Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

‘I see now. This is you as you exist in my heart. And yet, at the same time, it’s also me, as I exist in your heart’

- Episode 25 of Neon Genesis Evangelion

The small creature that thought of itself as a wandering knight returned to face the trials once again.

Many tribulations, it had faced.

Many times, it had failed.

Many times, it had fallen, and then clambered back up.

Many times it was defeated and managed only narrowly to escape with its life, and many times it returned to brave the trials again, returning over and over, propelled forward by a single-minded purpose.

The long ascent to the peak of the pantheon was really no different, much grander in scale and implication, really, but what pushed it forward wasn’t really all that different from what had drawn it back and back again to its explorations of the caverns above and below.

Only recently, it had come to learn a little more about the first experiences that had shaped it in the beginning, but this had no really changed anything, only re-contextualized it.

It had simply come to know itself -

It had simply accepted what it had always been, and in this act, tapped into a hidden fount of power, power proportional in magnitude to its nature as a godspawn, yes, but really no different in kind from the might that anyone could obtain by getting out of their own way, if one came to know and accept oneself, to stop acting without knowing or being torn in resistance.

If the small speck could answer questions, it may have credited the teachings of its mentors, the hours spend meditating, observing, learning, hunting, gathering the scattered dreams and memories of this land, taking on the task of laying them to rest –

Long had that task gone undone. Long had the unquiet spirits that blanketed this land cried out for relief from their vigil or a closure for their regret – and the Knight had come to answer them, because it could and others couldn’t.

Because it was needed.

If a sacrifice was needed, it would have been willing to serve as one, driven forth at first by an only half-remembered call to purpose – it could have taken that path, if it had gone straight for its goal, like another before it; It might have done so without ever fully understanding itself; Without so much as knowing the source of that wayward drive to prove itself that would have pulled it towards that road…

But as it stood, it had not taken the straight path. It had taken many detours, probed the furthest reaches of this place, listened to many people, learned from many masters and gathered up the scattered stories scattered within, gone beyond that initial purpose, grounded in it still, yes, the importance of that seed understood with greater clarity in its original context, but the creature had also evolved beyond it, explored beyond its bounds, reinvented its meaning, much as it had done in putting its own spin on its spells.

It had been described, at times, as bold and tenacious, but also as an astute, swift learner and an attentive listener; It had learned that, so long as it listened, the world would reveal itself to it in time.

And thus, it came to see that what was really needed here was not another sacrifice.

Most instrumental in this understanding was probably the fierce huntress whom the wanderer now knew to be its sister. She had tried to stop it at first, announcing that she knew what it was and what it was doing – a surprising statement, since it had not really known either of these things itself, at the time.

It might simply have pressed on, putting her out of mind after having defeated her, moving forward with no further thought on the matter. Continued straight along its path.

Instead, it had been curious.

It had sought to understand. It had met her again and again, and with time, come to understand why she had stood in its way. Why it wouldn’t do to simply prolong the current stalemate in the slow war of attrition that had already worn down what remained of this kingdom to a faded afterimage.

The most that might be attained this way is stave off the slow decline until nothing at all would be left within this cavern; If a future was to be attained, something else would be needed.

Something other than a sacrifice. Something more than to follow old plans that had already failed; Something more.

Perhaps a hero. Or simply a grave-keeper, someone to gather up the lost hopes and dreams that clung to this ruins and wield them like a shining star against the very force that had shattered them.

When the small Knight perceived what must be done, it had understood, of course, that it wasn’t going to return from this either.

At first, it had not minded.

To vanish and be at peace in the knowledge that its purpose was fulfilled would be a definite upgrade from the previous prospect of an eternity in chains;

Besides, the Wanderer had lived a long, long time, since before the fall of this kingdom, enough for ages to pass, for realms to rise and fall, for many generations of surface-dwellers to fall to dust; It had traveled far and wide, had seen many wondrous sights, and learned of many secrets none of which it might ever be capable of sharing with another.

