Chapter Text
Quirrel woke up.
That in itself was a surprise. He hadn’t been expecting to.
He cracked open his eyes, squinted over to where he’d left his nail in the ground some way further around the lake—the dead shouldn’t be burdened with such things, he’d told the little knight once, and he’d not wished to be so burdened either, happy to greet old age with open hands.
It seemed that old age was not yet ready to greet him.
He took a deep breath, and his throat stung with thirst. Crawling to the water, he dunked his head in to drink—undignified, perhaps, but there was no one to see. He emerged to take another breath, the air heavy and slightly warm in his lungs. Over where the passageways above the water led back up to the Crossroads, he could see the sickly orange of infection in the air.
Ah yes.
It would not do to lay down and die here, not where his body would be offered up as a ghastly puppet to the derangement of the furious light. Better for him to make it back up to Dirtmouth before his final rest—a gloomy place for it, not nearly as lovely as the lake, but clean and clear and peaceful.
Groaning a little, he hauled himself to his feet. Each one of his limbs ached, moving stiffly as if his joints had rusted through while he was sleeping. He stretched and twisted a little, feeling the plates of his shell grind against each other in an uncomfortable fashion. Resigning himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to feel much better any time soon, he began the long trudge around the lake towards the Crossroads.
As he climbed up to the abandoned village, it became quite clear that the infection in this place had worsened since his initial descent. The shambling husks that had been easy enough to avoid the first time had a wilder air about them now. Quirrel gave them a wide berth, no longer trusting in his own agility to keep him out of danger, and his nail left long behind him. Orange veins threaded through the stone of the walls, faintly glowing and pulsing slightly upon close inspection, congregating in horrid, bulging pustules of fluid that he had no desire to approach near enough to inspect any further. The air itself was thick and almost damp, and the inside of his throat seemed to grow claggy as he breathed it in.
Quirrel wondered if he had made a mistake, whether he would lose himself to the infection before ever reaching the town again, but he was committed now. Too late to turn back. He pushed his aching body onwards, pausing to cough up little wads of phlegm from the back of his mouth, trying to ignore an increasingly painful roiling in the pit of his stomach, like some creature was scraping away at his insides, trying to get out.
It seemed to take an age to climb up to the level of the Temple. He remembered his previous arrival there—not long ago and yet an age away, chattering away in the cool light of lumafly lanterns about the mystery of the Black Egg inside, all to a little knight who hung intently upon his every word. That light was gone now, replaced by the sickening orange glow of infection, clouds of it pooling out of the temple doors into the crossroads.
He couldn’t help but stop for a moment to stare at it in horror. He wasn’t quite sure how long it was he stood there, catching his breath, mesmerised by the thick, smoke-like billows dissipating into the air, before he was brought back to himself by the rapid patter of footsteps. Too swift and sure to be the shambling of a husk, he looked to see a familiar shape in a red cloak approaching, her long pointed mask and needle glinting a welcome cold amidst the dank warmth.
“Princess-Protector,” Quirrel murmured as she approached, raising a hand to tip in greeting a mask that was no longer there. He returned it awkwardly to his side.
For her part, seeing that he was no mindless husk, Hornet loosened the grip on her needle and gave a curt nod of acknowledgement. “Apprentice of Monomon,” she called out. “You have done your part. There is nothing left for you here. You should leave.”
Quirrel nodded. She wasn’t wrong. But something compelled him to linger a little more. “That little knight…” he began. He’d tried to avoid thinking about it, but now that at least some memory had returned to him, it was hard not to. This had always been how it would have to go, hadn’t it? For a new vessel to emerge, break the seals, and take the place of the broken Hollow Knight, sealing away the infection once more.
But he knew that knight. It hadn’t spoken a word to him, but it had listened intently to everything he said, splashed him playfully in the hot springs in Deepnest, reached up to hold his hand in encouragement before leading the way into the Archives… the little knight was no hollow vessel. It was alive and as much of a person as he was—and perhaps the same had been true of the Hollow Knight this entire time. The thought of what it had been subject to all these years, the thought of what its successor might take on in turn—it threatened to turn his stomach were it not already roiling. Did this dead place really deserve saving, at the cost of such suffering?
“I imagine that little ghost will arrive here soon,” Hornet replied. “I will await it.”
“It shouldn’t…” Quirrel tried, struggling to get the words out. “It wouldn’t be right, for it to take the place of the Vessel. I know that knight, it wouldn’t… it mustn’t…”
Hornet’s grip tightened on her needle, almost imperceptibly. “It knows the secrets of its creation now, I’m sure of it,” she declared. “If there is another way to be found, then maybe…” She gave a sharp sigh. “It will make its own choices. There’s nothing more you can do for it. You should leave,” she said again, a little more insistently.
“I… all right,” he conceded. What help could he be, after all, unarmed and dying, in danger of doing nothing but adding another body to the population of mindless husks? “When you see the knight, could you tell it…” He cut himself off with a tired sigh. “No. We have said our farewells already. Never mind that. You stay safe. Goodbye.”
He left the temple behind him. It wasn’t far now to the well, and the air seemed almost cleaner already as Quirrel approached the shaft of moonlight that reached down into the tunnels of the Crossroads. He took the well chain in one hand and gave it an experimental tug. One last challenge before he reached the surface. He could manage that much, he thought. He began to climb.
Not long ago, he knew that he would have been able to scamper up without difficulty. Now it seemed that everything was fighting against him—his stiff and aching limbs, his raw and twisting stomach, the cold bite of the metal chain. Nevertheless, the end was in sight. He could hold out just a little longer.
Sound drifted down from the town above him. Simply the roar of wind at first, but as he climbed he also began to hear voices—or a voice, at least, a droning sort of thing the words of which Quirrel couldn’t quite make out. And then… was that music? Yes, it was—a waltz of some kind, played on what sounded like a maggordion. Not a terribly lively piece, but with a steady beat, played with light and skillful fingers fond of flourishes. Quirrel’s heart lightened even as his body ached. It made Dirtmouth seem so much less of a dreary place to die.
Quirrel found himself matching the pace of the music, reaching up a little higher to each one-two-three of the bass line, breathing steadily in and out with the ponderous rhythm. He lost himself a little in the melody as it steadily grew louder, letting the complaints of his beleaguered body fall away from his awareness, letting it propel him the last few grasps of the journey, until he heaved himself over the lip of the well and collapsed to the ground, utterly finished.
On the edge of his awareness, as he sank into the soil’s embrace, he heard the hurried patter of feet and a high, wavering voice raised nearby.
“O-oh…! Look it’s… someone’s fallen. Oh dear, I think… I think they need help. H-help?!”
The last thing that Quirrel heard, as death claimed him, was the music from the maggordion coming to a stop.