Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Though bound, they knew the state of the world.

They knew the palace faded and curdled, bitter. They knew the queen returned and walked the same halls as their king, cold and lost, like a divide was carved between them.

They knew they were replaced. By the one they had let fall, too. They survived. And came to fill whatever shadow their absence might have left.

They knew that there was too much occurring at all times out there.

They knew that bugs dreamed and essence burned and the infection would get out. 

They knew the king left flowers outside the Black Egg’s door one time and one time only. Their petals shriveled and died.  

They knew he learned that they were a liar and a fraud and they had not even begun to slip and give the plague a way out yet. 

They knew that the world was not theirs to touch anymore.

Though it would have meant remaining bound without any distraction at all, sometimes they wished they did not have to know the state of the world.

She was sealed in their dream.

They should have been an empty vessel. Their dream would be equally empty. If so, she would sink into that void forever and never be able to escape its pull.

They wouldn’t have ever felt a thing from her, if she’d been so swallowed by an empty dream. 

That would have been better. It would have been better for them. Her presence burned. They could not physically get far enough away from the sun for her not to. 

When they were put into their dream, it was not empty. It was nearly so. It was pure just as it was dark with void. 

Chains crawled down its walls. Seals glowed on its floors. It was not an empty dream.

They did not pay attention to it, then. They tried to only hang there and then it grew painful and painfully understimulating, so they caved to using the spell and looking at the world more and more often. There were few thoughts. One was too many.

She didn’t make her presence known with words to start with. 

She didn’t have a form to them. She was a burning light inside their hollow body. It could increase in intensity. It could shift about. It prodded curiously. It raged. It was a being and she became far too real months before they ever had to hear a word from her.

Instead her thoughts spread like suggestions, needling and subtle until they were not. She was loud. They had been quiet. They were not quiet after her. 

The world was visible and completely untouchable.

Out of reach.

Forever and ever.

They could watch their own obscurity. 

When the palace opened its gates to another vessel, their choices were to see or to hide in a dream away from such stimulation.

They saw. 

Dreams were a type of agonizing slow death, a place and thing that sapped energy away. 

But watching hurt. 

The queen returned to the palace that they wished was their home. She left when they were small, because of their presence. She returned because of a vessel that was not them. 

The kingdom was told their monarchs had a successor, now, though one sickly that could not yet be seen. 

A child. Their child.

All the while, the impure vessel felt itself ache every moment of every day, from the suspension, from the fire, from it all.

Out of reach. 

Out of reach.

Petals wilted into powder outside the door to their hell.

They could watch that large room, so often empty rather than visited. They could look out beyond the dark temple and stare at a rebuilding, happy kingdom instead.

They could burn. 

There was no choice to stop.

Thoughts were as poison. 

No mind to think, they were born to believe. No mind at all. Not as a pure vessel. Not as what we wish you to be.

They had but one role and one role only, that lay as a possibility in front of them.

The pure vessel. The Hollow Knight. 

Not a child, nor an heir, nor anything that belonged in the palace let alone the world.

Yet they saw out.

Saw another.

Saw that life.

And they grew upset. They even grew angry at the parents that never were, each time they watched them sit at dinners with a shade. 

And what familiar anger it was. What familiar fears.

They are forgetting me. Replacing me. Like I was nothing.

It came from her. They did not always know. Hers was theirs and theirs was hers and they could not separate, sealed together like this. Her feelings bled into them and left them contaminated. It would have been easy to think that it was their feelings all along.

Poison. Poisoned.

They were no pure vessel, to be without thoughts.

They would not be without her thoughts in their own now-private mind either, though. Even if she was dead and gone, they feared it was too late. The bleed over too strong. The poison took root. 

It wound around their mind and bloomed in feelings unasked for and they could not tear it away. They could only dream that she would wilt, until they could shed her presence like a molt.

The same, forever and ever.

The same, forever and ever.

The same

The flowers were dying.

They were surrounded by a field that stretched tall in each direction. But its flowers were dying. They were blackened and shriveling, turning into soot that disintegrated. The wave of death followed the steps of long legs, shadowed under the sweep of a wind blown cape. It snapped in one direction. Then the other. 

There was a maelstrom in the distance. Silent, where it should have roared. It provided the wind. 

They were on their knees in flowers that died under their touch and his approach both. They did not rise to escape, to prevent their touch from poisoning more. The same did not go for him who strode nearer.

There were pauldrons on their shoulders and chains hooked to them and they were so so so heavy.

The essence in the distance was growing coated with darkness. Oh how she had feared that. They could not hear her screams. They received no reaction from her while her essence grew stained or wilted like the flowers did. Most of it did. Only some of those that were red did not. 

They knew who he was from her. They knew that the seals made her rage, her hurt, her desperation all silent to the strange god who visited this temple with their father. Only they heard her as she screamed at him for answering a single call from a worm while having ignored a million from her. Only they could actually notice when she asked him to save her. 

Those outside would not have heard. 

The flowers left before the door of the Black Egg died and decomposed before their vision.

It seemed a fearful thing.

Elsewhere, a maelstrom had the means to kill the most important lights in their life. They had no power in this matter. Their time was over, their purpose null, their existence unneeded. If one was to erase all that had defined them twice, then they would be left with nothing. Maybe it would not hurt. They wouldn’t mind that. 

He reached them eventually, even as the field behind his path was nothing but char and soot. When he tried to help them up, they failed. The harness weighed more than they could manage. The chains were all very long where they hid under flowers here. Their body ached and shook. Weak. Weak. Too weak, under such weights. 

If words were shared, they could not remember. It had not been a real place or meeting. It was a dream. Just a dream. 

The storm would have come to swallow that quiet field too. They didn’t have the will to flee that fate. No will? No will to break. It was broken, then?

The world outside has not changed nearly enough. It had not truly been long. They were not so much of a failure that they would completely break in such little time. 

They stopped shying away and let the terror touch them.

They recalled little. 

The dream in its entirety was unclear. 

They left the field of death. That much they could envision. They left it and they were not yet dead. All of the flowers left for their grave, peace, peace, their presence only made offerings of such wither and go dark. 

Go dark, as the lights had. As if dead. Their father dead. And they would kill any flower they tried to take to his own memorial. 

Even with as weak as they had been on the floor of the prison, weighed down in chains, dark eyes and white roots pulling them up instead of red arms, they…They wanted to find him. To confirm the death they had felt. 

Let these arms puppet them as they pleased after that. They would be too empty to care.

They watched him offering room and time and gifts to the new vessel. 

When they dared dream of rescue, it was a wish to be offered such too. 

They watched him live, up until the day when their own life was freed into a world in which he was no longer capable of offering them anything.

Sometimes, dreams were not so unpleasant.

What an ingrate they were.

They couldn’t remember too much of the return journey. The queen appeared with the void by her side and they were carried back gingerly, as if they were wounded. They would have been unable to walk. Nothing bled, no cuts marred them, but they were still immobile without the excuse of wounds. 

There was a doorway of essence that made them writhe in the branches’ hold. Her, her, her. They’d felt her die. They’d seen her essence swallowed into darkness. Their body went limp again after coming out the other side of the light (helpless to stop themself from being carried into such a terrifying gateway). 

From there, their head rolled and they saw figures. It was bright. The Black Egg was almost completely dark. The light here hurt. It was too much. Too much. All too much, to have actually seen the knight that held what was left of their father. These were things they put together after, through context and comments. 

The light hurt. The noise hurt. It all hurt. 

Pain made time wash into a strange mush that dragged on too long and ended mercifully faster than reality. 

After so long- too long- such little time- too little time to have broken- of them helplessly seeing outside of their prison, they were completely blind to the state of the world on that return journey. 

They were supposedly a part of it afterwards, though. Did they not have what the other vessel did? Vessel. Maelstrom. Home. Killer. Everything that they were not and more so. Terrifying, lovely, loving, but they had failed, they had turned their back on the Abyss, they knew not how to accept such attention.

Attention came from others as well. They did not know how to accept it either. But it did not feel important in the way that their hiding away from the Other One here did. 

