Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The absence wasn’t noted right away -

After all, Hornet of Deepnest was a huntress, known to depart on long, solitary watches, to make her rounds, guarding the land from a distance, and very much able to handle herself against anything that she might encounter in these lands.

Besides, it was safer out now than it had been at any point in the last few centuries, given the distinct lack of dreadful miasmas and shambling, animated corpses.

The lands were quiet and the remaining population sparse; It was not at all unusual for the huntress not to be seen for a good while.

What would have been unprecedented, however, would be for her to be negligent in her duties – and of these there had as of late been many more that required her to appear in particular places, or for her presence to be expected by particular people. For the most part she had kept to her solitary patrols which, for the longest time, had been the most she could do.

It was not her who had scraped together the modest remainders of the old guard – they had one remaining knight (or two, depending on whom you counted), an aged scholar whose memory was still somewhat of a jumble, and the former queen, still intent on secluding herself but perfectly willing to render advice or share whatever knowledge she might provide to the new ruler…

Her own offspring, technically.

As helpful as she’d been, her attitude was still most alike to a detached politeness. You might think she was rendering her aid simply as a function of faint well-wishes for the kingdom’s future.

At least funds were not an issue –

Wealth was something that the ancient kingdom still had lying around in spades – useless shiny rocks and sparkling crystals, in the end. You could not eat them. They had not saved anyone from the plague, serving only to gild their tombs.

When that small assembly last conferred, they had come to the decision to sponsor the cartographer of the surface town in the expedition he had been planning on his own accord – to make some cursory chart of nearby villages and settlements in the outlying lands. He mostly meant to go because he thought he could use an all-new adventure now that he was done mapping Hallownest proper, but the results may prove quite useful to them, if they were to think of re-establishing diplomatic relations with their direct neighbors after the kingdom’s gates had long been shuttered on account of the plague.

Yet even though the guild of Menderbugs had proven to still exist and retain a surprising amount of members, the choice was made not to rebuild the bridge over King’s Pass for now.

For many years, the twin lures of treasure and mystery had pulled in a steady trickle of adventurers, but the reputation of deadly danger had acted in return to put a check on that;

They lacked the manpower or the organizational structure to mount much of a defense, and the last thing they needed would be a horde of plunderers and gawkers to descend upon them.

In the next meeting, they were to confer with the former queen about some ideas for reestablishing agriculture within the kingdom in the long run – the matter was not urgent, as the current, much thinned population sustained itself well-enough through scavenging, foraging and hunting, the odd private garden and what small trickles of trade still existed, but such things came with a limited capacity in the end.

It was rather fortunate then that the matter was none too pressing, because the meeting never took place, as the kingdom’s protector never arrived.

The other would-be attendees had gathered in place near the old queen’s abode – really just the old scholar, the new ruler (marked as such by little but the mark on its right palm), and its tall sibling, who had taken up residence along with it in one of the vacant huts of the surface town for lack of anywhere else to go – That creature still bore the marks of its long ordeal, and likely always would. What it had endured was more than enough to force a slow and tenuous recovery even on a godlike entity. Long had its siblings been uncertain if their task would be to nurse it back to health, or to make its deathbed comfortable. At last, it had pulled through, however, and once it regained the wherewithal to do so, it seemed to have elected to continue serving as a knight, perhaps holding onto that familiar role as an anchor in the otherwise much-changed world it had found itself returned to.

Even the sister that now served as the jaded, hardened, long-experienced guardian of the kingdom had been a young girl half her current size at the time of its interment into its dreary tomb.

By now, it had markedly regained the better part of its old elegance, carrying even its gnarled scars with an imposing, silent dignity.

The worst of the unfading marks, it kept concealed beneath the long, alabaster cape it wore draped around its shoulders, or what was left of those – a much more loose-fitting affair than what it was wont to sport in the past, this one did not trail along the floor. Still, the modest garment achieved the effect of making the much abused creature look more like itself again.

Perhaps a bit more like itself than it ever had before, not quite as polished or prim, but also airier, less restricted. At times it might also arrive with a simple white ornament hung about its horns, a recent gift, awkwardly proffered by its mother, taken from her own collection. Maybe the first gift she’d ever granted it at all.

There had been similar offerings for the others, too, on that occasion – the princess got one strung with red beads, of course, to be put as a bracelet around her wrist, but though she’d gratefully accepted it, she hadn’t worn it much; there was still not much occasion to get dressy in these parts, when there wasn’t even a tavern or an eatery left where one might gather at, just a few shops.

Certainly no ball halls, none that weren’t overgrown with vines, or covered in dust and broken glass.

But at least the princess had at times put on formal wear on occasions that called for it, despite preferring simple and practical most of the time;

The piece handed to the new king might have been entirely wasted. The Queen had picked out one with blue beads, to go with its wings – the other obvious option would have been black, to match the bits of substantial darkness it was apt to drape itself in these days, but that would have seemed... macabre to her.

Though, truth be told, didn’t know anything of the little creature’s preferences. To be fair, her declining eyesight would have presented an impediment to catching clues that this maybe wasn’t the best idea, such as the small wanderer’s tendency to arrive tousled and weather-stained, often in that same tattered old hand-me-down mothwing cloak.

Chances are that it had never set foot in any ballroom that was still in use, or, if it did, that was perhaps as a guard or on some mission or maybe just having snuck inside.

At the time hadn’t quite seemed to know what to do with the gift. The little shadow could be observed clicking the beads together, perhaps wondering if they were supposed to be some manner of musical instrument. Only after observing its siblings would it have gathered the intended use, and even then it had not shown that much interest in it, aside from briefly trying it out.

Maybe it did not see the appeal, or did not like the texture; A few times, the little shadow had employed the ornament to make noise in order to get someone’s attention by clacking th beads together, but for the most part, the chief use it found for the gift was to janglr it in front of the Grimmchild’s face to entertain him, prompting some amused nyeh-heh-hehs and only half-serious attempts to fling the tiniest specks of flame at his prize.

The Pale Root had since accepted that the one to whom she had solemnly handed off the future of her kingdom had ostensibly made the decision to trust the playful nightmare spawn, with the same gracious detachment with which she endured most things, but at times, some traces of irritation remained.

Even when the former queen first presented her gift, it had dawned on pretty much everyone else in the room that there could have been many better choices, including some which the White Lady might have been apt to provide, maybe something as simple as a flower or a shiny rock, or some sort of tool or camouflage to aid the wanderer’s self-imposed mission to pry into every possible corner hidden out in the world.

Could this be any surprise, however? Out of any of their meetings’ regular attendants, she probably knew her heir the least. Things were still somewhat… awkward between the former queen and her surviving children.

Long had she steeled herself to send them to their dooms, to be prepared to accept that she would never see them again. Never know them at all.

Now that they were somehow, against all odds and every inkling of reasons, still very much around, she was still struggling to process this, and the implications of it.

By no means could she have known how to act around them.

The bracelets had been a stilted, mechanical attempt to act out a role that felt foreign and out of place - Once upon a time, the Queen might have imagined that plopping decorations on them was something she would have liked to do with any hypothetical children she might have;

But the children were long grown; The clay had hardened, what needs they might have had for a parent either left unmet forever or filled by other souls, in places unknown to her.

They were perfect strangers, even the one whom she would theoretically have had a chance to know, made not at all less foreign by the revelation that she had not understood a thing about them since their creation.

The Hollow Knight had worn the ornament she bestowed it with some frequency, but she honestly could not tell whether it was doing this out of genuine appreciation or simply because it figured this would be expected.

It had never objected to the traditional white, but as for why that was, she did not know.

She knew the princess; Of her preferences and tastes, the tangled knots in her and how the onion layers of her being had been added over the ages. She knew to read her moods, how to sense her sorrow beneath the armor of her strength and to give comfort in such way that it might be accepted by her pride and pass the muster of her sense of responsibility;

If she were to reach out and extend the paltry reminders of her senses, she probably could still have picked up some snippets from the flurry of her surface thoughts.

But those who, maybe, in another life, should have been the nearest to her, remained utterly opaque.

The pair of them did not appear to bear her any discernible grudge; The elder did seem intent to avoid her, but likely with the intention to to spare her the discomfort its presence was sure to inflict; As for the younger, that one seemed stubbornly determined to keep visiting her and had long persisted in extending olive branches such as small gifts or favors, well before even a clumsy, feeble, belated reciprocation had been forthcoming. It was not for desperation or lack of other bonds, parental figures included. Perhaps it worried for her, faded as she must seem compared to her days of glory. It was the Pale Root herself who would appear to be the most weighed down by the shame of having sent both of them off to their doom at their respective times, reluctant to dare crossing the chasm that she herself had wrought.

Even to an uninvolved onlooker, there would seem to be some insurmountable wall between them that could not seem to be bridged, something that wasn’t present in the warm, if tired manner in which the former queen would greet her step-daughter, or indeed the evident bond of friendship that existed between the old scholar Quirrel and the new monarch, dating back to when they had both thought themselves mere explorers with no previous connection to these lands – so the absence of the protector was felt, even before she could have been considered to be late.

The White Lady had made some observations upon their arrival, but then things stalled out somewhat. It was the scholar who took it upon himself to fill the silence with curious, jovial pleasantries, which came naturally enough to one with his agreeable disposition.

He figured that he might have known the queen before his departure, if only in passing, seeing as his mentor had clearly been deep in the late king’s confidence… or so he might deduce, from the clues left behind at the archive. He could not actually recall the king’s visage at all, nor his voice.

Even the Teacher herself only existed in his mind as a collection of tidbits and flashes.

Various interesting and marginally relevant topics were meandered through while the queen’s children seated themselves, waiting for the meeting proper to begin.

The small flying nightmare creature that was often the new ruler’s companion began to show some signs of getting bored, so his guardian pulled what appeared to be a collection of various oddly-colored little stones from who knows where and started to arrange them on the floor to entertain the little moth with some manner of game.

At some point it might have made a small gesture to invite its sibling to participate, but the tall knight would appear to have declined, perhaps remaining aloof out of some ingrained habit that had long since lost its grim purpose, but was easy to fall into in the presence of its mother.

Nothing resembling progress was made; The red guardian was usually the one to keep track of the meeting’s agenda, or maintaining organized notes on a tablet or a scroll.

Yet, by the same token, she was usually punctual, a trait shared with her eldest sibling, and as such, probably some long calcified remnant of the discipline instilled in both of them by their shared father.

If it had been Quirrel or Ghost (for many of its acquaintances had adopted the moniker bestowed upon it by its sister upon hearing her refer to it as such), it would not have been unusual for either of them to end up meandering and arrive just a little later than planned if their curiosity were to be derailed by something on the path – an outcome all the more likely to occur if the pair were to encounter each other along the way.

But Hornet? It was not unusual for her to arrive just at the allotted time, and no earlier, if she had some previous engagement. But she had hardly ever been late.

Of course she was not typically one to worry about – born with semi-divine strength, reared in the inhospitable wilds of Deepnest and hardened by centuries of experience, one would think her as equipped to handle whatever the world may throw at her as anyone might hope to be.

While many fearsome predators called these caverns their home, she must most certainly be counted and ranked high among their number.

All those same reasons, however, now served to make her absence all the more outstanding and inexplicable, if not alarming. It was hard to think of anything that could have delayed her.

Quirrel the scholar found himself somewhat left out of the loop as the various Higher Beings in his company went at once to track her by such extraordinary means of perception as were afforded to them. Most disconcertingly, the former queen could not seem to sense the half-spider’s presence anywhere within the reach of her vast, branching network of roots.

Her children, in turn, both had some manner of far-reaching scrying spell at their disposal, one of the last parting gifts of their late father… and it would appear that they had spotted something.

Something concerning enough that it would incline them to scour the site immediately.

Quirrel, for his part, didn’t follow. Ever since he had undone the seal on his mentor, whatever magic had sustained him up on the surface beyond the bounds of typical mortal lifetimes was dispelled, and he’d found at least some portion of the missing years catching up to him.

In truth, he’d once sought out the shores of the Blue Lake expecting that he would probably soon find himself crumbling to dust, wishing at least to behold the source of the city’s endless rain before it came to that. In the end, the fallout wasn’t quite that bad, as the catching up of the years had proven little worse what he would have experienced had he stayed here alongside the kingdom’s other native inhabitants, but while he could still be of service as a scholar, his fighting days were distinctly behind him.

He would have slowed them down, had he chosen to accompany the monarch, its sibling and the small flying creature trailing behind the pair of them.

What they found was rather self-explanatory and not at all subtle in its message.

The huntress in red must have confronted her foes herself, when she saw the entire convoy of them pulling up to the outskirts of the kingdom, likely while she was standing guard as usual. It was truly fortunate that she did; Because of this, they never found out about any other survivors, nor did they have the manpower to go looking for them after their quarry decimated their numbers, not when they had secured what must, no doubt, have been their primary target, the most alluring prey.

How had they learned of her?

Hearsay spreading around after the end of the plague?

Possibly… but such tales would have hardly mentioned the guardian princess, who had rarely shown herself to residents and visitors alike toward the end of her long vigil.

Most talk would have spoken of the plague’s end; Word among the mortals was that a plucky young adventurer of brave heart and short stature had shown up one day and vanquished many of the dangers lurking in the caves, including at last whatever monster had been to blame for its curse.

Those with enough deep knowledge to understand what the source of the plague truly was would have found this harder to believe, and told instead of a prophesied chosen who had picked up a mystical artifact; The Old Ones, of course, would be able to recognize the vanquisher of the pestilence as the long-lost spawn of the old King and an extremely powerful entity in its own right – the ascension itself and the ensuing annihilation of a venerable ancient power must have been sensed far and wide…

But as far as the shore, and beyond?

Maybe a shift had been felt, some premonition or disturbance that left certain powers listening closely to what news might be coming thence – still, it was unlikely that the princess would have featured all too prominently in any tales, if at all.

Could some of the returning faction of Weavers have mentioned her existence at some point, those who left all those years ago, when the infection returned?

That parting had been a bitter one, though neither of her half-siblings would have known it.

If her existence had been known about at all, even as a whisper, as some tale casually related or as statement extracted under torture, it would not have been unreasonable to consider the possibility that she might be among the survivors, few as they might have been.

It was one thing while there had been reason to assume that everything down there was dead, but if any lived at all, she would have been a prime candidate.

The passage of time would not be an issue, and they would know her to be a valuable prize indeed...

They had not, however, found her defenseless.

She left their bodies piled high, already gone cold, but still reeking of decay – the predators and scavengers of these parts had not yet had the opportunity to strip them wholly of their flesh.

Individually, these opponents would not have been that much of a match for her, but they must have overwhelmed her with sheer numbers. Pressed into the cracked dirt was the trail of some vehicle, possibly equipped to haul her away once put in restraints.

Who would know better than these two beings of shadow that restraints capable of holding their likes certainly did exist?

Whoever this was, they certainly came prepared.

The strangers’ allegiance featured prominently on their garments, which had the look of some uniform or ritual garb – even the bugs’ faces were cowled, the space where their visage would be taken up by the same emblem that was plastered all over their gilded equipment.

They must come from a place of wealth, some highly organized society the likes of which was largely unheard of in these parts, outside of Hallownest itself back in its prime.

The one once known as the Pure Vessel would not have expected that any such place existed at all beyond their father’s domain. Ghost, for its part, was distinctly less surprised, having come across scattered evidence of other large civilizations at various points in its long travels.

This one, however, it did not recognize in the least, which would suggest that these interlopers must have come a long, long way indeed.

One must wonder if the Grimmchild’s previous incarnation would have recognized these sigils, or been able to tell them of their place of origin, seeing as the troupe has crossed many distant lands…

During one of their ritualistic clashes in Godhome, the Nightmare King himself had remarked that the nightmare realm binds all the scattered lands together. Fear, it seems, is common to all but the simplest of living creatures. It was not in his nature to give straight answers, however. Few matters were straightforward when the dream realm or its offshoots were concerned – they would have to find their sister in the waking world, where time and distance were not nearly as inconsequential.

