway. This stagway was in ruins. All the stagways were in ruins. All of Hallownest was in ruins.

All of Hallownest was in ruins.

All of Hallownest was in ruins.

All of Hallownest...

...was in ruins.

He wanted to SCREAM!

He wanted to CRY!

He wanted to yell to the heavens, to any other higher being who was willing to hear him.

His kingdom had fallen, despite the sacrifices he made. His Hallownest was in ruins, despite the crimes he committed. Despite the atrocities, despite the deaths, despite the BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS, there was water dripping from ceiling, creating a puddle on the ground when any mender bug would of patched it up long ago had his kingdom been in its prime, and he was so thoroughly not in a place to fix it that he didn't even cast a reflection in the water that pooled at his incorporeal feat.

The only reason he didn't shout out to with the entire force of a dying kingdom, scream out all his emotions for all the wastes to hear, was the little vessel sleeping peacefully on the bench naught 10 feet away. He had no want to wake them, so he settled for crying silent tears outlined in essence.

He didn't know how long he sat there, shedding tears that weren't even real enough for him to taste when they entered his equally not real mouth, but when he was done the silence that permeated the dark told him it was well into the night.

He decided to get up an actually set watch. Besides, he needed to consider his next move, not cry like a baby.

When the lumiflies started to awaken in the morning, all evidence of his midnight sorrow had been long since wipped away. 

The vessel stirred, waking groggily from their, hopefully, peaceful slumber.

"How was your night, little wanderer?" The Pale King asked.

"Fine, I had a confusing dream in which I stabbed a tiktik and it turned into a quiloph from the kingdom of Pendernest before transforming into a giant platter of asorted foods from the kingdom of Mendildeep. Other than that, it was pleasant enough. How 'bout you?" They were rummaging in their satchel, probably either looking for the map he'd seen them carry or a morning meal (if vessels even needed food, The Pure Vessel sustained itself on soul alone).

The Pale King swallowed, "it was good," he lied.

Chapter Text

First stop, Dirtmouth.

Little Ghost and visage of The Pale King stepped off the back of Leidyn, The Last Stag, and into the station at Dirtmouth. It was small, gloomy, ruined, cold, dark and... home. Dirtmouth was the first place where Ghost had gone without some cranky higher being or stuck up king telling them off for being there. No, all that was in Dirtmouth was a lonely elder, a married couple that were happy together, even if the wife was left alone most the time, a fly who was a shady business bug but didn't lie about what his products did, only overcharging for them, and a shy beetle who was nice enough, even if she had some, interesting, writing preferences. Dirtmouth was small, gloomy, nothing more than a shadow of glory that travellers passed through without a second thought before diving into the caverns below. Yet it was humble, welcoming, and home.

Now, Ghost didn't miss the irony of complaining about stuck up kings while being followed by a stuck up king, but this king was at their mercy. Normally, it was the other way around, the kings would have the power and followers to kick out Ghost, usually because they were a vagabond, or a foreigner of an unknown species, or just a straight up trouble maker, or void that one time. Every now and then, Ghost would find a sympathetic bug who they would befriend, a caravan of fellow travelers looking for a better life after their home was destroyed in a volcano, a sneaky rogue with a tragic past from which he was running from, an overly friendly local guide who was praying for his daughter to survive the war, an alchemist chastised for heresy against the local higher being, a down on her luck gardener who was framed for murder, a traveling nailmaster looking to find adventure after the death of her husband, but none of them stuck around for long. Eventually, a caravan must find its way home, a rogue must face his past, a guide stays a guide and doesn't leave home - especially when his daughter returns from the war - no matter how much he is grateful to them for saving her, an alchemist leaves for a place where they are appreciated and leaves them behind, a gardener must be pardoned, a nailmaster finds a pupil willing to put up with her naivete, and friends must leave or be left behind.

Most the time, they were hated, ostracized and exiled. Now, it was different. Sure, they still faced hatred, spiders in a red dress looking to stop them from doing "what you'd try to do," husks infected by a strange light, xenophobic mantises, egotistical warriors with wooden nails and ants with a stick up his ass looking for a fight, but they had friends, a cicada warrior, a pill bug traveler, a miner who liked to sing, a beetle who, well, they weren't going to think about that, an elder, a fly shop keep, a slug selling charms, a snail working the mounds, a termite selling fragile charms, a mosquito selling cartography supplies and her husband selling maps. They hadn't been run out yet, and the local higher being/king hadn't yelled at them to leave, rounded up a mob, casted spells and curses on them, or been an asshole towards them. He mostly was an asshole to the Mantis Lords and had some grumbling about the quality of Leidyn's ride. Still, better than the king who tried to execute them for bowing to him incorrectly.

Ghost ran towards the rusty lift, not waiting for the real ghost behind them to catch up, and rose from the underground level to the upper floor without the king. They left the station building, the wyrm getting teleported unceremoniously by their side.

"I still don't understand why we had to take the rocky, jostling option when we were right next to the city entrance earlier?" The Pale King was very annoyed that Ghost had errands.

"I have somethings I want to do. Besides, you agreed that it would be a good idea to talk to a charm expert," they exasperatedly explained, again, in a whisper as not to alarm the Elderbug by the bench. It would look strange for them to talk to no one as though someone was there.

The two walked over to the bench, The Pale King clearly holding back whatever response he had as he wasn't supposed to talk to Ghost when in front of other people as Ghost could not respond, sitting down on the bench with a sigh. Ghost sat down too, whispering in their associate's ear.

"I'm going to have to take you off. I want to ask the shopkeeper I bought the charm from some questions about it."

He nodded at this, and suddenly with a flash of pale purple and pink light, he disappeared.

"You can enter and exit whenever you want?" They hissed.

The charm shimmered in response. Why hadn't he done this instead of coming with on the stag? Ghost had to endure a stag ride full of complaints about rocking from this bitch when he could of just pooffed into his little home whenever. Unlucky that Ghost couldn't yell at him, what with Elderbug right there.

Ghost sighed, took off the free charm and slipped it into their satchel before setting off for Sly's shop. The shop was small, cluttered, dusty, musty, crusty and old. Like every house in Dirtmouth. It was also surprisingly cozy, like all the rest of Dirtmouth. Sly was at the counter, counting geo, but looked up when Ghost entered the room.

"Ah, Ghost! My most prolific customer! What brings you to my shop this time? Here to purchase some more supplies? Rope? A claw pick? Something to read? Ah! Maybe you finally saved up for the lumifly lantern! I know you were interested in it~" He said it with a grin on his face.

"No, actually, I would like to ask about a previous purchase," Ghost rummaged around in their satchel, pulling out the charm.

Sly frowned, "Are you still hung up on that? I told you before you bought it that it was powerless, and you know that I don't take refunds."

Ghost shook their head, "I just want to know what you know about this charm."

"Well, I told you pretty much everything I know. It doesn't seem to do anything when I put it on, it costs 5 notches and a guy calling himself "Relic Seeker" said it was likely a high ranking knight/noble/official's seal to show their status."

"Yes but where did you find it?"

"I told you, I found it in the ruins of the palace."

"Where specifically? What room? Was it on a shelf, in a chest, or just on a floor?"

"Well, there isn't really a 'palace ruins', actually. It was just a broken down gate, the rest of the palace having been ruined and eroded away with so much time that you would think it just disappeared! I found the thing next to a corpse."

"Can you describe it?"

"Well, it was wearing armor-"

"No no, the charm!"

"You want me to describe the charm you are currently holding?" 

"Yes! How did it feel when you found it and picked it up?"

Sly looked completely dumbfounded, "...how, did... how did it feel?"

"YES!" Ghost was getting impatient with this.

"I dunno, like a normal charm?"

Ghost gave an annoyed hiss.

"Um... I was exhausted and disappointed to have come all the way down to find that there was no palace to get fancy goods to sell from. I saw the corpse on the ground and decided to check it out to see if there was anything of worth there. When I realized it was a corpse, I decided not to take it. There was this darkness that I investigated, it was so cold it burned my hand when I touched it. I didn't know what to do, my hand was becoming frostbit and I didn't even get a high priced product for my trouble. That's when I found the charm to the side. It was completely untouched by the caustic darkness it had lied so close to and looked fancy, so I took it thinking about what I might be able to sell it for. I tried it on at the nearest bench when I figured out it was a charm, tried to do so much with it but it did nothing. I found the Relic Seeker in the ruins of the old capital and asked him about it. He told me it was likely a status symbol for some high ranking person from Hallownest's past, and that it likely was powerless as purely cosmetic charms are common in Hallownest. I was still making my way back to Dirtmouth, my hand was so cold it felt like it my fall off. I was tired and cold, falling asleep as this burning warmth entered my body in the crystal peaks. Next thing I know, you woke me up and I was in a house in the crossroads."

Ghost sighed, so Sly knew nothing important, felt nothing of the familiarity that Ghost did, thought nothing of the charm.

"Thank you for your time, Sly," Ghost was about to leave when I thought crossed their mind, "How much was that lumifly lantern again?"

Next stop, travel.

Ghost had reapplied The Pale King's charm and headed down the Forgotten Crossroads. There, they learned from the king that he entered the charm by sleeping, and exited the charm by waking up. They also learned a lot of other things.

"Is this a tiktik? Oh, we like tiktiks! They taste great, their meat lasts long without much preservation, and holds a great amount of nutrients! With how common they are, they were a staple meat of Hallownest's cuisine. Of course, they weren't as fancy as oblobbles or fungoons, or dirtcarvers on the rare occasion they were brought to the kingdom. But they were quite good anyway, definitely better than crawlids. Crawlid meat is sour and tuff and spoils soon after the bug is killed. I was so disappointed when there was a crawlid infestation in the palace and we only had increasingly salty crawlid meat to eat for months, I swear, the only reason we ran out of the stuff was because it all went bad, I don't want to eat a crawlid again for the rest of my life..."

"I'll be sure to remember that should you need to eat," Ghost replied, curtly, not wanting to hear this king's voice again for the rest of their life. Ramblings like this were too common on the trip, and he seemed to get so carried away that he forgot to use the royal 'we'. They swerved around a bunch of husks, pogoing off their head over and over again before launching a vengeful spirit to wipe them out. There was only one crawlid that remained, which Ghost promptly stabbed.

The Pale King frowned, "We don't think you could eat these, they're too infected. Besides, we don't think we can eat in this form anyways. Nor do we think we need to, but we do miss it. The taste of bread made from Dirtmouth, and herbs from Greenpath and Queen's Garden, especially the gardens, they tasted great and stayed fresh for a long time, always being able to make me perk up when brewed into my tea, that had to be-" Suddenly, the world sounded as though Ghost had dunked their head underwater, the sound muffling around them. They felt slightly lightheaded when sound came back soon after, with a residual ringing in their ears, the king carrying on like nothing happened, "-'s doing, she was always great with gardening, using her magic to spice up her plants and brighten up her gardens."

Ghost shook their head, what just happened? Why did that happen? Why was the king acting like nothing was wrong? Was this a void thing? Were they imagining things? They stabbed some infected husks to clear their mind. What ever just happened, it clearly didn't affect the king, for he was still jabbering on.

"She was always nice, sweet and caring. She would stay calm and comfort me when it became too much. She was loving and good hearted, and I... I took advantage of that. After the sealing, it became too much for her and she left for her gardens. The palace never felt right without her in it, unnaturally empty and lifeless... I miss her."

Oof, Ghost was not expecting to have The Pale King to suddenly pour his heart out. They could only assume he was talking about the queen, he did mention that the herbs she grew in Queen's Garden were great, after all.

"She... must of ment a... not - no - lot to you?" damn it Ghost, why do you have to suck at comforting other people, always stuttering and tripping over your words? Why do you care? It's not like you know him well enough to care for him. 

But in that moment, it felt as if they were trying to comfort a distraught family member. They stabbed two husks before taking a moment to focus soul.

The Pale King snapped up from his ramblings, "we are sorry, we got lost in old memories. You shouldn't of heard that, that was private," he seemed a little mad at this, though it's not like it's Ghost's fault that he decided to ramble on about his dead wife in front of a stranger.

The journey was oddly quiet for a while, nothing but the swing of a nail or the shriek of a spell to break the quiet. Ghost decided to break the tension.

"So are you going to explain what happened and who this mysterious 'she' is?"

He returned to the charm right then and there.

Next stop, Charm Lover Salubra.

When Ghost got there, they once again took off the charm. The Pale King was still hiding in the charm, so they took it off with no issues and entered the store.

Salubra's shop was small, deep into the crossroads and had a nice purple haze about it from all the incense she burned with a big bench outside. The inside was cluttered with books and candles and statuettes, but mostly charms. Charm upon charms, spanning every nook, cranny and open countertop you could see. Salubra herself was a big pink slug who adorned herself with beeds and pearls and charms of her own. While she had many charms, only a few of the ones for sale had powers, the rest being purely cosmetic. She also sold notches to customers, but only if they had enough charms.

Ghost wasn't hear to purchase charms though.

"Why hello dearie~ Glad to see my most dashing customer return here. The villagers must be so jealous that I have such a charming individual being a regular at my shop. What would you like to purchase today?"

"I actually would like to ask a few questions about a charm I came across. It's a strange little thing, purchased it from a shopkeeper back in Dirtmouth, he said that it had no use and costed 5 notches, but for me it costs none. He also claimed it powerless, but I find it not to be so. You seem to be the charm expert, so could you help me out?" They said, showing her the charm.

