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mostlydeadallday · 3 days

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Lost Kin | Chapter XL | A Terrible Price

Fandom: Hollow Knight Rating: Mature Characters: Hornet, Pure Vessel | Hollow Knight, Quirrel Category: Gen Content Warnings: gore, body horror, nightmares AO3: Lost Kin | Chapter XL | A Terrible Price First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Chronological Notes: Quirrel assists in recovery efforts.

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Quirrel realized he was shaking.

He’d been in the way when the vessel started to move. He’d been leaning over them, trying to determine what had sent Hornet scrambling away, whether there was an emergency or if he needed to intervene—and Hollow had lunged. Toward Hornet. Toward him.

The lantern had fallen from his hands before he registered letting it go. He sprang back, scrabbling for his nail as the vessel twisted and strained against the ropes, burning through a reserve of strength he would not have guessed they still possessed.

It had not looked like Hornet’s silk would hold them.

That sudden strength seemed to have left them now as they went gradually limp, their single hand gone lax beside them, silent. Hornet was shaking even harder than he was, crouched in the gap between their mask and shoulder, shoulders jerking with what looked like stifled sobs.

With effort, he straightened, closing his fingers into trembling fists. Still empty, still aching for that familiar hilt. Though… his nail would have been no better than one of the little scalpels on the tray, if he was forced to defend himself against them.

He hadn’t been. He would not be. All was well. All was—

Well, perhaps not.

There was still a hole in the vessel’s chest, gaping startlingly wide without the blisters to fill it in. Several of the stab wounds had been concentrated there, carving out a chunk of chitin larger than his hand. And, as rushed as his examination had been, he thought he’d glimpsed what upset their sister so badly: the opening ran straight down through their chest, exposing a glimpse of their somehow still-beating heart.

That was certainly a problem.

His own heart was still pounding, his mind racing, looking for solutions, for avenues of escape. He smoothed one hand over his antennae and paced a tight circle on the floor.

They had survived what should have been catastrophic damage to their organs. The infection in their chest should have killed them, even before they ran themselves through. Hornet had speculated that their void nature was partly the cause—after all, a living creature filled with void was an impossibility all on its own. An organic shell could not withstand the pressure of that ancient dark, not for long, not without exacting a terrible price.

And from what she’d been able to tell him of the seals carved into their shell, the Pale King had stretched that paradox farther still.

To suffer for so long… to have death disallowed, again and again, having failed at the task you were made for, and being offered no escape…

He had to remember why he was here. He had been asked to help. There had to be something he could do.

Hornet looked up at the first quiet clatter of the tools as he gathered them onto the tray, then immediately buried her face back into her elbow. She was still shaking, but reaching out from beneath her cloak to touch her sibling’s face with one hand.

Quirrel had recognized her name as the first of the two signs they answered her question with, but it took him a moment of blankly gathering up the supplies and piling them into the wash basin before he remembered the second.

Oh. They had thought she was hurt. They had heard her, panting, retching, and tried to go to her, to protect her as they’d done before. Despite their wounds, despite being tied down, despite the hours-long strain of remaining still through a procedure no one should be asked to suffer through.

He hadn’t known the realization would break his heart so much.

Was it old orders lingering? A knight’s duty to guard their liege? Or was it something so simple as devotion to one of the only people who’d ever been kind to them?

Was it love?

He nearly dropped a pair of forceps onto the tray. He recovered just in time, before he could manage to startle anyone. That was just what they needed, while the tension was still unspooling. His limbs felt half-dissolved, his mind fizzing like acid. And if he felt this poorly…

He looked up. Hollow’s eyes were closing, their breath coming in slow heaves, with long pauses in between. Their mask turned ever-so-slowly toward their sister’s hand as she stroked it, a faint, halting motion, the sound of her palm scraping bone as light as a rustle in the grass.

Oh, he wished he could help. He wanted to reach out to them, too, to tell them again how well they’d done, to touch their shell and feel their tension fade away.

Instincts, mostly. And unhelpful ones at that; they had perhaps begun to trust him, but not like they did their sister. He would be foolish to assume that their earlier calm when he touched them meant that he could do so at any time, with impunity. He would have to earn it.

Hornet had lifted her head a few inches, watching him over the faded blue folds of her cloak. When he picked up the tray to take it into the kitchen, she cast him a look, and he halted, waiting for her to object.

She didn’t. Perhaps coming to the same conclusion he had—none of them were in any state to get anything more accomplished today.

When he came back into the room, she had begun to cut the rest of the strands binding Hollow to the floor. She was shaking, still, and moving as if her own body were resisting her. He reached for the strands to gather them up, though his pulse surged again when Hollow roused, eyes sliding open, head twitching to the side to watch her.

Hornet hurt, he’d watched them say, with a panicked urgency to their signs that he had not witnessed before. He opened his mouth to speak, but they moved before he could think of what to say—dragging their heavy horns off the ground, arm and torso both beginning to tremble as they propped themselves up enough to keep her in view.

“Ah—wait, please,” he started, caught between concern for their injuries and reluctance to order them about like an automaton.

Hornet looked up at his voice and abruptly hissed in alarm. “Stop,” she said again, though gentler than she had last. “Hollow—stop, I am—I—”

They froze once more, though this only worsened the shaking as they locked an already-strained position even tighter. Hornet hissed again, harsh—at herself, he thought, though it was impossible to miss the way Hollow flinched at the sound.

She pressed them back down with the hand gripping the shears. They halfway relaxed back onto the pillows, still holding their head up to pin Hornet with that intense dark stare.

She made a sound at that: a horrible, scraping fang-click that instantly set Quirrel’s mandibles on edge. “I’m fine,” she forced out—in a whisper, really, and her voice broke so badly on the last word that he was unsure for an instant what she meant.

That was a lie so obvious he’d be shocked if even Hollow believed her.