The trail of the wheel-tracks veered off into the flat, wind-scoured horizon.

What bitter irony then, that the one to get snatched just had to be the best tracker among their number. Although, judging by the state of these bodies, this trail may well have gone cold days ago. The further they ventured beyond, the quicker the traces would have been worn away by the unforgiving winds.

Their only remaining clue were those cowls and the symbol sewn onto them.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t one that anyone would recognize.

Quirrel had not seen it in his travels either – or at least what portions of them he might recall – nor could he find a trace of anything like it whichever parts of the archives’ information storage functionalities were still operational.

Conifer was still away on his mapping expedition, but it was unlikely that his travels would have taken him much further than Quirrel or Ghost; For whatever it’s worth, Iselda could not recall him ever mentioning anything like it, nor had she encountered its like in her days as a warrior.

Wherever this had come from, it must be a distant place indeed -

None of the other new arrivals from the surface recognized it from their hometowns, either – it should be a testament to Ghost’s attachment to its sister that it even resorted to showing the symbol to Zote, not that he did more than balk at it in a haughty manner.

Polling the eldest residents of Hallownest yielded no results either; Not even Bardoon knew the icon. The White Lady couldn’t quite make it out due to her declining eyesight, so perhaps her lack of recognition was owed in part to the limits of Quirrel’s ability to describe it to her.

Who else was there?

The elusive Higher Being of Greenpath had been around for far longer than even the White Lady. She was rarely seen these days even by her dedicated followers – but even though Ghost had once managed to get an audience with her and could be said to have done her a favor (as she’d clearly wanted the Radiance vanquished, judging by her token of aid), it doubted that she would be able to tell it much of anything that didn’t have to do with leaves, moss and hazy dreams.

The Lifeblood entity would be an even longer shot; The wanderer had seen evidence of its presence scattered far on its travels, but whatever it was seemed to be rather cryptic and not too understanding of what the world’s other inhabitants would consider safe.

It wasn’t too long since Hornet had discreetly taken them aside to inform them that not all could handle Lifeblood’s… gifts to the same extent that it could. Apparently she’d put quite a lot of work, over the years, into keeping the vines trimmed, mostly because it was almost impossible to get rid off altogether.

It seems that the wandering knight’s liberal use of the stuff had given her terrible visions of what dreadful outcomes might result if it were to use an excessive amount as First Aid on one of their mortal friends. Part of them wondered how serious it could really be – the stuff certainly didn’t seem to have killed Salubra? Although it must be admitted that she seemed to somehow repel all manner of logical consequences.

It still didn’t think that the entity behind the mysterious blue substance could be all that malicious… which, though it wasn’t outwardly stated, was still implied clearly enough to prompt its sister to remark that it could be far too trusting at times, so far as she was concerned.

It could not quite agree with her there; Sure, giving people (and mysterious entities) the benefit of the doubt might not always pay off, but in that case one would just deal with the consequences, right?

“We have to be aware of our positions”, she had said, “We’re less fragile than others.”

There was no arguing with that; The Wanderer had witnessed many times firsthand how easily life could be extinguished.

It cherished being able to be with its friends and comrades, with the citizens – it appreciated how this might require great care, given its new powers – there was a reason it returned as it did.

It would have missed being able to do this for all the greater glories that might await it in higher regions. Hornet herself was chiefest among those it would have missed interacting with.

The wanderer supposed that it would not have occurred to it to think that she might perceive as wide a gap between herself and everyone else as there might be between its current state and her.

It had just vanquished and enemy that her entire family had been unable to touch….

The Knight still wasn’t quite used to thinking of it fully as its own family, to the extent that they could do so with regards to her.

How was it to ‘be aware of its own position’ when it had spent most of its existence not having the faintest clue what it was, never having encountered anything or anyone like itself?

It had known that it was an odd existence, certainly, but it hadn’t been aware that there was any sort of ‘position’ to go with it.

One supposes that she could not have been ignorant of such things if she’d wanted to, seeing as she’d had the proper royal upbringing and all. She’d made a careful point to only explain or advise, and prompt it to decide when any directive choices were to be made, but she clearly knew how things worked. She’d have some experience with the inner workings of three different courts, and that was a good thing, too;

It recalled her saying at times that the present situation of the realm was in some ways much more similar to the Deepnest of old, or to the secluded bastion that the Hive had been, than to what Hallownest used to be be back in its glory days – the population was much smaller, there were fewer centralized structures.

She’d praised her sibling for securing the trust and respect of many of the survivors, but it had not really done this with any great plan in mind, nor could it have made that determination.

All in all, it was grateful for her warnings (on the Lifeblood thing as much as many other subjects) and hoped she’d have been able to gather from its subtle nod that she meant to keep them in mind – it certainly didn’t think that she would have been one to get so aggravated without a reason. She usually knew what she was talking about –

She kept saying that it was doing well so far, but, it had never considered any possible scenario where it would have to do this without her counsel close at hand.

(And it was then that it first occurred to it that it might have to run the kingdom without her aid, if she never turned up again.

A horrible thought, really.

It would imagine that it’s probably the sort of idea that might cause one’s insides to pull themselves into a knot within the frame of one’s shell, for those who have insides.)

It was her who’d taught it that sometimes, ugly truths have to be faced, no matter how bitter they might be.

That it wouldn’t just do to forget – after all, the truth remains true either way, wether one known it or not.

But the wanderer did not know the truth yet.

Clearly the first step should be to find out about it. One cannot accept the facts without knowing what the facts are.

Thus, it kept searching.

It might find her yet. It might find her, soon enough, and whatever this blip was could still be buried under years and years to come.

Whatever this was, it would just have to deal with it, just as it had dealt with every challenge before.

The first, faintest semblance of progress came, unexpectedly, from Relic Seeker Lemm, whom Ghost only really ended up visiting because it already happened to be in the area – As it would turn out, he recalled some of his colleagues trading the occasional stray antiquity with such an emblem on them, often gilded objects – but the particulars of the subject happened to lay far outside his area of expertise.

He could only recall that it was supposed to have come from some island kingdom beyond the shore, far, far distant, at least several months worth of travel away.

He was far more interested in the secrets of bygone days and forgotten places, chief of all the ancient civilization – not so much the history of grand empires that still stood undeterred to this day.

At least, this provided some glimmer of hope that there was some place, somewhere out there that the vexatious icon may belong to.

The Relic Seeker was, by then, beginning to grow a little irritated from the interruption of his work – he had quite some artifacts laid out before him to be worked over with his many tiny brushes, so that his visitor chose then to retreat and perhaps press him later about that distant island kingdom’s location, if no other clues could be procured.

Ghost’s next move was to consult the Hunter with one of the corpses in tow.

He had not seen its like either, but suggested cutting it open.

That, in turn, would prove to have been just the right instinct…

Not that it clarified much of anything, at first.

Rather, their attempts at dissecting the body chiefly succeeded in raising many more questions than they answered.

Both master and apprentice had no precedent for what they found inside –

The strange bug’s shell was stuffed full of a foreign substance that, upon closer inspection, proved itself composed of individual fine white strands or threads.

It was absolutely everywhere, filling every available space, half melded to the organs, strung around them, the guts, the air sacs, the heart, the nerve ganglia – the small shadow’s first thought upon seeing the string-like texture was something like a fungus, but once touched, the strands proved rather more solid than this would suggest, and the smell wasn’t quite right – besides, a fungus would have been expected to spread alongside the other decay once its victim had died, or to sprout some fruiting bodies.

The ultimate conclusion dawned on both of them almost at the same time, though only the Hunter had the means to voice it: “This is spiderweb.”

The tiny warrior could see that too: It had acquired far more familiarity with the substance than it would have preferred during its venture into the Deepnest.

So it knew, too, that spiders of many types and kinds had the capacity to produce a great variety of string for a plethora of different uses, most of them somehow related to catching prey or building shelter; Much of the webbing in the caverns down below still served these approximate functions, though, as was the case for most intelligent bugs, the sapient representatives of the group had found new applications for their natural gifts related to the many purposes of civilization.

Numerous spools of Deepnest’s most lucrative export could be seen catching dust all over the Kingdom’s old transport hubs, with some finding their way even to the Hidden Station associated with the palace, perhaps once intended for His Majesty’s personal tinkering.

But even given the material’s apparent versatility, Ghost was pretty sure that the web was usually supposed to go outside the victim.

It had personally had the misfortune of finding itself wrapped up and stored as a convenient snack that time it decided to sit and rest with what, in hindsight, should have been some rather suspicious figures near a bench in the Distant Village.

It should probably count itself lucky that whatever venom they’d used to subdue it didn’t quite have the necessary potency to take down a Higher Being. Or maybe it was the ‘void creature’ part that saved it, or the ‘technically undead’ part, who could tell.

To knock it out at all, whatever they had used must have been some nasty stuff indeed.

It never found out who or what its would-be trappers even were, other than ‘probably some of Herrah the Beast’s designated guards’ – were they shapeshifters? Perhaps some intelligent bug similar to a corpse creeper, judging by their discarded disguises? Something vaguely arachnid-adjacent, probably, given the webbing that it ended up strung up in.

The other Dreamers had secured their locations with hordes of expertly trained knights and near-invulnerable artificial lifeforms, but it was this simple, basic trickery born of the spiders’ cunning that might well have been the one that would havecome the closest to spelling the little Knight’s doom, if the poison had not proven ineffective by sheer dumb luck.

But the point still stands: While a spider’s typical victim might be pumped full of venom and all manner of digestive juices to tenderize it for later consumption, the web usually goes outside the victims, not into them.

The shadow creature had traveled far and wide, even before its return to Hallownest, and in all its time, it had not come across any sort of spider that would do this.

“This has the look of something purposeful. Unnatural. Some manner of witchcraft or devilry,” the Hunter deemed it, plainly expressing revulsion. “I’d compare it to the defilement of the affliction, but – disease makes sense. I know how decay works. A plague is a plague, even if it’s a dream plague. This here? There is something almost pure about it. Like it’s keeping the corpse from decaying as quickly as it should - Something that defies understanding.”

Time to drag this poor fellow’s body to the Ancestral Mound then; After the Seer’s departure, the shaman in the Crossroads was most likely the foremost expert on matters of ‘devilry and witchcraft’ still remaining in the kingdom.

He proved, indeed, most pleased with the haul of his former ...apprentice of sorts:

“Ohohoho… this is most curious indeed, my friend!”

The snail showed precious little reservations to rummaging around in the stranger’s threaded insides – one might almost presume that he had a certain experience in the taking apart of bodies – surely just from the hunt or something, right?

With moderate difficulty, he ripped handfuls of the threads out of their victim so as to inspect them more closely.

“Would you believe if I told you that this poor fella likely didn’t come here of his own free will?

Methinks he was being compelled by some powerful sorcery involving these strands of silk here – like strings used to move puppet, or the trick-wires used in some manner of freakish circus show.”

It seems the Hunter’s guess was right on the money then.

So these were just hapless minions, in an even deeper sense than what might be suggested by their uniform guise… Minions to whom, however?

A spider wizard?

Ghost didn’t at all like the picture this presented.

Hornet’s people had been renowned as mages, right?

The small shadow vaguely recalled that one inscription in the Fungal Wastes, marking the border to Deepnest, one of the enduring signs that many of the local tribes had distinctly been unfriends until the Ancient Kingdom’s influence somewhat tamed and pacified the area.

Insofar as the tiny warrior had encountered them directly, the warriors of the Mushroom Tribe seemed fairly unassuming, for the most part content to blend in with the landscape unless one were to attack them or their young, but their inscriptions, once made intelligible, gave up a surprisingly uppity air, like the hive mind they shared between them used to look down at the Kingdom’s more singular residents – or at least it did, at some point, before the influence of the infection might have somewhat degraded its coherence.

For all the small shadow really knew, their attitude might be justified – it had never really experienced a hive mind, so it could not say whether the advantages were not truly as overwhelming as they described. Whatever the Radiance had been doing to her victims looked rather like a horrid violation, but that was of course a forcible takeover. For the Mushroom Clan, their linked-together state was quite natural, and maybe being a cut-off individual would be strange and frightening.

Whatever the advantages of hive minds, however, it didn’t seem to have cured them of the rather typical prejudices found in many small communities. They weren’t above judging their neighbors’ king for marrying a commoner from a foreign land.

On its venture to break the Dreamers’ seals, it had come across what might have been the old ruler’s body strung up in a shrine, not far from where the queen had lain sealed in eternal slumber, scarcely more alive than he seemed, and deprived, it would appear, even of the hope of seeing her partner again in the next world.

Though being sent there belatedly at long last could not have been entirely a relief, as it likely was for her comrades, seeing as she had a living daughter still in this world whom she’d have to leave behind… and whose lot it might well be to remain on this side of the divide forever.

The very same princess who was now sorely missing.

The ‘biting, scratching things’ themselves of course had rather different views both on their queen and her people; Perhaps they’d felt some degree of natural fellowship to them as fellow spiders, though the architecture in their well-concealed hidden Den did not resemble anything else in the kingdom. They’d come from somewhere else, right?

Most of them supposedly returned there, after the situation in Hallownest turned beyond sour.

Not for the first time, the diminutive Knight wondered if its sister had ever regretted not going with them.

Had she wanted to, but been kept back by her obligations to her father’s kingdom?

Did she make that choice proudly, or with great reluctance, and had she come to regret it since?

Did the old king make her stay, or insist upon it?

Was he even still around by the time the Weavers left, or was that after his disappearance?

- she never spoke about him much, come to think of it, despite ostensibly appearing to be the one left in charge of his kingdom, carrying out his plans and standing guards over his personal secrets.

Even when she revealed their relation to her long-lost sibling, she had only referred to him obliquely as a ‘source of strength’, like she was merely suggesting to it that they’d both bought their powers at the same shop or something.

She’d mentioned a few things about her time in the palace, especially in conversation with the Hollow Knight or the White Lady (Ghost tried its best not to feel left out when that occurred), but she never had all that much to say about the king himself, neither for good nor for ill.

At first, the small shadow had much appreciated this – it was a respite from constantly hearing his praises sung by everyone and their pets, when its only memory of him was of being left for dead among the corpses of its likes. It had been quite a strange experience to see those like the former queen and the Ogrim the Loyal be greatly moved by its supposed resemblance to him, when whatever they were remarking upon meant absolutely nothing to it.

Even the Hollow Knight, who should in theory have more reason than anyone to resent the late monarch, would not suffer a single bad word about him to be spoken in its presence.

Ghost couldn’t blame either them too much, as it certainly understood the notion of taking comfort in the idea that something of someone dearly departed remains, (nor could it necessarily count on any protest it might make being understood correctly). If it could have done so with words, it might even have admitted to feeling just a little prick of jealousy about that shared past that it could not ever hope to penetrate into. Most likely, it just wished that it could have been part of it, or, that it could have found some of the others whose experience was more like its own before they met their respective unpleasant fates.

But it certainly had not found itself wishing that Hornet would talk about him more.

Looking back now, however, one would have to admit that there was something rather conspicuous about the omission.

The small creature did not exactly have the means to ask her about it, though it had contemplated discreetly poking her with the Dream Nail if the subject ever were to come up.

She didn’t really talk much about herself… or about anything at all that wasn’t strictly business, truth be told. Most of the other denizens of the kingdom would only see her briefly in a distance, if at all.

For being her sibling, Ghost was struck by the realization that there were still rather many things that it didn’t know about her, even considering that they’d only been reunited fairly recently.

There was probably no quick and easy way to make up for missing out on spending their formative years together, or to catch up on several hundred years spent apart… that’s longer than most of the surface dwellers lived at all.

But there was one thing it could recall, at least, which was that her mother’s people were definitely renowned as mages and artificers for wondrous artifacts crafted using their silk – Not only did it distinctly recall the Midwife of the Deepnest musing on their many contributions to the history of her land, it had one example of their craft in its possession right now – a silken charm that might be used to summon constructs in what it must presume would be the likeness of their young.

