Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

What If

The White Lady has absolute, unfailing faith in her husband. Not once has he let her down, or been proven wrong. Not once has his foresight failed. So she does not hesitate to agree when, in his desperation to contain the growing plague that threatens every life in their Kingdom, he asks for her assistance in a last-ditch scheme. If he says their hybrid offspring will have no selves to be lost, that they will never have even been truly alive, then she believes him. After all, she has an absolute, unfailing faith in her husband. And yet—

And yet.

A doubt plages her, brought about by the pure sentiment of having any sort of offspring. Just four damning words, and she cannot rid herself of them. What if he's wrong? He can't be wrong, she assures herself. He's never been wrong before. Why would this be any different? 

But what if it is?
What if he’s wrong ?

Many long days pass before her perfect faith splinters and she considers the consequences if she's right. If he is wrong. It takes only a few moments of contemplation for her to wish she had refused him in his desperation.

No cost too great to save Hallownest, to keep the fetid mind-rot of a castoff goddess from spreading beyond their borders. But this? The sacrifice of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of children if his first batch is unsuccessful? The death of their babies? The sacrifice of children? This, she cannot abide, not even for the Wyrm.

The cost is too great, and the more she watches him, the more she observes his frenetic calculus, the more certain she is. Normally, he is a scientist of the highest order. Calm, methodical, accounting for every contingency, every possible factor. But not now. Now, desperation has made him sloppy. He never even considers what he will do if he is wrong, so certain is he that his plot will work. Not because he has accounted for every factor, but because it must work.

She knows she cannot dissuade him, not now, but a more devious solution presents itself. She hesitates—the plan amounts to treason, though she doubts he would hold it against her. No cost too great, she thinks, and is resolved.

He cannot sacrifice their children if there are no children to sacrifice.

The Knights

The White Lady’s private office is less of an office and more of a greenhouse that just so happens to contain records and writing materials. Nestled deep in the heart of her Gardens, the office is one of the most well-guarded spaces in the entire complex, and so the perfect place to form her plot. It is here that she is sitting as she scrutinizes her husband’s reports, gathering every piece of information she can in preparation. A Handmaiden stands to the side of her stone desk, transcribing the White Lady’s words whenever she reads aloud a particularly relevant passage. Dryya is absent, but fully half of the Queensguard stand sentinel at the doors.

When those doors open, around midday, she pauses and looks up from her work. Another Handmaiden walks in and curtseys gracefully before announcing the visitors who trail in her wake.  “My Lady, may I present the Great Knights Orgim and Isma.”

“Excellent,” the White Lady says, setting aside the report. “Thank you, Agerata, you are dismissed.” Agerata curtseys again and departs, leaving the Knights to stand alone before their Queen.

“You have my gratitude for coming so quickly,” the White Lady says, rubbing tiredly at the space between her eyes. A mild ache has formed there over the course of the day.

Ogrim and Isma exchange a glance. “Of course,” Isma says cautiously. “No less for you, my Lady. Do you have need of us?”

“Perhaps. But first—“ she gestures to her Handmaiden—“Iris, if you would?” The Handmaiden pulls two records from a cubby in the wall and hands one to each Knight before returning to the Queen’s side. The office is utterly silent as they read, expressions growing uncomfortable as they realize exactly what the records outline.

Isma finishes first and looks up. “My Lady,” she says haltingly, searching for words, “what...is this?”

The White Lady folds her hand together and offers the Kindly Knight a grave look. “Has the King informed you of his plan? To contain the pestilence?” 

“A limited amount,” Isma admits with a shake of her head. “He…described an automaton, a biological creation with no true life, hollowed out to contain the Light. But this…” she trails off, looking back down at the document in her grasp. “This is...unspeakable.” When raises her face again, desperation is written across every line of her body. “Why would you show this to me—to us?”

“Because I require your assistance in preventing a tragedy,” the White Lady says quietly. “My Wyrm is no longer thinking clearly about this. There is no hope of dissuading him. But I have resolved to rescue my children when they emerge, to spirit them away to these very Gardens where they might grow in peace and safety.”

Orgim speaks up for the first time, sounding deeply conflicted. “My Queen...this is treason.”

She sighs at the accusation, though it had lacked any bite. “Perhaps,” she acknowledges. “But I mean no harm to my husband or to Hallownest. I only hope that innocents might be spared and in doing so I might force the King to find another way.” She bows slightly, pressing her forehead into the palm of her hand. Her voice drops to a whisper. “Another cost to pay. Anything but this.”

Ogrim and Isma exchange another, longer glance. “Dryya supports you,” Ogrim says, and it’s not a question.

The White Lady raises her head. “Yes. As do my handmaidens—“ Iris nods, boldly meeting each of the Knights eyes— “and my Guard.”

“We stand with our Lady,” the guards at the door say in unison. “We stand with our Lady’s children.”

“Against the King?” Isma murmurs to herself. “Or…” she looks down at the document. “...against an act of ill-considered evil?” 

“I will stand with you in this,” Ogrim declares suddenly, startling both Isma and the White Lady. He looks to Isma, a silent question communicated between them. 

Isma’s answer comes slowly at first, then with growing confidence. “I will stand with you as well, dear Queen. I will stand with you! And I will stand with your children!”

The White Lady exhales, slumping as if a great burden has suddenly been lifted from her shoulders. “Thank you,” she says, pure relief on her face. “Thank you.” 

Then her expression turns from relief to determination. “Now come. We have much to prepare for.”

Doubt

The White Lady contemplates the miniature Vessel statuette in her hand—one of ten such miniatures, made for placing on maps and plotting out the route they will use to bring the children home. Lily, the head of her Handmaidens, sits on the other side of the planning table, busily researching old texts on the Ancient Basin in the hopes of plotting out such a route. Miniatures of each Handmaiden and Queensguard member stand in neat lines beside a large map of Hallownest. The miniatures of Dryya, Isma, Ogrim, and the White Lady herself are yet to be completed. She turns the Vessel in her palm, watching the light of the lumafly lanterns shift over its painted white shell.

“Lily,” she says suddenly, “am I doing the right thing?”

Lily pauses, the busy scratching of her quill at last going silent. She looks up, perplexed. “My Lady?” she asks.

The White Lady’s eyes do not move from the miniature. “Am I doing the right thing? Stealing the children away?”

Lily is never one to speak rashly, and now is no different. Silence envelops the women for a long time. 

“May I have permission to speak freely?” Lily says at length, her tone slow and thoughtful.

“You may.”

To the White Lady’s surprise, Lily reaches over, takes the Vessel miniature, and clasps the Queen’s hand in her own. “You are letting fear consume you,” she says, earnestly meeting the White Lady’s eyes. “This is beneath you. You need only remember how much it took for you to even consider this to know the truth of the matter. You have weighed this action against every viable alternative. If you are wrong, it will be through no fault of your own.”

“And if the children are truly hollow?” The White Lady whispers, grasping Lily’s hand tightly. “If I am wrong, I will have done nothing but damn Hallownest and sow the seeds of mistrust between me and my husband.”

But Lily shakes her head firmly. “If you are wrong, we will close the Void. Nothing will be lost. But my Lady, you are not wrong.” She frees one hand and gestures to the materials strewn across the planning table. “I would stake my life on it.”

The tense, coiled fear, like a rope of thorns wound tightly around the White Lady’s heart, relaxes and falls away. She laughs a little, pulling her hands from Lily’s grasp and smoothing down the front of her robes. “You are right. Of course you are right. My wise Lily, always blooming in the tempest.”