She took the charm from their hand and examined it closely, "now, charms that change notches are not unheard of. They are rare, indeed, but not unheard of. They were made to be used by specific people who met a specific requirement, and not others. A charm made by a gang as a way to identify to members would only work for members. A charm given to premium club members that only works for them. A charm that will not work for one student made by their bullies. This charm might have a specific requirement for it to lower its notches that you met, or maybe the shopkeeper had a specific requirement that made it not work."

Ghost thought about this. What requirement would they have met for this charm to work? Maybe it didn't work for flies, or scam artists, or shopkeepers. Maybe it works only for foreigners. Maybe it works only for void.

"Clearly, what that requirement is, it doesn't apply for me, as the notches are showing 5, not 0 in my hands. As for the power problem, it depends on what the power is."

If Ghost had a lip, they would have bit it. They couldn't just say yep it summons an apparition of the old king, so a little half lie, "It gives me soul."

"Oohahoooo, soul you say? Well, if your shopkeeper doesn't have a soul vessel then he can't gather soul in the first place, so a charm that gives soul would be useless to him. I have a vessel of my own, may I try it on?"

Ghost nodded.

Salubra put the charm on, looked around, checked her vessel and was disappointed to not see soul filling up.

"Hmm, it doesn't seem to work for me."

Ghost waited a few moments, when she made no reaction to anything happening, they had to assume the same, "do charms with requirements for notches sometimes also have requirements for power?"

"Mmhhmmm, I would normally say no, as a normal carved charm doesn't normally work like that. But this is clearly not a carved charm."

"Oh?"

"Let me share a little secret with you, my most dashing customer," Salubra leaned in close to Ghost, it made them a little uncomfortable, "Not all charms are carved by bugs for a purpose. Some charms, though it is rare, can be made out of the wish of a dying bug. I look at this charm you have here and I do not recognize the material it is made of. So, I come to the conclusion that that is what it is made of," she drew back, plucked the charm off her headband, and gave it back to Ghost.

Ghost hesitantly put the charm in their satchel before scampering out the shop. 

They sat on the bench, both wanting and not wanting to put on the king's charm. Their head was spinning. Was this charm made from the wish of a dying bug? A dying king? What was his wish then? That sounds very personal and Ghost has already heard too much personal stuff from the king. Wait! Does the king even know he is dead? He didn't know that Hallownest had fallen, and he certainly didn't act like he thought he had died.

Sitting there, Ghost hesitantly put back on the charm.

Last location, Leg Eater.

Ghost was climbing down through the fungal wastes, the spores irritating the void within. They made their way down the cavern, the king's apparition following them down, to the closest bench to the upper entrance in the wastes, which was inside a cave to the side of a ledge.

Inside the the hovel was a blind termite sitting alone. Leg Eater, which was his name, had made some charms himself, though they were very fragile and broke when Ghost released their shade. Ghost had, indeed, released their shade many times when fighting the Mantis Lords, and needed to get fragile strength fixed. They also thought that getting some insight from the only bug they knew made charms himself would be a good idea.

"Eeeauuggh! You broke it! I gave that charm as a gift, and you broke it! Clumsy little fool... nasty. Apologize, ask me nicely, and I'll fix it for you. Give me geo and I'll fix it for you."

Ghost gave the Leg Eater some geo and the fragile strength. After a moment, Leg Eater gave the repaired charm back to Ghost.

"Can I ask you for help?" Ghost looked at the termite.

"What do you want? Don't try anything, don't ask for any debt," Leg Eater responded eerily.

"What do you know about charms?" Ghost asked.

"Oh, want to know my secrets, do you? Don't you try anything, don't you go stealing them, I'll steal them back. If you wrong me, you'll be sorry."

Welp, this was going nowhere and the king was making some very strange distressed wyrm noises that were not pleasant while showing visible signs of discomfort with the termite, so Ghost dashed out of there quickly, The Pale King not far behind.

The two set off for the ruins of the capital city, stabbing any poor unfortunate shrumal to get in their way.

On the way, Ghost posited their usual question, "So, are you going to explain who 'she' is?"

The Pale King returned to his charm.

Chapter Text

As Little Ghost entered the ruins of the capital, they were filled with a sense of awe and wonder. The ruins were old and run down, but still held echoes of their old grandeur. The tall stone entrance had been eroded with time, but still looked impressive, even in their decay. The intricate patterns and ornate carvings were worn, but still visible if you looked.

The entrance contained an enormous gate, locking Ghost out from the rest of the kingdom's long dead heart, with a statue to their left, so well designed with each small detail delicately carved into it that it took them no time in recognizing it. It was that False Knight that they fought, though it probably was meant to be whoever the maggot stole the armor from, not the False Knight himself.

With the gate closed, Ghost could not enter on their own, so looked down at the pale charm still attached to their belt, the bastard king still hiding inside.

“Get out here, I'm at the entrance and if you don't help me get into the capital then I swear I-” They hissed, not really knowing what threat to lay on the coward who'd been hiding since their last attempt at clawing the information of who this mysterious ‘she’ is from him. He was incorporeal, so there wasn't anything they could do to him. Plus, he was already dead (probably) though it wasn't like they had told him that yet.

The charm shone, flashing its usual bright light of purple, pink and gold hues, leaving behind its usual mist. And there was the king, doubled over in his usual coughing fit. Ghost would've thought, with how often this bastard hid inside his charm, and with how often Ghost had to draw him out of it, that he would have gotten used to it by now. But no, the idiot who avoided answering questions like the plague coughed like he had the very plague he was avoiding every time he made his smoke filled entrance.

“Well? What do I have to do to enter?” Ghost tapped their foot impatiently on the ground.

“What did we ever do to make you so annoyed with us?” was the king's response as he stood up and regained his royal posture, clearly trying to brush off the embarrassment from coughing his nonexistent lungs out and failing miserably.

“Well, I dunno. I'm pretty sure you promised to explain to me something and have yet to do so, but I'll wait for now. Can't have you hiding away when I need you to help me enter the capital.”

The king sighed, “You see that statue there?” 

Ghost nodded and turned to the statue. It was extremely well crafted, made with love and care that etched itself clearly into the design. Words of thanks to the figure were carved into the plinth in Hallownest's standard language, along with another language they didn't recognize, but could assume from how common it was that it was a more local language to capital itself. Along with what were hundreds of languages, some of which Ghost couldn't recognize, most of which Ghost couldn't read, that had been carved and painted onto the wall behind the statue. Of those they recognized, they were all foreign to Hallownest. Of those they could read, they all spoke of travelers, scavengers, warriors, explorers and historians from far off places who had come to the kingdom's heart, drawn by whatever it was they sought within, riches, glory, adventure, curiosity, truths, etc. The most recent one they found was a little inscription made in the standard tongue of Hallownest, talking about adventure and curiosity, and signed off as Quirrel. Ghost was excited at the thought of meeting their friend again.

In their intense analysis of the statue, they had forgotten about their acquaintance, who they only now realised was scowling at the generations of travelers' work of collective art. “Vandals,” he muttered, “Do you have the City's Crest on hand?”

Ghost rummaged around their satchel, pulling out an intricately carved bit of shell, magenta with a metal ornament on it, and held it up to the king for him to see.

“Good, you see this slot here?” he pointed at a socket between the statue's hands, “Just slip the City Crest into it to open the great gate.”

Ghost nodded at this, taking the crest and inserting it into the recess. It fit perfectly in the figure's hands.

The gate gave a heavy groan. The crumbling machinery heaving into life after what must've been centuries of disuse as it slowly lifted the massive gate up into the ceiling. It reached its peak with a creak.

The Pale King led the way through the door, Ghost falling behind to admire the elegant design of the city entrance. Even in its decay, the capital was beautiful, the architecture intricate, and the atmosphere was haunting. Even if the king was a bit of a bitch, Ghost had to give it to him, he had made a very pretty capital (Though they doubted that he designed the place himself)

As the two made their way further into the capital, the gate behind them dropped down with a BANG! The crumbling mechanisms that held it up must've finally given way, too old to hold it up much longer. The halls were cold, quiet, damp and rather gloomy, yet still held haunting echoes of their old grandeur. Ghost and the king eventually entered an open room with a large elegantly designed window overlooking the city below.

In the room was a bench, and resting on that bench was a pillbug. He had a blueish tinted shell, his underbelly was lighter than his back, and his limbs were long, dark and spindly. He had a long, thin, sharply polished nail strapped to his side, and a long, flat, teardrop-shaped hat tied atop his head with a bandanna. The hat had a crack along the flatter end in the back, with four black ovals arranged in a 2 by 2 formation near the more pointed end up front, 2 smaller ovals above the 2 bigger ovals. The hat seemed to catch the light in interesting ways that whispered a quiet melody of magic deep within. This pillbug's name was Quirrel, and Ghost was rather fond of his company.

Ghost went to sit next to their friend while the king moved to view the city out the window, probably because he couldn't talk in front of others. Quirrel acknowledged Ghost by facing the little voidling and giving them a tip of his hat.

“The capital lies before us my friend. What a sombre place it seems and one that holds the answers to many a mystery. I too have felt the pull of this place, though now I sit before it I find myself hesitant to descend. Is it fear I wonder, or something else that holds me back?” he pondered to himself.

Ghost nodded to show that they were paying attention. “What do you know about this place? I have heard many things about its glory, but I'm not sure how much can be trusted,” Ghost cast a glance over to their acquaintance, who showed no acknowledgement of their gab at his unreliability.

Quirrel nodded, “I know a bit about it, the city looks to be built into an enormous cavern, and the rain pours down from cracks in the stone above, giving it the name of the City of Tears by modern travelers. There must be a lot of water up there somewhere. I suppose, if the cave roof stayed strong this long, it should hold for us. Before I leave this Kingdom, I'd like to see where all that water comes from. What a sight it must be!” He tended to do this, going off on tangents to himself, he once said that others tend to find it annoying but far from it, Ghost found it endearing. They also tend to prefer being quiet, their voice was low, barely above a whisper, only raising it to yell, something they bitterly realised was a trait they shared with The Pale King, though they didn't talk much while that bastard liked to run his mouth whenever, and Ghost was perfectly willing to let Quirrel ramble on about whatever while they sat and listened.

Another thing Ghost liked about Quirrel is that he knew when to shut up (Unlike someone else in the room, though Quirrel wouldn't know about that) After his ramblings, the two just sat there in silence, listening to the sound of the rain against the ruined building for a time.

“Isn't this a wonderful spot for a rest? I so love the sound of the rain upon glass,” Quirrel remarked after a while. Ghost's response consisted of nothing more than nodding, having nothing to add themself.

When Ghost was done with silently sitting next to Quirrel, they got up and moved to the window to analyze the city that they were about to dive into. Looking down on the capital below, they were immediately taken by the haunting beauty of it all. The atmosphere was an eerie shadow, the buildings remembering their old glory, crying out to relive a past that never again can be, with nothing left to do but remain elegant in its decay. A somber visage of a long dissipated golden age, literally framed in tears. A city that literally mourned itself. How poetic, the travelers who came to this grave before them certainly chose the right name.

“If you look down from here, through the rain, you can just make out those twisted sentries, their husks still stuck in endless patrol. I'd be cautious around them, my short friend. Their training will not have been forgotten. This city presents some formidable foes.” Ghost flinched, in their pondering of the poetry before them, they did not see Quirrel join them by the window. He chuckled as a response

Ghost's gaze fell out the window again, they could, indeed, see the shambling husks on patrol, “I guess even after death, this kingdom's heart remembers how to beat. Should it ever get the chance, I think that one must only jump start it to get it working again. Of course, that is after you dry it off from all the rain.”

Quirrel chuckled at this, “Well, while I would like to see that, I doubt it would come in my lifetime. I'm to head off for the higher reaches of the city, would you like to join me, Ghost?”

Ghost shook their head at this, while they enjoyed Quirrel’s company, they preferred it in moderation. They traveled alone for this very reason. Sometimes, they just needed a break. Besides, they were going in opposite directions. The king said the nailsmith was in the lower parts of the city when the two were discussing plans of travel back in the Forgotten Crossroads.

“Well, I'll see you around! I'd tell you to play it safe, but if you've made it this far then you can certainly handle yourself. Despite your short stature, you've an air of strength and dark mystery about you, I'm sure you can use it well in these decayed lands,” Quirrel tipped his hat, waving goodbye to Ghost as he set off down the way.

Ghost turned back to the window after waving to Quirrel. Their gaze fell on the rain. They enjoyed the way it looked. Falling peacefully from the ceiling, its beauty was haunting, a melancholic memorial to a once great city, mourning the death of Hallownest and washing away the stains of a kingdom's fall and cleaning off the rot of death from the ruined buildings. Ghost thought they could watch it forever, and they normally didn't like sitting in one space for too long when well rested.

They turned to their acquaintance, noticing that he was staring out the window with a peculiar intensity, “You good?”

The king continued to look out the window, “The rain. Every now and then the ceiling would fall in and it would pour down, but the mender bugs would patch it up. But this rain, it most of been falling for centuries, it has started to erode the walls and penetrate the buildings which were meant to be dry. We don't like it.”

Ghost cocked their head, “The rain is what's bothering you? I would've thought it was the shambling husks that would tick you off, not the rain. I find it quite pretty.”

Ghost heard the most virile hiss they ever had the displeasure of hearing, “Pretty, pretty? You find it pretty? This rain is a sign of Hallownest's ruin, it shouldn't be here. No city could exist in constant rain, it would be uncomfortable, ruin papers, erode buildings, spoil food, and rust machines. In Hallownest's prime, keeping the capital dry was a main priority. If even a shred of the kingdom remained, the rain would not be here. The rain should not be here. It is decay manifested. And you find it pretty?”