When she inhaled to try again, he interrupted her, faintly surprised at his own boldness.

“Your sister is unharmed.” There was a sensation as the vessel turned to look at him, an almost-unnoticeable chill, like a cloud rolling over the sun. “I believe she is more concerned about your injuries, my friend—as am I.”

They stared at him, unmoving, and he felt his shell begin to prickle under the oppressive shadow of their regard. Something flickered in their eyes, whiplash-quick, then vanished again into those unknown depths. He was reminded once again of all they had survived, from the touch of the void to the mortal wounds carved out by their own nail, to the infection that had left them—if not unscathed—far more sound of mind than any other victim of its whims could hope for.

Perhaps they weren’t aware of just how severe the damage should have been. Someone built to endure the kind of beating they had taken might be disinclined to view their own injuries with the proper… gravity.

With a glance at Hornet—who hadn’t moved except to slump farther, as if her fortitude had finally run out—he took a steadying breath and turned back toward the vessel.

“You appear to be… missing a rather large portion of your shell. Just here”—and he tapped his own chest to demonstrate. “Your shoulder, where your arm was, looks uglier, but this is worse. And…”

Words failed him for an instant. An unlikely occurrence, but what was he meant to say about this?

“With the infection mostly drained now, there is much more visible than there strictly should be. It seems to affect you less than I would expect, but… there is… a hole.” He cleared his throat. “Right through to the center of you.”

Hornet blanched, head tucking farther away, and Hollow’s gaze flickered to her, unreadable. Then to their own chest, as far down as they could strain to see. The sight of their long neck nearly flattening in an attempt to view something directly under their chin would have been amusing if not for—well, everything else.

“It may not be as serious as it looks”—and how, he wanted to know, was it not—“but it is certainly distressing,” he added, with a strained laugh.

Did he want to know? Did he really wish to learn the intricacies of vessel physiology, the inner workings of a creature that should have been dead many times over? Was he actually curious about the mechanisms that kept their heart beating long after it was smothered by rot, then pierced through with their own nail?

Perhaps not.

Hollow’s elbow slipped, sliding a few inches on the blanket before they caught themselves with a jolt.

“Here,” Quirrel said, leaping forward—half to support them, half to coax them into lying down again—before his instincts could drag him back. They did not budge until Hornet moved to help him, but together they managed to settle the vessel back onto the pillows—though he thought their willingness to go had more to do with Hornet’s cooperation than their own.

She stayed put, allowing her sibling to keep as close a watch on her as they pleased while she untied the rest of their bonds. Quirrel worked alongside her, gathering the loose silk to dispose of. The strands drooped from his fingers in slick, filmy threads, the thinner ones almost too soft to feel.

“Hornet,” he said.

She didn’t speak, only looked up at him dully, shears in hand.

Everything he could think to say seemed dreadfully wrong, every word a terrible choice he could not help but make.

“The cysts you drained…” he began, and stopped. His mandibles closed, shifted, and opened again. Spit it out. “That space is empty, now. Nothing to hold their organs in the places they should be. If they move too much, we may have a problem.”

He saw the moment the fear hit her, delayed and distant as it was. Her fangs twitched, and her grip tightened on the shear handles.

“It should be easy to remedy,” he rushed to say. “We already have the material.” And he held out his handful of silk.

She glanced helplessly at the mess of Hollow’s chest, and then just as quickly glanced away again, staring at a patch of floor near their knee instead.

For lack of anything better to do, Quirrel kept talking. He could hardly make things worse, at this point. “They should heal, first, so any open wounds do not adhere to the silk when they close. And we should clean it, carefully, and then pack it full.” He held up a slick strand from the bundle. “With this. And you can spin adhesive silk to dress the exterior, can you not?”

“I-I…”

She cut off, hissed slowly. Nodded. Perhaps frustrated with her own lack of words—something he currently had too many of.

“I’ll help you with it. As much as I can.” He felt steady, remarkably so, though he suspected he would need to fall apart in private later. Not now. They needed him, both of them.

Hornet stood, halfway, then tottered. She crouched down again, resting her head on her knees. From that position, with her face hidden in her cloak, he doubted she saw Hollow twitch toward her, a motion half-aborted, whether out of fear of being seen or purely from exhaustion.

They’d been raised to believe that they were never meant to think or feel, Hornet said. He could hardly grasp what that might mean, for a thinking, feeling creature, to consider their very nature a failure.

He had known about the vessel plan. He had seen the theory drawn up in a massive, glowing acid tank, glyphs and diagrams soaring above him and curving out of sight on either side. His patchwork studies had not been strictly useful to those efforts, but he had contributed. He had been a part of this even before Monomon entrusted her mask to him and sent him to what amounted to his death—the destruction of all that he was, all that he knew, in return for nothing but a gratitude he would likely never remember.

Sacrifices. Sacrifices must be made, he remembered hearing, again and again. His memory. His future. His mentor—Monomon herself.

He did not complain. He knew that others had given more. He knew that the king had offered up the body of one of his own children, a princeling, surrendered to the void before it was much more than a spark within the egg. A child of gods that was a child no longer, all but the nascent glimmer of its power stripped away by that scouring shadow.

Or that was what he’d been told.

All those years of study, each careful aspect of that plan, a failure. Every long day and wakeful night, every calculation done and redone. The effort and dedication and the very lives poured into this experiment—a waste.

Because of one variable—

The child in that egg had survived.

Some version of them, at least. There was no doubt that they were more than a shell for the soulless void to inhabit, more than a body built and rebuilt to contain a god. As he watched them struggle to smother the flickers of life that still remained, he recalled their sibling—so, so small, but with such a presence, a presence Hollow also possessed yet desperately fought to hide. It hurt to imagine the other vessel stripped of their vitality, reduced to the empty shell they were meant to be—or broken, hurting, mind and body alike consumed by the light they had freed their sibling from.