It remembers wondering if Hornet might have looked rather similar to the threaded miniature spiders once upon a time, with some allowances for the differing number of her eyes and limbs.

While it was not wearing the charm right now and knew better than to mess with sensitive magical equipment without sitting down properly, it figured that showing the charm to the shaman might substitute for the question foremost on its mind, since the charm itself rather resembled the typical rounded masks of its makers…

Luckily, its old teacher caught its drift… though the connection did not prove as straightforward as the tiny warrior had anticipated:

“Hm, now that you bring this up, the Weavers of Deepnest did possess a talent somewhat similar to this, didn’t they… The similarity does seem more than a coincidence… Most intriguing…ohohoho…”

It would soon become clear, however, why the Shaman had not made that connection right away:

“But still, this is power far beyond any mortal sorcerer, even a Weaver… if it’s sorcery at all, that is.

The strands are curled around this poor fool’s insides with most intricate precision, as if the silk had a will of its own – this is a level of control that the clumsier folks among us don’t even have over their own body. And this fella doesn’t look to be from anywhere around these parts.

If the one who sent him is still somewhere beyond the wasteland, well, consider the distances involved. That would take a lot of Soul…”

The snail shaman seemed to be getting just a little too excited at the thought of such vast power as he was describing, though this did ultimately aid in getting his point across:

“This has got to be the work of one of the Old Ones.”

...did he mean, like, a higher being?

Some sort of spider deity then?

The Knight considered the difference between, for example, a regular slug with some degree of magical prowess, such as Salubra, and one such as Unn of the Greenpath, or the gap between someone like Seer or Markoth and then, on the other hand, the Radiance.

Then it brought to mind the likes of Midwife, Queen Herrah or one of the Stalking Devouts, and made some attempts to extrapolate…

...probably a really big spider then. With a really huge web?

A further detail was added to that mental image as the snail continued his idle speculation:

“-why, with this amount of sheer power, I’d wonder if this would be possible for anyone other than one of the more… aristocratic sorts.”

Higher Being… nobility?

Ghost was almost certain that he was implying something very, very specific, but it was an implication that it wasn’t quite catching.

You’d think that for all that he proclaimed himself its ‘teacher’ (by fairly tricksy means, one might say) it would be his job to catch it up on all that shamanic inside knowledge.

There was something rather ominous about the way he continued to be oblique.

“You know… like…”

Like what?

The tiny warrior really really didn’t know.

At last, the snail seemed to realize that he had to be just a little more direct:

“... like a member of the Ancient Caste.”

Ghost had heard that phrase used several times before, it thought, at least once from the Mask Maker in Deepnest, but it had never quite been able to pick up on the meaning from the context.

Did it perhaps refer to the ancient civilization before Hallownest? The Shadow Worshipers?

Just it wondered how to convey its confusion to the Shaman, he picked up on it on his own, maybe from some subtle motion of its head, or just the simple fact that it was still standing there listening rather than turning around like one who had received all the answers desired.

“Ohoho, you’re unfamiliar with the term? Now that’s a surprise. You know, my friend, from looking at you, one might almost think that you must at least have had some dealings with them...

Especially after spending so much time in this particular kingdom...”

That was probably supposed to be another hint, wink or nudge, one supposes, just in case the puzzle pieces hadn’t connected yet.

The small shadow might have been missing some sort of punchline here.

Maybe the shaman thought that it had been playing dumb on purpose, or just a hair’s breadth away from connecting the dots on its own, but when he saw that this wasn’t going to happen, he did at least bother to elaborate.

Perhaps he couldn’t quite parse what his sort-of apprentice was getting at, and thought it must have figured it out already.

“...I suppose you might have known them by some other term. The ‘Ancient Caste’ is one of the names they’re called, but they have also been known as the New Gods. The Light-Touched. The Prime Sources. The Majestic Ones. The Pale Beings.”

Oh.

Oh.

That was a bit closer to home than expected.

The diminutive knight had definitely heard that last one before – even the one before that, maybe, used once by Godseeker. It would have thought the terms referred to the erstwhile rulers of this realm specifically; it hadn’t known there were others like that. It knew little of them indeed, for technically being their offspring. It supposed that the White Lady must know even less about it, since there weren’t any old historical records about it for her to dig through – at most, it might have sparked the occasional folk tale with its deeds on its travels, in places far away.

And the King most likely never learned of its existence to begin with, ironic seeing as it could be considered now to have effectively made off with his realm – or a remainder of it, in any case.

The Mask Maker must have been talking about the royal pair then, when he was referring to the ‘Ancient Caste’… - though he seemed to know his small visitor’s origin, he must have doubted that it could do what even its illustrious parents had failed in, or prove itself their equal. The joke’s on him, now that it had by all means surpassed them.

“This ole’ kingdom once used to have a whole pack of them for its royal family” the Shaman continued, needlessly elaborating on what his guest had already pieced together “ – surely, if you’ve climbed down to the city, you’ve at least seen the statues? I’m not exactly in the loop with everything these days, since I’ve been left in charge of this mound, but I can’t imagine that none of those would be left, seeing as they used to be all over the place…”

Oh, it had seen some statues alright, to say the least.

It could not exactly tell the snail that it had in fact been the one to to finally find the old king’s body, or that it had met with the queen just earlier – many among the remaining residents didn’t seem aware that she was even still alive. The Old Stag, for example, had presumed her to be long gone when explaining about the station leading to her gardens.

Although the tiny warrior had a feeling that the shaman would probably have the means to sense something of her lingering presence. If it kept listening, he might still come to tell it something it didn’t know yet.

“It’s a rare thing, generally, for their likes to be driven out by anything other than their peers, though of course, we’re rather close to the outer edges of creation here – the borders are thin to the places where even greater powers might be lurking, such as the Dream Realm or the Outer Darkness... but as far as this plane goes, this dominion, creatures like that would be pretty much at the very tippy top of the food chain, with but a few exceptions… such an existence would stand apart even next to to other immortals.”

Hm. Ghost had not known that its parents could be considered such a big deal – strange thing as that was to say of divine royalty.

Although tiny warrior supposed that it now technically counted as one of those Even Greater Powers from the Great Beyond…

Hornet didn’t, though, and she must be far away now, en route to the domain of that other power – a big deal even among gods, apparently.

Ghost really didn’t like where this was going.

It liked the prospect of having to explain this to its sibling even less.

Oh, the Hollow Knight would keep its composure, certainly. That much was still ingrained as reflex.

That’s exactly why one could not trust its brave face to mean a thing.

For its own part, Ghost would really, really appreciate it if the various Powers That Be would keep their blasted appendages off of its siblings.

At least for a while. Come on!

It was only just finished preserving one of them from certain doom.

And now this…

To think that it had been of the opinion that Hornet was being a bit too cautious about the thing with rebuilding the bridge… now, it wondered if they had not been careless somehow, if information had somehow gotten out and made its way to this nasty spider deity somewhere out there…

Another like the King and Queen…

Probably a big, white spider then.

Possibly spider royalty. Maybe they’d have horns in the shape of a crown, too.

At least it wasn’t another like the Radiance.

The enemy was something corporeal – something strong, but something that Hornet would be able to poke with her needle.

In this, at least, things were not as bad as they could be.

And she’d be familiar with what she’s dealing with, to say the least.

She was smart. She’d be able to figure out, right?

Probably more quickly than it would have in her place.

Still, this spider deity…

All signs pointed to them being a nasty piece of work indeed.

They wouldn’t have sent a small army to have Hornet forcibly captured if they just meant to invite her for tea and crumpets.

One must hope that their soldiers hadn’t been too conscious for what had befallen them.

Why would they puppeteer their own minions?

If they were as revered as the other higher beings here in Hallownest had been, they should have people lining up to serve them… were these even their minions at all, if they were so forcibly employed?

Not that sending a regular army to abduct someone would speak well of them either, but this degree of vicious, brutal cruelty painted a grim picture of what might await the princess at her destination.

Whatever this was seemed disconcertingly similar to the infection, and yet… not.

The forcible overriding of another’s individuality and will, the perversion of unity, the defilement of another’s form from within… that much was similar, but it was hard to imagine a gaggle of infected bugs marching in orderly formation in relatively well-kept shiny uniforms.

The dream-plague had tended to reduce its victims… if not to a completely animalistic state, then at least to something like being trapped in a waking dream – sound judgment, reason and lucidity were usually the first things to go, even in the more coherent victims.

This grotesque internal strangulation, meanwhile had left its victims still capable of discipline, of organization…

If one were to guess, the power behind this needed a greater part of the minds intact so that they could process their orders. This thing did not warp thoughts or twist emotions, flooding hearts with foreign anger; They rather extinguished the will, suffocated and drowned out by a stronger existence, pressing down with immense weight.

In other words, the aim here was not destruction, but rather domination.

A forcibly imposed order rather than an equally forcible return to chaos.

A distant kinship to the King and Queen of Hallownest might be recognized there indeed, as in twisted, warped funhouse mirror, like the one Grimm had in one of his circus tents –

Indeed, it was no coincidence that Ghost found itself inclined to think of the troupe master, another being of dream and essence, of chaos and decay even, in some ways akin to the Radiance, down to sharing her moth-like features, yet nonetheless one the small shadow had come to think of as a friend and an ally, and whose child or, other self, if that were the better description, it still counted among its own kinsfolk.

Both Bardoon and Jiji’s strange metallic friend had described the King’s efforts here as an attempt at ‘order’.

But order could mean a lot of things – raising a beautiful city of gleaming spires to offer shelter from the harshness of the wild, certainly, but…

It doubted not that this small army of hapless uniformed puppets must also have looked very, very orderly on its trek across the wilderness.

Despite the fact that the King and Queen were technically its parents (it couldn’t say if it would ever get used to thinking of them as such), Ghost wasn’t sure how much it understood of ‘order’, even now after its own ascension. The dark had changed it, certainly.

The void could not be said to be exactly like either order or chaos – Nothingness had no structure, so, it could be seen as chaos; But it also lacked any inhomogeneity, so one could likened it to order.

Perhaps it was neither, and yet both, in such a way as only nothingness could be.

Destruction, however, must certainly be seen as the opposite of creation, the ‘Power Opposed’ as it were, though even that King would have found himself hard-pressed to draw up his blueprints without an empty canvas on which to put them first.

He knew this, too, in theory, though he did not not, perhaps could not, grasp it fully down to the last implication. One had to grant him that at least – that might just have been him, not per se anything to do with light or order – with intellect perhaps.

It’s not like Ghost would ever know, seeing as the old King was long gone.

Out of all the creatures on this earth, it would certainly be the least likely to be unaware that the much revered, widely beloved royal pair were not at all without some capacity for cruelty, however necessary they may have thought it – so it certainly would not have concluded anything too reassuring from the prospect that this faraway spider deity was in some way of their kind, especially with such plain proof of their disposition laid out before it…

The Snail Shaman’s antics did, at last, bring the little shadow’s attention back to the present once it came to its attention that the snail had grabbed himself some earthen container and was now busy ripping fistfuls of silk out of the stranger’s opened corpse.

“You don’t mind if I keep this, do I?

‘S only fair payment for the consultation, I would say.

Actually, if there’s any more of this where this came from… I would much appreciate it if you brought it around. This seems, to me, a mighty useful substance, mighty useful, ohohoho~…”

One could only hope that he would tell his clients that he’d gotten the stuff out of a dead body.

He did have a point about ‘fair payment’, though.

...even so, maybe Ghost should have Grimmchild set all the other corpses on fire, just to be on the safe side. The last thing Hallownest needed was for any more dubious curses or questionable substances to be carried into its walls.

Before that, however, it ought to try something which it should really have done to begin with, and go poking around with the Dream Nail.

The last dregs of essence clinging to corpses would usually hold some imprint of the last thoughts of the deceased, the last memories imprinted in the body before the departure of the spirit – often panicked, desperate thoughts, or whatever mantra or hope the person might have been clinging to to the last.

What Ghost found stuck to the shells of these intruders, however, rather confirmed the overall impression that there was something very much unnatural afoot…

The thoughts were all the same, though contained in what had once clearly been minds with distinct, individual voices, and the contents of their thought seemed altogether unsuited to those embroiled in a combat to the death, quite unlike the victims of the Radiance – as much as their higher thought might be consumed with thoughts of blazing light, survival instincts like fear or aggression would usually still be present, reflections of the fights themselves, of smells and sights, of pain.

This was almost a reverse… and yet no less distant from normal functioning. The contents that filled them were reminiscent of prayer:

“Your glory…!”

“Your grace…!”

“We hear you…!”

“Divine light!”

“Your will… eternal...”

The other presence was too dilute to be picked up right away, but the more the little Knight went rummaging through the minds of these envoys (for this seemed to be what they considered themselves), the more a certain… common denominator could be read between the lines, like a coloration or background noise – or no, not at all like that.

Maybe a little like that, in that it wasn’t immediately obvious, but that lack of obviousness was not because the presence was faint; but because it was so immense. It was not immediately obvious in the way that the presence of the water is less than obvious to deep-sea mollusks, even though they would have an immense weight of it pressing down upon them.

From the repertoire of minds, memories and imprints which the small creature had hitherto peered inside of, a few natural, apparent comparisons came floating to the top:

First, it was distinctly the mind of a spider – there were always individual differences of course, particularly when it came to intelligent beings, but by and large, on some rough average, spiders might be described as fierce, tricksy, territorial creatures – that was often the last thing left in a lot of Deepnest’s former denizens, after the infection had burned its way through them: ‘Defend our caves, defend our brood…’, that sort of thing.

There were prodigious quantities of raw territorial instinct in this particular mind, even sensed just vicariously, through an imprint on an imprint.

If one were to attempt to read the real thing, either something with a live connection, or any extension of the creature itself – or rather herself, it would seem – there was a memory of a full-bodied, feminine voice, with just a bit of roughness – one would probably find oneself rather vigorously expelled.

Second, and no less natural, was the comparison to a haughty noblewoman, rife with pride and entitlement and laden with finery; The tiny warrior had sampled many such minds in the noble quarter of the capital city – but while many of these had seemed yes-bugs, pilot-fish and hangers-on, merely basking in the orbit of the Pale Court while growing fat off their table scraps, this mind had not a drop of a follower’s nature in it. Just as much as gaudy painted ladies, it would have resembled the vicious brutes of the Colosseum, and likely exceeded many of the more barbaric ones among them in bloodlust and self-will; One could picture her carving her way through many of them by claw and blade, even if she had been but some mortal warrior… which she was decidedly not.

The fourth and final point of comparison would be that mold which the small shadow had found in its father’s workshop, likely the means by which he had crafted his artificial soldiers. Imprinted on the glowing, rune-studded arcanotech contraption was a massive geass, beyond any mortal sorcerer, the full voice-of-the-metratron brunt of his power, power to command, power to compel, to enthrall, impressing the impetus only to ‘SERVE!’, with the same absolute finality as the narrator of a story decreeing what was to happen in it next, bright essence of sheer will in its purest, most potent form.

While the Radiance had screeched with the full force of her divine presence almost constantly, drowning out all other noise in her victim’s minds like a star so bright it outshines all others, Ghost had not found any other instance of the Pale King doing this – long before they’d come to recognize the imprint upon those magical rune-etched tablets strewn across the kingdom from their single memory of him, they had wondered whom that strangely echoey, whispery voice might have belonged to, seeing as it was always the same one, always the same signature of soul woven into the spell-work every time, though it did not learn to distinguish this until the Snail Shaman taught it, and noticed only belated that it wasn’t just the voice, but also the magic that was the same, glowing sharp white – at first it had assumed that the strange quality of the voice was down to the age of the tablets or some quirk of the magic, and the actual caster behind them would have sounded a little more like a typical bug.