Ghost flinched, ok, maybe they had been a little insensitive, but, surely this response was a little harsh. Maybe. Kinda. “Um, I didn't… uhh… Sorry?”

The king just growled, before staring off in silence.

Ghost didn't know what to say immediately, so they thought in silence about how to respond.

Ghost sighed, “You know, yes, the rain isn't something that would be appreciated in a still living society, but, look at it this way, Hallownest is still beautiful, even in its decay. Partially in spite of it, partially because of it. The decay gives it a new personality, and quite a fitting one. My friend Quirrel told me travelers call this place the City of Tears, the capital is mourning Hallownest's ruin. Though, should you try to rebuild, I wouldn't begrudge you for patching up the roof.”

The king looked a little less sad at this, he was still somber, but more contemplative, “I like that, there's poetry there, and I've always been a sucker for some good poetry. In fact, I'd say the universe has always been my favorite poet, it writes some great poems, in plain sight yet still hard to see. Look the right way, and you'll find something deep that really touches you. In the confusion and worry of my current situation, I forgot to look for the poetry the universe worked so hard to write. Though I will say, while well thought out and profound, this has to be my least favorite of the universe's poems.” Ghost stifled a snort, or well, the voidling equivalent of one.

And with that, the two sat and watched the rain for a while, before Ghost got bored and decided to tell the king that it was time to prepare to descend into the ruin.

The Pale King did not want to be here. In all honesty, he didn't know where he wanted to be. Everywhere in Hallownest was ruined, a painful reminder of his failure. Dirtmouth was sad and dreary, while not the worst, he guessed, he felt weird when sitting on a bench with no one able to see him except the vessel, and didn't like how easy he could see where the grand entrance to the kingdom, a walkway between the howling cliffs and crystal peaks, had crumbled into dust. And that statue on Hallownest's crown, it was just barely visible from the melancholy town's streets. Too visible, for him. Another painful reminder. He was sure that Deepnest would be too hostile and dark for him, and the Mantis Village's prosperity was mocking him. He didn't want to stay inside his charm, either. There, in that darkness that was somehow both endless and way too small, he only had his thoughts to accompany him. A most unfortunate companion to be stuck with, really. He couldn't think of anybody worse to have by his side. Well, except maybe Her. Or the troupe master. Both were unpleasant, really, but neither forced him to dwell on his regrets. His thoughts it is, then.

Yet despite not wanting to be anywhere, he especially did not want to be here. The decaying capital was a horrific reminder of his failure. This was meant to be the grandest part of the kingdom. The foundation of its glory. The best of the best. And yet, it was in ruins. Elegance and power lost to time. Washed away by the ever pouring rain.

And the worst part of it was that the vessel was right. It was strangely beautiful. The echoes of hubris and pride danced in the poem, telling tales of a tragedy that could not be avoided, of karma taking its due and the consequences of a pale fool's action paying a debt in the price of lives. Terrible, yet a solemn memory of grace and beauty was etched hauntingly into the decaying stone and mourned by the ever present downpour in a beautiful song of loss and destiny. The prose is eloquently written, the tragedy laid out in such a way that captures your attention and makes you want to see what happens next despite already knowing how the story ends. Only now, surrounded by puddles of sorrow and crumbling glory did he realize what the universe had written from the beginning.

It was always going to end like this.

And yet, as he walked through the aptly named, “City of Tears”, he realised that it clearly remembered the good old days.

He made some sort of a twisted game out of it. When the vessel entered a room, he would try to remember what was in it. Every time it was different, he felt sorrow for how much had changed. When the vessel wanted a bench to rest on, The Pale King had led it to where he remembered one being, just for it to have been blocked off by fallen debris. When the vessel had approached the nail forge, fungus from the growth had crept up along the walls. Where there once was a library, some bug calling themselves a “relic seeker” had made home, trying to piece together history long since lost, history that should've been remembered forever. Yet when things were the same as always, it sent a horrid pang of nostalgia through his heart. The nail forge was exactly where he remembered, and strangely normal on the inside. The nailsmith, despite not being someone the Pale King recognized, acted like how he remembered the old nailsmiths acting, it was as though he hadn't realized that Hallownest had fallen. The old stag station at the store rooms was right where he remembered, the bell was just as he remembered from the one time he rode on this line (oh, how he wished he had ridden it more) not a speck of rust on it.

Curse his perfect memory, curse the photographic correctness of everything he recalled from the olden times. Oh, why couldn't he just forget everything and live in ignorant bliss. Why did he have to be the personification of mind and memory, incapable of ever losing any recollection (save for how he ended up in the charm. He was still curious about that) and forced to remember that every scuff and crack didn't use to be there.

Why did he have to analyze his old memories while in the charm? because if he didn't all he would have is grief to accompany him

Why did every pang of nostalgia and pain have to hurt so much in every part of his body? Because Hallownest was all he had after they had gone extinct. Because he cared so much for his magnum opus that it crumbling just like his species hurt all the more. Because Emotions touch every part of Mind, so intertwined that both are incapable of being disconnected from the other

Why did the world have to do this to him? Because after all he'd done he deserved it

Why did… Why did he have to do this… to himself? Because that is who he is, an entitled, arrogant, unintelligent and power hungry little wyrm who no one cared for if he cried, unable to swallow his own pride and do what was needed to save his kingdom

He didn't want to think about this, so he let his mind wander to the city storerooms.

The two were walking through the storerooms to the elevator as the vessel was looking for a more conventional way in and out of the city after the door fell. They were thick with the spores of the fungal growth, having not been cleared of it for probably years. Decay clung to the structures like a child would cling to their father when scared, slowly tearing into the stone, making them all the more fragile with each passing day as grief and sorrow became the old buildings make up.

There was an old package of barrels, tightly bound by ancient chains that once suspended the shipment in the air, unable to touch the floor and spread its contents over the ground, before the vessel had knocked it down to use it as a way to climb up to the stag station. The entrance to the store rooms was in the floor, a decrepit covering rose from around it before crumbling with the inevitability of time, for its caretaker had done a poor job at maintaining it. There was a platform that crawled over a hollow storage section. Where the materials to build and upkeep a kingdom once were, nothing but regrets remained. And the old elevator, it worked, worked despite the fact it could do nothing to save Hallownest from ruin. The least it could do was also the most; carry the vessel to where they would go next so they could continue on with whatever they were trying to do. Vaguely, he wondered whether its siblings in the other parts of the city were still working as well as it.

It was a bad idea to think of the city's remains. Better distraction, conversation!

The Pale King looked to the little vessel, “What did you learn from your encounter with Salubra? You said you learned nothing new from Sly other than that he didn't have any connection to it. You said that what Salubra told you made you think that there is some requirement that you need to reach for the notches to lower and the charm to work and that what Sly said strongly implied he did not reach it. But you never told us exactly what Salubra said.”

The vessel stopped in their tracks for a moment, “Well… um…” they thought (which sent a pang through his chest) for a bit before clearly coming to a conclusion, “Well, are you gonna tell me who ‘she’ is?”

Despite the fact that he could not physically feel, a freezing chill doused his manifestation, as though he had dove into the sea of void below. “What does that have to do with this?” he said through incorporeal gritted teeth.

“Ah, finally got the guts to hear that question without running away, did ya? There's a question you won't answer me, so now there's a question I won't answer you. Seems fair enough to me.”

“You can't seriously withhold important information about our situation from us because of a petty feud!”

“I don't know. ‘She could have seen us’. Seems like ‘she's identity is important information about my situation you are withholding from me because of some impractical reluctance.” The way they said it was casual, as though this was indeed being withheld from him because he would not explain Her to them, though, there was something that made him think otherwise.

Maybe it was an undertone, or some subtle body language, or something he had made up himself, but he thought that maybe the vessel was withholding information from him for a reason more comparable to “impractical reluctance.”

The two relations (unknown by one side of the pair) descended back through the city's shadow. They had gotten there through a long decayed tower with an outline that blurred in the tears as the city mourned. The vessel had taken the upper entrance into it, (by accident but he wasn't complaining) before finding the map maker from Deepnest, Cornifer, at the top. It felt rickety, like it was on its last leg and about to fall from all the erosion made by tears and become a pile of rubble and regret. Crossing through a walkway that contained a grumpy and stuck up beetle that The Pale King had nearly mistaken for a vessel with his horns, pure white face and short stature, before seeing his mouth, and rising up to the storerooms through a room full of broken and dismayed platforms where the vessel had found a simple key, a single jewel in the melancholic rubble and decay, was what they did last.

Now, they descended back into the resealed entrance, as there was a door between it and the platform room that was locked from the platform room's side with a lever that they had opened up. Miraculously, the machine still worked. It didn't make him happy.

The vessel had a quick break on the bench they and the pillbug, Quirrel, had chatted on when the two first entered the ruins before continuing downwards further, The Pale King spiraling behind.

The vessel had acquired a wanderer's journal and was too impatient to hold onto it, so they were off to sell it to the relic seeker, Lemm, as soon as they could. The Pale King had, of course, followed. Even if he didn't like the rain that the two would have to pass through to get to the relic seeker's shop, being in the rain was no different from being in a dryish tower or a scavenger’s collection. It all was a painful reminder. He didn't want to be anywhere within this city, framed in his tears. He didn't like going to any place in it, he didn't like going in any direction.

But he especially didn't like the direction they were going in now.

The vessel, after having gained their 200 geo, decided to go downwards instead of back up.

“Why are you going down?” he asked.

The vessel shot him a glance that, despite their face being blank and emotionless, said that they thought the answer was obvious. “Because I haven't been down there yet! Who knows what could be down there, my map shows a figure beyond here, I want to check it out! Think of the wonders I have yet to see!” again with that insatiable curiosity. Like father like- well, he didn't want to finish that thought.

“But, wouldn't you want to see what's beyond the elevator?” he suggested, his voice involuntarily higher than normal, but not by much. He was a diplomat, afterall. His voice didn't betray him often, he had practiced for it not to.

“Yeah, but this is much closer. It'd be inefficient to go all the way to the elevator just to come back here after.” He snorted lightly. Inefficient. He could understand not wanting to be inefficient. Though, the desire for perfect efficiency tends to lead to ruin, he had learned that lesson from the mistakes of his fellows. The cheapest way to learn, according to the saying, but it had led to the death of his species, sooo…

The vessel plummeted downwards, The Pale King hesitantly following not far behind. The vessel was eyeing up a mechanism that required a simple key to open. It was the entrance to the waterways. Old and decrepit, he vaguely wondered whether it still worked as the vessel inserted their key. It turned in the lock before breaking with a snap. Stone grinded on itself as an ancient trap door opened. Hallownest's machines were made to last, though they had lasted much longer than he expected without upkeep.

The vessel looked down the hole like they might jump, before looking up at the doorway beyond. They then looked down at the entrance, and then back at the doorway. It was clear what was going on in their (he shuddered) mind. Down, or onwards? The explorer was conflicted about which way to go.

The Pale King had his preferences, though. “That way leads to the royal waterways. It was a sewer system, though the constant rain should have washed it out by now. It's infested by flukes, full of acid down the far end, and drains into the fungal growth." He knows better than to suggest they go down there, the explorer types do not like being told where to go. No, it would be better to explain what's down there, get them curious, and then they'll act on that curiosity.

“Hmm, it's a whole entire area?” They look up at him.

“Yes, so wide with possibilities for exploration!”

The vessel gave him a suspicious look. “You want me to go down there. Why?”

Dangit, they definitely inherited his perceptiveness.

“Well… um…” goodness, why was he so bad at being confronted? Was it because he was so used to people bending the knee? That can't be it, Lilydayn had been quite confrontational with him regularly when she disagreed with him on how to rule Hallownest. Maybe that was different. She was his wife and fellow higher being. He wasn't trying to hide anything from her when she did it. They shared the same goal. She had known him well. He had known her. But this vessel was basically a stranger to him, and was prying into his secrets. So he was reacting to them like he did during his many arguments with Herrah and Vespa and the Mantis Lords. Poorly.

“Let’s just say that there are things there that I think are… less enjoyable, to explore, than the waterways,” that was the best he could come up with.

“Less enjoyable to explore than a sewer system?” he cowered at the question. “Well, now I have to check it out!” and they dashed off to the entrance.

He followed hesitantly.

On the other side of it was more of the City of Tears. A large open plaza with water pouring down from the ceiling above unimpeded. The place was cast in an eerie light from the lumiflies flickering in their lamps, clearly about to settle down for their long awaited nap. Not a husk was shambling around the place, as though something was causing them to avoid it.

And The Pale King knew very well what it was, for it was starting at him with two empty eyes carved from stone.

It was a statue, a figure of a bug forever preserved in rock. With two oval eyes that even in a depiction had nothing behind them. It had two giant horns, one on each side of its head, and three spikes on each, so big and impressive that on many days he wondered how it managed to carry them, even the statue had its head bowed. Inaccurate, it held its head high on most days back then. (Did it still hold its head high while bond, or did it finally let it fall now that it was alone, no longer putting on a show for the expecting nobles constantly around it?) It was adorned with armor, a breastplate and two pauldrons, one on each shoulder that quite hauntingly had hooks for (hurk) chains to bind it for an eternity. A long robe flowed down its form, though the statue failed to portray just how expensive it was. (A pretty little outfit to doll up the local last hope of an entire civilization so it looked the part of a valiant hero instead of a tragic one.)

All of it was hauntingly familiar, for The Pale King knew this face better than any other bug in the kingdom would. He had raised it, afterall. He had trained it, afterall. He had killed it- no, condemned it to a fate worse than death- afterall.