More quiet was given- still loud, in the hums of the palace, in the footsteps hallways away, in the distant opening and shutting of doors, in any and all little creaks- still loud, compared to the silence of the last five years. 

The brightness was dulled. They thought that one of the knights was responsible for closing curtains.

They were put under blankets and they did nothing, all the while. Nothing for days, perhaps. Time was a difficult concept in captivity and its state wasn’t more clear now. The world, if anything, was even less so.

The room they were placed in was that which they kept. It was theirs. They supposedly had a room. Property. Possession. As if they deserved what the living did. 

It looked like many of the bedchambers of the palace. The size was the same as that which their kin here owned. Its walls were white. The silks on the bed were white. The lantern let out the white light of contained soul.

It was clean, but not untouched. There were robes in its closet. Most were plain, similar to what they always had. There were books in one drawer. They were varied. There were ‘cards’ from each of the Five Knights. One of Ze’mer’s flowers was laid atop a note that gave instructions for care and disposal. They recalled an arrangement of flowers, tied together, left to wilt and die at the foot of the Black Egg’s entrance. The window had curtains that they could control. If they wished them open, to be a reminder that they were not trapped, they could. If they did not want any more visions of the world outside, let alone it seeing in to them, they could shut them.

Darkness lay like a blanket over this hall. An embrace. A promise. They didn’t have to be alone. If the room was too bright or too crowded or too empty…They could have another in here to calm all the noise and fire. The Other One was just a door down. It was a meaningless distance for a storm.

They were awake. 

This room was all too real around them. 

It didn’t feel real. They picked at the blankets. They felt the cold of the glass window. They wrapped themself in the closet’s robes, under their shoulders, around their chest, rolling their arms until the fabric ate their wrists and they were able to slump to the floor and see if it all pulled. It did. Their body strained. It was already in ruined condition. They struggled to stand and walk anymore. Their actions made their back hurt so much worse. But it also made their shoulders ache like they were being hung and it was real, then. The room was real. The robes were real. The pain was real. For the Black Egg was real. As much as they’d wanted it to be a nightmare, it was always real. Every time they became aware of their body suspended there in darkness: real real real. 

Waking hours could still be nightmares and nightmares could be dreams. The cool window was truly glass, truly cold. The texture of the sheets came in varieties and the threads they rubbed free were truly out, now, instead of tight in their intended lines (ruined) (their touch ru-). Instantly claustrophobic, they struggled upright again and ignored the pain of their strained back while extricating themselves from makeshift chains. It was as if they were on the floor of the Black Egg, but this time, this time they were awake. This time, they were alert. Their mind was capable of functioning outside of a confused fog. If the queen came in through shining light now, they would be able to make out what the light appeared as, where their sibling stood, what the knights on the other side of the portal were doing. They would have stayed alert for the whole walk back to this room (walk, not carry, not helpless and trapped) and seen each piece of it then, not days later. 

This was their prison. Their Black Egg. It could so easily be seen. The bricks beneath them were the color of soot. The air was crowded in the electric magic of seals and a humid sweetness. The locked door in front of them was familiar: they had stared at it for five years.

And the strain in their body was the harness, still weighing down. They had to fight to stand and walk on their own strength. But they did, while the black walls opened for them. They stood instead of needing roots to crawl around them and a stranger to carry them not through familiar walls but instead into light, bright bright light. Light that was known to them in two parts. Bright and golden and silver pale, essence, dream, soul, all things from gods they didn’t sense in the world anymore. That light was not a door. It had been unreal to be carried through. Their mind was left in the Black Egg.

They walked out of the closet and shut it with an initial feeling that they’d never open it again. Of what need had they of its cloaks? 

They were alert. They were alert. 

They were finally awake.

Dream was a prison and it wrapped around them like the vines of the queen did to the palace. Each thorn caught in their shell and made it more impossible to shake them off through walking alone. 

Real. Awake. 

Dream. Asleep. 

Alert. 

No…rarely. They saw silver light turn to a sky of gold. Their knees were tickled by dying flowers. Fires burned, low and pink and paling. Dying, not growing. 

This room was called their room. 

They did not know this white palace. 

How long would it take them before the vertigo ended? Until they were no longer sick at every second passing? 

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. 

They’d been able to watch the world outside. 

They saw their father alive with another vessel. 

If they really were awake, this time, then that was the palace they should be inside of, and it should not be a passive storm engulfing every shadow instead of a simple vessel replacing them, and it should not be that he was not their father. 

Wants were difficult but they knew a few things with unwavering understanding. That he was their father was one of them. 

(That they had done everything for him went without saying.)

‘Their room’ meant nothing. 

It was ash. It was dust. Blackened, fragile speckles, breakable and cast away, to fly out into the wind and vanish.

(It should stay meaning nothing)

(Everything they touched was ruined)

They tried the pale halls and found them without meaning too, when his light was not there with them. They stared over the courtyards. It wasn’t there either. They didn’t know what it was. 

It felt like dreaming far too often. The clarity from the closet did not last long. Since being saved, they were dazed. They were dazed and it made it hard to comprehend that they were saved from a nightmare at all. 

She wasn’t here. 

She wasn’t a heat inside of them where they should be without temperature. 

No feathers. No fur. And no thoughts. No thoughts. No words shared without permission. No feelings sickeningly felt in double, the vessel not hollow enough for such to find no purchase. All that she felt stretched out and clung into their faulty shadows instead of being rejected. They could feel. Not much. They were not emotional- before. They had no literal heart. Most sensations should have been too alien to them to ever comprehend if they were shared. 

But they could feel.

And so her feelings were barbs clinging to shadows where they found those faults, those impurities, that could decipher through relating. 

They hated her.

(She’d taught them hate.)

They wanted her gone, out of them.

(She’d wanted out.)

They hated her. They wondered if it had hurt. They thought she would hate having her realm so easily used by the darkness she so feared. 

They thought about finding out where she was now. The answer was kept from them. Good. 

He wasn’t here and he was. 

It felt strange. 

Too like a dream. 

His was a presence they couldn’t touch as they once could. 

It was good that he hadn’t been consumed completely. They clung to what remained while the world cast his memory away. He grew and they were careful while responsible for him. He was here, but he also wasn’t. 

There were other parts of this palace that surely hadn’t been able to shake his memory like the people had. 

There might be information of use within them. Some glimpse at what and who he was, thus what they needed to help him, what would make him most comfortable, maybe even traits of himself that he might find again in this new life. 

Those might be the last locations holding onto, protecting, who he was. 

His safe havens. His retreats of choice. 

They knew where some of his workplaces were located. Once, they might have felt a crushed desire to go inside some. To see what stole his time, what he found purpose in. 

For months, they avoided them despite knowing the locations.

When they entered, it was to a fresh wave of guilt. 

The lab was dark. It did not compare to the rest of the palace. The walls were grooved and ridged instead of bricks and shining metal. Black streaks ran down them. The soul lanterns were dim. 

Tables and desks and molds were all a mess. Armor for the other void constructs was present and recognizable. 

They should not have been there. 

He left them little to understand. What a funny thought they were thinking. As if he had left any of this for them. Wishful. Hopeful. Empty. 

Their fingers reached to graze one tall mounted stand of armor, a table-top, silk. It left them aching. They could so easily see him in here. The presence was an electricity against their fingertips. 

They pulled out a too-small seat and fit themself against one desk. The papers on top were covered in scrawls, grids, dots, lines, drawings. Blueprints. Plans. 

In the drawer below, they found more of the same. And others. Writing. Glyphs tiny, a scrawl. A poem of some kind. One repeated. Written on multiple separate papers. Notes for the room they had been given. Sketches of a lantern that looked like a claw. Sketches of a statue, the true one located on the crown of Hallownest, that made them sick to stare upon. The Black Egg Temple, the seals of binding, the Dreamers. The vessel that had come after them. 

They did not look for long. 

They feared their father had gone insane and they felt all the worse for having been gone while he did. 

None of this was for their eyes.