If it were to go back to whence it came now, it could do so without regret.

It was beyond regretting now.

Or so it thought.

It held no regret for its own sake.

But there were now at least two people whom it would lament to leave behind.

The first was the young, winged companion whom the Knight had acquired almost by accident, when it lit that mysterious lantern out of curiosity and ended up embroiled in the ritual of the Grimm Troupe.

Before he vanished, the old troupe master had declared that the two of them were set to feature in a great many tales and tragedies, but how could that be when their paths were to diverge so soon after it had been entrusted with the small nightmare creature’s care.

The Knight did not doubt that the rest of the troupe would surely show up to collect their own if Grimmchild’s current caretaker were to perish, so he’d be provided for, much more than the Knight itself had been at the beginning of its existence – and it could attest, more so than anyone, that a newborn godspawn could be rather more resilient and self-reliant than a mortal child.

Much like the Knight was born capable of fighting straight from the egg, Grimmchild had been throwing fire at anything in sight for a good while already – sooner or later, the little moth would surely feel the call of his destiny and depart to take on the leadership of his troupe in his predecessor’s place. It could understand this somewhat – it could see why the White Lady had thought them to be somewhat similar beings.

This, however, was exactly what lead them to suspect that none of this changed that the little gremlin would surely lament its absence.

The previous Grimm had no choice but to leave his offspring early due to the cyclical nature of his kinds’ existence; The void-born warrior would prefer not to leave him as well so soon after his father.

Given the choice, it would rather not leave him at all while he might still benefit from its company. There was a sense of failure, or at least of tragedy, in abandoning him just as it had been abandoned once by its own sire, even if the situation wasn’t quite the same.

It had gone to see the White Lady when it still wasn’t sure whether to conclude the ritual, or to take Brumm’s offer to put an end to it – she didn’t seem to see Grimmchild as fully trustworthy, perhaps owed to her taking the same detached approach to him as she did to her own undead spawn, but she did not object to the ritual’s conclusion as if it would be something dangerous to the kingdom, and with this, she had ultimately given the Knight the information it came for, to know what must to make its own decision. It was grateful to her, in a sense – the words she had spoken after the ritual’s conclusion assured it that something of its vanished friend endured within his offspring.

Her pointed admonishment not to forget ‘its larger task’ had been like how it must imagine sand upon one’s mouth-parts, but it could not deny that her urgency was grounded in fact; The ever more pressing need for action was plain to see every time it made its way through the oozing mess that had become of the Crossroads.

And then, there was its sister, the very same one who had set it upon a different path that even the Lady did not seem to have conceived of, even though it was her who had handed it the fragment that might make a different course of action possible.

Perhaps she had long since lost faith in her husband’s contingency plans, though she still held enough lingering tenderness for him to carry out what last instructions he might have left before he up and disappeared.

Hornet, however…

At the beginning, she must have viewed the Knight much as the Queen did – as an old regret come back to haunt them, having emerged as a revenant from among the bones in the family’s figurative backyard. It doubted not that she would have cut it down with the well-practiced efficiency of a hardened warrior if it had not proved itself tenacious enough to outlast the quickness of her blade – but she respected strength, and so did it. She caught its eyes at once as a creature moving with skill and purpose, and over the course of their subsequent encounters, the taunt with which she’d greeted it would morph into something like an affectionate nickname, or even the closest it could claim to a formally bestowed title.

It had felt some affinity to her at once, at first, simply because it could recognize her as someone long used to surviving on her own in harsh environments… but that was before she hinted at their connection. Before its encounter with the White Lady all but confirmed its suspicion.

– for so long, it had walked the earth, roaming far and wide, never once finding anything like itself among all the strange and marvelous creatures that crossed its path.

It met traces of its likes soon after coming here, but found mostly their vacated remains. Or worse than vacated, in one particularly unpleasant occurrence down in the depths of the Ancient Basin.

Its sister, however, was alive, and demonstrated a willingness to aid it on its quest.

