Chapter Text
All it could see was darkness..
A warm, damp, beckoning darkness that made the creature enveloped in it want to stay there forever. The kind of darkness that didn’t make it feel like it was being watched. The absolute nothingness was comforting. It could sense the safe feeling deep into their shell, seeping into every crack and tendril of its being. The darkness comforted the thing inside of it. And though it didn’t know why, or how it felt comforted by it, it did. The darkness soothed its wants.. its need of something to keep it afloat in the void of ‘true nothingness.’
And it was calm. It was calm for a long, long time. For as long as it could remember, though it didn’t feel as if that was that long.
And yet..? It had a consciousness somewhere deep in its forming, soft shell.
And that consciousness wanted out.
It remembered reaching out with hands that didn’t quite feel like its own, feeling dark and unknown even to the empty black void around it. Pressing against a surface it couldn’t see, knowing it was there. It felt its miniscule claws scratch at the walls of its strange prison, if it could even be called that. The near-silent sound of its scratching only motivated it further as it raked the hard surface of the wall seemingly in front of it, and even the slightest pressure from its hand caused a cracking sound from all around it. A small chip of whatever it was surrounded by falling out and away from it.
The being remembered the wall giving way in front of it as a light filled its ‘vision’. The light was not blinding, nor was it soft. It was a harsh light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The being behind the broken wall didn’t want to find out what was past the comfortable darkness they were now being forced out of.
Well, if it was going to make an escape or not was its own choice. Or was it? It had not a single thought as it spun in its shell, almost seeming to not control its own body. It felt the writhing around it.. the movement small at first, but the both very loud and inaudible sounds of its siblings - it didn’t know how it knew the things around it were its siblings, but it did - making the same attempt to escape their own prisons as it was.
Its attempts at escape resulted in it falling, still inside the shell. It landed on where its spine would be if it wasn’t just a young larva, prompting a huff of shock from the thing. Though it did not truly have lungs, like some other bugs may, it was able to breathe. It didn’t know if it needed to, though, but that was really a problem for later. If it even had a later, that was.
It knew it did, in some form of consciousness. It knew it would live somehow. Even outside the black void that tried to beckon it back to its possibly eternal sleep.
As the round form of the shell encasing the bug rolled to the side, it landed on the side broken, caused by the bug inside. The shock from the sudden movement was the one which had jarred the larva inside, but it made an audible cracking sound as the hair-thin cracks in the shell spread across the egg. At this point, the only thing the being inside the egg wanted was to escape it, even when the offer to be kept in the welcome darkness seemed overwhelming. Maybe that’s why it wanted to leave. Or maybe it was because it felt the need to do.. something that wasn’t just rotting away inside its shell forever, ignoring the light that seemed to be beckoning it out.
The light.. it wanted it. The light was calling to it. It thought it would be able to fight it, retreat back to the void from where it came, but no. It felt no stronger feeling than the need to follow the light, which had turned from mildly annoying to eye-blinding. And it yearned for it. It could now feel the walls of its enclosure clearly, the inescapable feeling of the calm darkness seemingly gone away. The bug shuddered as the warm and safe feeling left suddenly, leaving no trace of it ever being there behind. This caused the brightness in the bug’s mind to glow ever brighter, and it threw itself at the thin shell of its egg, breaking out of it with a satisfying crack and shatter.
The thing laid there on the stony ground for some time, its energy wasted on breaking out of its protective shell. But it wasn’t tired. Physically at least. Its mind was flooded with the bright and blinding want of the light above it. It could feel its siblings crawling over it in a ramshackle attempt to reach the light calling to them. The feel of their feet-claws on its still damp, newly hatched body was agonizing to a degree.
It wanted to follow them - Its siblings, to the light that called it so sweetly. But something in its living soul told it to stay away. That it would die if it followed the doomed footsteps of its siblings. So it did the only thing it could think of doing:
It laid there, unmoving, letting its hundreds of siblings crawl across its body as they tried to reach the light that shone from so far above them.