He couldn't look at the statue of his sacrificed child for a moment longer, so he turned to his abandoned one. The little vessel was staring at it, expressionless face unreadable. Then, they moved to face the three statues surrounding it. They didn't depict the dreamers perfectly, in fact they didn't depict the dreamers well at all, but you knew who they were meant to be because of the masks. He had, admittedly, focused more on getting it right than the dreamers. He liked to think he made up for it by giving them a second memorial in the resting grounds.

“Wha-” the vessel started, taking a step forward before being interrupted.

A long and thin, yet deftly crafted, needle shot down from some place above, its handle wrapped in a silk bandage, with silken string threaded through the back trailing behind. A figure came fast behind it, pulled along by the force of the needle she clearly threw to launch herself to the floor.

And that face.

It too was terribly familiar, though this time it was in the carapace instead of carved in stone.

He fled into his charm.

Coward.

>Sleep came to him easy as drifted off into the dreamless nothing.

The comfort of the dark and silence lasted only briefly as a voice rang out, “Why did you-? YOU AGAIN!”

A moment's pause, “Why are you here, come to get your ass handed to you again?”

A quick break, “Don't you shush me…”

Another bit of silence, “Yeah, you did.”

A short pause, “What truth?”

More silence where The Gendered Child clearly was giving some retort, “You don't get to talk about manners to me, miss, you met me and instead of asking for my name you tried to stab me with a needle!”

A longer pause, “What voids?”

A much longer stretch of silence, “Sacrifice!?” If he had a stomach, it would have dropped.

A much longer stretch of silence.

“Wait! What do you mean ‘the grave in ash’? What mark? What do you mean by one like me? There are bugs out there like me? You can't just drop that in leave! If you suddenly want to help you can't be that vague! I need an explanation!”

The voice paused, just long enough to take a breath, “HORNET! Get your needle swinging, spider hissing, silk flaring ass back here you misnamed fuck! Why are you even named ‘Hornet’ if you're a fucking spider? Why are you such a piece of shit? Fuck!”

While the voice continued swearing up a storm, he decided it was safe to return.

He felt as though his lungs constricted, even though he had none, and when he finally could breathe his nonexistent lungs took in a deep breath of essence, sending him into a coughing fit on his hands and knees. It was always a strange feeling when he exited, so different from entering which just felt as though he fell asleep, it was as though he was expanding. He had to blink away the sickly hues the colors took, as though you've just entered the sunlight after being in pitch darkness for a while.

He stood up from the ground and looked around for the vessel.

They were staring at him with visible annoyance.

“Absolute fuckhead she is, isn't she? Fucking Hornet, always so cryptic, who named her that, anyways?”

“Her mother, actually. She wanted her to grow up to be a great warrior so she named her after the queen of The Hive,” He answered without thinking, nobles always were asking about it so much that he gave his auto response.

The vessel flinched, “You know Hornet?”

He gave an indistinct grumble at that. He knew exactly what was coming up, they were going to ask about the statue, or something that Hornet said, or who She is. He didn't want to answer, but he knew he couldn't run forever if The Gendered Child had sent the vessel on a path of some sort. Better to bite the bullet now before they learn about it through less preferable means. Of course, that didn't mean he was going to explain everything in one sitting, if he could avoid any question for the moment, he would.

The vessel turned to the statue, “Time to see what Hornet meant by a sacrifice,” they muttered almost to themself. It would be a lie to say that The Pale King didn't feel a little woozy at the thought.

He backed up from the statue as the vessel approached. Bad idea, he ended up getting teleported right next to the carved figure of the manifestation of his regrets. From the ground where he landed, he looked up at the eyes of the child he destroyed, forever depicted in stone. When he first saw it upon entering the plaza he thought they retained the emptiness that he always saw in them, but from this angle they looked sad. Maybe it was just that the rain running down its face looked like tears, or maybe he was projecting his own emotions upon it like he always used to do (what if he wasn't just projecting on it all those years ago, and had actually been reading the emotions his child was trying to hide? Since it turned out that it wasn't actually pur-) but he felt like the statue was mourning the figure it depicted.

“Memorial to The Hollow Knight,” the vessel read outloud, “In the black vault far above. Through its sacrifice Hallownest lasts eternal.”

He winced at those words, sacrifice, eternal.

What a joke.

The vessel turned to look down at The Pale King, an air of determination about them, “Well, is this something you are going to explain to me or should I not get my hopes up about?” their voice was laced with indignation.

He got up from the ground and brushed his arms off out of habit. “It will be explained,” his voice felt hollow as he spoke, he was immediately regretting this, “just after we get out of the rain.” What a lame excuse, he couldn't even feel the rain.

The vessel nodded and started moving. The two moved back into the building they entered from. As soon as they were out of the rain the vessel turned to The Pale King, “So, I'm ready to hear your explanation.”

He sighed, this was going to be tough. Instinctively he reached for where he normally stored it, but of course it wasn't there. A charm couldn't contain another charm, after all, even if it was just a half.

He looked at the room they were in. More of a tunnel than a hall, with moss and algae weeping down the side. Water dripped forlornly from the ceiling, subtle tears from the roof for the story about to be told. The hall was quiet, the sound of the rain outside was muffled. It echoed about the empty halls, too big for him. The door on the other side of the hall was far away. The air was still in the silence, not stale for it had been flowing just a few moments earlier, more as though the halls were holding a breath.

There was a slight dripping sound that failed to cut through tension, for the tension was a lake and the dripping water was just adding to it.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The vessel had begun impatiently tapping their foot on the ground.

The Pale King swallowed, guess he should just rip off the bandaid, “I am your father, Ghost”

Little Ghost just stared at The Pale King.

What?

“What?” They gasped.

“Don't make me repeat mys-” he started.

“I heard you, I just- what?” They were stunned, “I- uh, yooooouuu, you, you're my-?”

He simply nodded at this, his gaze pointed at the floor. Ghost shook their head to clear it from the shocked fuzz that had entered it.

“I- um, ok. First off, how? Second off, why?” they stammered.

The king tilted his head, “I'm going to need you to be a bit more specific.” His voice was quiet and surprisingly small.

“How do you know that you're my father? How is it even possible? I spent my entire life in the wastes, I hadn't even heard of Hallownest until a traveling nailmaster told me about it. And why, when explaining a bunch of mysteries about mysterious ‘she's and cryptic spiders and vague sacrifices do you tell me that? And why only now? Why not when we first met-” a memory flashed in their mind.

“One of them got out, oh no, one of them got out. How did one get out?”

They were brought out of it by him starting to talk again, just what was he hiding?

“Well, I know because you look just like my ch-your sibling when it was younger. Also you are very distinctly void. And you look like your numerous other s-siblings who d-died shortly after hatching. As for how it's possible,” he let out a sigh, “It has a lot to do with both of the ‘why’ questions you asked. It's a long story.

“It starts with the ‘she’ you've been asking about. She is another higher being, known to many as the Radiance, and I will not speak Her name again, lest we draw Her attention to us. She and I did not get along, so we had a fight for these lands. I won, and every bug forgot She existed. Well, She was not pleased with the notion of being forgotten, so She started the infection. A divine wrath placed upon those She perceived as abandoning Her. It spread through the dreams of bugs, they would go into a deep sleep, dream of Her bright light in orange hues, wake up with broken minds, filled to the brim with her own anger and attack the bugs around them.” He let out another sigh, “Most had no idea what the nature of the infection was, or how to stop it. Panic gripped the kingdom. I tried to use my powers to strengthen the minds of infected bugs and have them break out of it, to no avail. My beloved root tried her best to use her life powers to heal the infected, but that didn't work either. So I want you to go into what I am about to tell you next knowing that I was desperate.

"Deep beneath the kingdom, in a place called the abyss, lies the last remains of an ancient cast of bugs. These bugs worshipped the darkness itself that called that place home, a substance known as void. This darkness inevitably clashed with the great light far above it. The ancients fell, the void god died, Her territory shrunk down to the crystal peaks and resting grounds, Her only remaining followers being the moths. She lost Her physical form in the altercation, becoming confined to the dream realm where Her powers lie the strongest. Yet even in such a weakened state, I could not fight Her one on one, not in Her domain…

“Yet void could.” He looked like he was holding something extremely heavy suddenly, “At least, I thought it could. In its weakened state alone, it obviously couldn't, but if it was given the right help…” He suddenly looked right at Ghost. His eyes were visibly wet, even in this outlined form. Ghost could feel him pleading for them to understand. For them to know exactly why he did what he is about to tell them he did.

“So, me and my wife, my beloved root, we… we… We had eggs together. And I placed them into the abyss, where void creeped into them. Tainted them. Most died before hatching, most of those who didn't died after taking their first few steps out of their eggs. Those who survived long enough to do so were compelled to climb. The rest fell, save for one. When only one got to the top, I took it and left, sealing the door to the abyss behind me believing I was burying to the dead. I never knew any survived the fall.” He buried his face within his hands.

Ghost was stunned. This was… not what they were expecting. They… had a family? They had parents? They had been born… here? It didn't make sense, how would they get from this abyss to the wastes that they have known for their entire lives? How would they have forgotten an unending darkness? Darkness…

A darkness enveloped them as… something happened … it was too fuzzy, too blurry, too vague to know. Crack. The sound was distant and hazy, as though it traveled through a poorly tuned communication device. The image of a vague darkness swirled in their mind, nothing was discernible about it but the darkness, fading in and out.

They tried to focus on this wispy memory but it was trying to cup water with your hands. It leaked out of their mind so quickly, leaving only darkness.

Darkness and a crack.

Ghost was breathing heavily. No, nononononono, this could not be true. This couldn't be real. This couldn't have happened. They are a child of the wastes, the endless nothing being all that they have ever known. They couldn't have been born here.

They needed to take their mind off of it, “what happened to the one who ascended?”

The Pale King, who was too busy burying his head in his hand to notice that anything was wrong, looked up at them with sorry eyes, “I-I trained it t-to be th-the perfect c-cage for H-Her. A p-pure vessel, one w-with n-no mi-mind to think o-or be i-infected. No w-will to b-break so it would n-never give up in c-containing Her. N-no voice to cry i-it's ssssssssssUfFerInG. And then… and then…”

“You sacrificed them? They are the figure depicted in the statue, are they not?” they finished for him, curtly.

He nodded, “In my desperation, I had convinced myself there would be n-no cost too gr-gre-great. I sealed them a-away, with H-Her inside, in the hopes that Hallow-Hallownest would l-last e-e-e…” he then proceeded to break down into sobs.

Ghost just stood there. Stood there without a word to say. This was unbelievable, and yet they believed it. They had spent their entire life wondering what they were, wondering why no bug worked or looked like them. When the alchemist explained void to them, they had a small comfort knowing that they weren't some mirage that started to think. That they had an origin. Yet it added so many questions. The alchemist had told them that void did not naturally go with life. That void and soul did not mix quite right. Yet they existed. Yet they had lived. Yet they had mixed with soul well enough to channel it to heal wounds. Didn't this wyrm say that soul was his primary power? It would make sense that they could channel soul because the ability had been passed down by their father.

Their father…

Their father who abandoned them.

A spark of anger flared through them as just what he had told them sunk in. What kind of monster experiments on his own children? What kind of monster leaves his children to die? What kind of monster raises a child like a tic for slaughter? A sacrificial lumifly. What kind of monster seals his own child away to suffer under the weight of constraining a goddess and saving a kingdom from destruction while making sure they have no voice to express their pain? What kind of monster…

What kind of monster cries when he thinks about everything he's done? What kind of monster builds a statue to commemorate just how much he's lost after he gave his child up? What kind of monster has to convince himself that what he's doing is right, lest he break under the grief and sorrow. What kind of monster admits that he used his wife then cries about how much he regrets it. What kind of monster avoids answering the questions that will make him relive what he had done all over again, because it would be too much to handle and cause him to break down into tears like he has just done now.

No kind of monster, because monsters don't feel. Yet this wyrm clearly does feel, for he is no monster.

Is he a good person?

Fuck no.

What he did was undeniably wrong, yet there was something there that made it… understandable? Not in the sense that Ghost could see themself doing it, higher beings no, but more in the sense that Ghost could see why he did it. Didn't this wyrm throw a fit that his kingdom was destroyed? He clearly cared, and deeply so, and used the fact that he was saving Hallownest as a way to make his actions bearable to himself. And when he realized that it was all for nothing… well the phrase “after every atrocity, WHY! WHY DID IT NOT WORK?!” popped into Ghost’s head.

He wasn't a monster. And Ghost really didn't know what to think of that.

The Pale King had calmed down enough to stare intensely at Ghost, clearly gaging their reaction.

“I-” Ghost really had no idea what they were about to say so they were kinda glad when they were cut off.

“There, I have told you my greatest regret. My unforgivable sin. You can break the charm in half, toss me into the canals of the city, let me rot in the waterways and leave me to die. I wouldn't blame you if you did. After all this time I deserve death.”

“I'm uh… not going to do that, because first… well… I think I can understand doing terrible things out of desperation…” their mind drift off to memories of their darkest moments, stealing from whoever for food, leaving that poor grub behind so they didn't fall into that ravine, working as a mercenary as it was the only work they could find, maybe not as bad as leaving all your children to die, but certainly the idea was still there. “And secondly, you are… already dead so… you got your wish in getting what you deserved…?” Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! Ghost! How are you so bad at this?

The Pale Wyrm reeled at this, “w-what? You c-can't be s-serious! How would you know? How would you know whether or not I'm…?”

“Um… well Salubra told me that some charms are formed out of the wish of a dying bug, and that she didn't recognize the material your charm was made out of and she knew all the standard materials that charms are made from so she believed that your charm might be something like that…” fuuuuuuuuck!