Now, it was all but certain that the tablets would hold the exact, perfect likeness of his voice for many, many years to come – strange though it was, it belonged to a masterful wizard and artificer with near-endless, timeless power at his clawtips, little though any of this had helped him against the Radiance.

Having since become more acquainted with what was often the nature of divine voices, it could understand why he’d make a careful habit of never raising his own above a whisper.

The former queen seemed much more successful at having herself sound like a friendly neighborhood old lady, but then again what might be thought of as her main body was only a small part of a greater whole, extending far throughout the soil in an enormous network of roots – while she had pruned herself into some concessions to convenience and practicality during her time as queen, much of which had since fallen away, she had not gone and tried to pack all her vast being into what by comparison must seem near to a singular point.

There used to be enough of him to cover all of Kingdom’s Edge even ages after he’d left it behind.

Whatever had Hornet abducted must be like this, too – enormous and immense, stretching far, world-encircling, world strangling, if she so pleased.

Ghost had never had any sort of voice, at least not of the sort that would be comfortable for anyone to listen to, but it had since had its own experiences with the state of immensity, having become one with something that made even its parents seem as specks.

Being able to crush the Radiance like a grape had felt good, after so long witnessing her throwing around her weight for so long, certain for so long that nothing could so much as touch her without burning up to ashes in the attempt; Under different circumstances it might have had sympathy for her plight of going rejected, forgotten and unloved, but after wading through the gore of her defiled victims for so long, it had precious little sympathy left.

Its sibling likely didn’t either, though it had framed one of its first independent actions taken once it was well enough for any degree of significant exertion as merely the continuation of its holy duty.

The remains of the temple at the crystal peak had started this whole mess – depending on your point of view, you might say, because the miners excavated it while looking for riches, or because the Moths stopped tending to it in the first place.

Either way, the place went up in a gleaming explosion of soul so extravagant and indiscriminate that some of the molten bedrock was left glowing with a faint pale shine.

The God of Nothingness rather lived up to its title that day, dispensing nothing short of annihilation.

A crime against historians and relic-seekers everywhere, really, as those walls and inscriptions were likely the only ones of their kind still remaining, last remnants of some buried, bygone era; The rocks committed no crimes, and it was not the Radiance who had built them, but likely some otherwise long-forgotten followers of hers. It was not just evidence of her, but of the architect, the bricklayers, the scribes, those who mixed the mortar and gathered the components for it. Even the later works of the Moths that were wrought in their time as members of the kingdom were now rare and in-between.

But who’d take the chance?

The only reason that Ghost had not destroyed the temple grounds itself was that it had not see a reason to. The Radiance could possess others though the presence of her image and her memory in their minds, but she needed to be actually there on the other side of the divide in order for her to push through.

Without her continued presence in the Dream Realm, the statue would have been as harmless as any other stone and could well have been left in place for its historical value, but who could fault the Hollow Knight for wishing to make sure?

It could probably use the catharsis after being helpless for so long.

The Radiance’s defilement upon its own form, it might have begrudged less despite its agony – that much could be accounted valid self-defense, seeing as she had been trying to break out, but it had been forced to watch its homeland crumble from within their shared prison and had not taken well at all to the news of the King’s death.

Sometime during the days that Ghost and Hornet had spent tending to their older sibling, something came up that afforded it the opportunity to imply to the other two that it had found their fathers’ body.

Hornet’s response proved quite subdued, even compared to what transpired in the Beast’s Den.

She was not forced to leave the room to preserve her dignity or anything like that, though in this case, the reason was no great mystery: She had pretty much already figured.

What sparse news Ghost might convey by such means afforded to it were only the last confirmation of what she had long since deduced on her own, many lifetimes ago by the accounting of the surface dwellers – so it would remain a mystery how she might have responded if the wound were fresh.

The Hollow Knight might have pieced together the signs as well, from what sight of the world beyond its prison was afforded to it by the King’s parting gift, but its long agony would not have granted it much room for clear thought. Unlike its sister, it had never quite knocked the Wyrm from whatever pedestal he occupied in its mind, perhaps from some sort of necessity to believe in the high purpose of its suffering in order to endure through it.

Thus, he was most openly lamented by the one who should have had the most reason to curse him.

If the Vessel could have howled in grief, it would have.

They might have heard the proof of its great dismay well past the howling cliffs.

Still confined to bed at the time, it had torn some prodigious holes in an innocent little pillow with its one remaining claw.

Ghost would have been the only existence this side of the abyss who could perceive the muttered apologies that followed, though Hornet could deduce what was occurring well enough from context.

Her fine powers of reasoning and inference would repeatedly prove a boon to communications in days to come.

One may conclude that it was mainly on the late King’s behalf (though certainly, along with many others) that his once vaunted champion had gone and leveled his rival’s old temple as soon as the state of its shell allowed, not so much to avenge itself.

There might not have been a rational cause to suppose that the Radiance might ever come back; A cathartic little ritual display might be just what is needed to allay what fears might linger regardless.

In the end, her towering effigy was built, above all, to act as a stand-in for her – once a focal point for reverence, her actions had made it a conduit of fear more so than wrath.

The wrack she wrought out of a desire to be remembered had only ensured that none would ever dare speak her name again, until even the terror of her passed into oblivion.

Despite that gesture, however, the Pale King’s own dedicated shrines on the same mountain would come to gather dust just as much as those of his predecessor had; few would peruse them now, with no one left to pray, and no one left to answer. They were merely another layer of sediment now, long since been stripped by scholars and treasure-seekers – Ghost had personally carried off and sold some of the idols, mostly before it had even begun to suspect any relation between itself and what had first seemed a long-gone historical figure – though it had pilfered at least a few of them with gusto in the days after first figuring it out…

It knew better than to rub that act into the faces of its newfound siblings, however.

Some of the ones down in abyss or all the way over there in the next world might have cheered, but these two had actually known him.

Ghost, too, had come to know a bit of him, not enough to miss anything, certainly, but the sight of his remains on a sad little heap on the floor had been enough to extinguish the resentment that had seen them flung there.

There was little for his successor to grieve, but a vague, dull sort of ache left by dim imaginings of what might have been. This, at least, left them better able to keep it together and be there for the others.

Ghost had hardly needed any memories of the King to want the Radiance squashed with extreme prejudice; It was enough to see the state of these lands; It was enough to see the mockery she made of its unfortunate fellow down in the Ancient Basin, first found still standing there like a hollowed tree, yet soon bent to her purposes.

It was enough to wish the others freed from their futile strife against her.

Ghost had come to learn the downsides of immensity right after.

It’s rather easy to crush things, when you’re massive (in size, in presence, in one’s very existence), even without intending to – it becomes easy to lose sight –

Just by existing, which is the worst part. One can watch their actions, but nobody can ever help that they exist.

Godseeker claimed that neither her nor her fellows were all too upset about what happened to her physical form – she’d been longing to be taken by some stronger presence and continued her their own ascension of sorts to an existence purely of the dream realm to be something of an upgrade. The least it could do after the invaluable aid she’d rendered was to grant her wish – though it doubted that she would complain to the face of one she would pledge fealty to with such borderline masochistic enthusiasm. She had seemed a little attached to her shell at least on ...aesthetic grounds.

She of course was a fan of all things large and could not understand why anyone would ever wish to be small; Perhaps the grass always looks greener on the other side, or it was a question of different individuals having different priorities.

Ironic as this might seem, and, as much as this may have left Godseeker almost downright adorable state of confusion, Ghost had found itself rather agreeing with its so-called father in the end.

The seat of honor at the pantheon’s peak would have seemed a bittersweet consolation prize at best, if to be its occupant meant to be parted forever from all those it might have wished to share the victory with.

Its newly-minted high priestess may have called it flashy names like God of Gods, Lord of Shades, Devourer, Great Destroyer and Sun-Eater, but its new form wouldn’t exactly have fit on that bench in Dirtmouth – not to mention that poor Elderbug would probably have a heart attack at the mere sight of it. But the power this had bestowed had many possible uses, including that of manifesting from the darkness and calling forth a semblance of its old shell in a flash of soul, for the most part restricting itself to the approximate capabilities it had before its ascension – though the much increased affinity to, if not outright unity with its native element could not exactly be concealed, and the greater power always lay in a wait like a vast, calm ocean, waiting to be called upon at need.

It probably had a much easier time at this compared to the Pale King’s very physical, very permanent and ultimately still somewhat clumsy and imperfect transformation, or even the ritual that the Nightmare King conducted to maintain an avatar on this plane, which, in the end, would be proof that it was more powerful than both of them now.

But even in that final form it came to bear, the light imbued into it by its maker still remained a crucial component of its being. It was not just darkness itself, a formless pool of raw primordial might governed by laws of nature, it was darkness given form, mind, focus, will, purpose.

A spark of light remained even now, rendering it distinct from the dark ocean proper in its most primordial form.

Though it did not really like to contemplate this, the little creature was well aware that it partially owed its own existence to a much more advanced version of the designs first contrived in that workshop. It had not failed to miss the similarity between the those constructs and the sharp light that would shine from the eyes of its own shade form. In some dim moments, it had questioned how much its desire to carry out its mission had truly been its own, and how much was down to some manner of program, no different from the crystalline minds of those mining golems atop the Crystal Peak. Had there once been some other nature, held in its shell, or perhaps in the darkness itself, that had been overridden in this process, or had its existence only really begun when both components were welded together?

It knew the reasons for its actions now, ever since it had dared to peer inside itself, and they seemed reasons alright, strung together of causes and effects –

In a sense it could be said that even bugs of flesh and blood had ‘programming’, only that it was more customary to use the word ‘instinct’ when referring to more ‘conventional’ creatures; it did not stop them from having more complex modes of consciousness and experience layered on top.

Certainly it had evolved far beyond anything that its creator could ever have predicted, and his predictions had been incomplete enough to begin with to topple his initial plan.

If one could forgive him, then that would be precisely because he had not fully known what he was doing.

Even so, the Wyrm had wielded that power of his to impress form, will and purpose onto what he had thought to be indistinct, primordial matter –

This other power… the one that took Hornet, did not seem to have the slightest compunction in bringing the full brunt of that same might to bear on heaps and heaps of sapient beings.

There was no reason at all not to suppose that there not must be a whole lot more such victims wherever these envoys came from.

The same trick shouldn’t work on Hornet, not quite, not easily – she was of light, too, at least in part. Like repels like.

But there was no reason at all to think that the will behind this atrocity did not have all manner of other nasty means to coerce her.

The tiny warrior did not like this one bit.

The mastermind behind the abduction didn’t seem the type to need very much of a reason to stop on others with casual brutality, but why come all this way?

What did she want with Hornet in particular?

Unfortunately, the spider goddess had not left the answer to this anywhere upon the minds of her unwilling minions. The shadow creature was none the wiser after dream-nailing every single one of them.

The dregs of emotion left behind in the resulting hive mind were a twisted, contradictory mess.

Its best guess would be a mixture of exhilaration, blood-lust, and a sense of being overcome with cloying heaviness at a harsh yet bittersweet meeting with a long-lost relative. All these feelings, it knew – some of them very well – but it would have figured some of them to be mutually exclusive.

This creature seemed just as likely to pull Hornet into a tearful embrace as she did to crack open her shell and consume what’s inside.

The small shadow would consider itself a rather expert dream walker by now, so, it didn’t think that there was any error on its own part here – these jarring, contradictory combinations of traits and impulses must have existed just like that in the original consciousness that had left them behind.

Its technical skill could not really disentangle an accurate but confounding result.

It could understand the aching desire to find another like oneself – so much that it had nearly ended up as yet another snack for the Nosk on that account. It understood the frustration, in coming here to find only traces of others long gone, or those it could only meet in desperate fights to the death. It understood, also, the thrill and challenge of a good fight… including good fights with those it had longed to meet. It may once have followed after Hornet for a mixture of general curiosity and a hope that there might be something behind that faint resemblance, but it was the crossing of their blades that really began to cement its interest in her – she’d provided a challenge the likes of which it did not often encounter on its treks across the surface, and she must have experienced something none too different, seeing as the usually stern, unflappable guardian had outright broken out in giggles during their fight, around the time when it first began to really counter her attacks. She must have gotten a more than a little riled up, which, it had since learned, she rarely did… or at least rarely let show, for whatever reason. A faint echo of that, one supposes, might be recognized in this imprint –

But it was all crooked. Twisted. Warped, mixed up. Not quite right. Hungry, somehow.

...if this foreign power merely wanted to have a talk, she would have sent a letter or something, not an army marching in formation.

Hornet herself certainly seemed to have seen ample reason to resist.

Whoever the creature behind this was… whatever she wanted with Hornet, whatever the knot of her intentions… what she had done to those she’d sent here was atrocious. And there could be no doubt that Hornet would find it atrocious as well – too long had she seen her home devastated by the antics of the Radiance to forgive another who would do something similar. She had actually known this land near the zenith of its wealth and splendor, the peak only just passed, and watched it crumble into its present decimated state, moment by moment – she’d been here the whole time.

Ghost tried to picture what it had been like to come to this kingdom, to learn of its history, its people both long perished and the few survivors clinging to life, to come to find that what had it had once entered looking for adventure and the origin of a mysterious call for help, only to find that it had found its long-lost homeland, long-since drowned under the sands of time…

The way that it actually happened had been challenging enough, but nothing on that road had yet prompted it to imagine the scenario of coming here not as the long-lost kinsfolk of Hornet and the Hollow Knight, or even of the White Lady, as… complicated and uneasy as that still was… but rather as some long-lost relative of the Radiance.

As a descendant from some family of moths who had fled before all the doors were closed, maybe, come to seek the land of their ancestors.

That jealous goddess had not been all too interested in appeasement or penitence, in fact she’d melted that congregation of turncoat Mosskin right along with everyone else and responded not at all to the old Seer vanishing with her name on her lips, but this supposed aristocratic spider deity might be a different animal altogether.

Hornet was a proud one and certainly wasn’t going to appreciate being forcibly seized or put in a cage, not even by someone claiming herself to be a kinswoman – nor was the stranger really helping her case with her brutish methods.

Ghost could not claim itself an expert, seeing as it had only found out recently that it had any surviving family at all and that its own first encounters with its sister had gone anything but the typical way, but generally your kin are supposed to protect you from those who’d do you harm, not send some minions to abduct you…

How could this even be?

On the one hand, the patent similarity between the power they wielded did suggest the existence of some form of connection, but on the other hand, Hornet’s mother was distinctly mortal.

She was one of the Dreamers – the one with that deeper, raspier female voice, it would turn out, compared to the higher, airier one that must have been Quirrel’s former teacher.

The small shadow distinctly recalled her as the one who had made the decision to dispose of it back at the Resting Grounds, an authoritative presence cutting through the din while the other two were arguing about what to to.

She must have been powerful indeed, for the Pale King to go so far to gain her aid in spite of how their dealings with each other would appear to have started out as anything other than friendly.

Feared as both the Deepnest and its inhabitants may have been by most everyone else in these caverns, the minds of her former subjects, be they dead, infected or the few still living, showed nothing but the utmost reverence for their sleeping queen; She’d been no less beloved than the king in the palace below.

Yet by the time the tiny warrior had intruded on her mind to break her seal, the only thoughts left on her mind were exclusively of her daughter.

An exceptional individual by all accounts, she seemed, by many possible measures, one of several impressive luminaries spent senselessly in a failed attempt to purge that plague forever… but distinctly not a Higher Being.

So how exactly would a ‘common beast’ be connected to the mastermind behind the abduction?

There was only one place remaining where the answer might be found, one last lead to pursue.

The shadow creature pulled off one of the envoys’ cowls before motioning to its winged companion to proceed with the torching of the bodies. From all the excited ‘nyeh-heh-heh’s involved, he must find this assignment rather delightful. It did seem natural enough – If anything should be capable of properly ‘exorcising’ these bodies, it would be the scarlet flame.

The stuff of nightmares would have been clinging to these poor shells in plentiful abundance.