“You flatter me too much, my Lady,” the Handmaiden demurs. “Fierce Dryya would have given you the same answer.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. You are too modest.” The White Lady sighs. “Forgive the interruption of my silly fears. We still have much to do.”

“One day soon you will hold your children here, safe and sound,” Lily promises. “And on that day, every fear will have proven itself worth the burden of carrying.”

The White Lady glances at the neat line of Vessel miniatures, each pale white shell gleaming in the light. “It already has,” she murmurs.

Chapter Text

The Pale King unseals the Void, and what he finds is... not what he expected. 

Not only is a Vessel standing in wait upon the platform, but two are. Truth be told, he had not expected even one. The path to ascension is prohibitively difficult, and purposefully so. Only a strong, Pure Vessel could have made it. By his own calculations, he had expected to run three trials at a minimum before finding his Pure Vessel. And yet, here is not one, but two on the very first trial.
"Curious," he murmurs, kneeling and taking one's shell in his hands, tilting it to and fro in examination, before examining the other as well. They endure his scrutiny without so much as a twitch of will or mind.

Pure, the both of them.

"Corvus," he calls absently, standing and straightening his robes. His lone assistant glides forward, reams of silken parchment in his arms. The Pale King takes part of the stack, rifles through it, and pulls out a few sheets in particular before handing the rest back. One pale claw skates over the inked calculations, checking and double-checking for error.

Nothing.

Of course nothing. He ran the numbers himself, twice, and even went so far as to commission one of the Teacher's mathematicians to do the same (without any variables or labels of course—just pure numbers). The twitchy little thing had done a remarkable job, even if her report to him had been full of nervously stuttered "Y-Your Majesties".

And yet…

He taps a claw against his mask thoughtfully, lingering over the probabilities section. Well, a slim probability is still a probability, he supposes. There is also the Void to consider. However much he included it in his calculation, there is still the glaring fact that he simply didn't—and doesn't —understand it. The unknowns might very easily have skewed the probabilities in one direction or the other. The Vessels are Pure; there is no reason to spurn good fortune simply because his calculations were slightly off.

He hands the pages back to Corvus and looks down at the Vessels, who watch him with preternatural stillness and timeless patience. "Come along, then," he says, turning away, and the Vessels trail obediently in his wake.

Despite himself, he feels a pang of regret. These lifeless shades could have been his children, had Fate been different. What would they have been like? What would they have looked like? Pale white carapaces, perhaps, and shells with branching horns that resembled his beloved Root. Instead, here are mindless automatons, stained with void, destined to stand eternal watch over a virulent goddess. He nearly regrets creating them, these empty facsimiles of children. 

But of course that is pure sentiment. Their creation was necessary to save every life—every mind in Hallownest.

Corvus and the Vessels stand off to the side as the Pale King permanently seals the void, allowing his mind to wander down a fanciful path as he works. Perhaps, once Hallownest is safe, he might convince his Root to mother a real child? Perhaps she won’t even need convincing—neither had ever brought the subject up until the Vessels' creation. His seal glows bright as he imagines such a thing, conjuring the earlier image of a pale white infant, cradled in its mother's arms. Yes, he thinks as he leads the way out of the Ancient Basin, once all is said and done, he will ask if his wife desires a child as well.

He never once notices, much less thinks to question, the Vessels' linked hands.

Chapter Text

I don’t have a name.

How could I? I never got to live. In fact, I’m barely a me. There are others like me, others who never got to live. My siblings, each a piece of nothingness given form. I am the one who was closest to life, the one who almost got to live. I am almost a person. There were young ones, too, who died before any of us lived. They died too soon, and the stuff that made them went away. Our stuff stayed. I don’t know why. For a long time I didn’t know anything at all.

But now—now I know something. Now I have a purpose. Mother called to us and filled the hollows within us, the empty places that might have let us live. Some of us followed Mother and our living siblings. I wanted to. I wanted mother to see me and love me. But there was another little sibling left, unborn and unnoticed except by the oldest. I didn’t want them to be alone, so I stayed. 

Others like me stayed too. They didn’t want to leave me. They wanted to be with the living siblings who were like us. So we stayed, and followed, even though no one noticed us. Then our Father came, and he took the living ones with him. We kept following. Mother would have wanted us to. 

I don’t know where he’s going. I don’t know why I was made. But maybe if I follow I’ll understand. And maybe if I understand, I’ll be a person. 

And maybe, if I’m a person… someone will give me a name.

Chapter Text

The bug scrambled backward in a tangle of gangly black limbs, impacting the pristine white wall with a thud. Pale red hemolymph marred the white stone in jagged streaks as it continued its desperate flight.

“Please,” It babbled, terrified beyond all reason as the Pale King’s Voice advanced on it with deadly intent, an ornate silver spear held loosely in his hand. “Please, I see now! Our King is Great and greatly to be praised! I was blind! I was deluded! I see now! Please! Please !”

The King’s Voice paused when the bug backed itself into a corner, its pleas growing ever more incoherent. “Shut up,” he told the would-be assassin coldly. With a deft flick of his hand, a long black dart embedded itself between the bug’s bulbous eyes. The threat was removed just as quickly as it had arrived. “Tch,” he clicked, eyeing the corpse in disgust. “Pathetic.” He spun on one foot, turning back to his brother, who was the only reason he was even far enough into the Palace depths to intercept the assassin.

Corvus waited patiently, hands clasped together. “Thank you, Aquila,” he signed when he saw the Voice turn back to him. “My cargo is too precious to risk in a fight.”

“Your cargo is always too precious,” Aquila sighed. “Or so you say. Were you not my brother, I would suspect prevarication.”

A glimmer of mirth entered Corvus’s eyes, gleaming beneath the shade of his headdress. “This time it’s true,” he signed. “Just look at them! How magnificent is the work of our Lord’s mind! It is a masterful achievement, and so much greater when considered in light of their purpose. The Plague will never have opportunity to advance past the outskirts of Hallownest.”

Aquila cast an unimpressed glance at the two ‘Vessels’ strapped to his brother’s back like strange, empty dolls. Their void-black eyes watched him from over Corvus’s shoulders. “Magnificent,” he grunted, heading off a speech from Corvus extolling the virtues of their Lord’s mind. “So magnificent that we should get them to where they need to be. Now.”

“You have no sense of magnitude,” Corvus complained, even as he fell into step beside his brother. “You didn’t see the detail that went into this! Why—“ Aquila, longsuffering but tolerant, endured Corvus’s enthusiasm for the rest of the trip to the Palace’s heart.

And all the while, the Vessels kept their silent, ceaseless watch.

Chapter Text

The first thing Panacea feels is her brother.

She doesn’t understand it, this cool push-and-pull in her mind. Almost as soon as she feels it, it spikes and becomes painful. Fear is what she will learn to call it, that feeling that her brother unintentionally communicated to her. She reacts, withdrawing from the pain on instinct. She doesn’t understand.

But he does. A moment later, he presses his mind to hers and it feels different. Warm, apologetic, but also incomplete. When she’s older, she’ll marvel at how quickly he learned to hide parts of his mind away to protect her, but in the moment she accepts it without thought.

Things change rapidly. She can feel as her brother does something she doesn’t understand, pulled by an impulse she does not yet share. Then, suddenly, she does: she wants to be free of her warm confinement. The thought has scarcely occurred to her when he’s there, peeling away the top of her egg with incredible care.