The wyrm squealed and made what could only be described as ‘distressed wyrm noises’ at this.

“If it makes you feel better, this makes us equal on the ‘telling each other the things we were hiding from each other’ front?” no Ghost, that will not make him feel better.

The wyrm was hyperventilating at this point, and all Ghost could think at that was ‘oops’. Seriously, they had no idea what to do.

It took way too long for the wyrm to calm down enough that Ghost thought that they wouldn't completely ruin everything by talking. “Well… I mean, Salubra could always be wrong, couldn't she?” They hoped that this would calm him down.

“Right… Yeah… She could be wrong… Of course… It was just a hypothesis… Not fact…” He said between gasps.

His breathing started to slow overtime as Ghost just sat there awkwardly. Eventually, he was breathing at a normal speed again.

“Ok, I'm fine, I'm ok. I'm doing fine!” He seemed to shake his head, probably to clear it. Ghost did that often (was that more than a coincidence that they shared that mannerism? Could that have been passed down?) “I need to be practical about this situation. We don't have all the pieces of the puzzle, so I can't make any conclusions yet!” He seemed to be back in a more normal mood again. 

Ghost let out a sigh of relief. 

Chapter Text

Little Ghost was in the upper levels of the City of Tears, taking too many wrong turns trying to reach the elevator, their mind thoroughly occupied on something else.

“Is there anything else you haven't told me? Because I'm still finding it hard to believe that I am your child. How would I have gotten from… some… hole… and ended up in the wastes? I don't even remember this place!”

“Well, I don't know how you would've… gotten out… of there… but if you left Hallownest and entered the wastes you would've relinquished your memories of this place.” 

Well, they had heard that the wastes were ‘insidious’ before, but had never felt the effects of it, so assumed it was some old story made to scare larvae from wandering off. But, what if they had experienced the effects of the wastes? What if they just never realised it? Just how many memories might they be missing? It was eerie… If it was true. If the wyrm was allowed to hold onto the hope that he might be alive, they were allowed to hold onto the hope that their father wasn't this asshole. 

“Honestly, I don't know if you're the only vessel that… escaped… but I wouldn't be surprised if you were the only one…” He said almost a little absent-mindedly. 

“Wait!” Ghost shouted, causing the wyrm to flinch, “I know! Others did… er… leave… I saw a corpse! In Greenpath! It was where I battled Hornet! It looked just like me!” 

The wyrm gave them a stern look, “Are you sure? It wasn't just a similar looking bug?” 

“I'm sure! I saw it up close seeing as I took my mothwing cloak off it!” 

The wyrm gave them a look of concern and revulsion mixed together. 

“What?” Ghost replied, “It was just a corpse! They were already dead! I do that all the time! Not many survive the wastes as food isn't that prevalent, yet many take tools into the wastes on their excursions and those are quite useful in the hands of the living! They're dead! What were they supposed to do with it?” 

The wyrm did not look like he was convinced. 

“You're just being stuck up! Quirrel agrees with me! He said that the dead shouldn't be burdened with weapons, it's a two v one! You're just an idiot!”

“I'm sorry that you're uncivilized! Two travelers that lived in the wastes that destroy minds and memories! It makes sense that you'd have no respect for the dead!” he spat out.

“I blame bad parenting.” was Ghost's somewhat auto-response.

Oops, “Uh, bad taste joke?” they quickly replied as the wyrm froze mid step.

The rest of the quick journey back to the bench was silent. Cornifer had already left the area, probably off to map new places. The patter of rain was surprisingly loud in the awkward quiet.

Little Ghost savored the break, resting their legs after a long day. They sighed, the hum-esque sound filling the silence. 

“Where are you going next?” The question the wyrm posed seemed to break the air.

Ghost shrugged, “more exploration, I guess, gotta see every nook and cranny in this city!”

“And what about when you are done exploring the city?”

“Move on to the next area and explore some more of course! What else would I do?”

“And what,” He squinted at them, “Will you do when there is nothing left to explore in Hallownest?”

That question gave Ghost pause. What would they do when they were done exploring Hallownest? 

They normally would've just left the kingdom and moved on to the next, but this place was different. Dirtmouth was nice to them, the first place that ever felt like home. And this place was home, technically. They were born here. But, they couldn't stay here, they were an explorer, they had to visit distant lands, didn't they? They couldn't stay in one place forever, they were too curious to ever stop traveling.

But that tug, that involuntary want in their heart, to settle down here, deep beneath the wastes, it drew at them. They had never thought about settling down before, but if they were to do so, it would be here. In the quiet little town of humble survivors who cared not if you were void or foreign or a vagabond or had a trickster streak, only that you were willing to help out a bit when possible and not stab people in the streets. Ghost could do both those things well! Maybe they could live a simpler life, maybe they couldn't. Were they willing to try to find out?

They shook their head to clear it, maybe this question could be answered later.

“I don't know,” they answered truthfully.

The wyrm nodded at this, “I have been thinking about the infection,” still not using the royal we? They thought he only dropped it for the explanation, oh well.

“What about it?” they asked.

“Mostly how to stop it,” he said, sinking down to the ground beside the bench, “I'm in no state to end the infection. Not corporeal enough to pick up a rock, foresight stripped from me,” The wyrm had foresight? They guessed they should have known that, they had heard of wyrms being able to see the future before, but then again they thought that was just a myth, soooo… Well, he had apparently lost it, so it didn't really matter, did it? 

The wyrm continued, “I'm not even able to talk to anyone other than you, for all we know I could be–” he cut off, clearing his throat, “well, what I'm saying is I'm going to need help in ending the infection.”

Ah, so this is what he wants. What form would this help take, they wondered. He wouldn't ask them to take The Hollow Knight's place, they clearly were too impure for that. So what did this wyrm want them to do? Kill The Hollow Knight? That wouldn't work, that would probably just release the infection. Kill the goddess at the infection's heart? How would that be possible, gods don't tend to die. Find a way to “purify” The Hollow Knight? Is that even possible? Free The Hollow Knight? Evacuate the civilians? Find a cure for the infection? Create some sort of vaccine against it?

“What is it you are asking of me?”

The wyrm distinctly looked away from them, “I'm… not even sure myself. Without my foresight it is hard to think of a solution that would work. But I can't just sit and do nothing, can I? I can't just abandon the people I gave everything for to die, not after everything I've lost, not after everything I've done.”

How… strange of him. Is this empathy? Does he actually care for his people? Is he just trying to redeem himself in his own mind? Is he just trying to run away from his guilt? Ghost doesn't know, but the wyrm certainly seems genuine, his tone was solemn and his voice was quieter than usual.

“I won't ask you to help me defeat the infection, goodness no,” the wyrm answered Ghost's unasked question, “I simply ask for help in getting me to a point where I can stand on my own and fight the infection myself. I don't know exactly how that can happen, but I don't have anyone else to ask. Will you help me find a way to start?”

Well, he wasn't asking as much of them as Ghost thought he would. And could they let so many people die from the infection when they could even help a little? Though, they had to admit, they didn't really trust the wyrm to find a good solution to the infection. Not after learning of his last attempt. 

Not that they thought they could do any better either. In fact, Ghost thought that they wouldn't even come up with a potentially viable option. And they didn't know who else to ask to do this either, the cartographer couple and Elderbug were too content with their current life, Zote and Tiso were too arrogant and dumb, Sly and Leg Eater were too blatantly immoral, Lemm and Salubra probably wouldn't care, neither would the snail shaman or Mantis Lords, and Hornet's idea of a solution to the problem seemed to involve murdering vessels until she finds a replacement for The Hollow Knight. And unless this queen was still alive, they doubted that there was anyone better than the wyrm to find a solution. 

Bugs, he set the bar so low it was practically a tripping hazard in Deepnest, yet here everyone else was, limbo dancing with the spiders.

Ghost nodded their head. They would help this king until they met a wall where you needed more than 6 brain cells to continue.

They had already reached a wall that required more than 6 brain cells to understand.

As Little Ghost stared down at the strange tablet, they really had no idea what it meant. 

It read, “Record Aba

The mind still limits us so.

How to break past its constraints?

To attain a pure focus, is it even possible?”

Ok, what does this mean? “The mind limits us” don't these bugs worship the wyrm because he gave them a mind? Like, the wyrm is CONSTANTLY running his mouth about how his mind giving powers are what makes him SO great! (Or at least he was, he was still being unusually quiet as of late) 

“To attain a pure focus” what is a “pure focus”? Like, what does that mean?

Ghost had no idea what they got themselves into. They just wanted to explore an area marked on their map as interesting because of the way the wyrm looked at the direction with disgust, the only reason they didn't go down that way when they first saw it was because they were looking for either Cornifer or a bench (they had found both).

The area was strange, full of vials of glowing, white, goopy soul and magic wizards (scholars?) That flew and used spells to attack the little voidling. (they guessed they had a species or designation that was more official than voidling now, though they felt strange and icky if they thought of themselves as a “vessel”)

And now, Ghost was staring at some “record aba” and had no idea what that meant. 

“What in the wastes?” Ghost said absent-mindedly.

“Let me see it,” the wyrm stated, his essence outlined form moving silently closer to them.

They will never get used to the complete and utter lack of presence that the wyrm has. No sound beyond that of his voice, not footsteps, not breathing, not anything. He radiated no temperature, not warm, not cold. He had no smell and cast no reflection. He didn't shift the grass beneath his feet or cause ripples in the puddles he waded through. There was no feeling when he and Ghost made contact, in fact, the wyrm could walk right through them and Ghost would feel nothing. And Ghost couldn't feel his anything at all, not his gaze, not the feeling of someone behind them. Nothing.

It was unnerving.

Ghost moved out of the way (because it still felt emotionally weird to see a person walking through you) as the wyrm approached the tablet.

He frowned as his eyes moved across the tablet.

When he was done reading it, he sighed while putting his head in his hands and started rubbing his forehead.

“That's not a good sign, what does it mean?” Ghost asked.

“That these shi- erm… scholars disobeyed my direct orders and continued to experiment with soul as a way to protect themselves from the infection.”

“And you ordered them to not try this because…?”

The wyrm turned to face Ghost, “Because it wouldn't work and would instead deform the bugs who tried. It's really unhealthy for mortals to have extra soul injected straight into them. It's the life force of living things, too much of it causes mutations. And the only way mortals can acquire soul is by extracting it from other living beings or the recently deceased. And I know that the soul extracted from plants isn't considered “enough” for these scholars.”

Oh. Oh. Oh my… these scholars are experimenting with the life force of bugs from the still living? Sure, Ghost extracts soul from their enemies but that is the soul that is released naturally from their wounds, and they're also infected! They doubted you could get this much soul from naturally wounded bugs! And there was certainly a difference in quality between the soul they got from infected bugs and the soul they got from mantises. In fact, that didn't even use soul from infected bugs when PK could provide them with unlimited clean soul at no cost! They doubted that these scholars would…

Ghost looked around horrified. How many innocent bugs lost their lives to these twisted scholars? All for nothing? 

If they could gag they would.

But… an explorer would not be dissuaded from the promise of truths and secrets by something like unethical science.

The two continued on through this “Soul Sanctum”, stabbing any soul twister with their sharpened nail to get in their way. Some of the beings that they fought seemed to be these goopy puddles of soul infused with flesh in a gory mass of disappointment and failure. They slithered on the ground and flabbed about pathetically as Ghost's nail pierced through the gooey, pussy, slimy pile of gunk, soul and infection flinging everywhere.

The wyrm made distressed wyrm noises that sounded suspiciously like gagging. Ghost couldn't agree more. If they could puke, they would.

Eventually, the voidling and their companion reached a high room, having fought a soul warrior and acquired a charm called “spell twister” on the way.

The room was big and spacious, with an ornate feature in the center of it, consisting of a large dome with a giant spire coming from the top and smaller spikes surrounding the rim. The floor was made of glass, the viscous soul flowing within it in smooth, swirling patterns. The wall on the opposite side to the entrance was partially collapsed.

Ghost walked through the room, their footsteps making clinking sounds upon the glass, as they marveled at the elegant room. This sanctum may be immoral, but that didn't mean it wasn't as pretty as the rest of the city. In fact, it might be prettier! The greatest of con-men wear the faces of altruists they guess.

They were just examining the opulent central monument, noticing that it must have some sort of practical application as it wasn't just carved from stone but had glass panels in it containing soul on their other side, when movement caught their eye. 

A shadow was growing from the back of the room, beyond the soul container. It was floating in midair, brilliant motes of soul swarming around the silhouetted figure.

Suddenly, it started to gather huge swaths of soul around it, glowing bright before disappearing and reappearing in a flash bright white.

The being appeared in front of them, cloaked in a fancy cape pinned up with an ornate clip. A circlet of pearls utop the pointed hood on his head. His eyes were colored a mix of silky orange and milky white. His sudden appearance gave Ghost quite the shock.

“Soul Master Sullivan,” the wyrm growled, his voice low and dangerous, “I thought you'd know better, but then again, how can I expect that from someone as prideful as you.”

Ghost had to jump out the way of a blast of soul, lifting their nail to strike at the unnaturally rounded body of the Soul Master.

“Ok, so the Soul Master has many powers, including a proficient control over soul and the ability to dive on to the ground and release a shockwave of it. Be careful and avoid his attacks!” the wyrm said unprompted.

“I'll try my best!” If Ghost had teeth to grit they would.

A blast of soul caught Ghost's side, damaging their arm. If they took 6 more hits, their shell would crack and they would release their shade.