Upon poking one of the blazing carcasses with a nail, Ghost could indeed ascertain that the ill-boding strings inside did indeed burn, coming apart into strange, transient sparks, but this might well be due to the rather peculiar properties of the particular fire used, its faculty to cleanse, to purify, to release what was stagnant.

The dreadful strings came apart into a fine white ash.

Only then did the spirits of its victims find themselves free to move on through the veil – none had left remnants that manifested as apparitions, but there was a subtle, barely perceptive shift in the air that one might pick up if one was experienced in the arts of dreamwalking or spiritcalling.

Mercifully enough, it happened long before the envoy’s physical forms caved in on themselves.

The little shadow watched them burn until it could be sure that they were well and truly ablaze, past the point where the winds would feed the fires rather than threaten to blow them out.

Ghost took its time to let the Grimmchild have his fun here; Surely, he would be disappointed that he wouldn’t get to follow his parent to its next destination, where more careful, stealthier means would be needed – nothing that might be read as a provocation, no sudden move.

For it was time now to depart for the Deepnest.

There was nowhere else left to look.

If nothing else, the people there must be informed that their princess was missing…

Or, technically, their queen, given her mother’s recent demise, though Hornet herself had never said a word of any upcoming coronations, and her siblings lacked the means to bring it up unprompted.

That was another thing she never spoke of.

In any case, the similarity, between that power’s… well, power, and that of Hornet’s people (on her mother’s side) was too glaring to ignore – early in their acquaintance, the small speck of darkness had found itself at the receiving end of her own soul-infused threads more often than it would have liked.

It would certainly seem one hell of a coincidence if she just so happened to be seized by a Higher Being with surprisingly similar capabilities. If one considered the Moth tribe with their power over dreams, for example… Ghost really hoped that particular intuition would prove mistaken.

But the only ones who would be able to answer this were the remaining Weavers, or perhaps some others among the populace of the Deepnest who may have had extensive dealings with them.

Many who survived the infection had done so by keeping to themselves in their hiding-holes, and the people of Deepnest had been wary of outsiders at the best of times.

Even so, Ghost was certain that it had seen at least one live, still uninfected Weaver slinking around their old haunts at one point. The way the spider had skittered away the moment that the tiny warrior had made so much as the slightest motion in her direction gave it the distinct impression that she was not exactly keen on being found – understandable, really; Staying out of sight might be a large part of the reason of how she, and any others that may remain along with her, survived the ravages and depredations of the Old Light’s reign of terror.

If only Ghost’s best bet of finding out what had happened to its sister did not depend on somehow coaxing someone with such good reasons to conceal themselves into parting from their hiding-spot.

Beginning its journey, the tiny warrior attempted to recall if its sister had ever said anything telling about her mother, or her mother’s people, or wherever it is they had come from.

The subject of Herrah the Beast seemed a natural one to avoid, considering the deal that had lead to Hornet’s conception, or what the tiny warrior had to do in order to gain access to the Black Egg.

The remaining survivors must know by now, too, or at last, should easily have been able to figure upon hearing that the seals had been broken.

Hornet herself had understood the necessity and willingly stood aside, but it was not inconceivable that some among her compatriots (or rather subjects) might habor some choice thoughts about what had befallen.

More than perhaps anyone else, Ghost would understand fullwell that telling someone their losses had been thought necessary for the greater good would not fully erase the bitterness and sense of injustice that came with it. In the end the final battle did not end up within the Black Vault at all, so, might some not call into question how necessary their beloved queen’s demise had truly been, whether she might not have been saved?

Who could say. It might be that not even the King himself might have undone the seals without lethal consequences for its live constituents; It had very much been designed to last eternal.

Certainly, it must be expected that the princess would have explained. That her own involvement would speak for itself.

This train of thought might well be an attempt to affix rational thought to the trepidation that

Ever since that time it had ended up taking a wrong turn in the Queen’s Gardens and taken a bit of a fall straight down into the cobweb-filled darkness, without a map, a light, or much else that might justly be called the appropriate survival gear for such a place, the prospect of going there had always carried a certain… well. Let’s not quite say dread.

Ghost was seldom ever daunted and noted by nearly everyone who knew it as an exceptionally brave creature, but that place…

Well. It would not doubt that the place must seem quite lovely to its native inhabitants, much as the Waterways might seem an ideal environment to the Flukes;

Even the barest deserts had inhabitants who saw their native landscapes so much as their beloved home that they would suspect some malicious prejudice in the very idea that bugs home to other habitats could ever think of deserts as uniformly awful places;

If you were a spider… and especially if you had been used to finding your way across the tunnels from infancy, you would not find anything lacking.

Especially since they could probably seen in here, or else orient themselves through vibrations and the minute tugs on all the string.

You would think that a creature made of living darkness would have no use for lamps, but alas, this was not so. Yet another miscalculation in the grand design of the King and Creator, one assumes.

Even so, the Wanderer was no stranger to inhospitable terrains, their wild predators or the fierce peoples that might lurk there;

It’s just that…

Well.

The tiny warrior had not been able to name it or to label at first. where that diffuse sense of apprehension had been coming from, and, being unable to trace it to its source, it had been easily taken for the sort of deep and primal thing that had always been there, its very absence unthinkable.

Nor could it fully place the mysterious forces at work behind that sudden welling-up it felt, when, upon its wanderings here, it had first come across the Stag Station, rang the bell, and been met with warm concern and the offer to be taken somewhere safer…

Nobody had come, or made any such offer, way back when…

Back when...

Really, in hindsight, the simple pattern indicated by the clues was not especially mysterious.

It must have fled through here, when it was but new-hatched.

Worse yet, this is must be where they all got separated, the few survivors that had been in state to crawl their ways out of the silent deep. The few that weren’t just outright devoured must each have ran a different way into the tiny tunnels, never to cross paths again, unless it were as emptied dried remains half overgrown with moss, or a desperate claw reached out, in one brief final moment of lucidity –

The memories may have faded, but the dark stains of regret had stubbornly remained behind, shapeless and nameless things passing through the night of a soul…

It was strange to think that their sister must have come to be reared not too far from that place, just a little later in the grand scheme of things;

One wonders if she used to play with her childhood friends in those very same places of dread, chasing small prey in the spots where some of her kin might have perished;

Then again Wanderer wasn’t really sure how long it and its ill-fated siblings had existed by the time they’d made their haphazard exodus;

It could be that she was already around at that time – that it could have ran into her, had it happened to take a different turn; One different choice at some intersection of dim, indistinguishable paths, and it might have ended up right with her, to play with the same friends and chase the same small prey, and maybe then, there would have been time enough to mention something about her mother’s homeland and what the Powers That Be there might possibly want with her.

...Ah, damn it all.

Ghost had only just been starting to really get to know her, and now she was gone to who knows where. Seized by some hostile deity, who might do who knows what to her.

They had only just reunited, after spending all these long years parted, never even knowing that the other existed – had either of them an ordinary mortal hailing from any place other than Hallownest, they probably would have perished long ago without ever learning of each other.

Nothing in the world could give them back the chance to know each other from the first as proper siblings should, to be there for each other’s undignified firsts and witness the trajectory of how each of them became who they are… not to speak of the ones down in abyss, or gone to the next world, some snuffed out right away, and others gone through their own storied adventures, to end without ever intersecting with Ghost’s own wanderings.

For the longest time, it had believed that it would have to strike down the Hollow Knight, too, after all the undeserved torment it had endured;

Much of what it did, it had done in hopes of preserving at least these last two, it would have hoped that before long, all the new memories made would come to match or maybe even eclipse their long parting, until people would be surprised to hear that they weren’t all reared together.

Now, that might never happen.

If only there had been more time…

Ghost had been learning new things about her… little by little. Small things.

Things it wouldn’t have known while it was preparing to make its stand against the Radiance, nor by the time it had returned from its ascension, nor for many of the weeks and months that followed, when they’d both had their claws full between coordinating the beginnings of the rebuilding efforts and looking after their shared sibling.

She wasn’t one to make a point of talking about herself at length, but even so, little by little, things had begun trickling out, just as they’d naturally come up.

She’d offhandedly mention a little something about her earliest childhood hunting exploits, how she’d entertain herself chasing various little critters and make it her mission to valiantly protect the Distant Village’s granaries from pesky pests. It could understand that – wanting to find some purpose for oneself, to be of use, to prove one’s skill. That might well be a trait that all three of them had in common, differently though it might have been filtered through their respective circumstances.

Once she was older, she’d help set up the spike traps around the village, something for which she apparently had quite the knack. Ghost would know, having been at the receiving end of some of her pokey implements – it endeavored its best to compliment her on their great pointiness insofar as it could.

It had also come to find that she shared its inquisitive streak (and hoped that she had come to conclude the same thing about it), though her mind had more of an enterprising, industrious sharpness even beyond that, looking not just to know things to but employ that knowledge.

At one point the subject of weapons came up, largely because their sibling wished its own repaired – apparently it was the last grand masterpiece of some famed smith who was the last of his line even in the heyday of Hallownest, and something that the Pale King had gone great lengths to procure.

In any case, the greatnail was one of the very few personal possessions the Hollow Knight had been afforded, and the only one it got to bring along into its prison, a reminder and symbol of the brief life it had lived before, of what little it has been allowed to be – and now of course long corroded by the caustic miasma that had long filled the chamber.

If at all possible, it would like to see restored, if not to its old glory, then at least some semblance of dignity – the Vessel’s siblings would not have denied it that wish, seeing as they had both been much relieved, by that point, to finally see it express some manner of desire.

However, finding a metalworker with the skill needed to work on some fabled ancient masterpiece without ruining it was no trivial matter, especially given that the one who made it was unlikely to be still around.

In fact, Ghost had its own suspicion of what may have become of the particular smith that wrought its sibling’s weapon, and, if so, it may in a way have ended up owning a piece from that same artisan, albeit a charm rather than a nail.

The tiny warrior had then inwardly lamented, though just faintly, that it would likely not be able to disclose the story behind its own weapon to their sister, but to the surprise of both their siblings, she deduced it all on her own – this style of weapon was quite particular to Hallownest and the smaller settlements in the vicinity to it, owing to its greater influence on the surrounding area at the time when trade was still coming in and out, but she’d observed that the small creature had arrived already wielding one. The weapon had at first appeared old and cracked, so its master must have carried it for a long, long time, and must have some attachment to it seeing as it never had it replaced despite the great abundance of diverse weapons ready to be looted off of fallen foes – instead, it must have paid a fair sum of Geo to have it fixed, upgraded and refined to perfection.

“You took this with you when you left, right? At first, it might just have been something you picked up somewhere, but once it became the only thing you had left of wherever you came from, you must have been reluctant to discard it… is that correct?”

There was nothing left to do but nod.

“Maybe we can pay a visit to the one who repaired it for you – whoever it is is clearly an artisan of exceptional skill, enough so that I would trust them with our sibling’s prized blade.”

(That turned out to be an excellent idea - The Nailsmith, despite being largely retired from smithing and for the most part calling himself the Sculptor these days, had in fact been willing to make an exception for an old friend)

In moments like these, it was just beginning to feel like there could be a real understanding between the three of them, despite their differences and the unique histories that had divided their different paths. Their sister caught their gist much quicker and more precisely than most others who were not of the void.

In Ghost’s previous experience, the ones who understood their intentions best were chiefly attentive and patient good listener types, those who did not rush to fill a silence with words or fill out ambiguity with preconceived notions, but could wait for the world to reveal itself – people like Quirrel, Cornifer, Elderbug, Cloth, Nailmaster Mato, Myla and so on.

The impetuous sharp-witted princess did not really fall into that category, but the more time they’d spent together, the more astute she got at perceiving their intentions in her own way – Ghost’s more so than the Hollow Knight’s, despite having known the former more briefly, as the latter still often did not wish itself to be perceived.

The two had been acquainted of old, having encountered each other on Hornet’s occasional stays to the White Palace, but in those days, she would have spent the bulk of her time in Deepnest, as her mother would obviously have been loath to part with all too much of the limited time she would have with her dolefully desired daughter – it spoke greatly of Herrah’s character that the visits she’d allowed had been as extensive as they were. Despite having all the reason in the world to hoard her child’s early years all for herself, she would not have deprived the girl of her father, nor suffered her to be dumped with effective strangers wholly unknown to her at the time of their parting.

At the time of the sealing, she would have been a little girl, a far cry from the hardened guardian she would become. Re-introductions had been in order, as it would turn out that she had not even come to use her currently preferred name back then.

The story of how and where she acquired it turned out to be connected to how she came by her own weapon – it was then that she had told them then of her time spent training at the Hive under the tutelage of its queen.

Ghost could not tell her that it had encountered the Hive Queen’s spirit and sent her on to the next world, something she gracefully accepted after seeing her faithful protector freed of the restless watch forced on him by the Radiance, but not before recognizing her visitor and giving it the helpful pointer to go looking for Hallownest’s own queen; Nor could it voice its belated realization that, now that she said it, some of the moves she’d tend to use did remind it of those employed by the fallen tribe’s soldiers.

It could, however, listen closely and attentively to Hornet’s tales of coming to learn much from the Hive Queen, not just in terms of martial skill, but from the great wisdom she attributed her with; She confessed to owing her a great deal. Her name, it seems, had begun as an affectionate term of endearment from her mentor. The needle, meanwhile, is a storied, traditional weapon of the Weavers, but it is usually meant to be used as a remote projectile guided by one’s web, keeping one’s foreclaws free for slashing – holding out her forearm, the princess explained how a full-blooded adult Weaver is supposed to have a retractable blade spanning its entire length – a trait that was not quite passed onto her.

She had some fashion of retractable claw-blades – but somewhat shorter, and one on each digit. It was deemed that these wouldn’t have been too useful… it seems this was once a point of embarrassment for her – she did not voice this explicitly, but it was implied, in how she mentioned that even the few other mixed children had not lacked for natural weapons, seeing as their other halves would have come fromDeepnests’s various other spider-like creatures.

It was easy to guess what she meant – The Stalking Devouts had natural blades, the Deephunters, though smaller, had the searing acidic venom not too uncommon among the creatures of these caves.

Still, when she showed them off to illustrate her argument, the retractable blades she did possess looked anything but harmless. Certainly she could have been taught to deliver some rather nasty slashes with these, if so desired…

Having fought her countless times without ever finding out that she had this feature, not just in their earlier encounters but in Godseeker’s ritual as well, Ghost would, if anything, count itself lucky not to have made the closer acquaintance of her talons.

One wonders if either Hornet herself or her instructors might not have been too quick to write off the offensive potential of these.

Ghost held out its own claw for comparison, which was… well, rather nubby, to be honest. It wasn’t going to leave more than fairly ordinary scratches with these, if applied to soft-bodied creatures like snails or jellyfish. What it had in its… other form pretty much resembled the forelimbs of it’s sibling, who had some notable talons on it as well, but these were distinctly the kind that are always out, nor quite as blade-shaped.

Their sister preempted the obvious questions that she wasn’t sure where exactly she could have gotten these from – if it were anyone else she might have theorized that this could be the result of something that might have skipped a generation, but so far as she knew, that couldn’t have been a possibility in her case. It could hardly be from their fathers’ side, seeing as he had not possessed any limbs at all in his natural form, so she figured that it was just some intermediate form resulting from her being a – well. She used a word for herself there which Ghost had not heard before, rather casually, spoken with callous, sober acceptance rather than insecurity.

But the little shadow could swiftly uess just about what it meant and the term’s approximate level of politeness from the Hollow Knight’s response to it – really just a slight but marked shift towards a posture of readiness, so far as most would have been able to tell, though this would qualify as being positively scandalized by its standards.

The statement must have rather offended its chivalrous sensibilities (and perhaps, the part of it that was still getting used to the fact that Hornet was no longer a little girl) – it seems a knight of the Pale Court must not stand for anyone to be called a ‘half-spawn’, much less a member of the royal family.

Ghost had not heard that particular term, as had been said, but it could guess at plenty of approximate synonyms popular in such parts as it had passed through in its travels. It may have been called the occasional such epithet itself, seeing as few could make sense of its nature.