His shell is the first thing she sees. Pale with nubby horns, dripping black and glowing white as he appears over her. She reaches up as he reaches in. He lifts her out of the glowing fluid that sustained her—their—growth.

She stands a little shorter than he does, so he must bend slightly to wipe the birthing fluids from her shell. She begins to feel other siblings around them, though they are distant and unknown as they begin to wake too.

“Panacea,” he says, drawing her attention back.

She feels, through their entwined minds, that he is… “Regulus,” she whispers in response. It does not seem strange to her that he knows his future name, or hers.

“Stay here,” he says, tapping the side of her shell. “And don’t follow me.”

“Alright,” she agrees, feeling the importance of his request. He tells her what who coming, what will happen, and where she must be.

Only then does she understand. A sibling will die, and her presence is the only thing that can save them.

“Love you,” he says, tapping their foreheads together, and vanishes.

Everything happens exactly as he said it would. Their mother appears eventually, knocking a hole in the side of their birthplace, and speaks into their minds. Panacea basks in the gentle warmth, swaying slightly as her mother’s voice sings through her, body and soul.

She climbs.

Halfway up, a little sibling falls, just like he said, and it is only her presence that prevents their death. She sets them down, smoothing her hands over their shell as they shake in fright. Thank you, they whisper, and the only way they can express their gratitude is by feebly mimicking the warmth of their mother’s voice.

We are united, she says in reply. And I have saved you, just like she said. They climb out together.

And then she is freed, lost in a crowd of her siblings. She stops to consider. He told her not to follow. She had to save their sibling. But now…now she can follow him.

If he doesn’t like it, she thinks, he can tell her himself.

The first thing Regulus ever understands is pain. His mind forms in darkness fractured with light, in flashes of white and orange that sear into his infant consciousness. He’s terrified by it. There’s another feeling too, warm and soft, and it withdraws in pain itself at his reaction. 

He Sees.

(Sister, precious, beloved, his, with a white shell and curling horns. He lifts her from her egg. He leaves her in her egg. He takes her with him. He leaves her behind. She lives. She dies. Panacea, a bug clad in dark purple and green says fondly. A bug with pointed white horns—Father—looks at her. Blighted light drips from the slavering jaws of a monster. Blighted light seeps into Panacea’s eyes. Regulus, she whispers as he puts a nail through her heart. Void drips from his hands.)

He pulls quickly away from her mind, pushing the Sights into a corner of his consciousness. He locks them away and smooths a bright silver barrier over them. They hurt him and he hurt his sister in turn. He can’t let it happen again. When he reaches out for her, he lets only warmth touch her shivering little presence. She re-entwines with him happily, not questioning his sudden change.

Time passes, and he continues to Watch. He has no choice.

(He cranes his neck up and up and up to see the face of a tall, pale bug with kind blue eyes—Mother. Hundreds of his siblings climb, answering her call. One falls. No one is there to catch her and she shatters against the ground. Panacea is there to catch her and she lives. I’m sorry, his father whispers to him, pressing their foreheads together. I’m sorry, he whispers, pulling his nail from his father’s heart. A sea of grown siblings stands before him, their eyes glowing a uniform orange. An angry goddess tears him apart, piece-by-piece. He trips on a stone and dies. Light glimmers on the edge of a telescope’s bulbous lense.)

Then he feels it, the urge to break open his egg. Panacea does not share his impulse.

(He is one of the first, but not the first. He resists the impulse and stays until he is the last. Blighted light drips from a crack in a sibling’s shell.)

The egg gives easily beneath his fists and he crawls out, gasps in his first breath of air. Black Void and glowing white drip from his body. He shakes his wings out, scattering glowing droplets onto the ground, and sinks down against the egg as another wave of Visions incapacitates him.

(A bug rushes through a dripping city. His mother and father yell at each other, both furiously angry. His mother’s eyes are orange where she sits bound in unbreakable ties. A bug kneels before his father and rasps, Treason. A sister weeps blighted tears. He cries out in agony as his wings are torn from his body. His siblings mill about in a cavern as their mother seals the way behind him.)

He wakes with a start as Panacea’s mind shifts. He peels open the top of her egg and sees her with his own eyes for the first time. She reaches for him with perfect trust and he lifts her out. When she stands on her own feet he wipes the birthing fluids away from her face, bending slightly to do so. Others have begun to stir around them.

He doesn’t understand uncontrollable Sight, but he has Seen enough to know that he must act. But Panacea must stay, or one of their sisters will die. So he tells her his name and hers, entwining their minds tightly so that she’ll understand why she must stay when he goes. She agrees with no hesitation.

(He doesn’t explain and she follows and they both die.)

 He taps their foreheads together. “Love you,” he says, and leaves her behind.

(He wanders. He wanders and wanders and wanders. There is a lighthouse and he dies in it, skewered by the nail of a guard bug. He falls into the black sea and never surfaces again. He falls and shatters against the ground. He climbs and falls, falls and climbs. He falls and falls and falls. He finds a way out and climbs and does not fall.)

He steers in the direction of his last vision, heading for a small crevasse upwards that provides just enough of an opening for him to wiggle out of his birthplace and into the lands above. The exit puts him on the edge of a dusty plain.

(He walks and walks and eventually finds the bases of enormous support pillars that stretch so high above him he cannot make out their tops.)

He turns and heads for the narrow tunnels that run through the rock surrounding the plains. If he wants to eliminate the threat to his siblings, he must be in place before it arrives.

Chapter Text

The heart of the Queen’s Gardens was far quieter than one would expect, given that it housed approximately a thousand newborn children. Regulus found this both amusing and convenient as he quietly made his way toward his goal, robed in a slipshod green cloak that concealed his shell. Amusing because the silence was in sharp contrast to the absolute hurricane of mental noise around him; convenient because he was hardly the only silent black-and-white figure skulking about in piecemeal clothing. Nonetheless, he was taking a risk doing this. If one of his mother’s employees spotted him—especially certain Handmaidens—then he would be hard-pressed to escape. Worse, if his mother herself caught him he had no hope of evading her. It would be over, and he would be stuck under her supervision, forced to sit by and endure the future as it happened.

He flinched, pausing and holding his shell as his thoughts briefly flashed down that hazy future, all darkness and death and searing orange light. 

It was imperative that he avoid being caught. 

Regulus had been careful to wait for an opportunity, the one-in-a-million path to his goal that would be completely clear no matter what, and this was it. He passed his siblings quietly, nodding or offering a greeting when one greeted him. He ducked around a corner as a sibling who would have off-handedly mentioned his appearance to Peony passed. He slipped down a child-sized tunnel of greenery to avoid the vigilant gaze of the Queensguard member standing watch at the north gate. He refitted a broken tile into its slot, preventing a different sibling from tripping and cracking their shell badly enough to summon worried adults.

Finally, Regulus pushed through a thick hedge and reached his goal—his sister Blossom. He hesitated, taking in the scene before him. Blossom, sitting alone on the base of a column, had a tiny potted plant in her lap which she was growing into a new shape with her powers. Those powers were his greater concern, and the greater threat. Unlike the clear, fractured futures where one of the adults caught him, Blossom’s decisions were warped and shrouded, as if he was trying to see them through deep, churning waters. She very well could decide to restrain him after he spoke to her. Already she had grasped their mother’s abilities with great finesse. If she used them against him, he had no way to free himself. He had learned a little of his own magic, certainly, but he didn’t have the kind of raw power or specific knowledge necessary to counter her.

