Chapter Text
The Pure Vessel. The Hollow Knight. Useless titles, now. It had no place in this new world, in the ruins of Father's kingdom. Ruins created by its failures. The gouged cavern where the White Palace its home had once sat. The overgrown, crumbling pathways, and His architecture eaten through by time. The emptiness. From bustling city to silence. His absence.
All because it failed.
Hornet called it Hollow. Hollow it would be called, then. She gave it some crumb of purpose. Gave orders, though none as consuming and demanding as His had been. She offered kindness and comfort, neither that Hollow knew how to receive. She carried some of His pale light, and for that, Hollow gravitated towards her, but she was not Him, and the peace and easy orders were wrong for something like it.
After reciting to itself Hornet's orders to endure its action did not conflict with them, Hollow followed another pale light it sensed. Something small and bright, prickling at it even from afar. Not quite like His. But not entirely unalike, either.
Hollow followed down, down. It did not look at its surroundings: it was incapable of caring where it went and it did not want need to know the state of the places it passed. It went to a place it had not been before, where trash accumulated in the sewers beneath the city.
The pale light pressed stronger against it. Closer. Closer.
Hollow knelt. A single flower, violently bright against the muted golds and blues of abandoned possessions. Not His, it confirmed, as a device unfeelingly confirmed an item's status. Its other knee struck the ground. It hunched. No shuddering or shaking. Just... Still. Unfeeling.
Not His light. Because Hornet said He was...
Still, Hollow reached out. Its claws cradled the flower and lifted it - only for a single petal to break away and slip between its fingers.
*
The petal's drift to the floor paused for a moment, a strange light glowing between it and its center, before the moment ended. A critical threshold passed, it exploded outwards, the mess of petals showering the Hollow Knight barely visible as a burst of darkness and light and more darkness came. Light, something so central to each part of the Vessel's strange life, came to an end.
The darkness stretched and flailed and grew as if to make up for the time it had spent hidden away. At first it went in every direction indiscriminately, as interested in thin air and the garbage underneath their feet as in the one who had lifted the flower, but soon it condensed.
They say that void is timeless, and its lord couldn't say if that was true or not. Measuring time was something that the Godseeker was much better at than they were. Once they were trapped, and now they weren't. Wasn't it enough to know that?
They opened their many eyes and looked around to see if that pretty and puzzling flower had left any remnants on the floor, but instead discovered something far stranger.
You?! they thought, a piecemeal of impressions sent indiscriminately. A tall figure with every inch the dignity of a storybook knight. A statue that seemed to cry amidst the three dreamers that might have been allies or obstacles. A pain so intense it jolted you from a dead sleep. A shadow cast small against the huge light of a doorway, only briefly aware of their existence.
*
Hollow staggered upright. Vast, black void. Antithesis to the light, a threat - the King had sealed away that Abyss for a reason.
Old instinct ran commands - all to prepare for a fight. If it should die protecting what was left of His kingdom, then it would.
It obeyed, only the vessel meant to execute those commands did not respond as it should. Legs too slow. Torso searing in pain at the quick change in position. The missing limb was no matter. It dropped the flower in favor of clutching its nail with the one remaining arm. What a broken, useless display.
And there, it... froze. Because the void spoke in a way it understood. Spoke inside. It was recognized.
Hollow staggered back again. Its nail embedded itself in the detritus - weapon turned cane, again, because it couldn't long hold itself upright without it. The memories it had been shown... one among them struck a memory of its own, though it was not pragmatic to go delving deeper. The void's intrusion was violation. Nevermind another memory; the rushing relief when darkness as this devoured blistering, searing orange light, and purged her thundering voice from its head.
'Return to that Abyss,' Hollow replied weakly. 'You do not belong here.' Would that be what Hornet wanted? It had echoed His sentiments as reflex, but Hornet was Queen, though she denied the role.