They jumped up and clung onto the side of the entrance building and fired a vengeful spirit at the Soul Master, soul blasting every which way. Their soul vessel was refilled immediately after launching the spell, the wyrm having teleported to Ghost's side to keep their supply topped up.

Ghost immediately dashed across the glass, avoiding the falling Soul Master as he dropped down from the sky, before jumping up over the shockwave. The Soul Master teleported to the other end of the room, coming straight for Ghost who jumped up above him. They pogoed on his head before landing on the floor.

They landed wrong, their leg twisting in an awkward direction. As they took a moment to stand and rebalance, they got hit in the back by a soul blast, flinging them across the room. 5 more hits and they'd lose their shade. 

The Soul Master was coming their way, encircled by 4 orbs of soul spinning around him. Looking at them closer, Ghost could see that they contained flickering infection within their cores.

“Focus! Heal!” the wyrm shouted unnecessarily, as Ghost had already focused back their health, though they couldn't fully heal in time. 6 more hits and they'd lose their shade.

Ghost avoided the blasts, stabbing the Soul Master one more time before he teleported above them and dropped down.

Ghost dashed out the way, but couldn't jump in time to avoid the shockwave. 5 more hits and they'd lose their shade.

“Be careful!” the wyrm shouted. Ghost tuned him out.

The Soul Master fired a soul blast at the voidling, who dodged and unloaded 3 of their own spells. The rounded head of the vengeful spirit crashing into the Soul Master.

Another blast was sent from the master that caught Ghost in their chest, knocking them prone. They couldn't get up in time to avoid his next dive. 3 more hits and they'd lose their shade.

The wyrm was making incomprehensible noises.

Ghost dashed the the far end of the room where the Soul Master had appeared, pogoing over him as he dashed towards them, momentum keeping him going and giving Ghost time to focus. 4 more hits and they'd lose their shade.

The Soul Master turned around at the other side of the room and started coming back. Ghost tried to get over but jumped too early and missed their pogo, taking a hit. 3 more hits and they'd lose their shade.

“Dodge! No, up! Errrr!”

Ghost was panicking. They blindly ran toward the Soul Master swinging their nail, hitting into him and taking a hit, 2 more and they'd release their shade.

“Don't do that! You need to wait! You're hurt! Heal!”

They tried to heal, but didn't have the time to gain back health before being hit by a soul blast. 1 more hit.

“No! Not now! Be patient and wait for an opening!”

They ran.

The door to leave was locked.

They were cornered, the Soul Master approaching, circled by soul orbs. Their breathing was labored, the void inside writhing in fear and desperation.

“Just go forward and move with the soul blasts!”

In their disorientation, they listened to the fiend on their shoulder after trying to ignore him the entire fight. 

They ran through the soul orbs, going with the direction they were flying. 

They got out the other side.

They were about to heal when the Soul Master started to dive down on them. They dashed to get out the way, but the Soul Master teleported mid fall to be above them.

A fake out.

They took a hit and an all too familiar feeling of searing pain flared up through their shell before everything went dark.

Little Ghost awoke on the bench they had played a toll for. They experienced a short feeling of dizziness before the world settled around them. 

Their compatriot, on the other hand, did not fare so well.

The wyrm had been doubled over in what they thought was a coughing fit until they noticed the luminescent purple, pink and gold puddle that was spluttering from his mouth. He was making the most ungodly sound Ghost had ever heard as he threw up essence on the floor.

“You good?” Ghost asked when he stopped.

The wyrm wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, an entirely unnecessary gesture as the “puke” dissipated into essence and coalesced back into his form.

“Yes, I - we - I, eh- er uh. GOOD!” the wyrm waved his hands around, clearly disoriented.

He shook his head before turning to Ghost, “Ok, now that I'm good, are YOU?! Your shell cracked in half and your shade was released! I'm surprised that you were able to drag yourself back to this bench.”

Ghost slumped against the bench. The remaining half of their shade was not willing to start moving again. They needed a nice, long rest.

“Yes, I'm fine. This has happened before, when I get too damaged. It's only half my shade that gets released, if I released the whole thing I think I might actually die.”

The wyrm looked horrified.

“What? This is normal. Happens all the time. I get damaged and the more aggressive half of my shade leaps out while the other half drags me to a bench to rest.”

The wyrm still looked concerned. “What are you to do?”

“Fight my way back, reclaim the other half of my shade, try, try, try again to defeat Soul Master. Just as I did with the Mantis Lords and with The False Knight and with Hornet.” they shrugged.

The wyrm nodded apprehensively.

They got hit in the face by a soul blast that the Soul Master fired. Crack.

The Soul Master dropped on them from above, they didn't dodge in time. Crack.

They missed their pogo when trying to avoid the Soul Master as he dashed across the room. Crack.

They were leading the soul twisting attacks around the room and got hit. Crack.

They died to their own. fucking. shade. (There went all their geo. Except for the 500 they gave to Millebelle) sigh, crack.

They were leading the soul twisting attacks to break on the broken part of the wall, they did not notice the Soul Master diving above them. Crack.

They died to a random Mistake in the sanctum halls. Crack.

They fell to another fake out. Crack.

Finally, they defeated the Soul Master. They stupid fucking idiot bug exploded into a burst of soul. Finally. Finally. 

And the soul coalesced into the form of a shrieking face. They recognized it as a spell, similar to the one the snail shaman gave them. 

“I would be careful with-”

They reached out to touch it.

And the fucking Soul Master appeared and dived down on top of them, the glas floor shattering beneath them.

“-That, if, I… were… you,” the wyrm trailed off as Ghost plummeted below.

They immediately got hit by a soul twister attack. Crack.

Fuck fuck fuck. Shit shit shit. Bitch. Fuck. Damn. Shit fuck. Damn crap. Bitch. Fuck, fuck, FUCK! 

They screamed when they came to on the bench. Their void writhing in frustration before they calmed down, too tired to scream anymore.

The wyrm looked at them with concern and sympathy when he was done puking.

Ok, this clearly wasn't working. They had swapped out their charms a million fucking times. They had tried a million different tactics. Nothing worked. Ok, they needed to get more new charms. 

They could get their 500 geo from Millebelle and go poke around Sly and Salubra to see if either of them had anything that could give them anything of interest.

They ran off to the stag station in the storerooms.

They were back in Dirtmouth, having bought a simple key from Sly. They had decided to place their hope in whatever was behind the stone door in Dirtmouth. Turns out that it was this weird bug calling themselves confessor who was named Jiji. She couldn't provide them with a charm, but she could summon back Ghost's shade. 

Ghost looked through Sly's supply but he didn't have anything they wanted, and they already knew there wasn't anything that could help from Salubra. 

“Eeerr! Damn it!” They kicked the light pole. Elderbug cowered behind Sly's shop.

“Please do not use-” the wyrm started.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. “don't use foul language in your presence” can you give it a break for a moment?” they whispered back.

The wyrm gave a slow nod.

Ghost moved from the light pole, limping on their now throbbing foot, to the bench to rest.

“You know, you have been making progress! Got to Sullivan's secret plan B, you did! I didn't even know he could dive that fast!” The wyrm was clearly trying to make them feel better.

It didn't work.

“So? I've fought this bloated idiot about a dozen times already and keep losing. How am I supposed to feel, bright and cheery?” they whispered.

“Well, maybe you should take a break from fighting this bloated idiot and try again when you're calmer and less likely to run into easily dodgeable attacks in a blind fury.”

“I- wait, did you call them a bloated idiot as well?” This snapped Ghost out of their rage.

The wyrm shrugged, “You know I'm not a fan of the Soul Sanctum, and Sullivan is who I am the least fan of. He was always the one who disobeyed me the most. In fact, I'm not sure many of his underlings even know that I oppose the whole sanctum. He probably doesn't see the need to tell his scholars that I want him to shut down his whole operation when he won't be following that order. Just because I'm both a politician and a diplomat doesn't mean that I can't think that everyone I debate with are complete dunderheads. Or voice those thoughts in private.”

Ghost snorted, though they tried to stifle it.

“All right, how am I going to defeat the dunderhead?” they said to themself between chuckles.

“You know… your spellwork could use some improvement.” the wyrm remarked.

“I guess, do you think the snail shaman would teach me more spells?” Ghost pondered.

“Why ask the snail shaman? I'm right here!”

Ghost snorted again.

“I'm serious.”

“Yeah, right. You can't even summon a “simple spell” without accidentally channeling essence.”

“So? I don't need to channel proper spells to teach you the theory. And even then, the practice is the same from what I'm doing and what you should do, just with soul instead of essence.”

Ghost cocked their head, considering the offer. He hadn't really shown that he was good with spells, but he was a higher being, and no one should lose out on a genuine chance to learn from them. And it was very rare that anyone got a genuine chance to learn from a higher being, most are too self important.

“How good are you when it comes to spells?”

It was the wyrm's turn to snort, “best in the kingdom. You can't get better at soul spells than a higher being of soul, and I've been training for centuries.” 

“And as a teacher?” This was the question they were most hung up about. They didn't have a good experience with his “help”.

“Well… I taught the… er-” he waved his hand around and Ghost immediately knew that he was trying to dance around talking about the subject that neither of them had felt the want or need to bring up again, “…Everything it knows about spells, didn't I?”

Ghost considered this. They didn't know how good their cursed sibling was at spellcasting, but if the kingdom wanted to portray its savior as a valiant and powerful knight it would need the chops to back it up, wouldn't it?

Ghost nodded. They would learn spells from this wyrm.

The two travelers were training in a hall somewhere between the hot springs and the stag station in the Forgotten Crossroads. Ghost had cleared it of infected while the wyrm scouted it out, making note of every little thing that might pose danger or impede training. 

The room was big, open, secluded and relatively quiet now that the infected have been cleared out of it. 

There was only one entrance to it, which the wyrm had Ghost cover up with rocks and stones that needed to be cleared from the room. The barrier was easily jumped over by Ghost, who could use their mantis claw to help climb over, while blocking the view of the room from the halls and making sure they don't get interrupted by infected bugs.

There was a small river on the right end of the room, its sound echoing in the empty room as they worked to clean it up. On closer inspection, it was actually an aqueduct that had been eroded by time to the point that it looked like a natural feature. The land was a little loose there so it was dedicated as the “rest zone” where Ghost would take breaks. Otherwise, they wouldn't be down that end.

One small lumifly light post lit the room from the back left corner, casting shadows that danced forlornly about the ancient plaza.

An old stone floor was the only indication that this place was once a lovely little respite where travellers would converse and make spur of the moment deals. One could even feel the urge and atmosphere of negotiation that has yet to dissipate even after all this time.

Yet, negotiations would not be made here, but a competent spellcaster would be moulded instead.

Probably.

Hopefully…

Ghost still wasn't too confident in the wyrm's teaching skills.

As Ghost finished up cleaning the room, the wyrm clapped his top set of hands and said, “All right! Let's get started.”

“Wait! I wanna stretch first!” Ghost interjected.

“Uh- a, ok…?” he said.

Ghost bent over to try to touch their toes (their nubs would not go that far) before reaching their right hand up and leaning left. When they felt the sensation of their back popping they switched sides, leaning right. They leaned too far right and took a tumble, flailing uselessly as they fell down. They could hear the wyrm holding back chuckles as they got back up. They reached as far up as they could, their big head getting in the way, but they didn't care. They finished off by attempting a split, getting stuck in the process, having to heave themself up while wyrm was no longer trying not to laugh.

“Ok, all done! Where do we start? The soul blasts? Teleportation? Oooh! Those souls spears you mentioned?!” Ghost said eagerly.

The Wyrm was still chuckling, “We start with…”

“SIMPLE CHANNELING?!?” Ghost sounded offended.

“We need to start with the basics. If you can't simply channel soul in waves then you won't be able to do anything more complicated than your ‘vengeful spirit”’ The Pale king was certainly unimpressed. Anyone who discounts the basics is a fool who will never get anywhere in the skill they're trying to learn.

Ghost looked at him with unmistakable distaste despite their expressionless mask.

The Pale King growled, “Do you want to beat Sullivan or not?”

Ghost gave a stiff nod.

“Ok, so to start, I need to get a feel of your current prowess with soul. To do that, I want you cast every spell you know, and then channel soul.”

Ghost nodded again. Soul flowed around and into them as they fired up their spell. A screaming blast of soul went flying, a face imprinted on its form. It wasn't great, its form was pretty unstable meaning it would only deal blunt force damage, but it could at least do damage.

“Good, mediocre spellwork but a solid start. We can build upon this.”

Ghost shot him a glare.

“Next?” he prompted.

Ghost seemed to take on a form of concentration as motes of soul started circling them. There was a flash of light. The Pale King took a closer look at Ghost's nub, noticing how a nick they got from moving rocks had disappeared. Fully healed.

The Pale King nodded, “Good, good. You have experience in focusing. This is good! Though, I must say you're quite inefficient at it. Anything else or are you ready to just channel?”

Ghost shook their head before shifting stance. A steady stream of soul appeared in the air and he watched as Ghost manipulated it with their hands.

The Pale King frowned. Their posture was wrong, their technique was painfully basic, the amount of soul being channeled was extremely limited and it was only being directed in big sweeping gestures that curved. No fine control, no sharp turns, no finesse.

“Poor channeling capabilities. Going to have to work on that first.”

Little Ghost sounded outraged, “I'd like to see YOU do any better!”

The Pale King just nodded his head. Stepping out into the plaza, he summoned a huge amount of- well, essence, but it was taking the form of soul. - It flied around him with ease, no need to be directed with his hands and swirling at a speed that Ghost could not recreate without losing control of it. The Pale King snapped his fingers and the essence’s course changed, abruptly doubling back on itself and changing to a harsh zigzag pattern. He spun around as the essence broke into many streams, spiraling around him like the many planets that orbit the sun. His spinning grew quicker as with a flourish, his hand shot into the air as he looked up to see the essence fly straight upwards before bursting outwards in all directions.