But he wouldn’t have come in the first place if he thought it wasn’t worth the risk, so he drew in a deep breath, lowered his hood, and stepped into the light.

“Blossom.”

She looked up, curious, and the glow from her fingers faded away as she abandoned her practice. “Hello there,” she said warmly, apparently used to being approached by random siblings. Regulus felt a questioning brush of her mind against his, like silken black fingers tapping against the closed silver mirror of his mind. “Do you need something?”

With a slow exhale, he opened his mind to her touch, careful to hold back even a hint of his fractured Sight. “Blossom,” he repeated, watching carefully as she jerked in surprise at the tenor of his thoughts. “I’m here to tell you some very important things, and I—I need you to trust me. You cannot tell Mother. You cannot tell anyone, or…” he flinched, control slipping a little as Blossom’s spike of alarm caused the future to shatter and reform in his Vision. Orange sparked along the edge of his Sight. “…bad things,” he rasped, clutching his shell. “Terrible things will happen.”

She plucked his name from his mind when he offered it, her earlier alarm melting into cautious attention. “Regulus—” she said, and he flinched.

Do not speak my name aloud, he interrupted, his voice falling into silence as he switched entirely to mental communication. Please.

Blossom cocked her head to the side, and he caught a ripple of amusement. Mama is looking for you, she said, catching on immediately to his motives. I heard her say Lily is taking your behavior as a personal challenge. What did you do?

Regulus surprised himself by laughing a little at Blossom’s question. It was the first time he could ever remember laughing outside of a vision. I…did challenge her, he admitted, sharing the memory of the Handmaidens’ ill-fated attempt to corner him. I didn’t mean to though, it was just…I was aiming for the best reaction I could get and that was the one.

Blossom hummed, leaning back against the column and crossing her arms. So why shouldn’t I go get Mama right now, Regulus? she challenged, looking him up and down. His breath caught as he was suddenly reminded of exactly how dangerous she was and exactly how dangerous she would grow to be. Tell me, why shouldn’t I pin you where you stand and call her right now? Why should I trust you over her?

Regulus stilled as the future tilted wildly.

(Vines grow up his legs, pinning him in place. She doesn’t listen to his pleas. His mother embraces him with fierce relief. The world drowns in caustic orange.)

(Vines grow up his legs, pinning him in place. She doesn’t listen to his pleas. In desperation, he tries to force his way free and loses his legs in the process. His mother embraces him with fierce grief. The world downs in caustic orange and so does he.)

(Vines grow up his legs, pinning him in place. She doesn’t listen to his pleas. In desperation, he splits her shell in two. He throws himself into the Void and dashes to pieces against the bottom, breathing his last where he breathed his first.)

(Vines begin to grow up his legs, but he turns tail and flees before they can pin him in place. Rose catches him before he can make it to Greenpath. No plea will sway her or loosen her tight hold as she carries him back. His mother embraces him with fierce relief. The world drowns in caustic orange.)

(He speaks, and Blossom listens.)

He drew in a shuddering breath. Blossom was shaking, her shell in her hands, and he realized with no little horror that his control had slipped. His vision had hurt her. He had hurt her. “Blossom—!” he gasped, closing the distance between them. His wings beat sharply in agitation, ruffling the bushes. “I’m so—”

“Shh!” she hissed, straightening. The pain in her mind dissipated as she forced it to. I understand, she said urgently, taking his face in her hands. I understand, Regulus. Please, tell me what I need to know. I promise I won’t tell Mama or anyone else, and I won’t try to keep you here either.

The world shifted again, then settled into the most stable form he’d ever Seen. His breath hitched, relief warring with disbelief as his own pain receded. The future became a problem for the future, at least for a little while. He nearly wept at the Sight. Blossom caught him as he swayed, and he didn’t resist as she led him to sit on the column base next to her.

You can’t try to speak to Father, he said bluntly. That was the greatest threat, that her compassion and optimism would compromise their secrecy too early. He can’t know about us, not until he’s ready. And you can’t save Larula and Cavatus yet either. They must be there until we’re bigger. Whenever you see one of our siblings trying to leave you must stop them.

Alright, Blossom agreed slowly. I can be… patient.

Mother is going to question herself a lot and question Father even more, he continued, but you must support her faith in him. She knows what she needs to, you just need to remind her of that.

Alright, I can do that too , she agreed, this time much more easily. What else.

Regulus hesitated, briefly blocking her from his mind as he searched for anything he may have missed. Ah, he said, opening again, one last thing. He took her hands in his and looked her in the eyes. Blossom, no matter how much Dryya insists, never take any more combat classes than you must.

At that, Blossom laughed outright. I think I can safely promise you that one, brother dear, she said wryly. If it hasn’t worked so far, it won’t in the future.

It was only a slim probability, he admitted, but I thought I’d say it just to be certain. The distant future shifted slightly, his warning virtually eliminating the few paths where Blossom became like him and their father.

He looked down, withdrawing into his own mind again. “I must go,” he said. “Thank you for believing me, Blossom.”

“You’re welcome.” She pulled him into a tight hug, pressing the side of her shell against his. He blinked in surprise as he returned the embrace. The tight, painful thing in his chest loosened a little. He pulled away reluctantly when the probability of Calla spotting him on her patrol began to increase.

“Will I see you again?” Blossom asked as he began to walk away.

He glanced back. She was still sitting on the column’s base, and her potted plant was once more in her lap. In the corner of his eye, he Saw:

(She changes her mind. Vines grow up his legs, pinning him in place. His mother embraces him with fierce relief. She says she’s sorry. He doesn’t believe her. Father learns of them later, but the world still drowns in caustic orange.)

Then he blinked and the path vanished entirely. “Yes,” he decided. “You will.” And he meant it, as he turned away again and pulled his hood up. She would see him again, because he was determined to make it so.

Chapter Text

Peony’s skin itched terribly beneath the thick black suit Deadealus had crafted at her request. Her filaments were coiled up and tucked into an elaborate mask—not the most comfortable, considering how it dampened her senses, but she had worn worse. Cold, foul-smelling liquid dripped from the low ceiling of the tunnel, seeping through the seams in her faux-shell armor and into the suit beneath. Her shortnails hung from a belt slung across her hips, knocking against the armor with each step. It was only the makeshift vine scabbards around them that kept them from making a clattering cacophony of noise that would certainly draw every hostile bug within a league of her position.

Not that stealth truly helped on her mission. The target she was so carefully tracking would be alert to her presence long before any noise she made could reach him. Still, she was successfully tracking his footprints—and closing in, if the increasing freshness of the tracks was any indication. Almost as if he’s letting me, she mused hopefully. She had little chance of capturing him, but that wasn’t her goal. It was more than enough to satisfy her Lady’s wishes if he would let her speak to him.

The tunnel abruptly dead-ended into a small cavern. Elegant vines crawled up the craggy walls; short blue tendrils poked out of the ground. In one corner, a bright blue cocoon glowed merrily away and beneath it, bathed in its cool light, stood her target.

She started to speak: “I’m not here—”

“—to hurt me?” he interrupted wryly, turning around so she could see his pale shell beneath the tattered green cloak. 

“ Or to catch you, Regulus,” she said gently.

“I know. That’s why I let you track me here.” He pushed the hood down, letting her see the nubby horns that crowned his head. No cracks. No injuries. No dripping void visible. He had turned smoothly, unhindered by a limp. He was healthy. She relaxed slightly as he continued: “And no, you needn’t add heresy to my list of slights against Mother. I am here because no one will disturb us in this place.”