It heard the ear-shattering thuds of bodies hitting the same ground it was laying statue still on. The sensitive sensors somewhere on or in its body could sense they had no breath, and certainly no heartbeat to their lifeless forms. Its siblings were dying. Why didn’t it care? It certainly held some kind of feeling deep in their shell, but it couldn’t draw those feelings out from the depths of itself.
It could feel the desperation in its siblings as they jumped from floating platform to floating platform in the sky. The bug’s sensors could make out from how many vibrations came off of them from its kin landing on them. It could sense them as far as a large platform on the left side of the wide space spanning from floor to far-up ceiling. And even then, the vision it had of it was faint and unfinished. Almost like the unfinished blueprint of a building which construction had started on while ignoring the need of a structured finish to the design. Chunks and sides were missing, and it couldn’t exactly tell where the platform started and ended. But it could feel the vibrations of the other bugs like it landing on it.
Another of its kin fell from far above, landing close beside the bug faking its own death. Something told it that it could not cry about its death. It didn’t know why.
Small void-stains line the corners of its eye-holes as the creature of void held back tremors and hiccups, keeping the air vents on its neck shut tight.
It could not cry.
It had to cry.
Do not show emotion.
It didn’t know why it couldn’t show emotion. It wanted to cry for its fallen kin. All of their corpses slowly littering around it, carpeting the void-stained ground with the bodies of its siblings.
Decisively, the void creature pushed itself up onto its shaky legs. It didn’t need to learn how to use them. It was an instinct that came naturally to the newly hatched bug, and it needed no introduction on how to walk. Balance would be something it needed to get better at, it thought as it shakily took a step.
It was then that it realized the blinding light in its mind had calmed to nearly nothingness, and the corpses falling like rain had slowed and only the occasional body fell. Even then, the thud of a corpse hitting the ground, mask smashing against others’ was still jarring enough to make the bug jump. But it seemed overall to be much, much calmer in the tall, dark room.
It didn’t know why the light had stopped, but, in hindsight, it was glad.
Its vision was blurry, like a dream with no real plot point. Or like a memory, buried deep in the mind of the beholder. So deep that accessing it would be just as hard as reliving it.
Its sight wasn’t particularly supposed to be blurry. It walked on, as if sight or understanding wasn’t difficult.
Because it wasn’t for it.
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They were out of The Abyss. They didn’t know how particularly they had escaped, but they had. They had no sense of time or direction, but whatever it was going to do now, something was telling it to go up. Though the walls were sheer and tall, there were cracks in the stone and bricks they were made of. Or were they white and pristine with no marks of impurity.. it was unclear now, when the world had begun to fall to ruin.
There were imperfections in the stone, however, and the small vessel was able to scale the walls, though not with ease. It took a decent amount of strength and energy. Though those were traits that vessels were hatched with, and to great amounts, their shells still could grow weary and sore. No doubt that was the feeling that began to tingle down their arms and legs.
But they didn’t stop there, atop just one ledge. They continued on. Stopping to rest every other rock shelf, or when they got a chance, away from the tall, armored and armed guards, those of which seemingly made of the same void they were. Though they were clearly not truly living beings, the larva made an effort to avoid them. They were quite scary for a newly-hatched little bug anyways. Much too large a foe to attempt to escape.
Hopping across ledges, more floating platforms, and scaling walls, the tiny impure vessel continued up. Up to what it would later associate the sound with bustling tramways and many bugs’ footsteps. It could hear carts rolling, bugs speaking, and so, so many loud, rumbling sounds that, even now, she couldn’t tell what they could even possibly be.
But their instinct was still to go up. But, they could wait. Be patient. They had all the time in the world to wait for the tramways to quiet down.
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They found a decent little cave with some kind of fountain in it, depicting some kind of bug with many arms, horns and wings holding up something. The statue was of remarkable size too, spanning just about the entire height of the room. It was actually quite impressive. Looking up at it, there was a light of familiarity blinking in the back of the little bug’s mind, though they couldn’t pinpoint why. They hadn’t seen this weird long bug anywhere before. Well, clearly they hadn’t. They were still just a newly hatched larva. But then why did it seem.. all too familiar?