He turned to Ghost, who audibly sucked in air.

“That was essence, that doesn't count.”

“Ah, but the essence was doing as essence does, taking the form of something else from your memories. When seen in its purest form, essence is a spiraling wheel, that essence was mimicking soul as I remember it. And seeing as I am a god of memory-”

“So! That's no fair! You've had centuries to train in soul while I've only lived for like… well, I don't know! 20 years?” they said, incredulously.

“I would hope you're older than that. And besides, it is exactly our gaps in experience that is why I do not expect you to get to my level.”

“I thought you were going to train me to your level?”

“I am going to train you to Sullivan's level. We do not have the time to train you to mine. Maybe we will some time after the infection is dealt with, but we do not now.”

Ghost shifted their stance subtly as The Pale King continued, “To start with the basics. Your posture is wrong, if you don't want To be knocked back by the force of your own spells, stand more like this.” 

As The Pale King demonstrated the correct stance, he could almost feel Ghost rolling their eyes (if they even had eyes) at him.

The wyrm was actually a better teacher than Ghost thought he would be. That meant that his instructions were understandable instead of the incomprehensible noises that he made during the battle with the Mantis Lords. He, overall, was not a very good teacher.

He seemed to think every question Ghost asked of him had the most OBVIOUS answer, when Ghost was asking things that were in no way obvious. He got upset every time Ghost asked him to repeat a demonstration or instruction. His mind wandered off to places so far from spellwork that Ghost just HAD to ask him how he got there (he got upset whenever Ghost did this too, and never answered)

Most of all, the wyrm was impatient, and that was something coming from Ghost, who was the lord of impatience. But this wyrm seemed to believe that Ghost should be learning at 3x the pace.

He was currently frustrated that Ghost couldn't channel soul straight up without it leaning any direction (that is a lot harder than you think to accomplish)

“No! Up! Straight up and only up! Not up and forward! Not up and right! Just up!” He was shouting.

“I'm SORRY, I'm not a god of soul like you are, and thus not at your standards!” Ghost shouted back.

“THIS ISN'T A GOD TIER SKILL! THIS IS BASIC CHANNELING!” He retorted.

“WELL I'M NOT GOOD AT BASIC CHANNELING, MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE I'M FUCKING NEW TO THIS AND YOU'RE EXPECTING ME TO BE AN ANVANCED SPELLCASTER IN A DAY!”

“YOU KNOW WHAT-!” He cut off and took a deep breath, “we're both shouting, let's take a break.”

How strangely mature of him. But then, he was a politician who was probably used to taking a break from shouting matches, every now and then.

The Pale King realized that he was tired and really needed a moment's rest. Little Ghost was nowhere near as fast a learner as their doomed sibling. Was that normal? Was there something wrong? Was his technique off? Was Little Ghost a slow learner or was the pure vessel just a fast one? It's not like he has experience with a wide range of vessels.

And who's fault is that, huh?

No, don't think about that. You promised that you wouldn't think about that. 

Memories only cause pain, why get hurt while hung up about the past when you have the present to focus on.

Suddenly, this moment's rest seemed a lot less pleasing.

He got up from the rock in the corner where he was sitting and moved over to where Ghost was sitting by the bank.

“Are you well rested now?” He asked.

“Yeah, yeah.”

There was an uncanny resemblance between Ghost and the young form of the Pure Vessel, now that The Pale King thought about it.

Their horn shape was similar, though Ghost’s were thinner. Their heights were similar, their bodies were of similar proportion and even their eyes were the same size and shape. It was as if they were twins. The only thing different between them being their auras. Ghost seems to be alive while it was always so blank and dead.

And who's fault is that?

No. Don't think about  that. Focus on the training.

…

What did you do for it that worked that you aren't doing now?

By the time the first training session had ended, Little Ghost was fully tuckered out and the wyrm was obviously done with their shit. And hey, Ghost was fine with that. Cause they were done with his shit too.

They had made little progress, only finally succeeding in channeling soul straight up with no tilt in the final half hour. (Ghost thought they accomplished it about an hour earlier but the wyrm was really pedantic about it and pulled a fucking protractor out of his ass and declared that it wasn't straight because it leaned 3 degrees to the left. Ghost was still mad about that.)

To put it simply, they were very happy to go back to Dirtmouth. They basically flopped onto the bench in the center of the town, not caring for the flash of light that meant the wyrm had returned to his charm. The shade inside closed its eyes as the void within settled down and Little Ghost drifted off to sleep.

Training day 2: sharper turns when channeling.

“Too big and sweeping. Try putting more force into your push.”

Little Ghost pushed with all the might their little arms could, sending the soul careening in large curve forwards.

“And maybe place a mental block in the soul's path to hinder its upwards momentum”

“Excuse me?” they called, “what's a mental block?” 

“Uuhhh… it's like a… like a… invisible wall made of your own will that decelerates whatever it is you’re channeling. You just gotta… you know… think it into slowing down.” The Pale King was worse at explaining this than he thought he would be.

They nodded, “So what does ‘decelerate’ mean?”

Why did they even need to know this? Can't they just learn from experience? That's what the Pure Vessel did.

The conversation then devolved into an impromptu physics lesson because Ghost knew basically nothing about basic physics. Then again, they had grown up in the wastes their entire life so it's really his fault isn't it.

Training day 4: faster channeling.

“For the FIFTH TIME! Prioritize keeping control of the soul instead of getting faster. Speed up, or accelerate, AT A SLOW RATE!” 

But Ghost clearly couldn't take training patiently as they once again lost control of the soul they were channeling instead of slowing down.

They let out a scream of frustration that, thankfully, covered up The Pale King's own.

Why wouldn't they just listen to him? The Pure Vessel never had any trouble with this step because it actually followed his lead! Why can't Ghost do the same?!

(“Why do I need to do what you say? I’m the princess of Deepnest!” “Because I know what I'm doing, if you want to learn how to play the piano, you listen to what the teacher has to say.” “Hmmph!”)

Training day 7: solidifying soul into a physical form with a proper substance to it.

This lesson was the hardest one yet as The Pale King couldn't give a demonstration. Unlike soul, essence couldn't create anything with proper substance, at least not in the waking world. In the dream realm it could create physical items and could interact with those very connected to the dream even when awake, but Little Ghost was neither and so The Pale King had to get by on theory alone.

The Pale King was very bad at teaching theory it seems.

“Push your will into it, will it to be stable!”

Ghost screamed in frustration upon their cube of soul melting down into a fluid state immediately upon taking shape.

“Stabilize it! Believe! Make it solid!”

Ghost's aura was screwed up in frustration.

“Just… you know… try! …harder…?” he shook his head, “Force your will into it! You are the caster! You are one in control! Make the soul conform to your desires!”

The soul was twisted into a cube-like shape for less than a moment before dissolving.

This was so hard, the Pure Vessel followed his instructions much better. Sure, it had proper demonstrations while Ghost doesn't, but surely they can do as he tells them, even if they don't understand it.

(“But why do I need to stay still?” “Because nobles aren't fans of little larvae running around causing a ruckus in the middle of a meeting.” “But WHY? Why are they so against fun?” “Because it can be distracting! These bugs take their jobs very seriously and they want to be able to hear what others have to say. Your screams of joy can be very loud, it would make us have to endlessly repeat ourselves as they keep drowning us out, and no one wants to have to do that, it would make the meeting last longer. Do you understand me?” “Yes father.”)

Training day 18: first foray into spellwork.

Little Ghost was staring at a chalkboard made of essence with a bunch of complex mathematical equations and diagrams of form and stance drawn on it. 

“Any questions?” The Pale King asked.

“Uuhh… can you repeat - like - everything?”

He facepalmed with a very forceful and loud smack! at that.

Why must they have to have everything repeated to them? The Pure Vessel heard something once and then understood, why wasn't Ghost the same?

He painstakingly repeated everything he JUST said to them.

And then again.

And then again.

Ghost sighed, and shook their head before getting up and stretching, “I still don't understand half of what you told me, but I'm willing to try even then because this is taking FOREVER!”

The Pale King nodded and made a motion as though to wipe the board clean, the essence dissipating at his touch.

“I've been studying your vengeful spirit spell and have some ways to improve it. Starting with a spell you are familiar with should help with the speed of improvement. Watch carefully as I demonstrate.”

He fired off the improved vengeful spirit. Only a fraction of his annoyance dissipating with the essence that burst off when the spell hit the wall.

Why were they so bad at understanding directions? The Pure Vessel-

(“No! The other way. Spin the gear counterclockwise, dear.” “Um… I don't know what that means.” “You know how a clock ticks in one direction? Well, when you spin in a circle in that direction, that is called clockwise direction. To go the other way around is called counterclockwise.” “Oh! That makes sense! Hold on, I can do this!” “There you go! Perfect fit!”)

Training day 23: learning new spells.

The Pale King watched as Ghost continued to struggle with soul spears. They were struggling to summon even one spear, let alone the up to fifteen that the spell can produce. (Obviously, one doesn't need to summon up all fifteen at once, as that costs a lot of soul, but better to master a spell completely and never need it than need it later and not know how to use it to full extent.)

A spear flickered in and then out of existence. 

Ghost's breathing sharpened as they tried again.

The spear existed for less than a second before disappearing again.

Ghost stomped - her foot on the floor in frustration.

The snapping of the silken thread was hard to catch as they don't stand out against the glowing walls that well, though the Gendered Child’s reaction was always an indicator as to whenever it happened.

The spiderling screamed in frustration, “WHY WHY WHY WHY! I'VE BEEN AT THIS FOR HOURS! AND MADE NO PROGRESS! WHY!”

The Pale King frowned, she'd been upset with this for hours, getting louder and louder with each failure, but now she descended into just plain sobs.

He moved over to the frustrated little princess, crouching down to her and placing a hand on her back, slowly rubbing circles on it as they slowly spiraled into each other.

“Heirling, you need to be patient. Things like this take time. It must be hard to learn how to weave tapestries. Do you think that bees are born knowing how to fly? Do you think that a dragonfly knows how to catch prey the moment it opens its eyes? Do you think that a nailsmith can forge a pure nail just as soon as they pick up a hammer? They did not. So why do you think you must weave in seconds? Hallownest wasn't built in a day and neither shall your ability to weave tapestries.”

The little spiderling looked up at him, tears streaming from her eyes, before burying her head in his robes.

“Do- do you really mean that?” she said through muffled sobs.

“Of course!” he replied, “why would I ever mean anything different?”

The memory faded as soon as it appeared, and yet it gave him an idea.

The Pale King moved over to Ghost, who was still shaking with rage. He sat down next to them.

“Little Ghost, you… need to be patient. Things like this take time. It is very difficult to learn how to cast soul. Do you think that bees are born knowing how to fly? Do you think that a dragonfly knows how to catch prey the moment it opens its eyes? Do you think that a nailsmith can forge a pure nail just as soon as they pick up a hammer? They do not. So why do you think you must cast spells in seconds? Hallownest wasn't built in a day and neither shall your ability to cast spells.”

Ghost looked up at him, a mix of anger and confusion said very clearly by their stance and posture.

“I- uh… thanks?”

The Pale King nodded and the two of them just sat there for a time.

“I'm ready to try again.” Ghost got to their feet, “and… thank you… for being willing to let me take my time. You were… so pushy earlier it made me think I was doing something wrong and that it wasn't going fast enough.”

“I was the wrong one.”

“That wasn't something I thought I'd ever heard you say.”

The Pale King laughed at this, “You might be right with that. But, I was holding you to the standards of your sibling, and have since realized that it was just freakishly fast at learning, or was really good at acting like it was learning. No, that wasn't what I should have expected from you. And I've since learned the truth. I mean, it should of been obvious, I said it all the way back in Deepnest when you ran off swearing at the top of your lungs, ‘You're just like your sister, you are.’”

“Hmm… wait sister?” they sprang up.

“Oh, right. I didn't tell you that. Hornet is your half-sister.”

“Uh-”

“It's a long story… I'll tell you after today's training.”

Ghost nodded at that, and they prepared to try again.

Training went much smoother from then on out.

The Pale King hadn't realized just how much a change in perspective could help his teaching skills, or how much a change in teaching style would help Ghost improve. 

But treating Ghost more like Hornet than the Pure Vessel really helped. 

For example, Little Ghost was able to summon seven of the soul spears within the second day of learning the spell. They mastered the spell by day three.

Three days to master a brand new spell when it took them five to master an improved version of a spell they already knew. Huge improvement.

It took them four days to learn soul daggers. 

Soul daggers is a more advanced spell consisting of bigger, stronger soul blades that deal more damage and come in sets of five. Though, one needs to keep their feet planted to work the spell, so The Pale King had normally preferred the spears. But it's soul cost was less than the full fifteen spears while dealing the same damage so if he found himself in a situation where he needed to deal big damage but could stand still for a bit he would normally use the daggers.

It was a good idea to teach both spells to Little Ghost, and they understood the necessity of it when he explained that.

It was strange, because soul daggers was the first spell he successfully taught to the Pure Vessel. It being mindless meant it was unable to decide based on a situation how many spears to use, so spells like that which had variable components were avoided with it. 

Though… if it was mindless it would have been unable to decide what spells to launch and when at all (if it was mindless it would have stopped the infection)

Better to not think about that.