And now they were to part, already, though it had only just found her?

It would be leaving her behind, and it wouldn’t be the first to do so.

Only the last, in a long line of looming figures that had gone forth in the name of duty, never to, leaving her to shoulder the heavy burden of their legacy.

The stoic warrior princess had valiantly held onto her composure when the wanderer had been forced to slay her mother, though she could easily have ended them then and there – she must have found its unresponsive form next to the dais on which the Spider Queen had rested, while its consciousness was preoccupied in the dream realm. It would have been short work for her to put some holes in its resting, physical body.

There was no way that the thought would not have crossed her mind; She was a skilled, consummate huntress; the Knight, a sitting duck, its back and neck served to her as if on a platter –

And yet she stood aside. She bit her tongue.

One more sacrifice for the sake of the kingdom. For some far-flung, desperate hope that this realm frozen in time might have a future after all, rather than remaining forever suspended in the stretched-out, eternal moment of its drawn-out decline.

She had accepted this outcome long ago as an inevitability, maybe even a mercy, compared with the prospect of leaving her mother forever suspended in limbo. She was so used to a lack of good choices, of having to pick the lesser evil every time, of bringing it about with her very own hands…

The Knight had understood her, then, and lost all will to resent her, even as it still held onto that tattered old mothwing cloak taken from one if its fallen kindred. They had seen her applying that very same, cruel measuring stick even to herself.

She was strong, of course. She could take it. She was sure to persevere. If it had never returned here, she likely would have guarded this gods-forsaken ruin until the place was finally emptied of all life.

‘No cost too great’, as that stupid old King might have said.

Curse Him.

Curse all of this.

All of this was so unfair.

Impossible choice after impossible choice…

Even so, some things simply cannot be done. Some costs can’t be avoided.

Some might say that a refusal to accept the inevitable was precisely what had lead the Pale King down the dark path of His follies.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

It may well be that the Knight might be able to put a permanent end to the infection – just barely, in a desperate effort, by using all means at its disposal and holding nothing back.

But anything beyond that would take a miracle.

And there were precious few gods left in these lands that might be prayed to for one of those…

That’s when it remembered that strange bug from the sewers. The one who spoke of seeking the Gods – at first, the traveler had not really seen the appeal, really. She had been rather rude, all things considered, somehow obsequious and imperious at once, and bound to bite off more than she could chew before long…

But the Knight had set out to do what was needed. To be what was needed.

So what if this land needs a new god? What if only a miracle could grant mercy to the remaining tatters of the family it had found itself with?

What faded gods remained here lacked the means to do a thing; Both Unn and the Life Blood Deity seemed to have sanctioned and blessed the Knight’s quest, judging by the charms they each had granted it, but their domais was life, not destruction. Meanwhile, the Nightmare King’s role in the ecosystem was that of a scavenger or cleanser that might purify the old through the sacrament of decay, so that the New could be made room for, but first, destruction must take place to clean out the rot, if preserving the old was no longer feasible...

The Old King had tried all He could, but His efforts had long since failed.

Once, He had been the supreme reigning power in these caverns, but the Radiance had laid Him low and beaten Him soundly, left Him defeated in every way, and sat on his His old throne at the top as the pantheon as the one and only Light.

So who was left now, to take up His crown?

...when the Knight took up the King’s brand, that was certainly done with the intention to take responsibility of the kingdom’s fate and future – Were it otherwise, the Princess should not have suffered it to pass.

But it also took it with the belief that the mark itself would serve it chiefly as a glorified passkey to open some doors, before it must perish in the attempt of what that responsibility would entail.

It had no thoughts of amending tax codes or getting trams to run on time.

Sure, there was some satisfaction in the symbolic value of being granted the recognition that it had previously been denied – in particular, because Hornet was the one granting it in her father’s place, formally bringing the Knight into their clan, as it were, for all that previous little remained of it.

