Chapter Text
The Knight awoke with no sense of where they were, other than cold stone beneath them.
Pain was an all too familiar sensation after such a long time, but this was a far kinder pain than what they were used to. This ached, it stung, it clung to them like an old cloak not yet discarded. It was a far cry from the constant, burning agony of the Infection gripping to their very soul, desperate for any foothold it could manage.
That that pain was gone… it was an anomaly. An abomination. It should not be.
Slowly, the Knight raised their head, grasping at the ground to even muster the effort. The ache flared in a comfortingly familiar way, and they rested the majority of their weight on one arm as they looked around. They were still in the Black Egg – their mission was still salvageable – but the chains that had once held them were limp and broken. No, not broken, they realized. Cut.
They closed their eyes- eye. The gaping pit in the side of their mask was cracked around the edges, and they knew that no amount of healing would repair it to the point of function. The Knight dragged memories into the forefront of their mind, trying to make sense of it all. What they could remember was muddied, a confusing mess of orange and black and white… with a flash of red.
Hornet had returned. A stroke of sorrow shot through their heart at the realization, for Hornet surely could not have survived an encounter with them. They cursed themselves for the emotion, for the lapse in nothing. They had no mind to break, no voice to cry suffering. They could not have a mind, a voice, a heart.
Pain made focus difficult. They shook their heavy head, and a clatter of fragments clattered to the ground, loosened by the motion. A vessel had come to them, they remembered – a small vessel that moved quickly and wielded its soul with great skill. They had fought it… and they had… they had lost.
The realization infused accursed panic and accursed fear into their heart, and they ignored the all too comfortable guilt as they stumbled to their feet, shoving off of the ground with their remaining arm. Their breath was hoarse, ragged as a crawlid hide, and they scrabbled for their blade before seizing it and standing upright.
Their nail was far smaller than they remembered, the further half broken off, and they swallowed a growl that they would feel shame for later. Had nothing gone correctly? Had they failed the Pale King so badly that nothing was left of their duty?
And yet… and yet, despite the bubbled flesh on their left shoulder, despite the scars in the ground from a heinous battle, despite the entrance of the Black Egg rent open, there was no sign of infection. Their soul shuddered, brittle fingers squeezing their blade tight enough to make their joints crack. Someone else had succeeded for them? Another bug, another vessel, had subsumed the infection and not let it free?
They turned, almost reluctant to do so. In the center of the Egg lay two halves of a mask they had only seen twice; once, an eternity ago, and second, all too recently.
This time their confusion was palpable. The vessel was gone, and the infection with it? No hint of orange coated the walls around them, no sign of the ruin that had befallen the Knight remaining. Comforting shame surrounded them, struck through with shock and hurt. Their purpose had been to contain the infection, to absolve all sin onto their own shoulders- but the vessel who had visited them had destroyed the infection outright.
They had not only failed. The vessel who defeated them had utterly surpassed them.
A low, keening cry echoed from deep in their chest as they collapsed. What did it matter, if they bore a heart, a voice? They had utterly failed to suppress the Radiance. They had utterly failed to lack a mind to break. They had not even managed to defeat a single vessel.
A flicker of hate not entirely their own brushed across their consciousness before it fled. They did not deserve to hate one who had eclipsed their ability so thoroughly. For even daring to think it, they glanced at their nail, wondering if it could slay them yet. Scarred and broken as they were, none would fault them for it.
But they were distracted from the thought as they saw another beside them.
Hornet lay limp and still on the stone, her mask facing downward, her needle dulled. The Knight had watched her often in her combat, her unconventional style of agile, mobile battle. It was a tragedy that she was dead, and the Knight glanced once again at their shattered nail.
Motion caught their eye, and their assumption proven false yielded only surprise. Hornet stirred, the spider lifting her head, and she stared at them for a brief moment before leaping back with needle in hand. She stumbled when she landed, one leg buckled to send her to a knee, but she readied her weapon regardless. At no point did she cease in her wary defense, both eyes kept on the Knight’s heavy form.
“...infection no longer fills your eye,” she said at length, and her clear satisfaction still did not lower her weapon. “That little ghost succeeded.”