They’d not been allowed in his workplaces. 

Guilt drove them away. 

They thought they had known the state of the world while bound. They could not even understand it while inside it once more. 

They were still dreaming.

Some sketches from this chapter (+ two just general IBIMM ones)

Chapter Text

They were being watched.

No. Judged. Evaluated.

Like prey, aware of and uneasy that a predator’s eyes were on them. Though they usually stayed away from the observation of anyone, they knew whose eyes those were. They knew whose attention it was that left them wishing to twitch and fight. 

Politics were new to them. They had been sheltered away for their whole early life, kept in the company of their king, their father, and few others. He kept to silent places and they found too much meaning in sharing proximity, however wordless. 

The times that he would stare at them were more transparent than words might be. 

They understood eyes. 

They knew what it was to be watched, judged, evaluated. 

He’d found them without wants, all that time ago. He’d sent them to their fate. He’d brought them to her. 

Her eyes were much larger than his, or anyone else that they had ever seen. She dwarfed other beings when she manifested a form of feathers and flesh. They were burning spotlights. They were radiant orbs that sometimes were left to appear as smoldering orange and shiny as the blobs of her infection were.

And they-

They were very tall (once, once, before they had hung suspended, before they had too much pain and shame to stand upright) and yet she was larger than they. In a dream, she could rise high above them and use that height to stare down upon their appearance. 

Watch. Judge. Evaluate. 

Determine their worth as a prison and victor. Decide if they were weak enough to find a crack in, to claw and cut and rip open. 

They should have been seen as nothing. Nothing at all. Null, vessel, an object of the plague’s doom. Nothing else. 

But they were not a perfect vessel and so they became prey. 

Were they a stranger to judgment? 

To being flayed by eyes, feasted upon? 

And they had been so much stronger in appearance, once. Tall, yes. Without fault. Pure might. How capable. 

Sheltered from the view of the world. 

That world came to their safe burrows now. The first party gave curiosity to too many. A few, they would not have minded. Their expressive sibling loved the butterfly’s song. The one (deemed their quiet by the other two, and it fit, it fit, for they were a sink of calm while the failed vessel was noisy, and they could rest their head upon their knees to be swallowed into that silence) who had accepted them back seemed to enjoy time with those that they could hunt great beasts with. 

They wondered how that hunt had gone. Had their kin used their beautiful nail to cleanly cut through to the brain of that creature, garpede, that they brought back for their smaller sibling? Had they been elegant in the tunnels of Deepnest with a stranger for company? They too killed a great beast in Deepnest. They’d used no nail. They’d had no elegance; it was not a dance around its attacks, a beautiful display fitting of so perfect a knight. They clawed it to death. 

A perfect knight, they were not. 

Whatever the storm had been on that night, it seemed only to have angered this foreign lord. The Quiet One vanished and returned with one of the sisters. There was amicability. Politics. What did they know of politics? Only that the world meant to cast their father aside and his name was to be buried in shadows. Only that his kingdom did not have friends in all its neighbors and those four lords were not among the truly amiable. 

At the party, those same eyes had been on them. Watching. Tracking. Too attentive. 

Looking for cracks. Looking for a sign that they could be prey.

In his mind, he pierced them all with his weapons. Behind his eyes, he envisioned breaking shells and mouthfuls of blood. 

Not all of Hallownest’s neighbors approved of father’s kingdom. They behaved because he was strong. Because he, once, had shown no cracks. Though they did not like how he was hidden away to be forgotten now, they did understand that the purpose came currently for protection. The queen would not have his present state seen by its public- for that public was not just loyal crowds, but also temporary allies who lay, watching, waiting, ready to cease qualifying as such the moment they saw weakness. 

Some disapproved enough that they might look upon the infection and desire its strength, so they might throw unwanted alliances off. 

They spent those years helpless to do anything but stare upon the world, and her essence tainted it. Four eyes in unity, trapped with only the sight of the world outside to provide any sort of merciful stimulation- for all that it was cruel, that it tainted them, tore at them, left them to watch the life they desired be so freely given to another- cruel- cruel-

It hurt, that sight. Even now. It may never not hurt. But it was a pain they could let sink into the storm and its tempest may tear it away from them.

Peace. Their kin wanted them to be at peace. 

And they were, mostly, but they also remembered and that could not be helped. They’d witnessed the world. So had she. And where they had been helplessly restrained to just watching, she spread out over the land like festering rot. 

They knew where she had begun to gain a foothold. And they knew what three of the four strangers might not. They knew what went untalked of, as all mentions of the infection seemed to be. They recognized the mantids as dangers, even though Hallownest treated them as allies. 

Wrong of them. Incorrect. But how was Hallownest to know?

Their sibling was so powerful. Surely they knew. Surely they saw that festering fancy inside the mantis lord. 

What a fool, to have ever dreamed of it. Of strength, of betrayals, of the sun. 

The mantis representatives came to the palace too often now. The vessel did not know what reasons they gave to the queen or the knight, but they did know how they were observed by those strangers. 

The politics of such meetings were cloudy things. 

The feeling of being watched in such a way was stark. 

They should have felt defensive. They should have pretended not to notice at all- stand strong, too strong to be affected: an object that was not for eating. They should have slid away at the first sight of the mantids in the palace, to go to hidden rooms and stand careful guard over a vulnerable wyrm. They should have gone to the storm and let their tumultuous mind become clear to them, so they might ease it. 

Their sibling would let no harm come to the failed vessel. Their sibling saved them once, and would let nothing come close to breaking them again. 

They could. They should. 

And they found themself staring back at those eyes even as their shade writhed. 

Watch. 

Judge. 

Evaluate. 

As you would do to prey. 

(The problem was that they were no prey. Not any longer.

And after being saved from their containment, they would never be prey again.)

Hurt was far from foreign. Being trapped. Helpless. Fear and pain. It did not have to be so literal. They’d been helpless to chains, to a fate that would end in their slow demise, years before ever being sent to it. They’d always been aware that it was coming. Each moment with their creator drove that in. They longed to keep it. They would instead sacrifice themself to a predator that they had thought they could beat, for it, for him. Even the kindest of moments were therefore times that they were uneasy, miserable prey, oppressed by something that would hurt them.

That was pressure. Like this. That was pressure, even if just in hindsight. 

They had not fought their purpose. They had walked into their nightmare. Without father in their life, they would not have. (They knew.) If they instead had left the Abyss in the way that the littler ones did (-so many dead in that den, hanging from chains made of web, nightmare, nightmare, and they had continued to break shell on the ground under those bodies far past the thing’s death-), then (focus!) they would-

still have been as prey, under the eyes of a predator. It would have been something like that beast in the dark nest. It would have been the world at large instead of purpose and pride and purity, instead of chains and light and burning, burning touch reaching for cracks, for weakness. It- 

They would prefer calm thought. Their mind had once been nearly hollow. It grew less and less as days passed. They were told that color and noise was acceptable. They were encouraged to be loud, even as they desperately hoped that they were not (they likely were). 

But despite preference, they could not escape the earlier memories. 

Those of siblings, for years left out of their mind. Siblings locked in their birthplace. Siblings that left it and then died. Died, when they could have lived. When they could have actually lived and not spent twenty years with nary a thought or scarce, impure emotion. Those siblings would have been deprived of the love they had for the one they viewed- suppressed- as father. They would have missed white halls and the knights, training, workshops, light so constant and so bright that it left them forgetting the shadow of their origins. They would not have had all that they’d had in those first twenty years, which made them, built them, turned them into something perfect, drowned them, denied them, stunted them. The rest of the shadows here were not…Not like they were. Their state was not a matter of being a shadow, a vessel, then. It was their upbringing. They and they alone were broken. 

It would have been sad for those others to have lived deprived of certain loves, and it would have been better. It would have lacked chains. It would have meant they never stepped foot in the Black Egg Temple and burned in there. 

Hurt.

It hurt. 

Their body hadn’t even broken. It felt so many times like it would. But the light remained the one trapped, the one with less power. They kept her contained in a well of infeasible darkness. The dawn could not burn that which was untouchable. 