Were they breaking, even now? While he stood here helpless to aid them? The infection was contained—but at what cost? How long could he count on their mettle to hold?

Hornet moved again, jarring him out of his thoughts. She looked… unstable, though he knew better than to mention that.

She took a rag from the stack nearby—one of the last clean ones—and doused it in the basin, then set about cleaning the wound as best she could. It was tricky, the shell pitted and uneven, with the muscle beneath scarred so deeply that it twisted back upon itself. Her motions were mechanical, as was her voice when she instructed her sibling to heal.

Hopefully, as long as she refrained from getting any more sudden looks at their organs, she would be fine. An understandable limit to have reached, though an unpleasant one to reach so abruptly.

Quirrel described what was needed, and Hornet began to weave. Silk sparked between her fingers—a long, fine thread spun into existence out of nothing but the soul in her reservoirs. He watched intently as she doubled, then tripled it, winding it around itself to form a solid core.

Aside from offering suggestions as to the shape and size of the material, he was quiet, letting her work. When she handed him the finished clump of silk to inspect, it was heavy and cool, giving slightly when he pressed it between his hands, its outer layer soft as gauze.

He handed it back to her. She looked as if she did not want to take it. And once she had it, she merely sat there, flexing her claws slightly, staring at the hole in their chest as if it might swallow her up.

He had not wanted to interfere again, but it looked as though he might have to. And that would mean dealing directly with Hollow, putting that shaky trust—or fear, or compliance, or whatever it was—to the test.

He cleared his throat to draw their attention. “Your sister needs to place this inside your wound. It may feel strange, and it may hurt, but… the pain should not be severe.” He glanced at her for support, but she gave him nothing. At a loss, he continued. “If it is, please tap the floor, as before. A significant increase in pain may mean that something is wrong, and that we need to change our methods.”

Their gaze shifted to him. He held it, praying faintly that they would see this as honesty and steadiness, not as a threat. The smaller vessel had hardly taken their bottomless eyes off him every time he spoke, so unless he’d misread the vast majority of their interactions, it was a sign of interest.

When Hornet was ready, or as ready as she could be—her hands were still shaking, though he could hardly fault her—he asked them to take a breath and brace themselves, hoping that their fortitude would hold for these last few moments. Hoping they would all hold steady, as Hornet, too, braced herself and began.

“Easy, that’s it. That’s it.” He couldn’t stop muttering as he watched, hovering, desperately hoping he would not need to step in. If it proved more than she could handle, he could do it, though at risk to his own shell. Some risk was acceptable, though—better that than Hollow losing consciousness as soon as they attempted to sit up, due to their heart or a lung slipping out of their proper places and into the empty cavity.

Both siblings were holding their breath, Hollow with their lungs full and mask-vents clamped shut, allowing the wide plates on their chest to flex apart as Hornet hurriedly packed the silk in.

She sat back when she finished, unsteady hands lingering just over the wound as she inhaled, tremulous and thin.

Hollow did not move.

“You can breathe now,” Quirrel murmured, half-disbelieving, and, to his relief, they did—though they were careful to move no other part of themselves. “Take a moment to adjust to that,” he continued, letting himself tentatively relax. “And… tell us if it hurts.”

They didn’t. They didn’t give any other indication that they’d heard him, either, staring upward at the ceiling and breathing in a stiff, regular rhythm, as if afraid their chest might collapse should they break from it. That must be uncomfortable, but not nearly so much so as a clump of cysts filled with acid rot.

He nearly asked how does it feel? before remembering that they had no way to answer him. And even if they did, they had been trained—inadvertently, perhaps, but trained nonetheless—to disregard their own discomfort.

Their pain is something they dearly wish to hide.

It had taken so much longer than he expected for them to ask for respite. Cleaning out the remaining cysts would be a nightmare if they were still resolved to bear the pain, in silence, until the last possible moment.

He clicked his mandibles. One problem at a time—and he had already determined that this was not a problem for today.

At his insistence, Hornet took their pulse once more. Though slightly elevated, it was still close enough to their prior reading to reassure him that both the surgery and the wound dressing had gone as well as could be expected.

Hornet wove an adhesive pad for the exterior of the wound, anchoring it to their shell alongside the edges of the silk-rune. He went to rearrange the mattresses, dragging them back into a configuration that somewhat resembled a bed.

Rather than risk another precarious move, he and Hornet worked to reassemble the bed where Hollow lay, having them lift their head, back, and legs, one at a time, and sliding the mattresses underneath. It took up more of the floor this way, but there was nothing for it; it would be cruel to ask much more of them, exhausted as they were. Neither he nor Hornet had expected them to be so weak at the outset, he thought, and Hollow had given no hint that they would have difficulty sitting up and shifting a few feet. It was a miracle they had not fallen and injured themselves further.

Hornet turned to making them comfortable once the bed was back in place, laying down cushions and tucking the ratty blanket back across their legs. She had not said more than a single word to him since Hollow spoke up to answer her question.

Something was wrong. He did not have to know her well to know that much. But he was powerless to do anything about it—however badly she had received his reassurance earlier, it would likely go worse now, if he tried. He stood with his hands hanging at his sides, watching her fold her knees and tuck herself into the crook of their shoulder again, curling up on the bed beside their mask, ignoring the way they minutely turned toward her as soon as her hand settled on their face. Ignoring everything, even his pointed stare, even a soft question sent her way, in a manner that made him more concerned than upset.

Defeated, he turned to gather up the soiled blankets and scrub them clean before the light outside dipped too low to see without the lantern.

She was still there when he returned. Still staring into space.

This wasn’t the curled claws and snapping fangs of her anger, nor the cold intensity of her disdain. This was something worse, something he’d never seen before—and given the narrow spectrum of emotion she allowed herself, he could not help feeling that this had pushed her over some unseen edge.