They decide to dwell on that later.
Instead, continuing to inspect and study the room, the small vessel learns two things.
One: there was a heavy, absolutely huge stache of Geo at the bottom of the fountain. They didn’t at the time know that geo was actually a form of currency, and not just a couple shiny shell rocks that looked pretty, but they gathered up as much as they could at the time. They would store it in what seemed to just be a little pocket in their cloak, which they had completely ignored the existence of until right about now. But when they put the geo in this little pocket, it just vanished from sight! The bug still knew it was there, they could feel it somehow, but it was now weightless and seemed to have no form.
And two: The water in the fountain seemed to be clean, despite all the geo among other things inside of it. When they had reached into the water to pick up the geo from the bottom of this fountain, the water seemed to energize and soothe the soreness in their arms. It also gave her some feeling of almost ‘ingesting’ the water? It was an odd feeling, that. One they did not understand.
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They would camp out in the cave for gods know how long. Possibly just a few hours, but also possibly days, or even weeks. They had been hiding behind the statue each time anyone entered, silent enough to not be caught. Most of the time, it noticed, the figures entering were wearing blinding white robes, and would throw unspeakable amounts of Geo into the basin at a time.
So that’s where all of it came from. Rich show-offs that wasted all their money for a STATUE. The vessel could feel her rage building, but not exactly restrained inside their body. Almost as if it was coming from everywhere at once, and nowhere at the same time.
But it didn’t feel pure rage. It didn’t even feel upset. It was just.. neutral. Despite having so much built-up rage, the vessel just continued to do nothing about it, with only a flicker of confusion.
The bustling above had slowed enough to leave when another pair of these robed figures entered. The bug was tired of waiting. They just wanted to get out and continue to climb up, up, up to the top of the world.
The white robed bugs would drop their offerings into the water, bow to the statue, muttering things the little larva couldn’t quite make out or understand. The language wasn’t foreign to them, but they couldn’t tell what they were saying. Not like they needed to know, anyways. They were just about to absolutely book it to the unknown landscape above anyways.
As soon as the other bugs left, the vessel splashed out from behind the statue, cloak dripping with the soul-infused water. The pair of bugs were still descending as the short bug jumps out from the cave and scrambles up the floating platforms and walls, up to the quiet tramways above.
The pair of robed worshipers were stunned speechless as the larva ran away from sight, disappearing in a matter of seconds.
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The Vessel opens her eyes. Where was she? She swiveled her horned head from side to side, before realizing that her memory had come to an end. She was back on the top of the world, where all one could see in the distance was a small, well lit town. The light had begun to dim recently, and there seemed to be less travelers passing by her little encampment, an abrupt stop happening only a few days prior.
She sighed, and sat down, legs dangling off the edge of the cliff as her cloak billowed around her. She wasn’t scared of falling. She’d sat here hundreds of times. Enough times to be able to counter the wind blasting on her back, threatening to push her over.
The vessel knew that, even if she did fall, her body and shell was strong enough to let her live, thankfully. But she didn’t want to have to endure the likely pain of falling straight onto the stone floor below, and have to make the journey back again.
Looking back to the dim, but warmly lit town, and the almost glowing pink light from above it, on another cliff that seemed to be just as high up as the one she was situated on at the current moment. Maybe there was an even higher up peak there.. She’d have to find that out someday.
She looked back at the buildings below her. The place some of the residents called ‘Dirtmouth’. It was an interesting name, she’d give it that, but it kind of felt.. A bit too literal.
She had visited the cozy little town once before. There wasn’t too much of specific notice, only the deep well at the end of the houses’ boundaries, leading down into the ground that she herself had traversed in her not-so-long gone youth. She had, when leaving the calm little town of Dirtmouth, needed to choose whether to brave the growing danger of the breaking down settlement below, or to return the way she had come, and would have to climb her way up a not unremarkable height back up to her ‘home’.
