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Verdant caverns of spore and clover. They hang from the cave ceilings, sprout over dirt in lively chunks, shining in their abundance, only disturbed by the sway of a red cloak, the step of furred claws across their path.
A swift, emerald foe bars Hornet’s way, like a cutting wind. She slices them down to naught but a breeze and continues onward, wiping their pearlescent blood from her needle. These bugs have provided a challenge; she knows better than to underestimate an opponent, even in the realm of memory, and yet their speed is still a marvel.
Or it would be, were it not cutting into her shell.
Another, at the foot of a glistening green pool. Once they’re felled, she glances back at their body, razor claws subsumed by the flora. Is this truly how they were, or has the prince’s rosy memory of his subjects, his belief and trust in their power enhanced them beyond what they ever were? Memories are a delicate, inaccurate medium, chipped away at by time, by the mind itself. But the power of imagination is limitless.
No matter. She must press on, sharpen the memory further if she wishes to take the heart.
In a large, thorny cavern, she spots the prince at the edge of the water, the tips of his legs just brushing the surface. It is difficult to tell if he’s cognizant, that he realises it’s truly her and he is not dreaming himself. Or even, how much of himself is a memory, within this realm.
Hornet restores an ancient temple, its mossy splendour near eclipsed, swallowed by the light that beats from the palace, and she races towards the huge, hanging pod on rushed, but practised feet. She may not know these lands, but she knows how to move through underbrush, to leap over jade pools. Whilst not acidic like the lush caverns of home, the water will still slow her down.
The palace is larger than it seems on the inside, the bounds of the memory pushing against reality, sturdy, leafy pillars propping up the structure, vines dangling from the ceiling as lights shimmer in the air, glow out of the windows to the right, the outside fuzzy and dreamlike. The prince and his lover sit on their tiered, pebbled thrones, though the latter is still a tad faded, as if his absence was so strong that even in the land of memory he cannot shake the title of spectre. A tad bluer than the prince, his ruffled chest a pale green, he looks towards Hornet, antennae twitching with scrutinous surprise.
‘Love?’ he turns his head to the prince, voice lilting and melodic, even as his antennae remain curiously fixed in her direction. ‘Were we expecting guests today?’
The prince straightens, a certain lucidity squinting his white eyes as they land on her.
‘I will handle this.’ he says, standing to his full height. ‘Check our guard is in place.’
The prince’s lover’s antennae raise, a hint of suspicion, or perhaps, pride in his gaze. But trust wins out and he rises as well, heading towards a door at the far end of the palace hall and leaving with a thump of stone, granting them privacy.
‘Warrior.’ the prince says, cold. ‘You are bold to intrude on such a place.’
A pale urge inside of Hornet wants to point out to him that it is by her claw that the palace has any form at all. But she reins it back and meets his eyes. ‘I am not here to harm you, sir. My goal in your lost land is not driven by joy, or malice.’
‘Your goal.’
‘To save the present, I must claim the hearts of Pharloom’s past.’ she explains. ‘Those of the old, great rulers.’
‘Ripping my heart from my shell seems like quite the harm to me.’
‘Not yours.’
The prince’s eyes widen, a falter of royal armour. He looks back towards the closed door, and when his gaze returns to Hornet’s his eyes have narrowed to slits. A smile sits on his face, with no humour or mirth behind it, claws glinting in the dappled light.
‘You wish to kill him a third time. To give himself to the Citadel once more.’
A cruel way to put it. A true way to put it.
Hornet doesn’t falter, not externally. ‘To dive beneath the void at the base of this kingdom and end this calamity, the hearts are needed. They are a necessary component in a spell; I would not come were it not the case.’
‘All of them?’
She pauses.
‘Khann conquered half of Pharloom in his time. Nyleth sustained the woods, and Karmelita’s voice still lives within the Skarrs.’ the prince continues. ‘Our kingdom is not lesser by any means; we stood proud and true alongside them. But are all of the hearts necessary, Warrior?’
No. But-
‘Four hearts would provide a comfortable source of energy, should there be any complications.’
A spark in the prince’s eye, a jagged flame. ‘But you do not need all of them, do you?’ he notes.
Hornet stands, resolute in the green memory. ‘The extra-’
‘Extra.’ the prince interrupts, sharp and unimpressed. She clenches a claw behind her back.
‘This can only be attempted once.’ she says, careful to keep the barbs out of her tone, the ancient frustration that tells her to simply knock him aside and take what she needs. ‘If there is any hope to calm the raging void, I must take it. I will not allow the citizens of this land to die by my mistake.’
The prince’s antennae twitch at the admission, like he knows she wouldn’t let such information slip through unwillingly. ‘So this is your doing to begin with?’