She crawled in dreams that they should not have had. They knew what it was, to be infected. 

Training with the knights left them to summon a pure nail, perfect armor, to fight as the flawless thing that they were- a great, empty god. Revere them. Though they be bound and defiled. 

It was a crawling thing against their head, itching from the inside where it could not be scratched. They did not want to remember that vague dream, that scattered, scattered, vague, go away-.

Something else. Something else. Fighting. Perfect forms and execution. They did all the knights did and more. And such cold perfection was useless against the sun. 

Broken. Broken.

They could have wished that none of the others faced anything like that: that sense of being small, of being overpowered, of being helpless to stand against fate, of being powerless to stop blades and fire from carving in. (From being helpless, even, to stop fighting their, their, him, them, two ghosts, regrets, regrets, that they would never have chosen to attack- would they? No no.) (Prey.)

There it was again. 

A sense that did not relate only to hunger and predation. 

A wish was worthless. There were scars on more than just they. From the moment they entered the palace, the expressive one had theirs visible. Pain tracking through their darkness. Venom left in shadow, to bite. They were too small to bear what even a fully physically matured vessel wouldn’t. 

So they found what their sibling feared. 

They tried not to think of that fight often. It was…conflicting. It wrenched them apart to fight one that looked like their father- their father, not a grub that they were told might not remember them (if he did not remember, then he would not be there, to forgive them- if he could) (if they could, if they should). It left them coldly angry that it would take such a form to start with. So the ghost, the regret that it took the form of, had not stopped them from hurting it. It incentivized them. It provoked. 

They sought it out for Witch. They saw the bodies in its den, though. Hanging, limp, dead in a room that lingered with the hurt of newborn shadows. The expressive one was nearly among those. 

And it was not right, for any of the others to have been prey when they instead took the mantle that should have carried the worst fate. 

Their father was not there. His visage was. The real form was larger than they were, dangerous, beastly, and breakable. Joints, long limbs, black carapace, even that white shell. 

Break. Break. Break. Break.

It had broken their siblings. Enough died in the dark birthplace, unable to get out. To find themselves in chains, upside down, left to leak, left to feel terror, left to hurt- to want to scream in a stretched moment of eternity and be unable to (stopstopstop) (she couldn’t-)-

And the one to escape still hurt after. Because that was what occurred, after pain. Scars. Memory. Nightmares. It did not leave. 

Years of hurting for them. Fear. Poison. It was so palpable on the tram, worse, sickening, in the tunnel as they sought the cause. 

Their own body splintered from the fight, rubbed against shell wrong, screamed-

but they did. not. pause. 

In the end, the only part that they did not completely ruin was the lying head. 

Witch kept the body around like a reminder that it could never hurt them again. 

They did not get the chance with the causes of their own nightmares. 

(They would protect him, remember him, when the whole world meant to forget his memory.)

(They did not have the choice to forget her. They were not sure that they would have, even in the same moment that they thought of her essence as a corpse strung up like the dead beast, an angry trophy that could never be in their life…how much worse was it, to feel unbalanced at the thought of her being truly gone, out of it?) 

They knew what it felt like to be stared at, evaluated for worth, chosen as prey, given to those that would then rip them apart. 

They stared back at the black eyes that judged them. 

This has happened too many times already. Each time that these mantids came to this place, they caught him staring at them. 

Those eyes might land on their smaller siblings instead. Or him. Those who had not finished their molts. Those who would stand as much of a chance as the newborn vessels in the dead nosk’s den. They knew what that stare included. 

Hungry, in spirit. Willing to harm what looked like prey.

Small vessels did. 

The den proved that to them in a way that they evidently had not shaken. What was dead already could not be killed a second time. They should have found relief from the sight by now. 

Those eyes would not be allowed to land on any other. 

If he thought them unworthy, weak despite their size (they were weak, failure, failure that they were), then they would show him otherwise. 

They once held still and passive, clipping on their own chains, allowing the horror to come in every past instance that they were the prey of. 

Frazzled, nervous, broken, impure, imperfect that they were now, they would not accept that sort of pain passively again. 

Wounded animals bit.

They noticed those dangerous kin with the queen, dining in a spacey hall. They saw Ze’mer hidden away on a balcony with another. 

They realized it all too late. 

There were visitors. Here for official reasons, perhaps, that the gray knight and her lover could take advantage of. 

Anxiety was familiar. It coiled and writhed. They felt that they must find their smaller siblings, usher them deep within the palace, stand in front of them with a nail that they hadn’t been able to use well in years held before them. 

This discomfort grew to an unignorable pounding in their mind, when they found another one of the visitors was missing from the hall. The one that hid away with Ze’mer was not an official Mantis Lord. They would not have even expected she was there, if not for having caught a glimpse of the two. When a Mantis party came, it consisted of those four lords- or some number less, but of those leaders still. 

The queen was attending to these royals, with their strong kin near her. There were no worries for any of their safety. The weaker vessel knew more than any just how powerful that sibling was. They were a knight by name, and a maelstrom of power contained under armor and blade. If they faced an opponent as a knight, then, it was as a worry-free courtesy. The nightmare that they’d been trapped within in those moments before their freedom was a vague thing. Most dreams were. They recalled the sight of flower fields, rotted and burnt and eaten away by a darkness that they were just one small, offending piece of. They did not get the chance to see out to a grand fight, they were not helpless to watch their father and the Old Light drown, they stood no chance to add to, aid, or stop the storm that they innately knew was raging. 

But they did know it. They had not seen it, perhaps, or they could not remember it, but void writhed and void spread and void stayed content with one shared, calmed heart. 

They would not worry for that sibling’s sake, nor would they be concerned over the queen’s safety so long as they were near her. 

The rest of their kin were not established god-eaters. They did worry for them. Even as they grew taller and they were strong, they were, the vessel still thought they could be hurt. They shared the same build.

And a vessel fully molted, fully trained, in their prime, could be broken. 

They knew that well. 

No, no, they’d not let it happen. 

One of their kin was hurt when very young. The venom stayed in them while they went without molting. Phantom venom and ghostly claws still struck, even though they were safe now. Shadows shared pain and fear. They found the thing that had made their sibling into prey. 

Rip. Ruin. Break.

Its body was lacking much. It was still recognizable as being the beast. Their smaller kin could go to where it hung- away from crowds, the queen insisted (but she had not denied their sibling its presence in the palace and they…were...They were uneasy around the queen, but they feared her a little less after that)- and be reminded that they were the one to stand unharmed while the one who hurt them was dead. They won. They won. 

The halls leading to such emptied floors also led to secrets, shadowed places, rooms that guests and visitors had no place going. 

The itching sensations of anxiety were present while they walked these passages. They looked for their other siblings first and felt that one was with the queen and void knight and another seemed to be at the top of a palace tower. That was safe enough. The visitors would not reach there. It was out of their own reach, though, and they were less pleased to have a limit on their power over the situation. They found him in his room and he seemed startled at their entry, so they regretted having checked. If they had not awoken him, they wouldn’t have to try to communicate for him to stay put. He was a creature of tissue and hemolymph, not shadow. They could only check him if they were in person, rather than at a distance. 

Though small (fragile, so fragile, so easy to be pulled into two. with shell and segmentation, would the sound be a pop?) (they hated their thoughts), he was bright. He did not truly emit light anymore, but they could nearly think he did. When they closed the door after leaving, they were paranoid that his recognizable, signature old light might have shone out before it could be cut off. If it did, then those who walked this hall would be able to notice something important was being hidden away from them. 

There should not be anyone (who did not already know) walking this hall.

Yet they found him as they sought out the last of their siblings. 

They stopped.

He noticed them and paused as well.

They did not move aside to clear the hallway. Polite manners would insist they do. Raging protective nerves insisted otherwise. 

They thought they saw his head move, ever-slight, so his eyes may rove down their posture and catch on their flexed hands. The vessel forced their legs to straighten and their arms to grow more lax. But still, they did not move to the side of the hall. And it was too late to put on the appearance of a pure vessel. They’d looked ready to claw at a threat. They knew what he had seen. 