Well, that was another concern allayed. “Will you speak with me, then?” she asked, taking a cautious step forward.

He nodded but held up a tiny black hand. “Stay there. Any closer and the temptation will be too great for you.”

“As you say, then.” Peony sank gracefully to her knees, ignoring the discomfort of the armor digging into her legs. She got right to the heart of the matter, asking that which her Lady was most concerned with. “Are you in danger?”

Regulus sat as well, crossing his legs and draping his wings to either side of him. They shone faintly, even in the wash of blue light. “We are all in danger,” he said evenly. “The Blighted Light spreads further with each passing day.”

Peony resisted the urge to roll her eyes—clearly she had been spending too much time around Belladonna lately. “That wasn’t my question and you know it,” she said patiently. “Regulus. Are you, specifically, in danger of immediate harm?”

To her amazement, he hesitated. “I—yes. No. No, I… It is unlikely that I will come to substantial harm.”

Ah. “So you endure minor hurts constantly.”

“That is the price for my actions,” he responded immediately. Peony smiled behind the mask, hearing the childish defensiveness in his voice. It was reassuring to know that there was a little boy hidden within the lofty words and preturnatural competence. 

“Perhaps it is,” she soothed. “I don’t mean to belittle your sacrifices. I am only concerned.”

Regulus drew his little chest up proudly. “It is no issue,” he said firmly. “And it does not trouble me.”

She could tell that it really didn’t trouble him. Admirable, perhaps, but the calm acceptance of suffering in her Lady’s infant child still broke her heart. Her next words were uttered incautiously, birthed by grief. “Will you not come home? Surely you know that we only want to protect you.”

Regulus regarded her gravely. “I know,” he said, his voice soft. “I know you mean no harm. But intentions are insufficient. I cannot show you that which I know. I can only act on it, and request that you trust me .”

“If you told us what you Saw—”

But he was shaking his head before she even finished. “My Sight is too fluid. There are many times when even I cannot act with the requisite alacrity. But to trust secondhand or thirdhand action? It is not reasonable.” He lowered his head slightly. “And believe you me, Miss Peony, I did Look.” 

Peony dug her fingers into her palm until the skin split, feeling herself on the verge of tears. They all tried so hard to catch Regulus, to show him that he could rely on them, as adults, to take care of the burdens he placed on himself. But if this was true, if there really was no other way... “Is there nothing we can do to help you?” She whispered past the lump in her throat.

Regulus stood, pulling the hood back up over his shell. “You can trust me,” he said simply. “Tell Mother I am sorry. This is the only way.”

Peony was overtaken by a wild impulse, born of grief and helplessness and utterly unbefitting of a Handmaiden. She lunged for the child from her kneeling position with all the deadly speed she possessed. But Regulus moved like liquid shadow, his cloak brushing mockingly against her fingertips as he nimbly spun away and vanished into a side passage, one far too small for her to pursue him through.

Peony was left alone, hand still outstretched, as her Lady’s child once more eluded them.

Chapter Text

Breaking into the White Palace was much harder than breaking into the Queen’s Garden had been. For one thing, there was no crowd of siblings for Regulus to blend into. He had only two siblings here, and both of those were accounted for at all times. There was also the matter of his father. More specifically, of his father’s foresight. Regulus had a tentative hypothesis that it was solid, like the structure of a crystal, since his father was so old and set in his ways, but that didn’t mean it was impossible for him to catch a glimpse of Regulus.

Regulus had agonized for days over what he should do—if he should do it. Without his ability to test the waters and parse through his visions for a good outcome, he found himself frozen with indecision. He’d curled up, sunk deep into his visions for over a week, and then collapsed into an equally deep unconsciousness for another week after that.

In the end, what he had seen was why he was now attempting to navigate the labyrinthine passages beneath the palace, cloaked in pure white with tufts of soft wool muffling his footsteps. The best outcome, the one far into the future, only occurred when he made this dangerous trek into the depths of his father’s domain. He breathed in and out steadily with each step, tamping down on his aura until it was a mere pinprick of pale light, easily lost against the shine of his father’s magic.

Worker bugs clad alternately in white (palace servants) and grey (maintenance workers) came hurrying down the halls. Like a deadly dance, Regulus wound around walls and corners ahead of each, weaving through every path and potential path so that not a single bug saw him. A common children’s song appeared in his mind. He hummed along silently as he went, making up his own lyrics.

Trick or treat,
I hear your feet,
pray that we will never meet
Slow I sneak
Quietly
for my siblings I must see

He stopped at the bottom of the hidden stairwell that led up into the Palace Kitchens and took a deep, steadying breath. This was going to be the hardest part. He had a very narrow window of time to ascend the long stairwell before another bug would come down and spot him. He would have to fly faster and with a more restricted wing range than he ever had before.

Hidden in the tiny gap beneath the last stretch of stairs, Regulus pulled the white cloak off and folded it into a compact square before tucking it away in his satchel. He quietly shook out his wings, rotating the joints as he listened intently to the footsteps of the bug hurrying down the stairs. 

Wait for it…

The bug passed right over him, muttering depreciations about her supervisor, and disappeared around the corner.

Now!

Regulus lunged from his hiding spot, launching into the narrow well between the stairs with a powerful downward push. His wings strained with each tight, restricted flap—the well was just barely wide enough to allow a full extension. If he hit the edge of his wing on a stair he wouldn’t be able to fly for a while, or maybe even forever. The ceiling approached, not as fast as he would have liked. He gasped in a breath and blew it out explosively, pushing himself harder. Pain began to spike at the base of his wings.

Almost…

The future coalesced into an arrowhead. With one last downward push, he grabbed the edge of the decorative rim above the exit door, flipped himself upside down, and braced his feet against the ceiling. Not even a full second later, the door opened beneath him. He held his breath, utterly still as the grey-clad maintenance bug passed less than a foot from his head. Silent as a shadow, he slipped through the door just before it closed.

Regulus crawled into the bottom of an enormous storage rack next to the door, curling up on top of a sack of flour. He allowed himself one quiet groan as the base of his wings throbbed viciously. There would be no more flying today. He had to rest before he could continue.

A Vision passed before his Eyes. 

(The head chef finds him when he lingers too long amongst the flour. Panicked, she scoops him up and rushes him to the Royal Wing, thinking him to be one of the mysterious, child-like beings that her King guards so zealously. Amusing though it is that she essentially does his work for him, she later will mention the incident to Voltur when he stops by to flirt with the kitchenhands. Regulus dies skewered on a nail, or escapes, or is held imprisoned until his father returns. The world drowns in caustic orange.)

At length, Regulus rose with wings tight against his body, and put the white cloak back on. He spent a fraught hour winding through the servants’ narrow passages, ducking in and out of rooms to avoid passing bugs. It was a relief when he finally made it to the Royal Wing, where his siblings were housed. No bugs passed through here frivolously, not even the Pale King’s autonomous guards, so he was free to quietly pad down the wide, pale halls.

The servant’s passages were notably more barren than these, which bore the evidence of his mother’s touch in the form of silver-white plants. They lined the walls like living paintings and tapestries, giving the air a mild humidity and a crisp, clean scent. The smell left Regulus feeling oddly nostalgic, though he had never even stepped foot here before, much less lived here. It was a foolish impulse, but he paused for a moment to sketch the curling shape of a leaf in his logbook, making note of the texture and scent.

