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When the last mechanical, thread-driven machine falls at the hands of a well-timed slash of her needle, Hornet doesn’t relax.
The air is still, quiet. The distant tick of a metronome rings through the air, interrupted by the sound of metal tinkering together as the tall paper-wasp beside her bends to collect her throwing disks from the many corpses scattered about the room.
The last wave has fallen, it would seem, but the sight of shredded silk wafting through the air does little to calm her nerves. Not here, not deep in the walls of this cursed Citadel, where every corpse has the chance to rise and kill and every room holds unfathomable dangers.
“Hornet-Wielding-Needle,” a voice calls. Shakra has stood, arms lined with polished gold, “you’re shaking.”
Her first instinct is to deny the accusation, as simple and surface-level as it is. With how strong and capable she is, Shakra of all bugs noticing feels unfamiliarly humiliating.
She’s not wrong though, Hornet can feel the way her body quivers from exhaustion. Surface-level wounds decorate her carapace, aching and oozing. It’d normally be a simple fix, but those robot-weaver things have wrung her silk supply dry. All of the reserves she’d entered the battle with now lay in thin, translucent strands amongst the smashed and scattered foes around them.
“The Citadel holds little hospitality for those who produce silk,” Hornet replies, making an effort to fight the way her torso hunches over, exhausted and over-exherted.
“I have noticed how those puppeted adversaries seem to target you specifically,” Shakra notes. She crouches down to Hornet’s eye-level, in a way that’s always irked her. “I wonder why that is.”
Shakra’s eyes are hooked onto her in a way that’s uncomfortable. It’s as though she’s really, truly studying her for the first time. Knowing she’s not a child, knowing she’s capable, knowing her newfound notoriety in Pharloom. Every detail that’s been overlooked by common passerby, pilgrims far too invested in their own journey of faith to question too terribly hard.
“That isn’t a mask, is it?” Shakra asks.
Hornet hates the way her body tenses, claws tightening around the hilt of her needle and instinctively reaching for a backlog of silk that isn’t there. The only ones aware of her heritage are this kingdom’s god and the few higher ranking creatures that follow her. As far as Hornet is aware, that in and of itself is a blessing. She’s a daughter of Hallownest, borne from both beast and wyrm in a political agreement. Her heritage is one of a kind, unique in a way that separates her from common bugs. Her lifespan is too long to truly connect with others in any meaningful way, and lifetimes worth of solitude in an infected Hallownest has only worked to deepen that gap.
Shakra waits for her, and Hornet almost wishes she doesn’t.
“It isn’t,” she says, “though I suspect my confirmation is unneeded.”
Hornet is aware of how odd it is. Reptilian and sharp, something so strikingly not mortal bug-kind running in her veins. A crime against nature, in some ways. The blood of a god the only thing guaranteeing the conceivement of her existence.
“You’re a strange bug, Hornet-Wielding-Needle,” Shakra says, “at first I’d suspected you were simply a spider. Then, weaver. But that doesn’t quite seem correct either.” Eyes skim over the wounds painting her body. “I won’t pry, but perhaps I can help tend your shell. There’s a bench nearby, secluded enough that we won’t worry of any ambush.”
It’s an offer she can’t find it in her to refuse, despite the faint tick of a metronome hinting towards the melody she’s climbed through these halls specifically to learn.
Hornet is beaten and worn, and she can’t guarantee she’d survive another encounter without a brief respite of rest, and so she simply nods. Shakra rises, and the two backtrack out of the aftermath of the gauntlet.
By the time Hornet lets herself collapse on the bench, she realizes she’s well and truly exhausted. Nonstop climbing and jumping and swinging has left her a shell of her usual ability. The sharp and extravagant architecture is so clearly built for bugs with the ability to fly—an ability she’d begrudgingly never grown to possess.
Shakra is quick to lay out her assortment of goods before them, and Hornet is surprised to see a collection of fine silk-woven bandages and healing salves from the ruins of Whiteward amongst her things. The image of Sherma cornered in a corpse-ridden storage room still haunts her mind.
Shakra had likely seen the moral crimes that’d been committed in those halls. Operating tables and documents detailing how to infuse silk into creatures without, diagrams of vivisections and notes of how those who’d passed had sinned in the simple act of dying.
Only one living being in Pharloom had been known to produce silk, the one responsible for those crude acts.
Now, there’s Hornet.
Cracked carapace burns at every movement, and Hornet begrudgingly removes the red cloak that’s come to feel like a second skin.