It frustrated them. Once, they were able to hide every rare feeling. Once, they passed as a pure vessel.

Perfect. Exactly as designed. 

A voiceless thing with no mind to think that it was in danger, no will to break under chains and insidious infection, no voice to give away that it felt pain. 

A Hollow Knight that would have hung in chains without reaction. That could be cast aside and never heard of again. 

Once, they wanted not only to pass as that, but to be it. For that was its intended role, that was father’s design, that was what “perfect” meant. They saw little satisfaction in anything but complete perfection. 

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, now. It was supposed to matter and likewise their kin told them it was not. They were adored as they were by little shadows, they were accepted, named worth protecting, by the larger storm. 

It didn’t matter.

They felt a flare of rage over the fact that he had seen them in a pose not only blatantly emotional, but far too defensive- something that ready to bare fangs was staking all hope in the threat walking off. It could spur some on. They knew how hopeless posturing was, whether it was in hunching over flexed claws or pretending to be a hollow statuette for the gods. 

And that irritation made them feel another wave of the emotion.

The mantis gave a bow that was so brief that they suspected it was a mockery of the actual action. He did not consider them worthy. 

They recalled another visit from the four leaders. In that, they expressed their desire for a show of force. The queen allowed it. For a small audience of herself, the knights, the mantis heir, and the other vessels (despite how they wanted to keep their kin away, far away, protected), the quartet faced off with the Other One. They did not worry for that sibling’s safety. The storm was in no danger. 

But while one of the  mantis lords was dueling nicely with them, they in the audience noticed him staring at them and their smaller two siblings. When he returned from the three-on-one duel with the knight, they caught him staring again. Sizing up. Unsatisfied. Hunting. They did not know and they also were confident that they did. 

That visit only served to add to their discomfort with the strangers, for their number included him and they recognized nothing but danger from his displeased expressions. 

After his ‘bow’, he went to shoulder past them. They moved in the way. He turned up to look at them. Too close, now. They wanted very few to get so close. Those like the queen ignored their wants and carried them around regardless. But they were deferent to her and there was an expected trust in the fact that she was a pale being. 

He was not. 

“Move aside, won’t you?” he said. 

They wanted to shove him away. No. Calm. Calm. The vessel was calm, not overly defensive; it was not hiding anything, not protecting anything, its behavior meant nothing, go away. 

They pointed down the hall instead. Back to where the stairs were. Go. 

Before they made him. 

Their implicit suggestion only made his eyes sneer. 

“I’m merely looking for my daughter,” he defended his presence. There was a lilt in his voice a moment later. Too purposeful. “A father is allowed to be involved with his child’s life, isn’t he?”

(Their father was not a god any longer. Their father did not shine as he once had. Their father’s presence was not given away by light when they opened his door. He was fine. He was safe. It was coincidence.)

It was coincidence and that meant the comment did not relate to anything in this hall, but instead to the way that the White Lady told the kingdom that she and her husband had children, displayed and shown to the world even though he had wanted their origin hidden and safe, and so that world could draw conclusions based on how he was never present when the queen and her children were. 

It was an insult to him. Or to them. It was an insult, they felt, and they would…Do nothing about it.

Be pure, one part of them continued to suggest. It was a quieter mantra and had been since their imprisonment. 

Do not make a scene, they thought. It would reflect upon the sibling who gave them this chance, upon how they wished to be a knight in name too because of how important that Other One was to them. It would reflect on the queen and extend to the king and this kingdom already forgets him, casts him away, whispers and questions his absence. 

The mantis stepped a few feet away. 

“Such distress in your own home. Are you unfond of visitors? Let me make a recommendation, then. Do what we would with those visitors who come unwanted into our home,” he said.

They did not know enough about mantids. They’d only left the Palace to go into their sealing, and, since then, made sparse trips into the basin and that creature’s den in Deepnest. 

The mantis lord was staring. 

Always, always staring, with him. Their shade crawled. 

“We fight them,” he said. 

Staring.

Crawling. 

His head tilted towards one shoulder. 

“And you have more than enough grounds in your courtyards to challenge me to a fight in,” the mantis continued. 

Oh, they realized. 

It was an invitation.

It was a terrible idea. They barely attempted to duel with the knights anymore. It was always an aggravating and depressing venture. Their teachers would make it too easy. They would not spar with the strength that they did when facing the void’s vessel. Ze’mer would move more slowly. Ogrim would stagger too easily and would not throw so many projectiles or pillars of dung. Isma rarely used the net of obstacles and thorns that they knew her to favor as a fighting style; she kept from tripping them even though she did no such thing when she trained with the other vessel. Hegemol pulled punches and avoided spells, and yet still would end their duels abruptly just by falling on them- their back would feel like it was snapping, they would curl and contort into ugly, twisted positions, and hurt for the rest of the day no matter how much soul infused water they lay in. Apologies haunted their memories. They found that they detested pity. And Dryya? She’d not dueled them once since their return a few years before. She would lead them through stretches or try to drill them on their soul summoning, but that was it. And that was a different form of pity in and of itself.

Failure, failure, ugly failure. They were replaceable. The other tall kin here was as capable as they were in their prime, and moreso. 

They longed to be included with the knights in the way that their sibling was. 

They avoided invitations to spend time together, and especially duels. Even when they knew they were welcome. Even when the passive storm would creep against their shadow and press those images of welcome through. They were not unwanted. They could rest while the others did. Isma and Ze’mer might attack them with flowers until they were adorned head to leg. The Other One may even join them in this assault. 

Welcomed, accepted, but it hurt. It hurt to have what they had longed for. It hurt to be incapable of so much. It hurt to be viewed with sympathy and treated with kindness. 

They’d been so very impressive once and now they could not fight without their joints wanting to curl in and their back feeling as if its shell was split open. 

Hurt was far from foreign. 

There was expectation in the danger’s eyes. Expectation was far from foreign for them as well. And they were so very poor at resisting such. They were what they were told to be. 

Once.

Once, before they shattered too much to perfectly reflect the light shone on them.

He wanted a fight. They knew how to duel, even if they were unable to practice very often nowadays. The courtyards were far from this corridor and their kin and father would be safely distant. They’d be the only one stared at like prey. 

Their back ached already just from knowing they would go. They remembered how clumsy they were with their once-perfect nail. 

(They remembered the face-stealer’s blood on their claws- blood blood blood- and the crunch of its shells in their hands.)

They did as their company expected them to: 

They followed him down stairs and past retainers until they’d slipped out from the main palace altogether.

There were multiple courtyards on the palace grounds. Walls and gates stretched up high around the perimeter. Gatehouses, stables, and other smaller buildings could be found along these walls, though none rose higher than the first floor of the central palace proper.  

They wanted to be far from eyesight. No one ought to watch while they tripped and moved too slowly, attempting to not exacerbate chronic pains. They did not doubt that they could defeat the singular mantis lord. They had seen him dueling their kin. All of the four mantids were sharp warriors, but the vessel, damaged or not, had a strength that true bugs didn’t. They still suspected this would be sloppy and they would be embarrassingly shaky from the pain it would cause and they did not want to be seen. They really, really did not want to be. 

(Even as they wished that they had no such physical struggles and could still stand tall and proud, and their father could be alive as he once was, watching over as they fought all four foreign warriors like the vessel he’d taken in after them did. They could have done just as good of a job, before. The Five could have watched and seen that their pity was misplaced.)

(But it wasn’t. They weren’t as they once were. They hardly needed more eyes on them to drive that in.)

First, they stopped at a barracks to retrieve a good nail. It wasn’t their old one. But it was similar in length and only slightly more thin (it was far less beautiful and its metal was not as deadly-sharp), and they struggled with the weight of the one they used to be able to wield effortlessly. 

Then they led the way to a small courtyard that was more just a clearing in a grove of silver trees. Private enough. 

The mantis hummed as he looked around it but seemed to find it adequate. Good. They’d not stand for him to demand an audience. 