The Knight felt a wave of emotion flood their heart, only to be stomped out an instant later. Their voice had not been used a single time since their birth, and while they knew the words, they knew not how to speak them. They nodded in simple reply, their grasp on their nail loosening. They would not fault Hornet for laying them low- it would likely be a mercy.
They closed their eye, allowing themselves to feel relief. Perhaps the Void would absolve them of their mind, and take away their suffering.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Hornet stared at the Knight, uneasy still. She had not seen them many times, and only in image after they were sealed. A lesser bug would have wept at the damage done to their trained body- their lumpy left shoulder, their scarred mask, the wounds coating their midsection. She saw it for the miracle that it was, and moved on.
The Egg bore clear signs of their battle, and she was not exempt. An exhaustion unlike any she had ever felt filled her body, made her legs tremble, but she could not rest until she knew with certainty that they had attained victory. The halves of the mask on the ground made a familiar whole, and the absence of any infection behind its eyes gave her some small comfort.
The spider drew forth her silk and bound her body, letting her wounds close. Rest alone would truly smooth her chitin, but the cracks were acceptable for now. She spoke again, to the Knight kneeling on stone. “Lift your head, Chosen,” she told them, and they did with the faintest spark of confusion in their remaining eye. “The Radiance has been defeated entirely, but Hallownest demands protection still.”
She took a slight breath. There was no better death than the one that the little ghost had endured, but it did not deserve its broken mask to remain here, so far from its origin. She walked to the mask and lifted both parts, concealing them under her cloak. “I would return its remains to its birthplace,” she told them. “You know the way.”
They stared at her uncomprehending, and she briefly wondered what thoughts went through that smooth face. The Knight was older than she, older likely than any bug still surviving, but what little she knew of their education had been brutal. Even broken and scarcely alive, their soul shone clear through their carapace, flawless whorls worn down to their barest foundation. The Radiance had puppeted them to the peak of their abilities, true, but that peak had been destroyed along with Her influence.
The Knight slowly stood once again, and Hornet had to tilt her head back to look them in the eye. Even broken, they towered over her, and their cloak shifted as they reached an arm out. Hornet watched dispassionately, trying to ascertain what they were doing. Realization struck her, and she reached into her cloak to retrieve the pieces of the ghost’s mask.
The Knight’s hand was larger than the pieces, but they took them and stared down at the halves. Hornet watched them, a hand still on the haft of her needle, and she shivered when their soul stirred. Closing their hand around the mask, the Knight’s flesh shone silver between carapace plates, and when their grasp opened, it revealed the little ghost’s mask fused together. Little more than a faint edge marked the join, a mark of inaccuracy on the part of the Knight.
Hornet was unsettled. To heal oneself with soul was an act of skill, the mark of a higher being. To enact their will on the world should have been an infinitely more difficult act, an impossibility for any bar the Pale King – and yet the evidence of it was clear before her eyes.
The Knight was far more powerful than she had believed, even broken. She once again considered the little ghost who had defeated them, and wondered how such a creature had wrenched victory from an entity like the Radiance. What had happened in that dream, to obliterate a goddess so? There were no living witnesses to the battle- indeed, there had only been two to begin with, and their destruction had evidently been mutual.
Rising to their feet, the Knight strove to stand straight- but the hunch in their back was one born of corrosive pustules, and they crouched once more. No flinch crossed their face at the pain- she supposed they were used to far worse. Wordless still, the Knight turned and walked towards the exit of the Egg, still cradling the ghost’s mask in their hand.
Hornet looked down at the ghost’s cloak, at their nail, and she considered the weapon as she picked them both up. It was a flawless thing, pale ore woven into its length, as hard and sharp as a thought. The purity in it was unmistakable, and its craft equal to none.
Where had the ghost obtained such a weapon, she wondered. Who had crafted such a masterpiece, and given it to one who would feel no gratitude for it?
She left the Egg without looking back.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Outside, the Knight had already begun their journey towards the White Palace. Hornet was swift to catch up to them as they strode through the narrow caves of the Crossroads. There was no traffic, no wagons and beetles passing by, and the silence was disconcerting when compared to the steady bustle of their memory.