The lack of a cover makes her injuries seem worse. Perhaps it’s the visual that accompanies the pain, something she seldom had the misfortune of seeing, with silken webs usually binding the wounds before they even have the opportunity to bleed. Now, her spinnerette is simply raw and sore, all of her silk forcibly drawn out to power those damned spider-like machines. It's a gross feeling, almost as though she’s been violated in a crude, unbecoming way.
It fills her with a strange paranoia, the fear that at any second a set of metal legs will jump down and steal the silk from her body before it even has the chance to fully form.
Alongside full access to her wounds, Hornet is also aware of how entirely un-spiderlike her body is. The tail and shell of a weaver, but the limbs and face of a wyrm-king-god.
Hornet doesn’t miss the way Shakra’s stare glazes over in confusion of her anatomy, though she stays true to her word. She doesn’t pry, doesn’t even speak. She simply provides Hornet with the premade silk bindings, woven in a way that forces her to take the time to properly patch each wound instead of hastily weaving her own covers.
“I’m not a weaver,” Hornet says, “at least, not fully.”
It’s a confession that’s never truly been spoken. In Hallownest, her heritage had been known. The Gendered Child. A bargaining chip her mother had demanded in exchange for her life to end, bound to the fate of a dreamer in an attempt to banish the Radiance. The heir to Deepnest, a weaver with the blood of a god. A way to ensure the Pale King never grew cocky and tried to take the independent kingdom for himself. It was a union forged by hate, and the Pale King’s desperate plot to eternally trap a god.
It didn’t do much good, in the end. Hallownest fell regardless. There’s nowhere left for Hornet to rule, even in the absence of infection. An heir to nothing, only the graves of those long-lost to history.
Here, no one knows of this. To them, she’s simply a spider in a funny-looking mask. If one were to make the mistake of peering too close, they’d see the eerie, extra eyelids of a reptilian wyrm instead of the normal lined gaze of a spider.
“Weaver or not, your skill with silk is unmatched,” Shakra says. She takes a seat beside Hornet, her towering frame casts a shadow over the spread of medical wares. “I’ve a sneaking suspicion it’s the reason this kingdom is so hostile towards you.”
“I wish I could provide an answer, but I fear I’m still not entirely certain,” Hornet says, “it’s why I’ve climbed to the citadel, after all. This land is stubborn in its refusal to provide answers.”
The silken bandages are old, thinned from age. They work well enough, if she suppresses the way her carapace seems to crawl from the aid of a foreign substance.
Shakra is silent, as she listens to Hornet’s words. Her hands move, as she removes the bladed rings from her arms and works to tend their edges. It’s a practiced routine, one that seems almost elegant in nature. They glimmer golden under the wasp’s touch.
“Have you ever heard of Hallownest?” Hornet asks.
Shakra’s motions stall slightly, before resuming the practiced tempo.
“In passing,” she says. “I’ve been warned to veer clear of its entrance. Similar to Pharloom’s haunting, travelers speak of those caverns as cursed.”
“It wasn’t always cursed,” Hornet replies. “I was born there, before infection set in and bugs lost their bodies to a corrupt madness."
This admission causes Shakra to fully pause in her actions. Rings of gold are set to the side as attention is fully focused upon Hornet.
“That’s… not possible,” Shakra says, “that kingdom has been dead for eons. No bug’s lifespan stretches that far.”
“I’m only half weaver,” Hornet stresses, though Shakra is far from wrong in her statement. Hornet isn’t a stranger to the short lives of common folk, heaven knows she’s witnessed the rise and fall of countless companions. “The other half is… a bit more complicated. Or, perhaps less so, seeing as Pharloom is the birthplace of those ancestors.”
Eyes trace Hornet’s shell. They linger on every scar, on the two-legs and two-arms. On her face itself, a blank sheet of a mask, a hardened shell that no weaver or spider can ever naturally grow.
“Hallownest is in ruins,” Shakra says, “those who manage to survive the hostile locals soon get consumed by the plague-filled air regardless.”
“Not all,” Hornet explains, “for one reason or another, certain bugs are immune. Even in a place as dead and soulless as Hallownest, life finds a way.” She tries not to think of the many broken, infection-filled shells of lives long lost. Tries not to think of the weavers who fled when it reached Deepnest. Tries not to think of a king who abandoned his people, only to fall at the hands of the void itself, alone on an empty throne. “Many foolish enough to enter in search of the kingdom’s treasures succumbed to the infection if they made it past the upper levels, but some were spared. Perhaps frequent visits above land cleared their heads, or perhaps they simply lacked enough of a mental drive to be targeted.”