He paused again—none of the Pale Hand would be coming by for some time—at the door to his mother’s rooms. The doors were large, much larger than most others, and the pale metal that composed the arch was carved with delicate flowering designs. Special holes had been made through the wall in certain places, allowing space for stray branches from a bright green tree that must have been growing in the center of her rooms. It was the only appreciable color he’d seen in his entire trek. He could hear water too, but he knew better than to try and venture in. The wards his father had set to guard his wife were far too strong and subtle for Regulus to break.

Further down the hall, across from his mother’s rooms, stood the doors to his goal. With a quiet nudge of magic, pushing the internal mechanism of the lock, he opened them and slipped inside. The full wards weren’t set, making it easy for him to skirt past the smaller ones without alerting any of the Pale Hand. 

The room was sparsely decorated. Really, it felt more like a casual lab than a bedroom, but there were touches here and there: two cradles with comfortable blankets in the center, two small desks facing a larger one, a bookshelf, and a thick carpet of his mother’s silvery grass in one corner, most likely for laying on.

Regulus shut the door behind him with a quiet click, re-engaging the wards he had bypassed. Immediately, the two sleeping figures in the cradles sat up and looked at him. Carefully, he unfurled his mental presence, letting it go no further than the edges of the room. Two minds brushed curiously against his. One was warm and sturdy but oddly vague, like standing in the middle of an enormous, pitch-black cavern. The other was small and dexterous, following in the other’s wake like a little black Maskfly.

Hello, Cavatus and Larula, said Regulus, not moving from the door. I am sorry that Mother missed you. I have come to speak with you.

His siblings climbed down from their cradles, joining hands before they physically approached him. Together they moved their free hands, signing as one being, and each word was accompanied by mental images and impressions. “Hello, brother,” they said. An image of the Pale King flashed through their three-way connection. “Did you know that you look like Father?”

Regulus laughed mentally. “ I did know,” he said, carefully signing along with his mental speech. He needed more practice to be ready for the next part of his mission. “You’re not surprised by my presence.”

Larula shifted slightly. “Of course. The wisps told us.”

“The wisps?”

“Our siblings. The lost ones.”

Despite Seeing their conversation many times before, he still had only a vague notion of what they meant. He moved on. “Do you also know why I am here?”

He got the impression of mental laughter, like sparkling bubbles in a black hot spring. “No. But we can guess. We know Father took us for a reason. We know he is wrong. Are you here to take us away?”

“No,” signed Regulus with a shake of his head. He very carefully offered them a picture of their mother and siblings, all crowded together in the cavern that had been the first checkpoint on the way to the Gardens. “If I did, many of them would die. You must stay here for them to live. I’m sorry.”

Again, he got the impression of amusement. He knew what they would say next. “Don’t be sorry. We are not suffering. If anything, we are having a much grander time, playing pranks on Father. Should we pity you?”

“Perhaps,” he allowed. “I know it is not necessary, but I still offer my apologies. It isn’t fair that you should bear the burden of Father’s expectations.”

Larula straightened suddenly, flapping their free hand in excitement. Regulus caught another image of their father, this time haloed in pale lumafly light as he wrote on an enormous spider silk scroll. “You are like Father!” they exclaimed. Cavatus jolted at the realization.

“I See, ” signed Regulus, using his own sign for the word: three fingers, two to the eyes and one to the forehead, flicked upward. “Just like Father.”

Cavatus tilted their head to the side. “Then you know that Corvus is about to open the door. ”

Regulus all but grinned. “I do. ” He turned around to face the door, which opened at that precise moment to admit one of the Pale Hand: Corvus, the Pale King’s most trusted servant and assistant.

There were two ways that this could go. Either Corvus would strike immediately with his nails, which Regulus would dodge and then have an extremely unpleasant time running away from the cunning Myceliad, or Corvus would stop and listen.

The Pale Hand stopped in the doorway, drawing in a sharp breath. His hands jerked toward the nails concealed in his garments. Regulus felt Cavatus and Larula come to stand directly behind him, three odd children looking up at the startled adult.

“Hello, Corvus,” Regulus signed. “Today may be All SOUL Day, but I am not here for either a trick or a treat. Won’t you come speak with me?”

After another moment of stillness, Corvus stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Slowly, he lowered himself down to the children’s level and raised his hands. “There are more, aren’t there, ” he signed with tired resignation.

“Perhaps,” Regulus answered. “But how many of us survived is not as important as what we are.” He paused, taking in the Myceliad’s reaction to his words before continuing with slow, deliberate gestures. “You know what we are, don’t you? Or you would not have taught my siblings to speak with you. ”

Corvus bowed his head slightly, finally conceding defeat in a struggle Regulus had not borne witness to. With the barest of movements, he signed: “Yes.”

Larula and Cavatus moved from behind Regulus. Corvus didn’t shift as they approached, didn’t even lift his head until they reached up and touched his face. “You didn’t know,” they signed as one.

“You should not forgive so easily,” the Myceliad signed.

They laughed, though only Regulus could feel it. “What is there to forgive? Even when you did not think it was so, you have always treated us as we were.”

Even without being able to connect to his mind, Regulus could practically feel the sorrow radiating off Corvus. “You should not forgive so easily,” he repeated without elaborating, then reached out and pulled both into his arms. “Why did you come here?” he signed to Regulus when they were settled on his lap.

“To see that,” he responded, gesturing to his happy siblings. “To ensure that you knew the truth, of them and us. Now I must take my leave, Corvus of the Pale Hand. My time is up.”

Cavatus and Larula both pressed their minds against his in an affectionate farewell. Corvus stood, one vessel on each hip, and dipped his head respectfully as Regulus slipped out the door and shut it quietly behind him. He Saw:

(Corvus sits down next to his sister Tulip in the sanctuary of his tiny private room. She eyes him curiously, the barest hint of wariness hidden behind her gaze. “I have erred,” he signs. He bows his head. Her expression turns startled. “Please. Help me understand how badly.”)

Chapter Text

The Pale King unseals the Void and what he finds…is what he expected.

The Pure Vessel stands still at the edge of the platform, watching him with empty black eyes. Its shell is gently rounded, unlike the squareish shape of his early prototypes. Dull points—five of them, with one in the dead center—rise from the top of the shell, almost like infant forms of his own shell’s prongs. The body—

The Pale King pauses his survey in surprise. Its body is black as void on the top, fading out into a pale white at the bottom.

This is troubling.

This is not what he expected.

He notices more then, having been startled from his self-congratulatory analysis: the air of watchfulness, not mindlessness. The stubby white tail that he spies a bare hint of. The wings…the wings! His Pure Vessel should not, genetically speaking, be able to have wings at all, much less these long, glossy ones. Even as he watches they gracefully unfurl and flutter gently, as if the Vessel is deliberately putting them on display. They shine in his Pale Aura.

Except…no. They aren’t reflecting his Aura. They have an Aura all their own, pearlescent and multi-hued.

This is wrong. This is not what he expected.

“Hello, Father,” the Vessel says, and the Pale King feels the breath leave his body in a painful rush. An icy sensation that he hasn’t felt since his long-passed childhood sweeps over him.

“No,” he whispers, disbelieving. Behind him, Corvus shifts nervously.

The Vessel seems amused by his response. “No, I should not be?” it says delicately, tasting the words it uses to guess the Pale King’s thoughts. “No? And yet. I am.”

“You cannot be,” the Pale King refutes. It is not a cold statement. It is not an insult. It is pure denial.

How, how, how could he not have Seen this? He thinks briefly, wildly, of acting like a savage lesser bug and simply tossing the Vessel from the platform. It cannot be. It should not be.