*
The ghost was no stranger to territorial bugs. They even enjoyed most of those challenges. Something about being told to go back to its birthplace like this, by this bug, was rawer and more painful, but they kept to the same response they always had.
No. There was no nail to draw, body overlarge and strange, but they stood stiff with the challenge sentient bugs understood even when they were so much smaller, a stubborn and unyielding foe. It belongs to me. Mixed thoughts drifted in their head, whether they truly claimed or were acknowledged by anything at all. But at least the sister did. Responsibility for the kingdom's future... They had slim concept of what that meant, but they knew enough to know they could never properly influence it by letting the Hollow Knight chase it out, if influence they indeed still sought.
*
Once, it had faced every opponent presented to it with nothing but a machine's lack of care. Or something close to that, at least. It never cowered. Never fled. Never flinched. Not in any way a bug might recognize.
Since then, it had housed the Old Light.
Shameful, weak, cowardly. To hear that blatant refusal and do nothing. To have the void in its body writhe in traitorous fear. Frail joke of the emotionless knight the Pale King had trained.
And yet. The thing before it resembled her, if only in their ability to overpower it. A resemblance that trembled through Hollow's limbs.
Hollow should stand its ground, insist that Hallownest's remains were not the property of Void. It didn't. Even speaking anything was difficult, faltering.
'You would devour all light, then... you would kill what few are left. All the bugs, and...' And Hornet. Why would they be satisfied only in devouring the Old Light? They sought to destroy every living thing.
*
... I would not. Simple bafflement filled the ghost's mind. While they had met many bugs with many different opinions on what the little vessel was, none had ever accused them of wanting to destroy all light and all bugs. A strange choice. They honed in on the Hollow Knight.
Intent as they were, they sensed the void resonating in its body. Ever since they had let the remains of their parents' strength truly merge with their body, they had come to sense the Void around them. Not just their own small (not now, not anymore) body, but also the dark imprint each sibling left on the world. In the dream, the Pure Vessel had never trembled like this. Or perhaps they had been too small to sense it. Other differences were picked out piece by piece. The bandages, the new cloak, the missing arm.
So different. And perhaps they too were so different. A bug might be so much more afraid of the large than the small. Did they want their sibling to be less afraid of them? Perhaps.
I already devoured the Radiance, that most malicious light. Bugs still need the other lights. They were pretty sure about this. Even they themselves had struggled once to crawl through the dark without a lantern.
*
The conviction that they wouldn't - this it sensed through the shared connection. Not a threat to Hallownest after all. At least not an active one. Not one it would have to imminently defend against. The exhaustion that swept through its body was visceral. It took so little to exhaust its shell now.
This being freed it from the Black Egg. Did what Hollow couldn't, in destroying her. That confirmation came with mingled sensations, none that it would indulge or allow to fruit. It would remain objective.
'If not destroy... then what will you do to Hallownest?' An odd notion: for all their darkness, there was some sliver of pale in them. Sensed rather than seen. Perhaps Hollow feared them less like it had feared the Radiance, and more like it had feared the Pale King. 'Rule? You will protect them? You will become King?'
*
I'm already king. There were so many ways bugs chose a ruler. Some the strongest. Some those who were born to those already ruling. Sometimes it was the one who gave life to them all. But this desolate kingdom chose its king by recognizing the imprint of the Wyrm. Their father had made such an impression in life that even in death, the remains of his power...
Preferring not to think about it, they stared down at the Hollow Knight. And what will you do?
*
Hollow hesitated. It was not asked what it would do. It was ordered. Instructed. Even this line of communication, which it had used for the practical purpose of identifying a possible threat, now seemed less appropriate. Ideas passed too easily. Words slipped out readily through their connection.
It must learn caution with this means of communication, as it had learned to control its own body and thoughts.
'It will serve the King,' Hollow asserted. Though what could a thing like it do for anyone? What use? And accepting one king was accepting the loss of another. All emotions it shouldn't have, though it had become accustomed to harboring many sentiments it shouldn't have. 'Until every last use is expired. Then it will leave and be no burden on any King or bug.'