A small hand grasped at their elbow, and they froze before looking down. Their sibling, their sister, stared up at them. “We should not travel such a distance without being prepared for it,” she told them, and they would have frowned if such a thing was anathema to their very being. There was no need to wait. They could go to the Resting Grounds and the Abyss beneath, then die alongside their sibling’s mask. What else would they do, if not that?
But Hornet’s stance implied anything but acquiescence to such a plan. Even if they defeated her, they doubted she would grant them death- if she hadn’t done so at their weakest, she certainly wouldn’t after they were rested. Unless of course they planned to give them a warrior’s death? A flicker of hope rose in their chest at the thought, and they slowly turned to follow their sister.
Hornet did not move quickly. She made sure to walk just in front of them, her needle held at the ready for any bugs who might slow their path, but none came. Not so much as a crawlid blocked them, and soon enough, Hornet paused before a shaft leading upward. She glanced at the Knight’s bulk, then the narrow access, then back again.
Ah. They were an inconvenience once again. Before they could ask her to finally kill them, she took a breath and unspooled her silk. They watched with some fascination, despair temporarily forgotten as she lashed her silk upon the walls of the shaft, shredding stone and widening the access point until it was large enough to the Knight to climb up. A clattering sound rang from above, and spider and Knight alike drew their weapons before a heap of stone, wood and metal crashed into the ground in the center of the access shaft.
They both stared at it for a long moment, and the Knight recognized a bucket and pulley. Hornet had just collapsed a well.
They slowly turned their head to Hornet, who was avoiding their gaze. “The well was dry anyway,” she murmured under her breath. “No one was using it, surely.”
Before they could ask a question of her, she flung her needle upwards, pulling herself behind it a moment later with a flash of silk and steel. A faint emotion brushed across their psyche as they reached up, their lone arm still strong enough to pull them up the wall of the shaft. They did not recognize it, and thus discarded it.
After all, where would they have felt amusement?
Upon climbing upward, they were greeted with a small town- and even that word may have overstated reality, as there were little more than a dozen buildings, most of them clearly empty. A hunched bug stood by a wrought-iron bench and a lamp, his mouth open at the sight unfolding before him. He cried out, and took quick, shuffling steps back, still watching the siblings. Hornet waited for the Knight to clamber out of the former well before turning to the elder.
“Elderbug. We have need of a building in which to rest.”
The cowering bug raised his head, wary and suspicious. His eyes did not leave the far larger heft of the Knight, even if only to glance at Hornet. “You may use one of the abandoned homes,” he said a moment later. “Or the Stag Station, if you so wish.”
Hornet inclined her head to him, and turned towards the Knight to speak to them. Elderbug reached out, but she looked at him before he could touch her. He hesitated, shifting in place. “I… apologize to ask such a thing of strangers. But a bug descended into the Crossroads not long ago, and its company has renewed this little town more than once. If you have seen it, I would appreciate any news.”
The Knight considered the request. An audacious thing to ask of anyone, much less their station. Hornet could strike him down if she so wished, but-
“The little ghost is dead.” Hornet’s tone was blunt, and remained so even when Elderbug recoiled. “It met its end in the Temple of the Black Egg.”
“Ah… ah,” Elderbug said, first in acknowledgment and then understanding. His head hung low. “A loss, for a place such as this.”
Hornet scarcely tilted her head, and turned towards the structure Elderbug had pointed out. He rather looked like he wanted to ask more, but the Knight did not care for it and followed Hornet shortly. They thankfully fit through the broad door, even if they had to crawl and pull their shattered nail through separately.
The Knight was unsure why they’d brought the nail along with them. Hewn almost in half, the once proud weapon was nearly without function- a shadow of what it had been forged for. Perhaps that was why they refused to let it go. They were in much the same state.
Hornet had been busy during their reflection, and the silk so adept in destruction wove cut curtains together into a patchwork blanket. She left it to them and moved to the bed, climbing in with silence. The quiet was appreciated, and the Knight lay on the floor before tugging the blanket over themselves. Chitin fingers searched for the join in between cloth, siphoning soul from the glimmering threads until they were dull and inert.
The Knight closed their eye. The darkness was familiar, and they gave themselves to it gladly. Were that their mind could be so silent normally...