Where she would land, he had yet to figure out.

Unsure whether she would welcome his company, but unwilling to leave yet, he stripped the soiled silk from his hands and threw it into the fireplace. Then he retreated to the window, working in silence to record the day’s efforts until the light was well and truly gone. When he glanced over his shoulder, Hollow had fallen asleep, the tip of their mask tucked into Hornet’s lap, their breathing steady and slow, still whistling faintly.

From what Hornet had told him of the aftermath of the last surgery, they would likely be like that for hours, altogether dead to the world. They had slept nearly a full day afterward, by his estimation, with Hornet having left them somewhere in the midnight hours and returning just as night fell the next cycle.

Somehow, despite what they had just undergone, it was not Hollow he was most worried for.

Quirrel stood, stretched, and looked out at the rain garden, at the slivers of light from an unbroken streetlamp reflecting from the water as the raindrops disturbed it. It was hypnotic, like the trickle of bubbles through the filmy green of an acid tube.

He needed sleep, or he would be useless tomorrow. Whatever tomorrow might bring.

After tidying away his supplies, he paused beside the bed, watching Hornet for—something. An indication that he should stay, that she did not want to be alone with whatever thoughts were haunting her.

He would stay up with her if she asked. He would listen, if she wished to talk, or offer company in silence. Anything but this waiting, this sense that she had gone somewhere far beyond where he could follow.

“I’ll head to bed now,” he said, softly.

She might have blinked. It was too dark to tell. She gave him nothing more.

Quirrel shifted his weight. There was only so long he could stand here, waiting, before it became rude. But he needed to say something.

He settled on, “Please… wake me if you need me.”

The next breath she drew was louder, hitching twice on its way in, and he listened, hoping for a word, or a sob, anything to break the damnable silence that followed.

But it was only silence, only darkness, and there was nothing left for him to do after a long, long minute—nothing besides leaving her there, staring into the cold hearth, with faint rain shadows streaking down her mask like tears.

The bed upstairs felt more than merely uncomfortable tonight. The room felt more than merely empty. It felt… gaping. Like there was a hunger to the stillness. Like his own fear was looming above him, ready to swallow him whole.

He shivered, turning on his side, and drew the blanket up over his head. Then, when that was not enough, he burrowed under the pillow, too, trapping himself with the hissing sound of his breath and the rush of his heartbeat, both suddenly—and inexplicably—racing.

This had been coming for a while now. He’d been holding it together too long; this invariably resulted in having to let it go. He knew this, he knew this—

It was still so hard to let himself cry, muffled by as many layers of fabric as he could shove against his face. So hard to let the lump of tension in his chest dissolve into tears, until he was gasping and wrung out, shuddering fitfully, drifting in a muddled sea of grief, of guilt, of anger and frustration.

He hadn’t cried like this since—

Since the Archives.

He was too tired to think of that now, and fleetingly grateful for it.

It still took him what seemed an age to fall asleep, and when he did, the silence followed him into his dreams, taking on a faceless presence that stalked him through the bronze halls and acid stacks, through lecture rooms and laboratories that should have been anything but quiet. Even the bubbling of the acid tubes was muffled.

It was darker than it should be. Darker than he’d ever seen it. The ceiling was drowned in shadow; when he looked up, he saw it beginning to pour down the walls in streams, great clots of it dripping onto the acid tubes, streaking the glass in viscous ribbons.

What—what was happening?

A pool of darkness spread across the floor, its leading edge rolling towards his feet. He stepped back. Stepped back again. Retreating, slowly at first, then stumbling faster as the inky murk gained inch by inch, as the light of the distant tanks began to wink out.

The Madam. He had to reach her. He had to see if she was safe—

Quirrel turned and ran, pelting down the dizzying hallway, each breath coming harder, harsher. The air scraped and rasped through his lungs, far louder than it should. He sounded like a dying thing, like he had already drowned in the void that was rushing up to catch him—

Something woke him. He did not know what, only that he was abruptly staring up at the very ordinary ceiling, breathing in gasps, one hand clutching the top of his head where the weight of her mask should have been.

He was not in the Archives.

Monomon was gone.

Over. It was over, it was done, she was not coming back.

The little vessel had killed her. And then gone on to their own end, or as good as.

Long minutes passed before he could slow his breathing, before he could stop feeling like a cold hand had reached into his chest and scooped out something vital.

Before he began to wonder what had woken him.

Quirrel sat up, a soft, cold dread filling his mind, like a fog he could not see through. He could not tell if that was a lingering effect of the dream, or an instinct awoken by he knew not what. He fumbled out of bed, struggling to move quietly in the predawn gloom—the faint slice of indigo between the curtains was not much brighter than the room itself, and the staircase was nearly pitch-black.

Likely he would find nothing out of the ordinary downstairs: Hornet asleep in her little nest on the hearth, Hollow still insensate, and he would be in trouble if he woke either of them—rightfully so. It was not like him to be paranoid, but the look on Hornet’s face was haunting him, and he needed to know—

A muffled creak. The front door.

He took the rest of the stairs at a run, scrambling round the corner and into the entry, ready to grab his nail and face whatever stood there—

It was Hornet. Red cloak on, needle sheathed. From the shadows in her eyes and the hunch in her shoulders, she had not slept, and from the nervy tremor in her hand, she had very much needed to.

“What are you doing?” he breathed.

A stupid question. He knew very well what she was doing.

It was too much, he heard her say, in the kitchen, across a square of clear, harsh light. I ran away.

She was leaving.

“Don’t,” he said, before she could answer. He could not stop her. The bruise on his arm throbbed in memory. Still, he reached toward her, every impulse screaming that he draw back, that he was an idiot to try and trap a hunter, that she had the claws and the teeth to punish him for it.