If all he wanted was a chance to make them prey, it could be tried with no more eyes than their own. 

He was looking them over once again. Their nail. Their arm, already affected by tremors. Their lack of ease when they were supposed to be in a lax stance. 

“We fought your father,” he said without prompting. They went even more tense at the word, once again. 

They thought that he seemed pleased at that. 

Their hand twitched on the hilt of the nail. 

“We were not going to acknowledge his supposed new kingdom if he didn’t,” the mantis offered freely. “That is not our way. We acknowledge grit, effort, honor. Our respect is sealed in blood.”

If they flinched at the word sealed, they could only hope it was imperceptible. 

But their shade crawled within them like it wanted to be free from their shell and exist as a raw, hungry thing separate from its sea. They were being far too closely watched for any sign of weakness to go unnoticed. He’d seen. He’d seen and they felt like screaming.

(And couldn’t. Couldn’t, never.)

(stolen from you  so much  are you not angry? you deserve)

“My sisters agreed to acknowledge your… ‘Hallownest’ from it, but your father made for a poor fight indeed,” the mantis started speaking again after they calmed.

Their fingers tightened around the nail. 

They would not stand for insults to his name. They refused. 

He hummed and looked upon his own weapon.  

“Strength is strength. He had it. But in soul and soul alone. He came near none of us. We are born to bite and claw for a reason.”

Said he, one who must not have considered himself strong enough if he dreamed about the infection during their time sealed. 

The mantis lance was twirled from a restful hold of inspection to that of intimidation. 

They lifted the nail and let their legs slide open.

He was staring, again. His eyes glittered. They looked like they glittered with gold for a moment. Leeching. Desire. Passing fancies, never gone through with. 

“Tooth and claws,” he said, almost a murmur, so discordant with the shining greed of his eyes. “It must be so.”

They might have recalled the moment with Deepnest’s monster. Surely that was not their nature, though. It was a fire brought on by the hurt to their sibling. Their nature was nothing, purity, perfection, a monument of wondrously crafted lies.

Hurt.

They met his eager eyes and could not say what their own might have been filled with, had they not been filled with void. Alarm, apprehension, anticipation; it pulsed through them. 

And it would continue to crescendo until he made the first move. This was his chosen battle. It was his desire, to shed blood here. It was he who would lose- they were no one’s prey and they’d not be pitied by anyone. 

(The first taste of pity they ever received was such a sour thing, toxic, bitter bile, her essence burning while they had to remain unaffected, unaffected, as though they had not noticed it at all.)

(They noticed everything. They felt it all. A mind a will a heart of void that did not cast them out. They were no pure vessel, oblivious to either hate or fear or pity, and they had so often wished they were.)

They would not be defeated here and let the mantis run off, free to hurt their kin. That would be a mockery. They’d not let the pain leave them collapsed for the queen and the storm and the knights and the other shadows to find and pity.

The only option, then, was to ignore any screams from their body and fight past the pain until the mantis called it quits first. 

It sounded like a chore.

It was a good thing that they were quite used to ignoring their own senses. 

He threw the lance while they were thinking- do not thi- and they didn’t have the time to focus on a shield. Instead, they had to try to dive to the side. It should have been a simple move. They watched their knight-sibling and the Five. There was little or no pain when those types did so. They moved with fluidity and grace, and they, instead, would have screamed if they had the mouth for it. Pain shot up their back, from hips to shoulders. It felt like the shell was ripped off them, torn nearly free just to pull on nerves, painpainpain. 

The fact that a part of their mind went to scream for someone to help them made the throbbing hurt worse. Weak. Helpless. Crying out for a world that could-not-would-not hear them, but they could tell that they would not contain the infection and so what else had they to do but dread and fear? Their nail was gone. They couldn’t think. 

They were not helpless, to become a burden for another to bear. No matter if they twisted where they landed on the dirt, ripped open and still throbbing where the nerves burned. 

Burn, the sun, it-

Soul. They needed soul. They could focus it and alter their fighting style to lean on magics and immobility. A shield against that thrown, spinning lance. Pillars and daggers from a distance. Their nail was gone, unused by their weak form, and the nail they’d brought here with them was- somewhere- they forgot to think to use it. 

The whistling lance had already returned to its owner. He held it to his side for just a moment- he was looking down on them, probably- Fluke that thought he was stronger than they when he likewise thought he needed the strength of the infection- They pushed to their knees and stayed crouched to watch him. 

This time, he chose to try to dash at them, to spear them in place. They jerked aside- the shell on their back was ripped off once more- and grabbed the lance as he went. They were larger than he was, they remembered. Once, they would have been unequivocally stronger. They could still be strong. 

They twisted his weapon and his momentum left him to tumble to his back legs first. His noise of surprise turned into a grunt of pain when they slammed the handle-end of the lance into the bottom of his thorax, smacked it against his face, and threw it into the trees. For all that they knew, it was an important weapon in mantis territory. They’d not ruin relations by snapping it apart- but they could. Their void-storm sibling had chosen to be a knight and they asked to follow in that path. Their strong, strong sibling, who could have been a sea, chose to stay in casual form and stand with the knights and queen of Hallownest. So they’d not ruin the relations of their father’s kingdom with another. No more than they likely already were by getting goaded into a fight here. 

But they could.

They could feel how light the weapon was. They could shatter it. Ruin it. Break. 

The limbs of Deepnest’s face-stealer were thicker.

Before they’d been broken. 

The mantis kicked from where he was still on the ground. It left them to curl over their gut and he was standing before they recovered. Standing and ready to bowl into them. The pincers that made up his arms were as sharp as a lance would have been. None of the four lords needed extra weapons. 

They could fight as they were, with their bodies alone; they could rip and crush opponents without metal nails or lightweight lances. Teeth and claws. 

It must be so. 

He’d said. He’d said. They knew what duels looked like. They understood sparring. Once, they’d been able to do it well. Since the nightmare, they could at least watch the rest in their training. Those spars were like synchronized dances. Beautiful, coordinated, not teeth and claws. 

Their strike left them with some soul and they used it to throw burning cold daggers through the air. That was the move of a duel. It had the cool distance of their father. How much more regal. If they were now called his child (he who could not contest it, who was here and not here), they should appear the part. 

A presentation of perfection- 

It was too late for that. They’d already fallen and flinched and failed to move with the fluidity of void and light. 

The mantis tried to dive and claw at them from a jump, but they caught a shoulder and swung him down. It almost carried them to the grass too. He was heavy. Once, they might have been able to lift any of the mantis lords, but now just redirecting one’s weight threatened to cause their arms to lock and body to buckle. 

They considered this a few seconds after the actual move was finished and he’d returned to circling. In the moment itself, all they knew was their irritation and the feeling of shell within their hands. 

He rolled his arm and they knew they must have hurt that shoulder. When he tried a lunge again, they let soul flare in front of themself. The mantis crashed into it and stumbled, burning. Soul burned. The smell of shell burning-

Burn burning burn

Retch

They had not the means to, but void rolled and writhed inside them. 

He kicked from the air again and they tripped back to avoid it. Their footing was poor. They weren’t- concentrate, vessel. Or be so mindless that thoughts will not distract. 

They let soul stream from them into the dirt, to crawl in white roots quickly before exploding up from the ground. The summoned nail pillars only caught the bug briefly. 

Light dimmed back to its former state. In that time, the mantis had rushed past the faded pillars, and rolled under their swinging arm. They twisted and punched. To their shame, he slammed his pincers against their arm and it could only slide a little further before the double pressure cut through shell. 

They would be bleeding, now. 

Bleeding spills of void on a silver garden.

Poisoning the queen’s handiwork, as they poisoned his survival long ago just by failing in their duty. 

Their free hand came and grabbed around the pincer entirely, despite how its serrated edge cut into that hand. If they were to bleed, if they were to ruin, then let it be a flood of the poison. 

Voiceless, the only shout came from him when they pulled him off their arm and shoved him away. Soul rose beneath his form in a pillar that left him to shout again.