The Vessel laughs—laughs!—and says “Oh Father. Come now, you have seen my wings. Throwing me would profit you nothing.”

Father.

It’s such a damning word. In a drowning influx the Pale King suddenly realizes every assumption he has made to get this far, every unspoken and unexamined axiom required to conduct his desperate gambit. His Vision, stable for years now, suddenly splits and splits and splits again.

“No,” he whispers, falling to his knees and clutching his head. “No! Corvus, stay your hand!”

His trusted assistant stumbles in his aborted effort to get between his King and the Vessel. The Path where the Vessel is skewered on the end of the Myceliad’s shortnails folds into itself and vanishes.

Tiny feet tap against the metal of the platform—plink, plink, plink—as the Vessel moves toward him. He looks up to find it a scant few inches away. With him still kneeling, they nearly are the same height.

“You…you can See,” he rasps. It’s not a question, but the Vessel nods anyways.

“I am your son in every sense, Father,” it—he—says, again with a light, nearly mocking edge. “A Little King. Mother would have taken one look at me and named me ‘Regulus.’”

The Pale King swallows back bile. The reminder of his wife, whom he convinced to take part in this enormous mistake, brings the weight of his sins crashing down upon him again. “I have erred badly,” he says.

“Yes,” his son agrees. “Very badly. Your plot has failed in its entirety. 10,000 children you spawned, and yet even among the few who survived, there are no Hollow Vessels—no, there are only damaged children.”

“How can I fix this?” he rasps, burying his face in his hands. He doesn’t know why he’s asking his infant son. Foresight or no Foresight, there’s no way the child has enough control to give him a definitive answer.

“You cannot,” Regulus says, apparently in agreement with his thoughts. “We are all of us doomed to die, some worse for the wear because of you. This you cannot fix. But the Blighted Goddess is not beyond you.”

What?

“What?” He searches his Vision, traversing a thousand paths in the span of a second, and finds no hint of what his son has Seen. There is no defeating the Radiance.

“It is quite simple, Father, perhaps so simple that only a child would see it,” says Regulus, and the Pale King looks up at his son. Tiny black hands reach out to touch his shell. “Go to her,” his child says, voice dropping to a whisper, “and die.”

Chapter Text

Blossom knocked politely on the grey-painted door: two quick taps, hard enough to be heard but light enough not to seem demanding. Nervously, she adjusted her poncho and satchel, straightening up and squaring her shoulders. Lily was very insistent that first impressions were the most important part of asking a favor, and she was determined to do her tutor proud.

The door opened a moment later, revealing a tall female bug clad in a long white gown like the fuzz of a dandelion. “Oh,” the bug said, immediately crouching so that her purplish eyes were level with Blossom’s. Her voice was warm and gentle as she continued speaking. “Hello there. Are you here to find a playmate, little one?”

She sounded young, and without a mask to hide her face Blossom could tell that she wasn’t quite an adult yet. According to Iris there were three caretakers that lived here: Daedalus, Sigrun, and their daughter Wynne. Blossom assumed this was Wynne.

“No thank you, Miss Wynne,” said Blossom, hoping her intuition was correct. “I’m here to ask for Mr. Daedalus’s assistance.”

“Ah.” Wynne blinked again in surprise and stood. “Of course. Please, come in. May I ask your name?”

Blossom warmed with embarrassment as she realized that she had neglected the most fundamental part of first impressions. “Oh, um, I’m Blossom,” she said, stumbling a little over her words as she rushed to correct herself.

Wynne stumbled over her dress and her words as she hastily moved aside so the vessel could enter. “Oh! Blossom! Yes, come in!”

Blossom cringed a little as she stepped through the door. Just because her mama was the Queen and also her primary caretaker didn’t mean that Blossom was more important than any of her other siblings. It really didn’t. Unfortunately, her mother’s reputation had clearly preceded her.

“I’m not interrupting anything…am I?” she asked. The question came out timid, despite her attempt to sound casual.

Wynne shook her head, shutting the door behind them. “No, not at all,” she said. Her voice was calmer, but there was an undercurrent of nervousness that hadn’t been there before. “Please, right this way.”

Wynne led Blossom through a small, warm living room stuffed to the brim with toys and pillows, through a kitchen with plants growing on every wall, and down a set of narrow stairs. “Dad’s in the lab,” the caretaker said over her shoulder to Blossom. “I think some of the kids are there too, but Wyrm knows what he’s entertaining them with.”

Blossom nodded, even though Wynne was no longer facing her by that point. “I see.” Her grip on the leather strap of her satchel tightened.

None of the noise from the basement filtered up into the stairway, due to the thick metal door at the bottom. Wynne pulled a latch and it glided open on greased hinges—perfectly balanced despite its monstrous thickness—with not a squeak or squeal to be heard.

Not that Blossom would have heard any sound the door made, for the moment it opened a wave of noise burst forth: clanging, screeching, tapping, and thumping, all accompanied by a mental whirlwind and a deep male voice.

 “…All SOUL Day, my children!” the male voice said in a storytelling voice. “The spirits of the mindless dead return… to Hallownest! Oooooh!”

A chorus of high voices, some louder than others, was accompanied by another mental swell. Blossom cringed a little and tucked her mental presence in, much like she might pull her hands suddenly to her chest.

“No way!”

“Dae, no!”

“Scary!”

Wynne looked apologetically at Blossom, gesturing toward the noise. “Sorry, but this is normal,” she said, and led the way through the door.

The inside of the workshop was exactly as chaotic as Blossom expected. A row of child-sized workbenches lined one wall, each covered in materials for wildly different projects. A long seam ran down the center of the floor, diving the smaller benches from a line of machinery and a much larger adult-sized bench. Blossom assumed that the seam housed a retractable wall or panel, given the mirroring seam on the ceiling.

A squat but obviously adult male bug was standing at the larger workbench, a strip of half-curved metal in one hand and thick pliers in the other. He was turned away from his project, regaling the attending crowd of vessels with a tale.

“Yes! That’s why we hang the Black’O’Lanterns on the doorposts,” the bug said, gesturing demonstratively to the black-tinted glass globes that lined a shelf above his bench—half-finished lanterns, she assumed. “They keep the spirits at bay, lest one slip inside and steal away your mind!”

The crowd of vessels churned at his words, some skittering back in fright, some puffing up bravely. One vessel in particular tilted his head slightly to the side, as if listening to something, and then spoke.

“Hobbes says that there’s no such thing as mindless spirits, Dae,” he said in a lofty voice. “Mindless bugs get ground up into dust when they die and that’s why the Howling Wastes are so dusty.”

Daedalus laughed, turning away for a moment to secure the metal in a clamp. “Well, Calvin, you can tell Hobbes that these spirits are special. They’re the ones that refused the Pale King’s offer, and so were cursed to die as mindless beasts. That’s how they can return and haunt us, if only once a year.”

The vessel called Calvin seemed oddly galvanized by this explanation and immediately scurried off to his child-sized workbench. Blossom noted that it was the one covered in blackened explosion marks.

Calvin’s motion drew Daedalus’s attention up from the crowd of children and toward where Wynne and Blossom were approaching. “Ah, Wynne!” he said, setting down the pliers and dusting his hands off on his leather apron. “And who is that you have with you?”

“This is Blossom,” Wynne replied, ushering the vessel forward with a nudge of her wing. “She has a…request?”—Blossom nodded—“a request for you, Da.”