But she was the one to shrink away from him. Shaking, visibly, much as she tried to curl up and hide beneath that cloak. The beginning of a hiss rattled her fangs, but it was weak, cut off sharply, more like the sound of something wounded, something dying, than a predator.

“Don’t do this,” he pleaded. “Please, Hornet, don’t. Your sibling—”

“I—” She shook her head, hard, and took a quick breath, then another, and another, deep and harsh and beginning to scratch in her throat, and swallowed down something that seemed to hurt. “I can’t. I—tell them I-I’ll be back soon, I can’t—”

Whatever it was she couldn’t do, he never found out. She hissed again, harder than before, and flung herself out the door, snatching her needle from her back as soon as she had the space to draw it.

Quirrel almost caught her, dashing out into the rain and grabbing for her cloak. His hand closed on nothing. She threw her needle, wrapping a twist of silk around her wrist and yanking herself into the air after it.

“Hornet!” he shouted.

She vanished quickly into the mist rising from the city streets, a dwindling red flash that flickered and was doused by the rain, even the whistle of her needle fading into silence after a moment. Quirrel was left with nothing but the echoes, and then nothing at all, standing in the downpour with his hands hanging empty, that same cold dread filling his heart.

He stared blankly into the distance, pulse beating fast, unsure what to do.

Unsure what else there was to do but go back inside.

He made himself move after a moment. He was good at that; he’d had practice. His footsteps dragged, cold water splashing across his ankles. Back into the dim house, where he shut the door and threw the bolt—she had the key. Into the parlor from there, where he grabbed a dry towel and scrubbed his arms and hands, then bunched it up and buried his wet mask into it.

A sound halted him. Something so quiet that he might not have noticed it had he not just returned from outdoors, where the pounding of the rain covered all. A short breath, shivering, hissing through burned and battered lungs.

Quirrel raised his face from the towel. He knew what he would see, even before he looked over and met two slanted black eyes, open wide and churning like whirlpools. His stomach sank.

His shout had woken the vessel.

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Taglist: @botslayer9000 @moss-tombstone @slimeshade @gamergenia Send an ask or reply to this post to be added to (or removed from) the taglist!

#elletalks #lost kin fic #lost kin chapter #hollow knight #hollow knight fanfic #mywriting #hk the hollow knight #hk hornet #hk quirrel #hk #sorry for the delay in crossposting!

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ekourege · 8 months

Note

hope this ask is sufficiently crunchy—a handful of your favorite NPCs encounter a nosk. who do you think it's mimicking, and how well do the next five minutes go for them?

Hornet: it's herrah. It was always going to be herrah. It couldn't be anyone else. First thought: (cynical bug with mommy issues voice) You Are Not My Mother KILL second thought: how are you fitting in this cavern Herrah the Beast is HUGE

Nosk dies. Badly.

Lemm: would never fucking set foot in deepnest. NEXT

Oro: sees mato. The next five minutes go badly. Oro wins, having prepared for a fight, angry at seeing ever-prideful and ever-confrontational mato flee, but Oro does not truly wish to harm his brother. Not anymore.

Mato: sees Sheo. Revels in the sight of Sheo having taken up the nail again. Gives chase. Wins, and also feels like he's learned a vital lesson in wishing and deceiving yourself. He's good at compartmentalizing like that. it further affirms his feelings on training and meditating and that he should not go see Sly anytime soon.

A-hem. And now, a brief list of NPCs who are so dead on arrival it is not even funny: Myla, Tiso, Lost Kin, any vessel really, and I would go so far as to say even the hollow knight. You know their ass is seeing the pale king and going

#avi.txt #asks #hollow knight #i didnt include any of the npcs i like that would see themselves bc i feel like i either a) dont understand them enough #or b) self explanatory #people talking at me

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lightrises · 3 years

Text

"Only in allowing her to pass..." — Hornet, The Radiance, and the means by which Hallownest turned its victims against each other

A quick note: I read Hollow Knight as an anti-colonialist text. As such I'll be touching on topics related to colonialism as it's depicted in the world of the game, and said analysis will reflect both a sympathetic take on The Radiance and a critique of The Pale King that won't pull its punches. If this sounds up your alley, hello and thank you for the read! Let us be sad about these bugs together.

———

So!! A while back I realized something about pre-canon that felt rather... "curious" is one way to put it, I think. To wit: for all the effort and scheming and determination The Pale King poured into trying to get rid of The Radiance, neither of his plans involved directly killing her.

Was that his long game? Well, sure, that seems clear enough. His tack changed from luring the moths away from their god and creator to a more literal form of incarceration once the infection became a factor, but at its core the end goal never really changed—The Pale King very sincerely wished to destroy Radiance via obsolescence. The Seer lends us foreshadowing to confirm as much:

[Image descriptions: Two screenshots from Hollow Knight, showing the Seer and Ghost in the Seer's alcove at the Resting Grounds. Across both screenshots, the Seer tells Ghost the following: "None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters." End description.]

(Which, by the way and given the context, talk about an extremely unsubtle allusion to cultural genocide huh!!! Whew.)

In any case, we're left with a whole bunch of machinations which build up to... well, two very roundabout attempts at committing deicide. That's kind of weird, all things considered! Why not just do the deed in one fell swoop and get it over with?

This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe the king was devoid of the means to instantly kill another higher being. Maybe his personal sense of scruples stopped him short of signing off on MURDER murder (although, y'know, the aforementioned genocide + eternal imprisonment = still cool and copasectic apparently!). Maybe the long drawn-out cruelty was the point. Maybe the idea of playing fuckign 4D chess with the circumstances was too delicious for him to pass up—that man did love to tinker and stick his claws where they sure as hell didn't belong—or maybe it was a little bit of All The Things. Who knows!!

But interrogating The Pale King's methodology on this count isn't what I'm here for, at least not really. The main reason I raise this question at all is that in her own way, Hornet did too.