Their arms dropped to their sides while they heaved and bent under aches. The sensation of void running down one arm and the other’s palm was disconcerting. Moss and grass dissolved under the droplets. 

They were wavering and it let him kick them in the midsection. It hurt. Their whole body did, and that one hit left the pain to ricochet through so many other ones. Their body was too stiff, too bent, stuck in useless positions. When they watched their kin spar, they appeared so fluid. 

The mantis was a shadow to their left. They made to rise and realized abruptly that he’d not only landed near their lost training nail, but picked it up. Though it was clumsy in his type of arms and heavier than his lance, he still nearly stabbed them badly. 

The cut was a sting in their side that was almost more numb from the flow of void leaving it than any other part of their body was. It trickled, it leaked, it left them. It ruined the ground. His eyes reflected the palace’s ambient, constant light; bloodlust, they thought. His eyes. Always the same, always recognizable, and they would not bleed on the ground under it. 

They summoned more pillars that he avoided being cut by, but that caught the stolen nail and left it tumbling away. They threw waves of daggers out in a fanning circle over the battleground. 

Now he bled. Nics and cuts. Jagged holes. 

Still, he stared he staredhestared.

They burned. 

The mantis started forward and they threw up orbs of soul to block him until they regained their stamina or he quit. When would he quit? When he had them dead. When he had them beaten. They knew what his eyes meant. They’d not be safe until they wore him out so completely that he had to give up.

(Or until he had no living eyes to use to stare- but no, no the mantids were here as representatives and they would not ruin his kingdom)

He stepped forward again and they raised an arm in warning. The daggers which left bleeding indents on his shell could easily (not truly, it ached, they were tired) be brought back. 

And he seemed to understand it, for he just stood there for a moment and looked down upon them. 

“You’re a prideless coward too, then,” he said. 

They did not move. They were too-still. 

Aches spread through their body. Void throbbed under particularly bruised shells. It whipped over their vision and left it fluid, hazy.

They burned. 

When he walked forward again, they lunged. 

-

It was not about thought. They did not recognize that he might have been quitting, just by walking. Or he was heading for his lance so he could have something to combat their distance attacks. 

If it was a tactile fight he wanted instead, they’d oblige. They’d oblige as they had with the beast who’d hurt their sibling. It undoubtedly also stared upon their kin as the mantis stared at them. Its lair held the dead who were not so fortunate as the expressive one. They’d killed it. 

They did not regret it. 

Even though they were then barely able to move for days afterwards. Their limbs stuck. They were left to lay contorted and the pressure would not alleviate. Their back had hurt the worst. 

There was a stage that they stopped feeling pain so primarily in and they had only met it that one time, in the den, while they ripped and tore that thing apart. When it no longer moved under them, then their agony returned. But before- haze. Haze. Throbbing. Aching. Light. Both at once. Contradicting. Elevated. 

He threw them off himself and lunged in return. They did not try to throw him anywhere. It was easier to rip at shell when it was right there, under them. 

He stabbed and a part of their neck’s side sliced open. But all that remained under the shell, under its musculature, under the nerves, was shade and it poked and wiggled from the cut. They felt a compulsion to open the cut wider, draw it down their throat and through their chest so that void could flower violently and whip their opponents. Isma had taught them to use it in such a way, but confined, confined. Careful. It was their arm that melted and resolidified. Be contained. 

(Be careful- bugs were fragile compared to a shadow)

They took care. They took care in hunching through and bearing the shockwaves that he sent up from the ground. Moss and grass flew and fell. It was a mess. The courtyard was ruined. How rude of him, to do this to the queen’s craft. (It hardly mattered that it was they who had brought him here.) But he spat on the name of the monarchs of Hallownest. Coward. Prideless. Like him, he said in insult. Like him? As if he were without honor. As if he did not sacrifice them, sent them to a hell  no no

(Funny, that this hell was what the mantis considered voluntarily taking on.) 

The shockwaves should have hurt. They forced through the next set like a brute and did not care how much it stripped the top of their shell. 

A cut across their arm. A pincer caught in two hands and snap- useless. Not that he stopped fighting without it. 

Wounded animals bit. 

The effort was attempted to be returned and it succeeded in causing a bruising ache through shadow, convinced as it was that it could feel. That it was capable of feeling, thinking, being. They let their fingers slash like claws- a shame they did not have the teeth, for it must be so, it must be so, it must end this way: in blood. 

(They were- knight- Hallownest-. Kingdom. The Five, their kin, the queen, alliances, wars. They…)

He took that role on to bite and break through clawed fingers, despite how they cut the soft insides of his mouth, wrists, anything. It amounted to having to spit out their poisonous alternative to hemolymph. They took those pauses to slam elbows down, slash and claw, blow after flow. 

His unbroken arm cut into their side. He’d freed himself again. They chased. 

His kicks sent them down. Shockwaves left them shaking where they were hunched on upended dirt. Their lunges sent him tripping. They left him to stumble into a tree and then grabbed his head with both hands to lift and shove it back into the trunk.

It made a noise they’d not heard before. Softer than they would expect from a tree taking a hit. He managed to kick them off before they could hear it again. 

They couldn’t straighten their back- it screamed trying- but it was not stopping them from being able to draw blood. 

And they drew it. It coated their fingers. It ran down their void and mixed, oil and water. 

He’d stumbled away to cough a slough of dark hemolymph up. That was a sign of heavier injuries. They were hurting him. 

Good. 

(Don’t kill him, don’t, the kingdom, them, don’t)

Good good, and they shoved him to the dirt before he finished drooling blood. 

He twisted onto his back but it just allowed them to sit on top of his torn cloak and grab his face. 

Few bugs had hands as the old void’s form did, imprinted by those that brought it into a form before. Their tallest sibling did. They used those hands to hold a nail as fanciful as that which their father once made them. They used them to stand tall and proud with armor and cape and weapon, like a knight. 

Theirs covered the pale portion of his head. Only the two end fingers had the leverage provided by that face’s curving edge and they strained to close in on it. No matter. The remaining fingertips shoved until white shell bent and broke and they too had something to grip. The fingerholds let them lift his head with one hand alone. Lift. Shove. Shove! 

Dirt thumped. His noises were wet. He was slicing at their thigh and they were numb to pain. 

Lift. Shove. 

Crack.

How familiar a sound. 

It came from somewhere on his head- the spiderwebs growing larger and larger from the two places their fingers impaled it at? Something on the back of it? They wrenched their hand up and his head followed, all the way to the shoulders being lifted from the dirt. Weak? Their nail, too heavy? Armor too much of a burden? They could lift after all. They could win. 

Slam. 

Crack.

You’re killing him

One teal horn snapped from the second prong. It hung onto the rest of the crown but flopped around. They could rip it free and make the dangling cease. Did these horns mean anything? They seemed to contain only antennae and some flesh under. They were not like the vessel’s own. Did it hurt, to have them broken? 

It would have hurt to fulfill that dream of his, the one of the sun. He might have been strong enough to tear them apart with it. They were damaged now. But he would have burned as they burned. They thought they might want him to. 

Their hand shifted to dig their fingers deeper, to feel more and more shell give way. Hemolymph was hot on their claws. Let it all begin to burn. 

Let his dawn break. 

They’d not regret it. 

You’re killing him

They’d not regret it- he hurt them, he looked upon them as prey, weak, he wanted her infection over their father’s kingdom. 

He began the fight but they would use it to rid that kingdom of a threat. 

(His sisters were inside. With their remaining parent and the rest of the court. They couldn’t shouldn’t-)

Slam. Crack. Bleed. 

You’re killing him

blood blood blood blood blood 

And?

And?

Let him, let him.

One who wished, willingly, in passing fancies and growing obsession, to call the light into himself. 

Who could want such? 

They had they had they had

And what would they tell their past self, heading for that fate? Do not. Take her not in. 

They had they had

They ripped that fool that they were apart to save them- how contradicting. 

They were not burning anymore. 

Cold filled every inch of their being instead. Cold, embracing, and fearful all the same. 