*
The king… The wanderer was so used to others being king it took a moment for the implication to sink in. So there were bugs, not just mechanisms, that truly cared about who claimed the crown of this rotten kingdom.
Lay down your nail. they ordered speculatively. If they were truly its king, it would. If they were not, then at least they would know. Actions were much more reliable than words.
*
Hollow knelt and relinquished its weapon. Orders weren't to be questioned or considered. It did not need to know the King's intentions with it, nor any following steps. Needed no why. It wondered nothing.
Hollow exhaled unsteadily. Once the reflex to obey passed, and was properly satisfied, it...
Nothing. It felt nothing. The exhaustion of its body was purely mechanical - a flaw of its composition, unlike the metal contraptions Father devised, which never tired. The queasiness in its stomach, a minor error to be quelled. Don't consider if it was useless. A tool did not determine its own worth.
*
And it knelt, too. They had seen many who did, but none to them.
The king’s silhouette condensed somewhat, from a form that stretched high up to the ceiling to one that was only a few feet taller than the Hollow Knight itself. They picked up the discarded nail with one of their four arms and grasped the undamaged side of the Hollow Knight’s face with the other, tilting its head up. So you won’t fight me? they asked, fascinated by the shift that had taken place.
*
Everything about the thing before it was unnatural, morphing and fluid and dark, antithesis -
But also King. Last remnant of His light. Devourer. They saved Hallownest. They sought to protect the kingdom. They took it as tool and object to serve. He took it. And touched its mask in a way achingly familiar. The number of times it had wanted, when she ravaged it, for the smallest kind touch, like this -
Hollow shut down on the thought.
'It would never raise weapon against the King. An error in analyzing the situation motivated its initial threat. It will not repeat the same mistake.' Would he run its nail through its chest for the mistake? It'd be deserved.
*
Sourness bloomed in their chest along with sweetness. To be king, as they knew, was to take up the throne their creator’s corpse had once sat in, but they were unused to such a thing. It was much more familiar and pleasant to live in places where not a soul judged them as anything other than themself.
They distracted themself by running their hand up and down the Hollow Knight’s face and horn. Although vessels were all strange bugs that rarely had any body heat, something about touching it was different than touching the corpses and shed masks of their other siblings. Something subtly and distinctly alive.
Satisfied that the Hollow Knight had no intention of harming them, its liege considered the greatnail and their sibling’s state. Perhaps it would be better if it didn’t carry this around, for they were surely able to protect it at the moment.
On a whim they opened their mouth, exposing a huge, bottomless darkness, and swallowed the nail. It nestled in the strange internal space where charms and other small things of importance rested. Then they focused.
Their form grew even smaller, more focused, something that at first almost ached, and then it reached a happy medium. They resembled their first and most familiar form for the most part, perhaps slightly larger, with tendrils sticking out of their back, some extra they didn’t yet feel the need to tuck away. To float or to walk? After some consideration, they settled themself on the ground, gingerly touching the debris until the void no longer stained it, their outer membrane as steady as it had once been.
Did you come from the Black Egg? they asked, curious what their sibling had been up to since the Radiance died.
*
Hollow didn't lean into the touch, despite that it felt close to breaking. Since sealing, its mental defenses were in shambles. The stillness and silence that once came easily now was threatened by the smallest things, like Hornet tending its wounds, or the King providing gentle attention as if it was anything but an object.
For the best that the King's next actions so thoroughly confused it. He ate its weapon. The nail that it had carried through years. The nail granted by Father. He ate it.
Hollow stared. Their void within furled and writhed. That weapon had been forged in the kingdom's height. Even if it had done no right by its nail, this was treasonous, this was -
This was the will of the King, Hollow amended forcefully. Whatever he wished. Its weapon as contribution to one who could shift so easily from one form to the next. None of them so pale as the last. Rather, uncomfortably, near mirror image of an old form of Hollow's.