"I'd urge you to take that harder path... "

See, going by The Pale King's actions and what The White Lady explicitly says, they both foresaw two outcomes wrt the infection: it can be allowed to spread, or it can be contained. At Teacher's Archives, Quirrel acknowledges the fact that Ghost is expected to do... something about this, but he doesn't elaborate on what HE thinks that's supposed to be apart from the obvious "Gotta bust into Black Egg Temple first". Hornet is the one person who presents to us—to Ghost—what's framed as a third option: confront and destroy the infection at its source.

And she doesn't bring it up like it's just another tactic for Ghost to consider, prim and indifferent to what they would do. She nudges them towards it, actively, up to the point where she throws herself into the fray against Hollow at a juncture that's uniquely dangerous to her and her alone just to make that option feasible.

Even when she's couching it in disclaimers that this is still Ghost's decision to make (and let's be fair, she's extremely not wrong about that lol), no one can pretend Hornet is unbiased. It's obvious in that buttoned-down Hornet kind of way that she is way the hell done with the increasingly tenuous stalemate that's kept Hallownest's desiccated corpse from collapsing in on itself. Personally it's hard for me not to read some Toriel Undertale-esque "My father was too entrenched in his own foolishness to pursue any course of action that would have DEFINITIVELY ended this" shade into her stance here, regardless of whether that's strictly true in canon.

And that bit—Hornet's hopes for an end to Hallownest's stasis, moreover her grim calculation of what needs to be done to get there—that's the bit I find super interesting but likewise tragic and depressing as shit, on multiple levels. In no small part because a) canon itself gestures towards Hornet feeling conflicted about the very plan she's pushing, and moreover b) she has at least two (2) damn good reasons to feel that way.

So, what do I mean by that? Let's look here first:

[Image description: A screenshot from Hollow Knight, of Hornet and Ghost inside the Temple of the Black Egg, standing in front of the unsealed egg itself. Hornet has been struck by the Dream Nail and her dialogue is displayed as follows: "... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?" End description.]

As the curtain is about to drop on things one way or another, Hornet thinks,

... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?

Now, looking at that last bit it's easy to go "Oh no, Hornet's worried that Ghost won't survive killing The Radiance!" And I do think that's part of it: Hornet is, categorically, not her father. By endgame it's clear she's not content to view her Void-borne siblings as tools to be used then disposed of. She's also well aware that as a healthy autonomous Vessel amongst the countless dead, Ghost is the only person left alive who has a fighting chance against The Radiance. Knowing someone is the only qualified candidate for the job doesn't make encouraging them to embrace a probable death sentence any less of a bitter pill to swallow, though. And odds are on that this sentiment extends to Hollow too, who IS going to die no matter what happens here. To put it bluntly, it's more than reasonable to conclude that Hornet hates the absolute fuck out of this.

But I don't think that's all there is to it either. Remember what I said earlier about The Pale King's bids for genocide? Well, it's not like the man deigned to limit his efforts to just the moth tribe.

"We do not choose our mothers... "

On top of everything else—an infected Hallownest being all she's ever known, the fact that she only exists because of the infection, the list goes on—Hornet has spent her life wedged into a position that's been uncomfortable and terminally unglamorous at best: she is both a daughter of her father's kingdom and of Deepnest.

Deepnest, which like the moths and many others was here long before the wyrm and his lady wife swanned onto the scene and the God Become Bug laid claim to everything the Light touched plus a considerable amount of change. THAT Deepnest, which has fought claw and thread to retain its sovereignty against same-said settler king, and for which Herrah not only surrendered her life but also agreed to bed her worst enemy, all in hopes of securing a viable future for her people (put a pin in that last part by the way, I'll come back to it soon).

Two Worlds, One Family (Ft. An Indigenous Woman Trying Her Damndest To Work With What She's Got Versus An Imperialist Who Only Signed Up For This Because He Needed The Political Favor THAT Badly, So It's The Height Of Dysfunctional Actually). Fun times!!!!

The baggage this entails for Hornet is gnarly enough without implications made by The White Lady and the pre-canon timeline of events and even Team Cherry's dev notes that the king may well have looked at baby Hornet, gone "YOINK", then ensured she spent the lion's share of her childhood reared within the pearly auspices of his Pale Court*. That would be rather advantageous for Him Specifically after all, the potential to mold a born foe into a future ally and even have her trained in combat under the same tutelage as her doomed sibling. And far be it from him to stop a grown Hornet—his own flesh and blood too!—from making Deepnest her forever home if she so pleased. He totally wouldn't be reneging on his "fair bargain made" by doing this one simple thing until Hornet came of age, not t e c h nic c a l l y.

If that is indeed the case, there's a non-zero chance Hornet's formative years were a hot mess of cultural alienation and being a good deal more privy than most to just how much of a bastard her father could be. There's an equally non-zero chance that at some point she stood or sat within earshot as The Pale King finally, finally dropped all pretense and euphemism to name the Light for precisely what (for who) it was.

See, in conjunction with the question that started this whole dang train of thought I've been asking this one too: Does Hornet know? When she speaks of confronting "the heart of [the] infection" does she know she's talking about not just a literal person but someone very specific? The Radiance, who god though she may be shares skin in the game alongside Hornet as a native woman screwed over by the same settler king, likewise deprived of her kin and saddled with a life gone horrendously pear-shaped?

I'll assume for the sake of exploring the possibility and because I think it's a likely one anyway that yes, Hornet does know. She knows, and despite everything can't help empathizing. She might even look at Radiance and see bits and pieces both reflected and slightly inversed in her own mother: Radiance was forced to the sidelines while her people—her children, the brood she was meant to lead and care for—died out under The Pale King's rule, and it's no stretch to assume she's at least as upset about that as she has been about everything else; Herrah too took drastic measures for her people's sake, trying to head off annihilation by relegating herself to the sidelines in an act that was as much calculated risk as an attempt to find wiggle room and leverage in the face of a nasty proposition.