Hornet, however, was cool as a cucumber about it: “I am a half-spawn”, she stated, matter-of-factly. “And a foreigner, and a bastard, and a savage from the provinces, and many worse things besides.”

What did she mean about worse things…? Perhaps something she would not utter in present company. Whatever it was wasn’t load-bearing to the point she was building up towards:

“It is what it is. Flinching away from mere words or bending over backwards to avoid them simply invests them with more power than they ought to have. I simply do not have eight limbs, whatever you want to call it – and I’ve accepted that long, long ago.”

Be that as it may, intelligent beings are of course not purely limited to that which nature had given them – some of her father’s knights had readily shown her how to wield a nail to make up for her supposed lack, but those, she could not quite combine with the Weaver arts using her silk. Besides, unlike a typical spider, even a one-handed weapon would leave her fresh out of limbs with which to thread further needles.

Queen Vespa had her smiths solve this problem by fashioning a needle more suitable for use as a handheld weapon, somewhere between a traditional needle and a nail in its design – furthermore, it was forged from the uniquely durable steel of the Hive, an unparalleled material rarely handed out to outsiders, making the weapon not only a great token of honor, but something especially tailored to her unique needs… A precious gift indeed, and indicative of why Hornet would hold Queen Vespa in such high esteem, even all these years later.

The princess caught onto the meaning behind the wordless look which Ghost affixed to her in response: “Do you find it strange to imagine a time when I would have struggled to make use of myself? The skills I have now are the products of rigorous training, no less so than yours. You must not assume that it all came to be naturally without work, no matter what lineage I might hail from or what markings of rank I might bear.”

Still, for her to confess to any weakness, even one long settled and overcome, was a rare thing, perhaps a show of slowly growing trust between them.

After that, she’d often mention the occasional story from her time with the Bees – not that she ever went out of her way to relate things about her life, but sometimes things would just happen to come up.

The arrangement was apparently prepared for by the Beast before taking on her duties as a Dreamer, perhaps as her way of ensuring her daughter’s well-being and education even in her absence.

The two Queens had apparently been close friends.

It was not a great mystery why she might not want to leave this entirely to the rulers of Hallownest – despite their alliance, Herrah might not have come to trust them completely, or, even if she had, the Pale King had proven beyond all doubt by the very nature of the plan that he would always put his kingdom before his family; For a ruler, this might be commendable, at least more so than the opposite, but one cannot fault a mother for wanting a little more insurance where the future of her only child was concerned. Faint though it was, Ghost could not help a certain pang of envy concerning the concept of being prioritized in such a way. Of course, even if one were to assume the best of the King and Queen, they were Higher Beings – they could be expected to help her regarding ‘god stuff’, but it seemed natural enough that Herrah would have wanted her daughter to have a mortal caretaker to turn to as well, especially since no one could have predicted in advance how much she might take after either side of the family.

What was more surprising is that the Beast didn’t chose for that mortal caretaker to be someone from Deepnest – wouldn’t a fellow spider be an even better fit, particularly one of the other Weavers?

Hornet never said much about them outside of explaining general things about their culture or her own abilities. For all that she seldom brought up the Pale King’s particular person, she didn’t avoid the subject of her time at the White Palace and some of the things that trickled through spoke of more positive associations; She made some remarks about various plants or architectural features that implied that she had generally favorable sentiments towards the decorations, and at one other point obliquely referred to some incident in her youth where she’d made a point of slicing various materials with a circular saw to find out what the cross-section of them looked like, which certainly did imply that he let her into his work spaces, maybe even taught her, and she expressed some respect of the court’s Knights.

At the time, the most intriguing takeaway for Ghost was the implication that the circular saws apparently did exist before the Palace was put into the Dream Realm, although their presence was presumably restricted to reasonable places for saws to be in.

In the end, Hornet’s sheer dedication to protecting her father’s kingdom rather spoke for itself – she might not be doing it for his sake, in particular, but rather for a broader sense of duty, but even so, that was probably the exact sort of value that one would pick up in his vicinity.

Similar things could be said about the Hollow Knight –

One might detect a shared influence upon the two, one that prized duty and responsibility above all things, perhaps to a somewhat imbalanced degree.

It was only after the worst of the immediate aftermath had passed that Ghost had gotten around to making it its mission to get the two of them to loosen up some.

It could, alas, imagine very well why the Hollow Knight might be reluctant to cut loose some, after a lifetime spent in the belief that the fate of all it ever held dear depended entirely on it maintaining the uttermost restraint, but the wanderer had not expected their sister to be as much of a tough nut to crack as she’d proven. She gladly presented a united front when it came to doing her part to best remedy the injustices against their sibling, but kept to her own discipline when it came to herself.

Efforts to incite her towards splashing around in hot springs or bouncing on mushrooms had proven rather futile, and the many quiet, scenic places in the kingdom that Ghost had often taken the time to admire with the likes of Cornifer or Quirrel did not quite seem to have the same relaxing effect on her. Obviously it did not expect her to be all too taken with the landscape, she would know every rock and crevice in the realm like the back of her claw, but she never quite seemed to let down her guard or relax her constant vigilance much.

Well. It supposed that it somewhat made sense, since she was from the Deepnest, where standing around idly for all too long could easily end with a nasty surprise to the back – she’d expressed some bafflement of her own upon catching the small warrior napping on one of Hallownest’s many ornate public benches, remarking that she had observed it doing this since its arrival and that it had irritated her from the first, though her reading of the situation had proven to be rather different – she’d somberly lamented that she didn’t want to think about whatever rocks and crevices it must have been curling up in or under in the wastes for it to get so comfortable on these metal benches as if they were the height of luxury, and implored it to please make use of the proper house it had since acquired.

It had made half an understated motion of brandishing its nail to assure her that it could defend itself (indeed, now that it was a full-fledged deity, it would have had little to fear from anything short of exceptionally powerful Higher Beings even without the weapon – though it was still as unwilling to discard its trusty nail as ever), but she insisted that it was the principle of thing.

For its own part, Ghost had not really seen the issue with its habits, seeing as it had always more or less made do with such makeshift accommodations as it could find and considered it a hassle to limit its wanderings so as to always end a day’s march in a settlement.

It had been nice to see her concern herself with its whereabouts, however.

In the end, it ended up making its way to their new dwelling more often than it otherwise would have, simply because this seemed to put both her and the Hollow Knight at ease somewhat, insofar as it could tell.

It had taken a while to connect the dots that seeing it show up with the occasional leaf stuck on its cloak and wings at times tended to bring up pangs of guilt for the others, reminders, as it were, of the deprived life it must have lead, particularly in its youth.

Truth be told, its earliest memories were still somewhat of a scramble, hard to summon up unless prompted by something, and it might be supposed that this is in part a mercy, in the same way as Quirrel’s still somewhat foggy recollections, although more bits of pieces had surfaced since, context-less stretches of desert, solitude and frantic scramble for survival, before it would have come to be anywhere near as proficient at defending itself as it was now – but while its early life had contained precious few proper beds and most certainly no palaces, it was not the one who had just recently escaped half an eternity of fully remembered, fully conscious torment inside the Black Egg, nor the brief stretch of hopeless, predetermined sort of existence that must have preceded this for its sibling.

After that fateful return to its birthplace, Ghost had decided to put aside all matters of comparison, competition and leave the stupid games and stupid prizes for the colosseum; From that point onward, it had wanted only to put a stop to the cruel circumstances that had lead them all to wind up in this situation to begin with, so save what might be saved and at least set all else at peace.

With the deed done and the yokes of the heavy destiny forced upon them lifted forever, it had wanted only for the three of them and what others might still be clinging to life in this place to get the chance to simply exist, united in the purpose of taking care of the remaining survivors as they might, perhaps, in such ways as would suit the needs of the much smaller, much sparser, less concentrated communities that remained and might never again equal or require the populous, sophisticated degree of organization that had existed in the days of the kingdom’s height, but above all, the small creature had been looking forward to simply living together and having the chance to properly get to know each other – to spend time together in such ways as they had been previously denied by their long parting, now that it had been able to put its regrets and unfinished business behind it…

That wish, more than anything, had fueled the direly needed persistence to climb its way through Godseeker’s ritual.

All that good intention, however, could not immediately change that the other two still carried many regrets and unprocessed experiences of their own, wounds that had only just been granted the theoretical possibility of healing, as they’d only just stopped being actively inflicted. The two of them had held up the weight of the figurative roof over these caverns for a long, long time, each trapped in their own, separate solitary struggle.

They both seemed long overdue for a some stretch of life lived for themselves, but how could one be allowed to make off with an existence so dearly bought?

Until not so long ago, Ghost’s elder sibling would likely have accounted it a part of that price tag, and their sister, then, must feel keenly the good fortune of never having being cast down into the dark to begin with, both a product of the same blasted trade, and simultaneously, a chief part of what it was once meant to preserve.

She didn’t quite get away, but she kind of did. Or she could have, had she chosen to; Had she felt like being shameless –

Never mind that neither of them did the buying.

The tiny warrior would at least prefer if they did not lay further weights on themselves on its behalf;

Its sibling had apologized many times for failing to alert the Pale King to its presence. Ghost was touched to some extent, to know that it had lingered in the others’ thoughts after all, but ultimately, those two were rather far removed from the brunt of the responsibility;

The Hollow Knight could not have been alive for more than half an hour at the time, and Hornet wasn’t even born yet.

Even with the Radiance vanquished, the effects of her deeds and the desperate acts done in response would likely come to linger for a long time.

Things would have been hard enough as it were, without that other power from a faraway island getting involved now, on top of everything else…

Couldn’t they at last be granted a moment’s peace to regain their bearings?

Factually speaking, one event must probably be seen as a consequence of one another; That power from the Weavers’ home must have existed a long time. If she was making her move now, rather than before, it likely followed, as cause from effect, from the end of the plague, and the word getting out about it; There are always unintended consequences and side-effect to any action.

Ghost would certainly know this: In a way, its entire existence was such a consequence, nor had it been spared regrets of it own.

It knew this, it understood and accepted; But the little shadow would have been remiss to deny that, for all that it had been willing to trade in its everything, it harbored a hope – if not a belief in any guarantee – that peace would follow from its deeds, if not for itself, then for those its acts were meant to benefit….

The three of them had only just been reunited, three out of a great, unknown number, whittled away by countless vicissitudes.

Its remaining sibling had been no less concerned for their sister than Ghost was, and had gone to scour the kingdom’s perimeter for further traces and see how far it might pursue the cold trail into the endless night.

Having more experience with the wilderness and the ways of the hunt, the wanderer had advised against this;

Formidable though it might be, the Hollow Knight had never once left the confines of Hallownest and had no experience with tracking, nor was there any chance that there would be much left to pursue; If there were, Ghost would have gone by itself.

The once- chosen Vessel, however, would not be dissuaded at all, claiming itself honor bound to go looking.

It had never been said that anyone in their family had ever built a reputation for knowing when to quit, and it seems they were unlikely to be starting with this anytime soon.

Besides, the smaller shadow suspected that having some task to see to would at least give the Hollow Knight a sense of being able to do something – heaven knows it had more than enough of the opposite in its time.

It may have desisted from its aim if Ghost had phrased its objection as a royal command, but it was not going to, instead leaving it at marked advice not to stray too far into the plains lest it get lost, and to meet back up once each of them would have completed their half of the search.

The wanderer let its sibling know, at least, that it still had some leads to pursue for its own part.

This would be what finally prompted the taller shadow to pause in the march it had thus far relentlessly persisted in. The unceasing winds of the never-ending plains blew its cloak about its thin, tall form.

It turned around, quite meaningfully, to regard its smaller counterpart, some unreadable, but definite something taking shape behind its eyes.

“Is that so?”

It wasn’t exactly words. Nor even images.

As with all things relating to the void, it was easier to say what it wasn’t than what it was.

An artist’s rendition might perhaps involve depictions of perfectly square ripples passing through two dark pools, unconnected and yet not.

A translator with a more pragmatic purpose held in mind, however, might have been willing to cut some corners and smudge some edges to render some rough near equivalent.

“It might be supposed that it is unsurprising that you would.”

For here was another thing that was new, fumbling, delicate, uneasy, like gashes scabbed over but not yet filled with flesh.

So long, Ghost had accounted itself as being in the shadow of this tall creature, even when it had not known this. Especially when it had not known this.

The earliest, deepest mark impressed upon its nascent soul was a sense of not being chosen, of coming up short, of its tiny stunted form falling short of the tall shining splendor of all it might have been.

Now, the tiny warrior found itself looked upon as the one who had finally done the deed, who had somehow accomplished what all others could not, and though it had done this, in great part, because it did not want the strivings and sufferings of all the others to have been in vain, this had then left it in the infinitely bizarre position of having to be mindful that it might now be the one who is envied.

Of course the chosen Vessel’s envy would have been a quiet, restrained, responsible affair, far from the all-encompassing, world-engulfing, context-less envy of childhood, raised up to shining maturity and then broken out of all youthful illusions by direct physical contact with the harsh mistress of reality.

There was no risk at all of any fuss being caused, just a quiet, shamefully smothered pang made worse by all too-much clarity, barely noticeable enough to leave the wanderer feeling honor-bound to refrain from rubbing further salt into the wounds.

It would claim that it had not taken down the Radiance to best its sibling... except that it did, a little bit, even if there had been a cornucopia of other reasons most of which were far more chivalrous and gallant.

The Hollow Knight must know this, too.

It wasn’t a matter of serious resentment, just… some tender spots still to be navigated, as had been said.

“I’m not really sure. Just something that could be a lead. Could be nothing, too.”

Then, mercifully, some idea to latch onto, a way to perhaps involve its taller companion in the search without causing undue worry before solid answers could be given:

“...you knew Hornet from before, right? At the palace. Do you remember if she ever mentioned anything about her mother’s homeland? Or maybe the Beast said something?”

A slight shift in position passed ever so subtly through the Hollow Knight’s towering form.

“...if she did, this Vessel has no recollection of it. It is true that she was known to this one of old, yet even so, her visits to father’s domain were brief and rare in those days.

Great efforts were made to accommodate her, as you might expect, however, she would still have been taken to an unfamiliar place rather distinct from her accustomed environment.

She was strong and composed even as a nymph, but there can be no doubt that she must have been frightened so far from home, surrounded by beings strange to her, even if we were her kin.

Of course, both our parents and the staff made great efforts to accommodate her insofar as they could, and even the other knights made time to entertain her. Nevertheless, no courtesy in the world could have erased the fact that she would have been sent to us and, occasionally, to the Hive, even preceding her fosterage there, in order to acclimate her to being away from her mother in anticipation of their coming parting.

She had not come for a pleasant reason, and, in the beginning, she would have been guarded, even around our father.

It proved fortunate that mother is rather fond of children and has some skill in entertaining them.”

“She does?”

“So it is said.”

The notion seemed passed down as second-hand knowledge to the Hollow Knight as well.

Even so, the Wanderer could not summon the bad faith to doubt it.

It was probably true, at least in most cases. After all, the queen used to take time out of her day to personally entertain young devotees like the caterpillar warrior who lay buried in her gardens.

It just wasn’t a side of her that either of them would have seen much of.

Ghost wondered briefly if the Lady had ever gifted Marmu one of those clacking beads on a string thingies. The thought woke up some idle longing, vague as strings of smoke on the wind, dissipating swiftly as the Hollow Knight continued its account:

“This Vessel’s chief obligation would have been to its training, so we did not spend much time alongside each other, even in the brief overlap of our respective stays at the White Palace. Father did not forbid it, but mother would be set on edge if she found her in this Vessel’s company. Our likes are crafted from a substance whose nature it is to consume all light, after all.