Choosing the former, and braving the descent into the well, she had found this interesting little trinket she had seen several times before, pinned to the cloaks of dead travelers. She never really had any remorse taking the little emblems from their bodies, the pins might sell for some amount on her next trip to the little town. No use to go back immediately though,
The trek was generally straightforward, going directly past some of the possibly hostile creatures, and running from the stubborn ones, she was able to find a way to make the climb back home. The trip truly wasn’t awful, but not one she’d be willing to make bi-daily.
The bugs there were nice though, thinking back on it. Some of her memories may be damaged, but some, like the one she had just relived, were crystal clear. Each face still retained the slight differences that they had owned. It was a funny little quirk of hers.
There was that old bug that looked almost eerily similar to what a vessel would look like. Almost as if he had taken the mask of one of her kin and shaped it to his own face. It unsettled her, and made her shiver even now at the thought of it.
There were those two new bugs in town. The tall one and the cartographer. She remembered seeing them stop by her small cave-home before descending the cliffs and stopping at Dirtmouth. When she had visited, they seemed to have settled down quite well, though the tall bug constantly seemed a bit irritable. And the shorter one, the cartographer, wasn’t there when she had visited. Not quite odd though. He was probably just living his best life doing his job. Nothing too out of the ordinary.
And of course, there was the unclaimed house. The bug who had lived there previously seemingly left, and it was now unoccupied.
The old bug welcoming new people into the town had offered her the empty home, but she was already settled atop the cliffs. On one hand: in her complete and honest opinion, she probably liked it here more. The view was great, and the everlasting breeze was calming to her, drowning out all the noises from the caves below.
And on the second hand, if she had stayed down there.. She believed the urge to deeper explore the land in the well may have become unbearable. Who knows what could have happened if she had stayed in those caves and tunnels. Or even worse, who may have seen her.
Maybe she should visit again sometime.. Maybe take or build a house for herself there too. It was.. well.. quite lonely here.. alone.. with no one to talk to..
The young vessel shook her head and scooted away from the edge of the cliff so she could stand safely, even if she lost her balance and fell. Once she was far enough from the ledge, she stood, supporting her weight on the pole of one of the light fixtures planted securely in the ground. The lumaflies inside fluttered around, without a single care in the world.
She stood upright, and began to walk against the wind, her hoof-claws dragging on the stone ground. She had trod this path so many times before.. Just sitting and watching the lights of Dirtmouth flicker, dim, and light back up as days went on. And then, after who knows how long, returning to her little tent and camp and doing whatever there instead.
As she ducks through the flaps of her tent, latching it closed from the inside with a loose strand of weaver silk and a rock hook sewn into the fabric of the tent.
The sound of the wind was still as present as it always was, but the chill did not carry inside the large tent. And inside there were multiple unfinished and finished little rock carvings alike. There were also many, many bags and pouches. Some were heavy with Geo or tiny carved pieces of rock, and some were just empty. Prepared for a trip that had never come.
But that was about to change.
She could only grab a few of the stone shapes and throw them in the biggest bag she had (Which, for the record, wasn’t that big), along with an unused quill and paper she had bought when visiting Dirtmouth.
She may still be quite young, but she had seen smaller bugs venture past the fading town. Her keen eyesight made sure she always saw each bug descend into the well, and never return.
Ice trickles down her spine, into her veins, making her involuntarily shiver. Hopefully, she’d never have to know what had happened to all of them.
She had been subconsciously packing, throwing hopeful necessities in the bag until it was near full. She may still need some room for things she would need to buy later in time.
Finally, she strapped the pouch of geo under her cloak, trying to ensure no one would steal it without her being aware.
And with that, she was ready. She opened the tent flap again, letting it billow in the wind. This was it. Her home would no longer be, well.. Home.
Her gaze lingered there for just a moment, before she headed back to the ledge. There was a lower way down, with a generous amount of stairs leading down to the King’s pass. She huffed. Descending that many stairs would be a pain in the ass.
So, like any bug with a hard shell and the mind of a maggot, she jumped down the cliffs, heading to the world beyond.