A calculated risk that, if things continue as they are, might well amount to nothing as the rest of Deepnest gets eaten alive by the infection. It survived The Pale King's advances for so so long, only to fall here. Herrah's sacrifice would be for naught; the other tribes—themselves the king's victims—would keep succumbing to the infection too.

And this is where things fall apart.

"... or the circumstance into which we are born."

Let's be clear: I think Hornet is wise enough to know what's what here, that all the carnage and suffering falls on her father's head for starting this slow-motion trainwreck in the first place. Hallownest wasn't always Hallownest. This domain was Radiance's home first, along with many others. It was the worm-turned-king who rolled up on the scene unsolicited and decided this was a ""'problem""" that had to be """solved""".

But the fact of the matter is that he's gone and The Radiance is here, raging, seemingly inconsolable. Above and beyond being Deepnest's rightful heir, Hornet isn't in a position to countenance more splash damage even if the grief and fury fueling it makes perfect sense. She can understand without ever bringing herself to love Radiance, and she can bend her knee to practicality even if she hates the everloving shit out of it because the fact that it "has" to end this way isn't fair.

This lends itself to one last awful conclusion: that Hornet has probably considered and (rightly or wrongly) discarded the possibility that Radiance can be saved, at least not without dragging more collateral along for the ride. If even her mother and every other enemy to the king seemed to dismiss talking Radiance down as an option way back when... well. Why should Hornet hope for any better after things have escalated so far?

Again, it's practical. A practical net good is what Hornet strives for. And again, it fucking sucks.

For extra tragedy points, this makes Hornet's extended crypticness around Ghost followed by her last minute casting about for a reason to tell them "Wait, don't; not just yet" that she never voices even more of a gut punch. She can't bring herself to burden Ghost with the context that haunts her so, least of all when it might weaken their resolve to go through with what (she thinks) needs doing.

It's the "same song, different verse" which led to the mantis tribe and Deepnest being pitted against each other: Hallownest rigged the game so that two women who could have been powerful allies—who have a mutual vested interest in driving out settler rule—wound up poised as enemies instead. And how awful is that? The king for all his being extremely fucking dead still gets the last laugh, because outside of a miracle the game never manifests Hornet can salvage what her mother started and look forward to a future where Deepnest pulls itself back from the brink if and only if The Radiance dies.

Resolution comes at the price of a completed genocide. Add two more dead siblings to the unconscionable pile thereof, while we're at it. That's what it boils down to whether or not Hornet can bear to articulate it as such, and there's no grace or even a properly bittersweet ending to wring from this clusterfuck. And that is rough.

———

* This has been better explained elsewhere, but a quick rundown: The White Lady tells Ghost that Hornet and Herrah "were permitted little time together." On its surface this can be taken to mean that Hornet was still very young when Herrah was shipped off to Eternal Dreamland—except this doesn't jive with the fact that we meet Hornet as an adult. If the stasis kicked in once the Dreamers went to their rest, which in turn halted the aging process for every living bug in Hallownest, AND before all this Hornet experienced little by the way of quality time with her birth mother... I think you can see where I'm going with this.

To top it off we've got Team Cherry weighing in ominously from their dev notes on Herrah: "As part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer, King gave her a child (Hornet). Was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away?" This isn't confirmation by itself of course, but given additional canon details (see above): Can I get a "yikes" in the chat fellas.

#hollow knight #hornet (hollow knight)#hornet hollow knight #hk hornet #the radiance #hk radiance #herrah #hk herrah #hollow knight meta #sup folks it's been a minute since i dropped a whole dang essay but Here We Go!!!!!!

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dragoler · 4 years

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The Hollowness of the Knight

This is a theory post about Hollow Knight and contains spoilers, so if you haven’t completed the game you should probably not read this post.

There is a debate I see often within the Hollow Knight fan community and every time it comes up I ignore it. This debate is on the purity of the protagonist Knight as a vessel, and sometimes by extension the purity of the Hollow Knight at the time of its choosing. Here I want to explain why this is a fruitless debate, and how the topic may be better approached from a different angle.

Let's begin with the iconic lines said by the Pale King about vessels during the Birthplace memory:

No cost too great. No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry suffering. Born of God and Void. You shall seal the blinding light that plagues their dreams. You are the Vessel. You are the Hollow Knight.

The part that I am going to focus on here is 'No will to break' because it’s the point of hottest contention. It's no real secret that the Knight displays a will throughout the game, this is even referenced in NPC dialogue, such as when it refuses to trade with Steel Soul Jinn:

...It refuses to trade...? It has a will... all Its own. Can refuse. Jinn will keep waiting... until a gift comes.

This obviously runs counter to what the Pale King is saying, but the situation gets more complicated than this. Five other important characters (sorry Mask Maker) in the game have in-depth knowledge on the vessels, what they are, how they were created and what is needed for them to be pure - The three Dreamers, The White Lady and Hornet.

Let's ignore the Dreamers (they have little to say) and start with the White Lady. Upon first meeting her she will gift the Knight a White Fragment and then urge it to take over the duty of the Hollow Knight, believing it pure enough to succeed in the task:

I implore you, usurp the Vessel. Its supposed strength was ill-judged. It was tarnished by an idea instilled. But you. You are free of such blemishes. You could contain that thing inside.

Her perception is obviously not perfect as she didn't seem to notice the impurity of the Hollow Knight until it was too late (possibly she did but they were too far into the plan so ignored it, as the Path of Pain implies the king may have done). Though this could also suggest that all vessels start out pure and only lose their purity if something were to tarnish them later. The next part is more interesting though, if the Knight returns to her with the Kingsoul charm equipped she says this:

The Kingsoul... What is at the heart of it I wonder? If its curiosity wills it, it should seek out that place. That place where it was born, where it died, where it began...