Outside of the memory, the ground must shake, darkening air, shuddering tendrils. The effects cannot reach them here, for the time being.
She does not falter, chin tilted up to his tall form, steadfast and graceful. ‘You have seen the haunted bugs, spun into service by Silk. I was brought to this land by their thrall and I sought to remove them from their prisons, without taking the pale being’s place. The plan was…effective, but complicated by another. I was unaware the void would be involved.’
‘Another party. Are they involved on your new spell?’
It would be wise to lie, perhaps. To assure the prince that that is not the case, and she knows exactly what she is doing, and that it is simply a matter of doing it. But-
‘Yes.’ she says. Best not to try her luck with one so perceptive.
‘So, you are trusting this party again.’ he says, a curl to his fangs. ‘Who have already brought you ruin through their plans.’
‘This plan was my own. The ingredients are theirs.’ she swallows, thankful her hard shell gives no sight of the motion. ‘There is no other way. I must do this.’
‘You are afraid it will fail.’ the prince states, cutting. ‘Thorough in the face of doubt.’
Too perceptive. Hornet cannot hide her blanche this time, wasteful seconds where she breaks eye contact, claws squeezing her needle. ‘Is it wrong to wish to right a mistake? To save a kingdom from apocalypse?’
A embittered laugh spills from the prince’s mouth. ‘Perhaps, when the kingdom is Pharloom.’ he says. His face falls, and for a moment, his true age shows, pulling under his eyes and at the corner of his mouth. Worn and distant. His feet clack against the damp, mossy stone, towards the glowing windows, out across the facsimile of his kingdom.
‘The Citadel choked the corals dry. Drowned the wetlands in bile, puppetted the Skarrs and their marches. Verdania shriveled under its weight. They stole our caverns, our clover, our creches.’ he says, the shell at his eyes tightening. ‘They stole my partner.’
He looks to her, the exhaustion of an ancient widow. ‘Why bother saving it?’
A question one wonders, when crushed between evil and hopelessness. One that had crossed her own mind in weaker moments, in those lonely years.
Hornet chances a step closer, mindful of the prince and his sharp claws. ‘I do not deny the carnage of the Citadel. My kin, the Weavers, fled its gaze, and were retrieved harshly. Strung back into her web to die.’
Lights shimmer outside, twinkling through glass. ‘The Citadel was monstrous. But Silk is deposed. All that remains are the pilgrims, the commonfolk who have had no part in the stripping of these lands, or any others. The Citadel had crushed them under its boot, and now the void thrashes to do the same. I cannot subject innocent bugs to this painful, black fate.’
The prince watches his dead kingdom, phantoms of his subjects flying past the windows, his partner talking to a group down below. She doesn’t know enough about him to be certain it’s a compelling argument; all she can do is trust that an appeal to saving the commonfolk is one a good ruler should agree with.
But not his commonfolk. The prince’s claws tighten against the narrow windowsill.
‘Why should I allow you to do this?’ he asks. ‘Do you suggest it is what my partner would have wanted?’
His partner. A name kept hidden, safe like a precious memento. The one part of him untouched.
‘No.’ Hornet says simply. ‘I did not know him. You would know the answer to that better than I, if at all.’
Brave, to suggest he may not know, but who fully knows their loved ones? If the prince takes offense, only a frown can tell of it, as the shell around his eyes seems to soften, pensive, grieving nostalgia sitting on his face. Gaze firmly on the memory of the past.
‘Perhaps it would be. He had given himself up after all.’ he murmurs. Something almost like a real smile creeps onto his face, weathered by pain. ‘He was always quite happy to talk with the common travellers through our land; he would hide his status for as long as possible to hear them at their most honest. It was odd, to see one so delighted in being called “a dozy, fluffy stickbug”. ‘
She remains silent, keeps the ache in her shell to herself and gives him the space to continue.
‘This memory…it’s the height of spring. The clover are large, the pendras are freshly hatched and flying throughout the ponds. We would have led our first hunt of the season. Then the guard trials, the festival of thorns…it was beautiful.’
Hornet joins him at the window. ‘My home would celebrate the first hatchings of the year. A child’s first weaving, pollen marches, knightly duels. It is long gone as well, and I stood its sentinel for far longer.’ she says, her hive-forged needle glinting at her side. ‘We are souls of an old age. But there are bugs alive now, who need our help. They must be saved or there will be nothing.’
A flicker of consideration, across the prince’s face as his partner peers back into the room, door hushing its way open.
‘Fine.’ he says, straightening and flexing his claws. ‘If you can best us, I will offer it freely. I wish you luck, Protector.’
Hornet readies her needle, quick and sharp, with a nod. ‘And you as well, Prince. For the future to come.’