Besides, as you may have gleaned before, mother greatly cherishes our sister, no less that if she were her own daughter also. She would not have been aware that this Vessel… understood.About what is precious. Or about what must be treated with care, and why it is crucial that that which is precious must not come to harm. Our sister may reserve the title of ‘mother’ for Lady Herrah out of gratitude for her sacrifice, and mother very much respects this, yet while she would not think it her place to claim her, it must be suspected that mother very much considered her as the only living child she could ever hope to have. She would always say to her that our house is her house as much as it could be anybody else’s, that the Gift should count herself as a full part of our family, and that she was to be held as a legitimate princess and heir apparent without any qualifiers or restrictions on this.”

This much was news to the Wanderer. Sure, the queen had spoken to it of holding ‘some affection’ for her step-daughter, but that was a statement so vague and detached that it could have meant a great many things, surely including, and even inclining one to think of little more beyond a polite, broadly amicable coexistence.

Being used to the White Lady’s courteous but disaffected manner, Ghost found it hard to imagine her acting so affectionate. The idea that she was perfectly capable of, but simply would not do it for them did not go down without stinging some, like grains of sand in places where they’re not supposed to be.

There was a temptation to look for some indication that Hornet had simply been made their replacement, so that the great prize might be rotten on both their accounts, but no indication of this was forthcoming. Hornet seemed like the sort that would smell such shifty intentions from a mile off… instead, what came to mind was that she never seemed to see a need to specify them as her half-siblings, unless someone were to ask why they did not exactly look like spiders.

She spoke for the most part as if they shared both parents, though Hornet simply also happened to have an additional mother.

Perhaps that was her subtle way of claiming the Lady indirectly, without feeling as if she were being ungrateful or disloyal to the Beast.

Even so, from the fact that the Kingsbrand had sat unclaimed for centuries while Hornet was left as the person in charge of knowing exactly where it was, Ghost would have concluded that she simply would not have been considered eligible to claim it herself.

On account of being pledged to a different throne, perhaps, if one were charitable, or, more pessimistically, something to do with words like ‘bastard’, ‘half-blood’ or ‘savage from the provinces’.

But if she’d been fully recognized, if not fully adopted by the queen, the question of why she’d never claimed it herself popped out of the story being relayed as a glaring unsolved mystery, like a parasitic fungus from an ear of grain.

Though Ghost would doubt that the Hollow Knight would know the answer – whatever decision was involved there must have taken place long after it was entombed.

The simplest explanation would simply be that she meant to rule Deepnest – or it would have been, were it not for that recent matter of her conspicuous sidestepping of any kind of coronation talk.

And then, there had been that phrase…

“The Gift?”

“Ah. Pardon. One of our sister’s titles, one of her first ones, indeed, which would have been in use back when this Vessel knew her in our youth, before her present one was bestowed, once chosen according to the customs of our caste – Father saw fit to grant it, for all that neither she nor this one may be accounted as typical examples…

This Vessel thought it an honor despite the unfortunate circumstance, even though it would seem that our sister had other preferences. In fact, it was not long after the end of this Vessel’s task that she asked it if it perhaps wished to take a different one as well. This one would not shed it, however. It was given by father. And besides, this Vessel knows well that it ought to account itself grateful to have received a title at all…”

It meant this, perhaps, as a deferential acknowledgment of its smaller sibling’s lot.

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t mind.”

That was a bit of a fib. There had absolutely been a time where the small shadow had envied its siblings’ titles and perhaps sought to claim them for itself in proving that it could do the allotted task, but it has long since come to recognize this as a counterproductive pursuit…

Clearly, its taller counterpart had paid dearly for that dubious honor, and besides, it had since come to the conclusion that ‘Ghost’ or ‘Wanderer’ fit it better anyways.

Envying another, while understandable as a feeling, is only fruitless in the end;

You can only be yourself in the end; Everyone else is already taken.

Of course, it had Hornet to thank for gifting it an appellation all of its own, even she had first intended it as something of a taunt… if she could not be found, the knowledge of that would sting every day, simply as a result of that which once was gratitude being left without anywhere to go, or tinged with the bitterness of some uncertain sad ending, of all the things it never got to pay her back for.

Of what it had not known of her, but might have come to understand, if only there had been more time…

Ghost tried to summarize the gist of it, just to confirm that it had got it right:

“It’s probably different for her. She’s half a regular bug, so it’s not strange that she might think a regular name fits her better.”

The particularly diffuse bit of silence that followed lead it to suspect that that was probably not quite it.

“...this Vessel cannot tell you of her reasoning, since this would have taken place after it would have gone to its long duty. The cause may simply have simply been her great respect for Lady Vespa. However… one should note, that it is not exactly a matter of halves. Being a member of the Ancient Caste is something that one either is, or is not. Some are simply born thus marked, much among ants, termites or bees one might be marked to be rule by the capacity to bear plentiful offspring. It is rare even among Higher Beings, although the odds of it occurring are somewhat greater if one is descended from others who share that trait, as with the Gift and this Vessel.”

Ah. Of course.

Figures that the Vessel would have known exactly how it is that this works.

It would have lived in the Palace for many years until it had come into the fullness of its strength;

It would have had to live with a great many mistaken assumptions about its being, many of which it probably had believed, but this would still have been different from Ghost’s own experience of finding itself wandering the world with absolutely no context for what it was, where it came from, or what any of that meant.

Their parents would have explained their existence… or at least, it would surely have come up in conversation where the Hollow Knight was likely to hear.

Ghost really should have asked the Vessel to begin with.

It just seemed… rude, to invoke the minefield of bringing up their parents without immediate reason… For now, the Wanderer thought it best to stick to the salient technicalities, especially those that could also be relevant to the situation regarding this newest sister-napping foe of theirs.

“So Hornet counts?”

“So it is. Certainly, there are some differences owed to her unique blended heritage, yet even so, she is a Majestic One in her own right, same as father, mother…As this one has heard it relayed, it is the case that among Higher Beings, each one is imbued with great quantities of Essence, though few are of it completely, such as the False One or the Scarlet Heart. The quality of Essence that one possesses is indicative of one’s nature – same as it is with mortal bugs, truly, but on a greater scale of magnitude. There tends to be a particular quality to one’s essence, perhaps akin to a color. For someone like Unn of the Greenpath, for example, whose nature and power is linked with life and growth, it might be said to be green, akin to the color of leaves.”

Ghost simply nodded.

It occurred to the Wanderer that it did actually have far more direct experience of this than whatever theoretical explanation its sibling might once have received. Having walked through dreams, and become embroiled in the rituals of the Godseekers, it had actually seen different forms of essence physically, in all sorts of hues. Golden. Red. Green. Blue. When it had pricked its own reflection, the essence contained in its own mind had been pitch dark.

The little shadow could already guess at some of what its sibling was probably going to say next.

“Every now and again, one comes to be distinguished by the possession of an especially bright and pure kind of essence, much alike to the shine of unfiltered Soul, possessing the qualities of order, or will, of the very first light of creation. It has been said, since times immemorial, that one who is marked from birth in such a way is destined to rule. You may have heard it said that father was… particularly gifted, with an afterimage of that primal light.”

Ghost tried valiantly not to feel a little irritated at yet more talk of how exceptional that old Wyrm was supposed to have been;

It was, perhaps, beginning to understand why the likes of Soul Master and the Radiance had gone mad with envy. Granted, any upwell of venow would be swiftly quashed by the undeniable knowledge that none of the Pale King’s many gifts and talents had saved him in the end, not even a little. Perhaps he could have saved himself – it was not the Radiance who had slain him. But what good is an existence that has been stripped of all meaning and purpose? Strength alone is never quite enough; The Wanderer had been told as much by the restless spirits of the many warriors it had put to rest along its journey, and it would not doubt that if any remnant were left of the old King, he would have told it much the same.

All things considered, the Wyrm’s end had been the very image of impotence.

Of his rivals, Soul Master had outlasted him and the Radiance had utterly defeated him, not in a way that would be satisfying victory to her, but certainly in every way that mattered to him.

He’d had no reason left to go on, with the greater part of all he’d ever cared about left rotten and burnt to a crisp… worse yet, the Old Light had driven him to tear up some of what was dearest to him with his own claws before she ever touched it, even to hand it to her as an offering on a platter, no different from one who tears our the floorboards to barricade the door from a storm to find oneself drowned in the waters seeping in from below.

Yet even so, there did seem to have been a certain literal or figurative ‘brightness’ about him that his foes could not quite equal, only clumsily copy or destroy out of spite. He was the better wizard next to Soul Master and next to the Radiance, not the mightier god, but certainly the more popular politician.

When it came to gauging how the illustrious Wyrm might have felt about his gifts, his long-lost offspring was, as always, left with little but ambiguous glimpses and contradictory accounts.

From his words left on the tablets at King’s Pass, one might gather that he his might at least partially in a positive light, as something that let him ‘accomplish feats others may only dream of’ – He may have thought his strength a great boon that he could put to the uses of his grand utopian visions, all those promises of wealth, protection and eternity that had come to nothing in the sands. On the other hand, he’d cast off his immense form in favor of something that would allow him and his queen to choose a lifestyle that seemed more comparable to that of a mortal ruler like Queen Herrah or the Mantis Lords than it was to the way that other Higher Beings like Unn and the Radiance would interact with their followers mostly in a religious context.

Certainly, there was also Grimm, who by all intents and purposes seemed to have some actual fellowship with his troupe members and acolytes – notably, when one wanted out, his response was fairly merciful, even if the dissenter had come close to sabotaging what appeared by all intents and purposes a rather crucial rite, a far cry from the Radiance’s disproportional retribution to obliterate not just the ‘traitors’ but anyone who could even remotely be construed to have the slightest association with those who had given the defectors aid or comfort.

But it was not quite clear to which extent Grimm and the Scarlet Heart were distinct or the same, the Troupe Master himself might be something closer to his fellow performers.

The Pale King, too, had often described as reclusive, remote and inscrutable – though it was hard to guess in hindsight how much of that was down to his status as a Higher Being versus just some natural reclusive temperament or a sense of mystique that existed only in the second-hand accounts of awed admirers, no more solid evidence of his true likeness as the various dissimilar artistic renditions carved in stone.

Perhaps there had been some inner contradiction there, or a genuine inner tension, imperfectly resolved through a compromise – did he long for the companionship from his subjects, but found himself set apart from them all the same? One might concede that he was not so remote even from his retainers that they would not have thought of worrying about him or thinking of ways to ease his troubles….

Who could say, really.

For its own part, the Wanderer had never really thought of itself as anything all that special – for most of its days, it never knew what it was, and the touch of the dark had rendered it different enough from any other kind of existence (be it bug, beast or god) that it had spent a long time walking the earth without ever encountering anyone who could have taken a good guess at what it was supposed to be – not until it had been met with Hornet’s needle and her claims of knowing exactly what it was.

The small Knight knew that it was probably something rather strange, but it had lacked any concept of whether that was supposed to have been good or bad, or what implications were supposed to go with it. The overarching thread was really that nobody knew what it was.

The most consistent guess was that it looked kind of like a beetle on account of its horns and body segments but not quite.

The specifics of what had done it might be too arcane for most sapient bugs to have heard about, but many could discern that it was a somewhat stunted, runty specimen of whatever it was supposed to be, or at least short and scrawny; It had tended to get underestimated.

For long, its best guess was that it had been the offspring of a more precocious species, left to fend for itself from birth; or (a guess that was perhaps tinted by some unconscious echo of its buried memories) given up on or discarded on account of its underveloped shell.

Given its modest size, the little shadow could not call it too surprising that no one had ever guessed ‘wyrm’ or ‘root’.

A few among the more knowledgable folk here and there had wondered if it might be a Higher Being; But no one was ever quite sure. Both the faint pale shine of its mask and its long shadow were commented on, but the presence of both must have rather scrambled the signal.

It was just an inexplicable, unlabelled existence in a world full of orders and hierarchies, unable to be sorted or categorized while everyone else could be easily lined up and classified in terms of species, tribe, rank, clan, family, organization, faith, caste or gender, a little island onto itself that seemed to exist simply because it did. Once, it must have wanted to forget what it was, or what it took itself to be, with the limited understanding of a child: A discarded failure, something that has no place at all and isn’t needed by anyone.

Maybe it had hoped that somebody out there would need it. That there could still be some task for it to do, even if it wasn’t the very best…

Ultimately, it had become something of its own making, by its own deeds, shaped by its experiences along its long journey – one whom attentive witnesses at least would prase as a well-travelled adventurer, a seasoned warrior. On its best days, it might even live up to the admiration of those who had spoken of it as a gallant, chivalrous hero.

It had marks of belonging now – not just that of the house they ought to have been part of from birth, but others earned from different, chosen connections – it could count itself as a member of the nailmaster’s order and of the hunter’s caste, for example.

It had still never felt any great desire to mark itself as any particular gender, but at this point that, too was by choice and by no means completely unheard of, in any case – There were other beings like itself that felt no need to classify, or those that did desire to mrk themselves as belonging to a class, but one that was different than the most common ones that loosely (but by no means necessarily) corresponded to reproductive capacity (among mortals, such individuals usually went by ‘they’, though other variations depending on preference and local custom) – since Higher Beings could often create life on their own by default, a category doesn’t tend to be assigned unless an individual actively chooses one.

Indeed the Wanderer was not sure that its parent had taken their own before the moment they chose to reign together as king and queen – at least that’s when they start being referred as such in the historical records.

Ghost had since come to learn that is eldest sibling actually shared its own non-preference, though it expressed this in in its own different fashion, much like you might find a rather different style of being a girl if one were to compare, say, Hornet and Bretta, or how Ogrim was a rather different flavor of male compared to Quirrel or Grimm.

Even so, in spite of new knowledge gained, new bonds forged and even newly acquired royal status, Ghost still for the most part found itself interacting with its fellow-creatures as it always had, when it was a nondescript weather-swept traveller of unspecified origin.

Its deed may have won it admiration and even praise, but it wasn’t going to make people start bowing… or keep indidividuals such as Godseeker from doing so if they insisted, really.

It was more a matter of habit than even humility.

But so far as it could tell, both Hornet and the Hollow Knight would have spent their youth very much aware of their royal status, which they chiefly seemed to view as a matter of immense responsibility to which personal feelings must be subordinated.

Not the worst attitude to have towards power, but there wasn’t much freedom in it.

Lonesome and harsh as its umbringing might have been, the wanderer could not help but conclude that it had nonetheless experienced a liberty that the two of them had never known, especially not the Hollow Knight.

It had ascended the throne in the end, but it had done so because it wanted to, out of free choice, after many mortal lifetimes spent wandering the scattered lands to its (figurative) heart’s content.

It could have chosen otherwise.

Though, if anything, it had been glad to finally have a purpose, a role, after so long left without one.

To be given one before one even knows who one is, without even the room for choice or experience of deliberation must be an alltogether different matter.

If Ghost had to guess, they would assume that the Hollow Knight would not decline the throne, if it were offered; It would feel honor-bound still to continue their father’s legacy, especially after having invested so much blood sweat and tears (or rough, void-based analogues) in its perpetuation. It was a true believer, probably because it had to be, o find any meaning in its hopeless lot.

If anything would hold it back, it would be concerns of its woirthiness and capacity, on account of having ‘failed’ to protect the kingdom before.

There was no use in reminding it that the whole thing had been was an unwinnable suicide mission, or that it was deeply unfair that it had been asked to give up its life at all, that it was barely a free choice, even if it wasn’t forced in the strictest sense, and that even then, if one were to grant that it had agreed to go willingly, it would have done so under the false premise that it wasn’t going to hurt.

The Hollow Knight knew all this already, on an intellectual level; It was a full-grown adult.

But if reason alone were enough to talk someone out of their feelings, the powers that be would’ve solved the infection with that instead of resorting to either of their creation.

Had Ghost somehow not made it back from its qust to vanquish the Radiance, or been unable to return to its old form, it doubted not that the Hollow Knight would have welcomned the role of heir, after allowing for the proper recovery time, not in the least because this would have meant to be acknowledged at their parents’ legitimate offspring.