Here she directly encourages the Knight to follow its curiosity, something which should be counter to what a vessel would feel and also insinuates a will. After acquiring the Void heart she comments this:

That pulsing emptiness... Truly, it has been transformed by the revelations it found. Does it... feel anything? Triumph? Or hate? If it does, I cannot sense it. The fate of our Kingdom, our Hallownest... that future belongs to you now.

This dialogue strongly suggests that the Void Heart has somehow made the Knight more empty than it was before, and yet the description of the Void Heart also directly references a will:

An emptiness that was hidden within, now unconstrained. Unifies the void under the bearer's will.

Now onto Hornet. When Hornet first fights the Knight she thinks it is weak and would kill her mother, only to fail at the Hollow Knight and unleash the Radiance onto Hallownest. After she is defeated she concludes that the Knight has gained resilience from 'two voids':

I'm normally quite perceptive. You I underestimated, though I've since guessed the truth. You've seen beyond this kingdom's bounds. Yours is resilience born of two voids.

The second void mentioned refers to the wastelands outside the Kingdom, known to rob bugs of their 'minds':

Higher beings, these words are for you alone. These blasted plains stretch never-ending. There is no world beyond. Those foolish enough to traverse this void must pay the toll and relinquish the precious mind this kingdom grants.

This seems to translate to bugs losing their memories, as Quirrel is shown to have lost his own memory when he left Hallownest:

Twice I've seen this world and though my service may have stripped the first experience from me, I'm thankful I could witness its beauty again.

So the Knight losing its memory has made it resilient and therefore more 'pure' right? Well, there are problems with this. To start with resilience =/= emptiness, you don't need an empty mind to have a strong body. It also seems unlikely that she is talking about physical strength here because the threats of Hallownest are more dangerous than those on the surface. From Quirrel:

Your nail looks a fine instrument, but it's showing signs of wear. I'd wager up there it would take you far. Down here however, I suspect you'll soon meet dangers the surface world can't match.

What Hornet is actually referring to is resolve - willpower. This is supported by the names of the achievements you gain after defeating her: 'Test of Resolve' and 'Proof of Resolve', she even makes reference to a will directly in dialogue later:

You could do it, if you had the will.

This weirdly suggests that an empty mind directly contributes to an increase in willpower, something running completely counter to the king's words. It also makes her very next move seem quite counter-intuitive; she encourage the Knight to learn the things it has forgotten about its past:

It's no surprise then you've managed to reach the heart of this world. In so doing, you shall know the sacrifice that keeps it standing. If, knowing that truth, you'd still attempt a role in Hallownest's perpetuation, seek the Grave in Ash and the mark it would grant to one like you.

If a lack of knowledge would make a vessel more 'pure' this goes against her own best interests, so we can also rule out the effects of the wastelands contributing to the purity of the Knight.

By now you will probably be saying that Hornet doesn't want the Knight to seal the Radiance, she wants it to kill her. Hornet doesn't actually consider the possibility of the Knight uniting the void until after it climbs out of the Abyss:

...It faced the void, and ascends unscathed... Could it unite such vast darkness?..

And even then considers the possibility as almost an impossibility:

...Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?

She is perfectly accepting of the fact that it could chose to seal the Radiance instead, and doesn't voice any concerns about its fitness to do so:

Ghost of Hallownest, you possess the strength to enact an end of your choosing. Would you supplant our birth-cursed sibling, or would you transcend it?

Even if killing the Radiance was the only possibility she considered, shouldn't the Knight becoming an avatar of the void itself make it as empty as it could possibly be?

The conclusion here is that the evidence is incredibly contradictory. Multiple knowledgeable characters encourage the Knight to exert its will despite the Pale King saying vessels shouldn’t have one, and even a loss of memory isn't considered better for purity.

Onto the second part, what can we say for sure DOES contribute to purity? It should be safe to assume that everything else the king mentions about vessels still holds true. Vessels do not speak and have no voices, whenever a vessel roars with a voice the sound comes from the Radiance and not themselves. They do not think. This is an odd one because there is Dream Nail dialogue for the Hollow Knight and Pure Vessel, but because it isn't accessible within the game it can't be taken as canon (though that is a debate in itself). Ignoring these outliers, there are five creatures that give Dream Nail dialogue of '...' which are Broken Vessel/Lost Kin, Fool Eaters, Gulkas, Shadow Creepers and Nosk. The Fool Eaters and Gulkas are plants so naturally they have no minds, Shadow Creepers are found near to and within the Abyss where it is strongly suggested they are inflicted by the effects of the void:

Found only in deep, dark places. Has never been observed to eat or drink anything.

The Broken Vessel is a vessel so it makes sense for it not to think, even when inflicted by infection. Nosk however is an interesting case, and I theorize the reason for its lack of thought is in its nature as a mimic:

In the deepest darkness, there are beasts who wear faces stolen from your memories and pluck at the strings in your heart. Know yourself, and stay strong.

Nosk does not only mimic the body of the Knight but also its mind, so when the Knight Dream Nail's Nosk it is seeing its own empty mind reflected back. Interestingly, if the Pure Vessel and Hollow Knight's Dream Nail dialogue are to be taken as canon, that makes BOTH the Knight and Broken Vessel more pure than it, supporting the theory that all vessels start pure until tarnished. So what causes tarnishment? An 'idea instilled' is rather vague, but the existence of the Path of Pain strongly suggests that the idea instilled into the Hollow Knight was an emotional bond with its father, supported by cut Dream Nail dialogue:

"...Father?..."

Perhaps the king should consider replacing 'No will to break' with 'No bonds to break’? Maybe then he wouldn't have messed up his plan as badly as he did.

#hollow knight #hollow knight spoilers #lore #theory #vessel #little ghost #the knight #pale king #hornet hollow knight #white lady

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