Focus on training…

The Pale King was pleasantly impressed when it only took Little Ghost five days to create a basic shield of soul. With it being an entirely new skill for them, he was expecting eight. 

But no, Little Ghost was speeding ahead of his mental schedule. Maybe he would have to update his time frame, as he was sure it would take over fifty days to teach them everything he wanted to after the disaster of a first day.

When teaching through soul spears, the yelling between the two was less, there were some times when Ghost would get frustrated and scream and The Pale King sometimes accidentally raised his voice, mostly when Ghost was being stubbornly impatient, but it far less than the previous lessons. When teaching soul daggers, The Pale King was much more patient with Ghost's impatience. Now, no one was yelling whatsoever.

Soul shield is a useful little ability, second to last that The Pale King wants to teach them before taking on Soul Master Sullivan. It can block some soul based spells, absorbing it into itself, though it needs to be more advanced to block attacks from weapons, and can't block particularly strong spells. It takes some time to create when you are a novice at it, so it won't be too helpful for Little Ghost in fighting Sullivan, but what kind of godking of mind and wisdom would he be if he didn't think of future plans? When the fight against Sullivan was over, Ghost would have more time to practice the shield and eventually get good enough to summon it in an instant and block greater spells, making it very useful. He knows they won't have the time to get good at it before Sullivan, but better to start now and save time later.

Ghost's shield probably won't be able to stop any of Sullivan's attacks (It's hard to tell, the only way the two are able to test the shield’s strength is by having Ghost launch soul daggers straight up and having them fall down and hit into their shield which isn't the most practical way of testing this.) But it should lessen their power.

Observing Ghost weave the shield from soul, seeing their jump of joy whenever they get it right, watching as they run around laughing trying to catch their own soul daggers, he was starkly reminded of Hornet. 

Hornet, weaving tapestries of her family standing together. Hornet, jumping up as soon as it was done to show her father her artwork. Hornet, running around waving it above her head for all to see while laughing. There was a great mournful tug in his heart at the comparison.

She was never going to be that small, young, innocent and hopeful spiderling again. 

Sure, last time he saw her she had been fully grown, but there was still that young spider in her. 

But now? She had looked so stern. She had moved with purpose. She had set Ghost on some path, told them to do something, go some place. She was not a child anymore, was she? Ghost had talked about her fighting them in greenpath. She was a true adult.

Oh, how his heart ached at that thought. He could never see his little heirling again.

The final thing The Pale King wanted to teach Ghost was a more efficient way of focusing, mostly because he was horrified once he realized that Ghost was using the same amount of soul to cast a spell to heal one hit, but also because it set up the foundation for later training.

Teaching Ghost to focus better was very different from teaching them to use attacks because it involved, bleh, anatomy.

The Pale King knew vessel anatomy very well. In fact, he probably knew it better than the anatomy of regular bugs. The way that soul channels through a vessel's body was very well known to him, and he knew where to direct the soul one focuses to make the most of it.

He showed Ghost where soul flows through them, tracing the paths along their arms and legs with his incorporeal claw while explaining the best ways to direct soul through it.

“Now, every bug is different, soul will flow through you in a unique and special way that is unknown to me. I can give you the basics based on your sibling’s biology, but you are going to need to experiment around with it to get anywhere above healing two hits. Your sibling never got above two.”

Ghost nodded, it was a really cute gesture, reminiscent of Hornet, though she was much more enthusiastic when nodding. 

Ghost looked up at the diagram on the board of essence, seemingly tracing it with their nub before retracing it on their arm. 

“Ok, I'm ready to try!” they reached for their nail.

“Wait!” He didn't know why he said it. How else were they going to test focusing if they weren't hurt to see how well they were healed? Yet, there was something that made him not want to… “Focus unhurt instead. I can get an idea of how good you're doing before you try to hurt yourself.”

Ghost paused before nodding and shifting their stance. Motes of soul floated up around them, jumping up before diving back into their body. A brilliant flash of white marked the end of the focus. It was better than the other ones he'd seen of them before.

The Pale King gave them the go ahead to try on a real wound.

“Cut shallow, like one hit. We are trying to half the amount of soul it takes to heal one hit before trying to heal two with the cost of one.”

Ghost nodded their head. They reach for their nail, holding it just above their arm.

He couldn't watch. The Pale King looked away. That didn't stop him from hearing the sound of tearing voidshell. It drilled in through his mind and deep into the essence of his being. His eyes shut tight as his claws balled into tense fists and tail curled into a tight ball. It took all his power to not cringe away in distress.

When he looked back at Ghost, void was pouring freely from a gash, no no, a nick, along their arm.

Why did it look so much worse than it actually was?

He stayed silent as he did not trust his voice. He already could barely not preal in distress, who's to say that he wouldn't puke upon opening mouth?

Ghost's stance shifted as motes of soul floated around them. It took a noticeably quicker time to heal the cut than he had seen in their battles. When it was over, Little Ghost marked down the amount of soul it had cost in the dirt with their nail. 

The Pale King relaxed, taking a moment to close his eyes and rest.

Why had that been so hard? He had seen them battle before, get hurt before too even. What now made his shell crawl at the thought of that?

He exhaled, opening his eyes and moving over to where Ghost had marked down their data. He was pleased by the great drop in soul cost. It would take more tries to half it as he wanted, which wasn't a pleasant thought, but they needed to get better for the fight against Sullivan.

He thought it would get easier to think of as they continued training.

It did not.

Little Ghost was glad to have finished training. They were getting antsy from waiting around when they had an enemy to fight, training got boring and repetitive after they worked on anything new for a while, every loss was frustrating (even if it was less so near the end) and worse of all, wyrm had started acting weird near the end of it.

So when they could consistently heal 2 hits for the price of 1, they were ecstatic at the thought of finally fighting the Soul Master and winning.

So ecstatic that it took a lot of convincing from wyrm for them to rest instead running off to fight right after the final training session was over.

“I'm putting my tail down. You need to rest after training, and if you run off into battle right now without taking a break, I will not be providing you with soul!”

That was a deal breaker, as Ghost had become reliant on unlimited healing as of late, so they took a rest on the bench in the crossroads stag station for the night.

In the morning, they decided to switch out their charms. Shaman Stone, Longnail, Spore Shroom and Thorns is Agony were what they landed on. Their spells were already strong, but it couldn't hurt to give them some extra juice, so Shaman Stone was a good option. Longnail so their nail didn't fall behind, as it was still pretty powerful and useful but might be tricky to incorporate in their more spell based setup. Spore Shroom so they would always be doing damage, even when healing. And Thorns of Agony just because it was a one notch charm and seemed more useful than Stalwart Shell. 

Good set.

As they walked into the Soul Master’s battle chamber, they felt a rush of emotion, and adrenaline, at the thought of the battle to come. They held a firm stance as they saw the Soul Master approach, not shocked whatsoever when he teleported into the field, instead they wondered if they could do that one day. They'd have to ask wyrm about that.

The Soul Master dashed, Ghost jumping out the way, pogoing before flipping in the air.

They grabbed onto the wall, firing a soul spear down from their elevated position. They couldn't hold on for long, having hooked the mantis claw in an awkward position, so they dropped down and fired a vengeful spirit. 

The Soul Master fired some soul twisters, the infection writhing inside to break, to consume, to spread, Ghost dodged the first 2 but got clipped by the third, vines bursting from their body in every direction. 6 more hits…

“Shit…” they swore under their breath.

Dashing from beneath his dive and jumping up from the shockwave, they fired a vengeful spirit, its face a sharpened axe head ready to cleave through the Soul Master as opposed to the round head it had before training. Infuriatingly, he danced upon soul, blinking out the way of its path.

They tried to follow up with soul spears, but found out that their soul vessel was… empty?

“Dude!” they glanced at wyrm, who was just staring blankly at a random spot on the floor, before rolling out the way of the Soul Master's dash. “DUDE! WYRM!”

He snapped out of whatever trance he was in, “What? Oh! Right!”

Their soul vessel filled up as they ran through the clockwork like soul wheel attack that the Soul Master was using, allowing them to fire a soul spear up to pierce through his enlarged belly.

He teleported above them, and they dashed on moth-like wings away. Turns out it was a fake out, and they got hit going down. 5 more hits…

“You need to heal as soon as possible.” why…? They could take plenty of more hits, why was wyrm so worried?

This distracted them, meaning they didn't see the Soul Master come until their dash avoided him by a hair's end.

He spun around, summoning up his 4 soul twister attacks to encircle him. Ghost took the time to heal once to full 7 before following the soul twisters, spores irritating their void (come on man, you're supposed to be on my side!)

They stabbed the Soul Master, slicing through his bloated shell as soul burst everywhere. He teleported to the other side of the room, preparing to dash. They gathered up soul, planting their feet firmly on the ground as they launched 5 daggers of it at him in a line, each one exploding into motes upon crashing into his frame.

He teleported above Ghost, diving down towards them. They jumped out the way before being hit by the shockwave of soul. Their world was spinning so much they felt like a dilplip from the kingdom of Käärilma (alchemist, where are you now?) 6 more hits…

Their breath caught in their throat for a second before they steadied themself, turning to face the Soul Master and firing glowing spears of soul in his direction. The spears streaked through the air like lightning illuminating a stormy day, bursting into many sparks upon impact.

The Soul Master descended from above, and Ghost danced on their wings away. 

That fucker!… another fake out! Ghost hated them! They couldn't get around a fake out for the life of them! And that bitch knew it! He kept doing it like the sneaky sniveling coward he was! Only going for the easy option! 5 hits left…

Ghost impaled the Soul Master with their nail, using the force of a goam! Stabbing in and out over and over again, glowing white and translucent green flying everywhere as they turned the Soul Master into a sheesh kebab! 

He deflated, soul trailing up from his mouth.

“NOW!” They vaguely heard wyrm shout as they impaled the Soul Master- no, this coward didn't deserve a title to put him above other bugs, what did wyrm say his name was? Sulfur? Sultan? Sultry- NO! Fuck it, they'll just call him Shitface. They impaled Shitface with a soul spear, its light getting lost in the glow of soul that spouted every which way.

Shitface raised himself above, diving down to shatter the fragile glass floor, bringing despair with his descent. 

Fuck.

Ghost didn't know how to fight this faze, they had only got here once before immediately dying. 

Shitface was diving like that mythical creature called an eagle just about to pick off a poor bug. He was fast.

Ghost was caught off guard, getting hit, stunned from pain, and hit again, only able to get up because Agony's vines had gotten a firmer hold on Shitface the 2nd time, causing him to teleport out. 3 left…

“Oof! You need to heal…” wyrm was flying up near the hole to the upper level, his 6 wings splayed out to catch the still winds.

But Shitface was not letting Ghost heal. He shot out soul twister after soul twister, Ghost dancing around each one, firing off spears who's light brightened up this much darker battlefield.

A soul twister blasted into Ghost's chest. The room tumbled about as they smacked into a… person?

No…

A corpse.

The walls were lined with corpses.

Ghost was stunned by this revelation. (How many innocent bugs lost their lives to these twisted scholars? All for nothing?) Creeping dread filled their void at the answer to that question.

Too many…

Far too many.

Shitface landed on top of Ghost's head, vines ensnaring him for a second before he teleported away. 1 hit left! They had to focus! 

They pushed through their rising vertigo as they swung their nail up at him. Its sharpened blade cut clean, giving them an opening for vengeful spirit, and then 2 soul spears.

The bastard teleported again, diving over and over.

How long could this bitch hold on for? He must be very low.

Ghost got into a rhythm. 

Dive, dash left. Dive, dash right. Dive, dash left, stab up. Dive, dash right. 

Dive, dash. Dive, dash. Dive, dash, stab. Dive dash.

Dive, dash. Dive, dash. Dive, dash, soul spears. Dive, dash.

But of course, when they get into a rhythm it has to be broken.

Shitface dropped, Ghost dashed, Shitface caught himself, pulling a fakeout, Ghost's heavily injured leg twisted awkwardly, a visceral snap cutting through the room.

The Soul Master was coming down. 

This was it. Another failed try. They would have to experience the pain of death again. No matter how much they played it off, they weren't that big a fan of it. 

It hurt. Death hurts. Death left them broken each time, scrambling to pick up the pieces of themself.

They really wished that death didn't hurt that way, that it was a peaceful endeavor. 

But no, death was worse than an annoyance because nothing hurt more than a split shell. 

It's like experiencing the horror of molting without any the growth. 

Maybe that's why Ghost felt too old and too young at the same time.

The Soul Master was about to land his hit. It was funny, how time slowed when death approached. You have both all the time in the world and none of it.

And now death approaches once again, in a dive of desolation.

“NO!” The shriek pierced the air.

And death. Never. Came.

The Soul Master was about to make his mark, what stopped him?

Ghost looked up, then fell back in surprise.

Long, wild vines had latched themselves around Shitface, thorns tearing into his shell. 

Thorns causing agony.

But Thorns of Agony wasn't meant to do this!

They rolled to the side, eyes following the rope of vines that strung back from Shitface like a leash, shocked to see wyrm at the other end of it, a pale glow emanating from within him as the thorns wrapped around his hand and arm, seemingly appearing from the brilliant light. Wyrm was breathing deep and heavy.

Ghost had barely a second to register it before wyrm yanked back on the vines. They shuddered and started burrowing into Shitface, who seemed to have run out of soul and could no longer teleport, before ripping him into pieces.

The vines lashed about, flailing in all directions as Shitface was torn apart. Shell, flesh, viscera, hemolymph, soul and infection flew about the room, some mix of greedy bug goo landing in the socket of Ghost's mask.

The void inside did not hesitate to sample the delicacy.

And it tasted like…

Victory.