Hornet is rambling, she knows. Spilling the tragic story of her home to a warrior privileged enough to never encounter the haunted halls. Perhaps it’s an exchange—Shakra had, after all, given Hornet a glimpse into her life. She’d shared a mourning song for the warrior’s master, and had fought alongside the wasp more than once.
“I’ve lived many lifetimes within those tunnels, and not once has my mind been clouded by the call of a dying god. How ironic, to survive her wrath only to be forcibly targeted by another. One foreign to me.”
“You’ve certainly had a fair share of conflicts with higher beings, for such a small bug.” Shakra’s voice is calm, even when she speaks. As though they’re simply discussing a short battle with a mindless pest. The teasing jab sends a spike of ire through her, but Hornet can’t find the energy to do much more than roll her eyes.
“I guess it should be expected,” Hornet says, “I was fathered by one, after all.”
Shakra doesn’t reply immediately, and Hornet almost regrets the admission. To refer to the Pale King as a father hardly feels correct after all this time, though the title is correct. She’d been born in the years that quickly approached the sealing of the Hollow Knight, the death of her mother, and the eventual fall of Hallownest. He’d been far too busy fighting the death of a kingdom to do something as simple as raising a child he’d never even wanted.
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Shakra eventually says, and Hornet can’t bring herself to meet her gaze. “I’d had my suspicions about your heritage, to be sure, but it’s not my place to pry.”
There’s an ache in her back, one that’s difficult to reach with her sore body. When Shakra gestures for Hornet to turn, she complies, trying not to flinch at the feeling of foreign hands tracing the indents of her shell.
“These are deep,” Shakra notes, as an arm plucks up one of the many healing salves from her things, “most bugs would’ve fallen ages ago from a wound such as this.”
Hornet bites back the sharp laugh that threatens to slip at the comment. A critique on her stamina, as though they hadn’t just been speaking of not-entirely-mortal composition.”
“I’ve had worse,” Hornet says, instead. “Those wounds are hardly so surface-level.”
“And what might those be?”
Her touch stings, as cool gel is painted against the break in Hornet’s carapace. It’s gentle and electric all at once, and Hornet can’t help but wonder when she was last touched. Held in a way that didn’t accompany violence and pain.
“When I was… escorted to Pharloom, I was not permitted food,” she notes. The mere thought of her time in that golden prison fills her with a bone-deep, simmering rage. “I do not know exactly how long I was kept, bound by runes and foreign magic, but not once did that elegant lock unlatch. I assume it was purposeful, to prevent escape and to weaken my abilities by the time we reached this Citadel.”
“A cowardly tactic,” Shakra notes. Her touch leaves, briefly. A new bundle of woven silk is procured, pressed against the notch in her shell. “To weaken one’s opponent with time and neglect is hardly a justified win.”
“Perhaps not,” Hornet agrees, “but I’m here now, nonetheless, and I intend to grace this so-called goddess with an audience. I’d like to know what she so desperately needed of me that called her to resort to such tactics.”
Shakra’s touch on Hornet’s back leaves, and she has to resist every urge to lean back into the gentle touch.
“That looks to be the worst of it,” Shakra says. A long arm reaches across to pluck up the red cloak from Hornet’s opposite side. Shakra drapes it over the spider’s shoulder, light and careful, buttons slipping to fasten before Hornet can even attempt to act. “Normally I’d fret about infection, but that hardly seems to be a concern of yours, demi-god.”
The term irks her, though she isn’t sure why. It isn’t false, despite the grievances she held with her father when he was alive.
“For a warrior such as yourself, you seem quite adept at mending wounds,” Hornet says.
Shakra rises from the bench, gathering the remnants of medical wares and returning them to their proper places in her storage. It’s quite mesmerizing, how quickly she does it. She supposes it’s to be expected, with how often the warrior camps out in less-than-forgiving areas with less-than-ideal foes.
“My tribe honors warriors,” Shakra says, “to die in battle is an admirable end. That doesn’t negate the mending of non-fatal injuries.” The supplies are bundled up, returned to the rest of Shakra’s belongings. “To survive the fall of a kingdom, and the journey to another… you may just be the most honorable yet.”
The compliment settles warmly, in Hornet’s chest. The two grow silent, in the aftermath of it all. Shakra’s leg presses against Hornet’s side.
Content and safe, she finally lets herself rest.