Daedalus peered down curiously. “Well now, isn’t that interesting?” He looked away from Blossom long enough to shoo the crowd of children away. “Go on now, kids, work on your projects. I can tell you more about All SOUL Day at supper.” The group dispersed with grumbling and inquisitive glances at Blossom.

“Thank you, Mr. Daedalus,” she said, digging around in her satchel. “I have a bit of a… well, you might call it a favor more than a request. I understand if you don’t want to do it.”

Daedalus’s curious expression intensified into keen interest as she handed him a slender tube. “Well now,” he murmured, popping the cap off the tube and shaking out the rolled-up blueprint within. “What have we here.” Wynne sidled around to peer curiously over her father’s shoulder as he perused the document. Her eyes grew wide at what she saw.

“My my,” Daedalus said after a long pause. “What an ingenious little proposal. Did you come up with this?”

Blossom ducked her head shyly. “Yes,” she said. “It was bothering me, so Belladonna told me I should make a project out of it and see if I could solve it myself. I did as much as I could to make that schema, but the enchanting is too complicated for me to do alone.” She looked up. “Do you think it would work?”

Daedalus surprised her by breaking into hearty laughter. “Work? Blossom, not only will this work, but the patent would be worth a fortune! I know artificers in the City who would have given a limb or two just to have an apprentice with even half the creative capacity this—” he shook the blueprint paper “— demonstrates.”

Blossom felt a little faint at the effusive praise. “Oh,” she said weakly. “…really?”

Still chuckling a little, Daedalus put the blueprint on his workbench. “Yes, really,” he said. “Princess, I will happily fulfill your request, provided you’d be willing to come work with me for the duration of the project.” His eyes twinkled. “Let’s hope your creativity will rub off on some of my other projects, hm?”

This was far more than Blossom had hoped for. “Yes, yes, of course I will,” she said, still feeling a little dazed. “I’m sure Iris would be willing to rearrange my class schedule a bit. I’ll send you a message when she does.”

“I look forward to it,” the older bug said sincerely.

Chapter Text

“—all your fault! Why did you have to—”

“Shh! She’s waking up!”

Blossom dragged her way back into consciousness to the sound of two girls bickering. “What happened,” she asked, except that the sound that came out of her mouth was more like “mmfgn?”

“Hm, that sounded promising,” one of the girls commented sarcastically.

“She’s fine,” said the other. “Give her a minute.”

“Oh, yes, just fine, provided you didn’t permanently damage her mind!”

“Which I didn’t.”

“You are so—ugh!”

Blossom rallied herself and forced her eyes open, mostly because the arguing was beginning to give her a headache. Two blurry figures swam into focus, glowing softly against a velvety black background.

“I told you she was fine,” said the one with a faintly green tinge to her glow.

The one with the purple-tinged glow threw her hands up. “Fine?! Look at her, she’s squinting! You gave her vision damage too!”

“Please stop for a minute,” Blossom asked weakly, blinking and rubbing her hands over her eyes in an effort to get them to focus. To her surprise, the girls fell silent. She took a deep breath, noting that the air wasn’t hot or cold and that it didn’t have any appreciable scent or humidity. Which meant she couldn’t be in the Gardens anymore. She distinctly remembered falling asleep in Mama’s arms, bored into unconsciousness by the discussion her mother was having with Rose and Lily about merchant contracts.

“Where am I?” she asked, trying to stay calm as suspicion and fear twisted her insides into knots. “And who are…you?” She trailed off, staring silently as she realized that the two girls in front of her were not only glowing but also semi-transparent against the featureless, fathomless black background.

And…familiar, like faces out of a dream.

The purple one looked worried, but the green one seemed very pleased with herself. “You know us, Blossom,” she said, a smile in her voice. “Not as well as we know you, but well enough. Come on, you know our names. Just think about it for a bit.”

Blossom had met every single one of her siblings, except Regulus and Panacea, when she had organized them into groups on the day Mama had come for them. But these two, despite resembling her, didn’t feel like any of the siblings she had met then. She would have remembered seeing such bright blue eyes, just like…Mama’s…

“I do know you,” she said, dazed. The green one brightened noticeably when Blossom looked to her. The feeling in her head was like a painless version of what she had felt from Regulus, when he had accidentally shared parts of his vision with her: information building in the bottom of her shell and rising like bubbles in the hot spring to pop at the surface of her eyes.

“Willow,” she whispered. Tears spilled over and dripped down her face, though she didn’t understand why she felt such potent grief at the name.

The purple one suddenly smacked the green one, startling Blossom from her sudden grief. “Look at that!” the purple one said to Willow, who was scowling and rubbing the back of her head. “You made her cry!”

“Pine,” Blossom blurt out in an attempt to keep her sisters from devolving into another bickering match. “You’re…Pine. That’s what Mama would have named you.” My sisters. She choked on an unexpected sob, fingers clenching convulsively. “You’re my sisters. You’re my sisters but I never got to meet you.”

Willow and Pine exchanged a look. “Yes,” said Willow softly, reaching out to take one of Blossom’s hands while Pine took the other. “But we’ve met you, dear little sister. In fact, we’ve never left you.”

The grief was still strong, but Blossom managed to distance herself from it long enough to get a handle on it. “Wh-why are you—why am I seeing you?” she said, hiccupping slightly. “You’re—”

“Dead?” Pine interjected wryly. “Yes. In fact, you shouldn’t be seeing us, but dearest Willow, sister of my heart—” she grit the last part out, shooting Willow a venomous look, “—decided to try something when you got hurt.”

Blossom gasped. “Hurt? What?! When!”

Pine and Willow exchanged another glance, but Pine was still quick to reassure her. “It’s alright, you’re going to be fine,” she said. She reached out to trace a line from the side of Blossom’s left eye down to her chin. “You cracked your shell a bit in an accident, so Mom’s got you submerged in a SOUL bath in the infirmary. But…for a moment, your spirit was, ah, less attached to your body than normal, so Willow pulled you here.”

Willow had pulled her soul away from her body?

Blossom fully understood why Pine had been glaring at her sister.

Willow, apparently sensing Blossom’s growing wrath, quickly interjected: “You’re fine. There’s no way this could hurt you. You’re still in your own mind. You’ll wake up just fine when your body is done healing.”

“And how, exactly,” Blossom said in a measured voice, drawing her hands away from her sisters to cross her arms over her chest, “did you know that before you decided to try it?”

“She didn’t,” Pine said smugly before Willow could defend herself.

It was Willow’s turn to throw up her hands with an exasperated noise. “Oh alright, I didn’t know for sure. But you’re fine! I can feel it for sure.” Her head jerked up. “In fact, you’re waking up right now. It’s time to go.”

Pine made a startled sound, darting forward to press her face against Blossom’s. The intangible shell tingled slightly where it was pressed against her. “Oh! Tell Rush and Toss we love them!”

Willow echoed the motion on Blossom’s other side. “And Mom! Tell her we love her too!”

They pulled back, both smiling. The darkness became washed out with warm light, so Blossom wasn’t quite sure who spoke the final words she heard: “and don’t forget, we’re always with you, Blossom. You’ll never be without our strength.”

She blinked awake, disoriented, to find her very worried Mama hovering above her. The side of her shell ached dully right where Pine’s fingers had traced the shape of a crack.

“My Blossom?” Mama asked softly.

Blossom sat up, the SOUL infused water sloshing around her. “Mama,” she mumbled, rubbing at her eyes, “you’ll never believe the dream I just had.”