'It did,' Hollow replied stiffly. No need to talk about itself. 'What of you?' burst out, and it continued, recklessly out of control of such a fluid, easy means of communication, 'Sealed in the abyss but you refused to stay? Trained - by who? Father didn't mold your form. It would have known. But you bear His light. And you destroyed her. You take His throne. Our kind are not meant to be kings - though you are, you are. How?'
*
They suddenly sensed wrath radiating off the Hollow Knight, white hot and menacing as it could manage, and eyed it with confusion. While they felt anger, it was a small, sparse ember that rarely stoked to blazing. Even against the Radiance their own fury had been colder.
The feeling that the Hollow Knight gave off retreated suddenly, but it did not disappear. This too was strange to the Lord of Shades. But-
Who was the Hollow Knight, to question them about the Abyss? What right did it have? Their aura turned razor sharp and prickly as old memories ran through them. Though they didn’t intentionally project them, this was too untried a communication method for them to be fully contained. The resentment of their siblings that churned foul and noxious around them when they woke. That strong impression of somewhere else they had to go. A task- a task- someone and something they did not understand.
The memory, far more deliberate, of the Pale King’s corpse: a monarch near-useless and dead, of personally cracking his shell until finally that strange fragment of soulstuff fell out.
If the Pale King cared to mold my form or restrain my role, he should have met me in person. Malice dripped from them, vicious and slow. He knows nothing and is nothing, not even in dreams.
*
Although Hornet had said Father was gone, there'd been no clear proof. Until the image of His body, wrongly deflated in death. The divine mask whose cool impassivity Hollow had tried to replicate, cracked and dull.
That could be fake, too. An illusion, like she'd create. (Their resentment and anger didn't seem like an illusion.)
Hollow struggled upright. No nail anymore to grasp.
'You are nothing!' Hollow snarled. 'Refuse. Discarded for a reason.' Except they'd done what Hollow couldn't - Hollow's own failing. Not His. He was not this frail, defeated body on a throne -
Hollow clawed through its own limited experience with Void to lash back with images of its own, where words failed.
The calm dignity standing before thousands of bugs. Answering to their demands, while they had no care for His own thoughts. How elegantly He had endured, showing weakness and exhaustion only away from the sight of those He cared for. An enviable, perfect control; model for its own. The tiny clever claws ever crafting, the calculating mind ever bent to the aid of others, the few times He had looked at it, really looked and the aching longing left in His absence and -
Hollow shut down on that. Not all of that had been relevant. It hadn't conveyed its point. It needed the other vessel to understand, without that understanding being tied to Hollow's perspective. 'The error was its own,' Hollow clumsily and rapidly followed up. 'If it had only been what He needed-'
*
Some grudge lingering in the vessel's heart rejoiced to see the Hollow Knight, the Pure Vessel, the sibling that turned away focused on them with every fiber of its being. Struggling and fighting and trying to connect with them, somehow.
Even the image of the Pale King failed to take all the relish from the experience. A being dead and gone, supposedly perfect but in fact just as weak as anyone else. Struggling. Failing again and again. Sacrificing what he could bear to give and coming up with nothing. Sacrificing what he held dear and coming up with nothing.
When he locked you away, did he know it was doomed from the start? They say he was prescient! They say he knew the future. Did he look at you and see a solution, at the end? If so, it would be one of his final failings, proof that he was wrong, wrong, not objective, no flawless king at all. And if he did know, then what kind of stage play was it that he was performing? For whose benefit?
I was the solution. If I am am nothing, no one, the refuse and regret of your creation, how blind was that wyrm?
*
Had He known? Hollow's gaze dropped. The glittering trinkets coating the floor swam in its vision. When He looked at them, what really had been in His unknowable mind? Hollow had imagined affection; the softening of His sharp edges. It had seen pride, and felt the same reflected, quickly stifled (but guiltily, to some extent, harbored).