Hornet, meanwhile…

She, too, was clearly someone with a great dedication towards duty. Though jaded and rarely one to be awed, she had offred her sibling distinct praise fot taking on that heavy mantle and being ready to do what this might require. She, too was their father’s child, and her own mother, though different from theirs, was clearly also someone who was willing to protect those under her leadership at a great personal cost.

After the Beast passed on to the next world, she had told her sibling that she had every intention to ‘take on the burden of the future’ in her stead…

At the time, Ghost had assumed that she meant by this to follow its example and suceed hr mother as queen of Deepnest.

Clearly, there couldn’t be any doubt about her suitability. Much more so than Ghost itself, she was someone who naturally exuded an air of strength, competence and authority. It was not hard to guess that she would have spent most of her formative years in the company of distinguished and respected leader types. She was the sort of person who could command respect and reverence organically, without any need to insist on it or try to extract it from people by exertion of force.

The coronation would have seemed like a formality at most – After all, she had effectively been the closest thing to a leader remaining in either of her parent’s realms.

Had Ghost an its sibling both perished in the vanquishing of the Radiance, it would not have doubted that she could have done an excellent job ruling them both joined as one.

She’d chosen to stay when she could have run away with her mother’s kinsfolk back when the bulk of them left.

Until recently, Ghost would have assumed that she had simply avoided calling herself the queen this far because her mother was still technically alive – and after she was gone, well, it would be natural to have a mourning period. Only as time drew on did it her avoidance of the subject begin to sem conspicuous.

There was a piece of the puzzle still missing.

Something that Ghost did not know about. Something that might not have anything to do with Hallownest at all, or even Deepnest, but rather with her mother’s mysterious homeland… and therefore, possibly, the one who took her.

Far more salient to the present than anything to do with the late king was the new and urgent problem of trying to come up with a sort of ‘criminal profile’ of the sister-snatching villainess who may or may not have to be contended with to retrieve her. If she was the same kind of being as their parents, then all that jazz about order and will and being considered as destined rule would logically apply to her as well… which, come to think of it, made at least some of the contradictory facets in the cursory sketch of her presumed personality slot into a comprehensible whole.

If one were to assume the premise that she was one of those individuals that let some lucky accident of their births go utterly to their heads and took it as license to lord over others with prodigious entitlement… Then that more or less checked out.

Considering there were those like Zote who thought they were better than others for no reason at all, it wasn’t hard to assume that someone with vast power and some supposed expectation of being ‘destined to rule’ could see their power as an excuse to push others around as they pleased.

That type was well known – one did not need to be a ‘Majestic One’ or even nobility to apply, the only thing required was to spend a good while as the biggest baddest lobster in a given pond and go altogether too long without ver hearing the word ‘no’.

The enemy might not, in essence, be all that different from other power hungry of Traitor Lord or Soul Master, only bigger and badder – though, probably not quite so big and bad as the Radiance.

You’d think they’d all have had more than enough of it by default, but any soul might carry in it some unmet need that could com to manifest as bottomless entitlement in those lacking in wisdom.

Ghost did not expect to be impressed by the white spider goddess, if they came to meet. It had fried bigger fish already.

The issue at hand was rather that all its skill with the blade (and the tentacle, should this be needed) would be moot without having a direction to point it in.

The aristocratic sister-napper had quite a head start on them, too.

Until they could find and reach her location, Hornet would be on her own.

So, not least among the pressing questions in the little Knight’s mind was how well their sister might be expected to hold out against such an enemy.

“...but Hornet wouldn’t be the same as father, right? She’s skilled, and clever, and she knows what she’s doing, but she’d be more like a regular bug-”

The Wanderer had the distinct sense that its sibling was trying to phrase its next statement delicately.

“...Valiant sibling. Surely, humility and lack of pretense are worthy knightly virtues. Even so, you must certainly be aware, that strength such as yours is hardly-

It is of course conceivable, that one such as you would find her a fairly manageable opponent, however, this is not... not typical.”

The Wanderer felt perhaps a little sheepish.

It’s the ‘normal bugs can’t handle large quantities of Lifeblood’ thing all over again, isn’t it?

“As was often the case when father would speak of the distant future, his predictions might concern events that might not yet come to pass for a long, long time. Nevertheless, this Vessel recalls him once announcing to the Beast that he believed the Gift might attain capabilities to rival his own after many ages… She has not yet attained this, yet that need not mean much.

Unlike the steady, linear changes in mortal bugs, the evolution of our kind may require a catalyst to proceed past the point where maturity has been attained.”

“A catalyst?”

“In your case, you have taken up what father and mother left behind for you as a failsafe, and futhermore, you have now vanquished and consumed the False One. In the case of this Vessel, there was pressing reason to ensure through rigorous challenge that it should proceed to prime form swiftly, however, such is not typical. Often, there may long gaps of latency followed by transformation, as you have no doubt seen in your own example.”

Aha.

So that’s how it is.

There was so much that the little Knight had not known about its own existence.

Even about ‘regular’ Higher Beings. Seeing that it was something unprecedented & imperfectly understood even by their makers, it might well be that no one knows, that no one will know, or be able to give it the answers, unless it finds them out for itself.

But it had lacked even the explanations that could be given… who could have given them?

It wasn’t uncommon for those who crossed its path to not know what to make of it at all, even before it had gone and evolved into something yet more unprecedented…

Still.

The Old Wyrm better be right for once, hard as it was for Ghost in particular to have much faith in his spotty track record. If Hornet could still get a lot stronger down the line, that would sure be really… convenient, though not much consolation if it wasn’t going to happen until hundreds of years in the future.

She’d better tap that supposed hidden potential really fast, seeing as she was definitely going to need it. If being snatched away from all she’d ver known wasn’t a suitable ‘catalyst’, then Ghost couldn’t say what else would be.

If the missing ingredient is simply time, they’d be out of luck.

Seeing as her birth was also tied up with that damnable old plan, she shouldn’t be too much younger than them. If Ghost had hit its full potential just recently, could she not follow close behind?

There were too many variables.

The whole thing with the void, Hornet being part mortal… would that make her reach full potential faster or slower?

Maybe it wouldn’t happen at all.

The Wyrm had been super duper wrong on some pretty important counts before, to say the least.

Had Ghost not just learned that he had given his daughter a ‘Higher Being Name’ that she didn’t end up liking that much?

She didn’t seem to outright dislike the use of her old titles, seeing as she never corrected those who kept sticking to them out of habit on account of having known her in her youth, such as Midwife or the White Lady, but one could still clearly see her preferece in how she usually chose to introduce herself.

The old Wyrm could've been lead astray by wishful thinking – not even out of vanity, maybe, but simply out of hope that he wouldn’t have to outlive her, given his preoccupation with making things last forever. Joke’s on him there of course, because she ended up outlasting him.

At some point, the Wanderer must have spent long enough getting lost with its gaze in the far-off dust-swept distance for the Hollow Knight to sense something of its doubt.

Not used to explaining anything at all, the Vessel paused to search for the means, again, not words, but had they been words, it would have had to search for those too.

“...those of our caste... commonly claim large territories, so it is natural enough that we can sense one another’s presence.

She… registers to this one, as another, much as mother does even now, and it has heard both her and father express like perceptions… although she does lack the deep well of Soul that one sharing such endowments would usually possess. However, the distinction is of magnitude, not of kind.”

If this meant a better chance for her to hold her own against her captor while they all figured out how to get to her, Ghost was willing to stand corrected...

Especially once absolved of any worries that it may have missed something that should somehow have been obvious:

“Granted, your qustion is not without merit – even father himself was surprised when she was born as she was, and it was a very rare thing, for him to experience surprise in any way at all.

This Vessel could only name but one other instance of an outcome he did not foresee.”

Even without the heavy, drawn, halting manner in which this was expressed, there would scarcely have been a need to ask what that was.

“This one could not ask, of course, but there is reason to suspect that there is not much precedent.

As an occurrence, such a thing must be exceedingly improbable.

One would not… have been... aware of the… specifics, of course…” the reason for the Vessel’s halting trepidation did not become clear until Ghost finally caught onto what it was about to discuss, albeit as indirectly as possible: “However, if one were to attempt an inference from events witnessed –

This one would surmise, that for one reason or another, numerous attempts were required in order to... provide the Beast with what was asked, all of which ended in failure, aside from one singular exception.”

Do spiders and wyrms really not mix, or something like that?

On its own the combination sounds strange enough, but it comes to seem downright pedestrian once one considers how the White Lady is a plant.

Though things might be more difficult where regular bugs are involved instead of just Higher Beings?

Be that as it may, it was plain that the Hollow Knight did not want to spend a single moment longer having to think about their father doing the deed, valiantly as it might try to preserve its customary stoicism. Anyone other than a fellow void creature would probably have been fooled.

Honestly, Ghost, for its own part, would also rather avoid any mental imagery that might tempt it to walk straight back into the wasteland for another memory wipe, especially this close to its edge.

The small shadow let its sibling get to the end of the point without prolonging its palpable embarrassment with any further questions.

“Our sister alone lived – most likely, because she was exactly as she was. The probability of one like her coming into being might well have been vanishingy small – were it not that for some reason only one such as her could have successfully come to be. It might be rather like how this Vessel alone emerged from the dark with some semblance of its divine strength largely intact – for what little good this one’s so-called purity of essence may have done in the end.”

Hm. So in a way, all three of them could be considered something previously unprecedented and unheard of, each in their own ways.

There was some consolation in that.

Looking to confirm just one last thing, the Wanderer pointed at itself.

“...naturally, you too would bear some evident touch of our parents’ light. However….”

Ghost was not really too disappointed. It had suspected as much, from how Deepnest’s Mask Maker hard warned it of attempting deeds that ‘only the Ancient Caste’ had previously dared.

Much like it no longer envied its sibling for its titles since it had its own name, Ghost was content to be counted as part of the Hunter’s caste.

The closest it came to experiencing what it must be like to exist as a ‘Majestic One’ was probably while it had the Kingsoul charm in its possession, but even that had felt… clumsy somehow, unwieldy, not quite compatible, until that had been transfigured into a new, radically different power that was much more its own.

The Pure Vessel’s protestations, however, took on an almost apologetic note: “-It matters not, in the end. The realm is rightly yours by any conceivable measure of merit. You have mother’s blessing, you have passed all the tests set by father for any would-be successor of his, you’ve conquered the foe that had been plaguing the land like none before were able, along with having dispatched various further pretenders, you have defeated all other legitimate heirs in honorable combat, you have won the respect and the loyalty of the people, and most importantly, you have shown your willingness to give all for your subjects. We all agree that none could be worthier. Both our sister and I have spent too much time guarding the realm to begin quarrels to its detriment or suffer it to be ruled by any but the worthiest.

The Gift has her mother’s realm to see to, and this Vessel would stake no claim while yours remains.”

It was touching, at least, to be the subject of such faith and loyalty after so long.

Ghost might have gone past the need to prove itself as good enough, or the illusion rather, that such a thing is needed in the first place, but it’s still nice to be wanted.

To be considerd important, especially by those whose love and approval it once longed for…

Which made it all the harder that one of the most crucial sources of that hand-won love and respect was not here with them.

The Hollow Knight’s thoughts, too, must have strayed along a rather similar path:

“This Vessel would wish nothing more than to be of service to aid you in find her, but it has been long.

If she discussed her mothers’ homeland at all, the ravages of this Knight’s long tasks must have claimed all recollection.

One doubt that she would have discussed politics, however.

She was not even half her current size when the sealing took place; If anything, it must be thought surprising that she recalls anything of this Vessel at all. One would not have expected her remember much of those brief, scarce occassions.

And yet-”

There was something like a pause there, as if there were an obvious continuation to what was meant, though one help back by reluctance or shame – whatever that meant for a creature that was always perfectly silent.

Its small companion was being quiet (as in, somehow especially quiet) as well, but with a different implication to it, more of a patient, expectant silence, endless and ready to contain whatever might be given up to it.

The small Wanderer had, perhaps from necessity, come to be a rather good listener in its time, one to whom people tell things. Even if the ‘telling’ was entirely metaphorical in this instance.

At most, the very sharpest of observers might have noted the slightest inkling of relaxation in the Vessel’s rigid stance.

If it could have spoken, its tone would perhaps have recalled that of one who was confessing something like a sin, or at least, something it would have been expected to be ashamed for.

“This one was observing – remotely of course – on the day of our sister’s knighting ceremony. Before she took her oath, she gave a speech, and named among her inspirations for joining the order Dryya the Fierce, the champion of the Hive… and this Vessel.

Evidently, a grievous error had been made... in choosing to observe. Looking back in hindsight, this one had always been proud to have held out long enough at least to let her grow to adulthood unmolested. That she, at least would be spared. That one could preserve at least her, even if it failed you.

Plainly, such was the wish of father and mother also.”

So, they tried to atone the next time ‘round, huh?

It occurred to Ghost that this might be not a small part of why the Vessel was so forgiving of them.

“Had it been feasible, this one would have seen that wish granted, along with all the other prayers for salvation of all the other families in the realm.

Needless to state, the False One could exploit even that…”

There was really no need to elaborate on that any further.

The details were bound to be awful and most certainly not worth recalling.

Nor would they have much changed the Wanderer’s opinion.

“What’s the most wrong with all that”, it stated, bluntly, decisively, “is not that you were happy she remembered you. It’s that you couldn’t be there with her.”

“I wish I could have been there, too.”

If either of the two siblings had been able to draw breath or produce sound, one can imagine that they might have shared a nice long drawn-out sigh.

“To clarify. This Vessel does not doubt that you would have been mentioned in the speech also, had our sister been aware of your existence at the time. Your valor cannot be in question.”

Despite the subject matter, this was stated with such forthright, dead-serious intensity that it might have drawn a half-stiffled snicker from the sheer contrast.

Maybe the void telepathy equivalent of a snort, dissolving some of the moment’s oppressive heaviness.

Though the need of attending to the business at hand lingered not too far behind.

“You can keep looking, but don’t go too far from the kingdom.” the Wanderer declared, readying itself to set off. “I’m going to see if that lead I got shakes out.”

After that, it impressed upon its sibling once again the very same point which it had previously spend much of the day reminding itself of: That took her alive. That she’d been wanted alive, at least at first, for whichever reason it might be, such that they might reasonably expect her to be alive still, no matter what dire straits she might find herself in.

She was tough. She had survived through the plague, the kingdom’s end, and the long, desolate wait that followed after. Besides, the little Knight knew exactly where to go looking to further investigate the purpose for which she may have been snatched.

After that talk with its sibling, the little Knight really did not want to turn up to their meeting empty-handed.

It recalled still that the Weaver’s Den was located close to the center of the Deepnest, tucked away behind a hidden entrance. Were it not for the small Wanderer’s persistent curiosity, it may have walked straight past it and have stayed none the wiser of its existence forever. Even in the land of their allies, the elusive spider mages would seem to have kept to themselves. Their lair was a long way away from any of the major entrances to the nest, smack dab in the middle of the nearest transit connections.

It would be a long walk from either side, either from the tram, or from the Stagway station at the capital.

Back in the day, they must have hauled their most lucrative exports quite some ways through the treacherous wilderness – though perhaps, this had been seen as a proud test of their strength… or simply something that is not as hard as you’d think if one has sufficient limbs to spare.

Either way, nothing about their choice of dwelling or the state in which they’d left it suggested that they liked to be found; When the small wanderer first arrived, it thought the place abandoned save for whichever of their infected compatriots happened to have wandered in.

They’d even left out some bodies, still bearing the imprint of their last thoughts, forever lamenting their lost queen; Ghost had been almost entirely fooled until it was about to make its way back out, just barely spotting an onlooking survivor which had not scuttled out of their way quite fast enough.

At the time, it had thought this a heartening thing, to see any indication of the scattered survivors still clinging to life all about this place, the presence of life enduring, as surely as it did in the leaves and the mushroom-caps...

Now, there could be no doubt as to where it must go next.