It took careful effort to extract their hand from where it pressed so tight over, and into, his face. When they crawled back, they noticed that the pincer was not digging into them anymore. 

They released.

And exertion returned in horrid force. They shook, so hard they thought they might fall over as they stood and backed away. 

They thought that they might have killed him.

Even if he choked up blood now and breathed, a death soon after would still be one they caused. 

It was almost impossible to walk and they had to fall against a tree for support instead. Their shaking was distracting. They started to slip down it and fought to stay upright. 

They felt like they were completely covered in blood and void. 

Cold. Dousing a fire. 

If they had killed him, then they would face the consequences. They did not want to think about what those consequences might be. Chains were the staple of every nightmare. 

It was just a duel. Those ended in death at times. 

It was a duel- a bloody brutalizing, done by a beast, not a knight. 

Disappointment was a familiar feeling but they did not like it anymore for that. 

Still laying on the ruined ground, they heard a wet laugh. 

Dying, not dead. 

Did he understand better now? 

They rested their head against the tree and continued to shake. 

Their shuddering rattled down through them even as the mantis rolled to one side, spat, and crawled to a tree of his own. The piece of his horn-crown had come off altogether. It was left where he lay under them. They twisted against their support and stared at it as if it meant anything. It left them to shake more. 

Their gaze shot from the broken ornament to the bleeding mantis when he started to talk. It sounded like his voice was dragged through broken shells. Surely it hurt to speak. Why did he bother?

“Raaather good- ow-” he broke off to cough. 

They looked away towards the pale palace wall, only a few bushes away from the clearing. 

Anger was a hot thing. It burned those it was directed against and its source alike. It couldn’t help it. No more than she could have stopped burning them even if she tried. It was not the place of anyone to contain a god. 

The knight did it well enough. Better. What was a god, a light, to that storm, that sea? 

(You couldn’t, you couldn’t, you didn’t)

Shame was no better. 

The mantis was trying to talk again and there were no others around for it to be directed towards. 

“You-.”

They tried to meet his eyes. They hadn’t changed. Still shining black. But no infection shone there. No malice glittered. They didn’t see hunger. They weren't judged prey.

“You are stronger than your sibling.”

The knight? Who else could he mean? All of the mantis lords fought them. It was an impressive duel on all parts, even if their kin went easy on the foreign warriors. 

It hurt to shake their head. Their fists curled tight, though, and his eyes narrowed at them. 

“No,” he growled. “I will not have the shame of being defeated by one who won’t accept their own will.”

(Shame- how familiar a sentence, how familiar a sentiment, how familiar a burden)

The mantis lord tipped his chin up. It looked like it hurt, to move his neck about like that. If it did, he did not let it stop him. 

“You are a warrior. Face that. Accept that,” he demanded. 

They were not stronger than the storm. They could not even compare to the void’s heart. 

They could recall the will and words of siblings shared in shadow: you are strong you are brave 

Brave, brave.

As if-...But brave. 

“Theirs is restrained by courts and tradition. You fight with every piece of yourself. You aim to kill. There is no nonsense. No pretense.” His cloak was ruined and wrenched down from his lower face and neck by now. It let them see his mouth and the smile was macabre. “A warrior. They ought to lead with you, when they challenge outsiders.”

The mantis pushed and shuffled until he could dip down. It left him wavering and falling on the tree. 

They did not want to accept something that dismissed the strength of their sibling, who was only attempting to act by the rules of a knight in Hallownest. 

Besides, they might have faceplanted if they tried to nod back. 

(But the praise was a noise that built inside them, and they did not think the roar was a negative.)

He tried to talk more, but grunted and drifted off with a worrisome “ah” instead. They wondered if they would manage to walk again. It was dramatic. But they hurt right now and it made them regret so very many things. Not the least of which was having ever gone into the Black Egg Temple, because without years hanging in chains, burning, they’d not have a body that experienced such aches after activity. They never had before the sealing. 

They weren’t in any danger of dying. It still hurt. They’d nearly killed him, they thought. And he praised them afterwards, but that did not remove the fact. They’d nearly destroyed foreign relations, just because they had…The praise was odd. Their mind kept catching on it and growing confused over whether they had done something wrong, or right, or wrong but right to mantis culture, or the opposite. All that they knew was that they were both injured and they did not want to face whoever found them. They likely should go walk back into the palace and draw attention to the fight, but they also would rather never be found at all. The earth was fine in this spot, upended as it might have been by their fighting. They wouldn’t mind melting into it. 

Unfortunately, they did not sink into the dirt fast enough to be gone by the time that voices started drawing nearer. They felt shadows against their own. Queries, cares, compliments, a disappointment that the rest weren’t invited to watch, and no words at all from the passive storm: just a sweeping, drowning feeling that held them. Content. Their kin was not mad. Their other siblings claimed to be, but that came because they had not seen what was not a pretty fight to watch to start with. Had they a mouth, they felt certain they would have used it to tear the Mantis Lord’s neck and chest open in the heat of the moment. They felt hyper aware of every dried drop of hemolymph on their shell and ruined cloak. It was rather obvious what happened. Anyone who came would know. Know. Know. They would be seen.

Like this. Unable to stand up more than a weak hunch. Surrounded in blood and destruction. A knight? They’d been an animal. And then been complimented for that, by a voice that insulted their father and their sibling the void-heart for their fighting style. 

They pushed up from the tree but did not manage to leave the clearing. That panicked desire to hide was contested not just by rationality and pride but also their poor physical condition. 

By the time they were standing and wavering in place, slim trees were pushed aside to allow for the entry of figures nearly their height. They froze. 

Their kin was there. And their kin did not fault them. They were more pleased that they weren’t in danger of dying, displeased that they hurt, and otherwise it was hard to read the feelings that came so passively from that being. The queen was not there. They were glad for that. For many reasons. 

But of most alarm for them in her absence, there were three mantids, each nearly as tall as they were and each stone-cold. They did not stare as he had, but theirs was an apathy that they knew to fear as a weaker vessel too. 

They didn’t have their nail. And they were shaking with the effort of standing. 

(They’d not needed their nail. They were strong even without it.)

The three looked away from them to stare at their fallen fellow. Were they angry? With either him, for disappointing them (they understood that fear, as one who lived with royalty, who bore the blood of royalty, who did everything and more to not disappoint their king), or them, for being a stranger and nearly killing one of their own?

They were very, very glad the queen was not here. 

The smallest of the mantids started hissing wetly on the ground. 

“Sisterss.” He pushed onto his less-damaged arm and waved the broken one in their direction. “This is the might of Hallownest, see?” His words slurred. They were tense under the scrutiny of the three quiet mantis lords’ eyes. “It will- shall…Respectable.”

One at a time, the others broke the pause to silently walk over to their brother. One stripped off her cape and slid it on the ground while another lifted him from the dirt. A third collected the piece of his horn before joining the rest. As three, they carefully rose with their living burden held up between them. 

Their kin still stood nearby, head tilted. Amused, they suspected. They did not know whether to burn or not. 

The Mantis Lords paused at the border of the brush. One nodded at their sibling. 

“We shall retrieve our niece in time. Do ensure she’s treated well,” she said, before twisting her head to look at them instead. 

The other two stared now as well. 

Staring, staring, they did not like it. They were too aware of the blood, of their tremors, of how weak they looked and yet how monstrous they likely appeared, and how that contradiction earned them no favors with either the easily scared nor with warriors. 

They looked, unreadable, too unreadable. Every eye saw them, the weak them, beyond the lie. Judge. Judging. 

“When do we get our turn?” the sister furthest away asked. 

That knowing amusement from their kin continued to crash like waves into them while they did nothing but stay still in confusion. 

Hallownest’s allies were a strange sort.

They overheard too often that their Lords had given approval to the newest heirs of Hallownest. It meant tensions relaxed and that they would catch sight of Ze’mer’s mantis lover sneaking around the palace even more often. 

It still made them strange creatures. 

But there was a simplicity to tooth and nails. That much, they acknowledged.

shitpost drawn for this ages ago