But did He ever truly look at it and think it was the key to resolve all His pain? Had He ever felt relief?
... Had its presence ever relieved Him of the weight He carried?
...
Hollow felt sick. 'It doesn't claim to know His mind,' it uttered. This slimy intrusion of another's thoughts. Hatred of the Pale King. These images of an empty corpse. It wanted all that gone. 'Nor do you know! He saw the future. His choices were just. Order it. Command it. But do not speak of Him like this!'
*
I will think of him however I please. Though they saw their sibling moved, painfully moved, almost unbearably moved, it was frustrating to imagine why. Why their sibling went along with it. Why once this shade too had considered it a viable option, something to be sought. Their siblings below, bearing the same pain in their heart. All these painful and unnecessary things.
... Must we think of him at all. Nothing would please the shade more than to see the Pale King utterly forgotten. By them, by everyone, a footnote in history too damaged to read. That the corpse of his first body had decayed, that his palace had naught but a door-frame, that time erode it all.
Suddenly composed, the shade looked around at the debris around their feet, their small body contrasted with the Hollow Knight's large but fragile one. They pulled out a map.
*
Sour, roiling displeasure.
Even if all else forgot. It would remember. That could be its one driving purpose - a thread carrying through all other orders and purposes. Divine calling. And would it fail that, too?
Hollow's claws bit into its palm. An old, foolish technique of controlling thought with pain. One it had grown past long ago. Better anyway to use the pain already reaming through its body. The wounds she left.
It stood straighter, insomuch as its destroyed form could.
It had anticipated orders from the Pale King plenty. It did the same here, 'Speak to Hornet in Dirtmouth. Apart from you, she is the closest to monarch of Hallownest, now.'
*
What a bossy vassal the Hollow Knight was. In truth, there was not much displeasure at it, as they had lived most of their life with no real purpose, blowing idly to the winds of whatever they came across, be it place or bug.
Does she want to speak to me? They struggled to envision it, the Gendered Child they knew seeking them out. She had once saved them, that they might save Hallownest. And now it was saved, wasn't it? That quest was complete. Then again, she likely had no idea what had happened. Many things happened in the corners of the world, but this little ghost never shared them, eternal secrets except for those with the time to guess. And guessing that they had destroyed the Radiance... she had hoped for it, yes? So maybe she would guess.
*
'She thought you died.' As had Hollow. Released with no explanation, only that billowing shadow... and Radiance's light and voice gone from its head.
'She should know the truth. Especially if you will claim this kingdom.' The worshipful subservience, a second nature triggered by his claim at king, did not come so easily now, nursing quietly the knowledge that neither Hornet nor this king were keen on Father. Still. It would serve.
*
I didn't die. the king said, as if it needed to be clarified. They looked between the Hollow Knight and the map, then slid the map back under their cloak. A decision made, it reached out with all its tendrils, grabbing the Hollow Knight firmly and thoroughly, curling around all its limbs. Then they raised their nail.
Before, the nail had merely faded into the background of its own power, bereft of the attention of its wielder, but now a veil quickly slid over them, brighter and brighter. The king closed their eyes and thought about a certain bench, the first one they had ever rested their shell on when they arrived at Hallownest, so real they could see it.
*
Chains wound around its limbs. Sleepless scorching orange light.
SURRENDER - YOUR KING ABANDONED YOU - WHY DO YOU FIGHT? - EMBRACE MY LIGHT OR I WILL BREAK YOUR BODY AND MIND. ONE END OR ANOTHER, I WILL BE FREE. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS TIME.
Hollow staggered, which made no sense, as it should be chained and hung. A fresh new spike of terror. It wasn't chained. She had broken free.
The image of a town wobbled before its eyes. Dirtmouth. Stumbling from the Black Egg. Radiance wasn't free. She was destroyed.