If it cared for anyone’s recognition at all, that would be hers, not the stupid King’s, for all that the mark might be the lingering echo of His residual magic at work.

It was a nice little gesture to receive first, if this must be the end.

Now, however, it thought of taking the Pale King’s throne in earnest.

If not as monarch, then as Hallownest’s topmost reigning deity.

It had no plans of order to impose, no intention of building a palace, and no pretense of reasserting the old Wyrm’s promises of eternity; It meant to do the task for as long as it was needed and let the future be as it may; It might well end up handing the kingdom off to someone else down the line, maybe Hornet or one of her descendants, should she chose to have them, or some other worthy steward of sufficient merit, whatever their origin.

It might disappear back into the night to resume its wanderings eventually, or return to whence it came to the dark ocean below – who can say what the future might bring?

But for now, with the Creator long gone and the Preserver brought to its knees, all called out for a Destroyer, rising out of the Sacred Darkness to cleanse the unclean.

And one would answer.

On its many travels, the Knight had heard a few tales or legends that told of the occasional demigod ascending when they would otherwise have died.

The odds should then be even more favorable for a full-blooded godspawn.

Of course, it knew well that it could never be a deity of light or life, like its parents had been, and certainly not one of order; It had no great visions to impose on the world, and was quite willing to take it as it was. Furthermore, it had accepted that it was of the darkness; of the primordial chaos that preceded creation. Yet it knew the dark to have its own power – a power that the stupid King had, after all, tried to seek out without fully understanding it. The dark itself had once been worshiped in the most distant, ancient days, long before the reign of the Pale Beings or even that of the Radiance Herself. For all that she might call the King a usurper, She too, had not been the first power in these parts.

So let night follow day again.

The small creature of shadow was nothing if not tenacious.

Once, it had clawed its way out of its early grave, refusing to be buried among the bleached bones of its likes, heeding the call of purpose, only to find that they’d been a hair’s breadth too late, that the intended destiny was already taken by another –

Discarded by its creator, the small, nameless creature had fallen straight back onto the pit from when it came – and yet, it could not rest. Yet, it could not be satisfied with simply fading away.

The King may have no more task, employ or mission left for it, but it still wanted to be a knight in its own right.

It still felt the call to deeds, to purpose, and it decided then, that it would go to find those elsewhere, even if it was not needed in the place of its birth.

The Godseeker’s ritual was really no different.

It was just another climb, in which the creature did not cease, no mater how many times it was thrown back down to the depths.

It always got up and tried again.

Undeterred.

Tenacious.

Hellbent.

...well. Actually, there were quite a few times when it had really been tempted to just keep laying on the ground right where it awakened after being whacked by one of Markoth’s stray projectiles of essence for the upteenth time, and more than once, it may have marched past a few mildly confused Godseekers to plop itself down on the nearest bench and not move from it for quite some time while Grimmchild landed besides it and did his part to cheer it up with a few encouraging little ‘nyehs’ and silly antics that included spitting little bursts of fire in the shapes of various beasts, but in the end, it always pulled itself together and returned to the task at hand, much to the annoyance of the leading Godseeker.

Though as of late, it might have worn her down to the point that she was beginning to find its persistence more intriguing than irritating.

For a being so fixated on attaining communion with the Gods, she certainly had an idiosyncratic concept of what makes for one.

It was not immediately clear to the diminutive warrior what exactly she would ‘count’ as a God. Clearly it took more than just a powerful being. Anything that could have a story around it, maybe – something that could spawn legend. Anything that could might be thought of as as embodiment of a concept or force. That’s how even Zote could be here, if enough people believed his tall tales, even if it was just very few wanting to believe him very badly.

If not Gods, then maybe the candidates that were clearly mortal could be thought of as something like patron saints.

Many times, she stood before the challenger, smaller than she appeared in the outside world, but speaking in a voice that was clearer, less raspy, ringing with power. A showy one, she was, and once impressed by showy things, so much so that she’d almost accomplished the unlikely feat of making the Knight feel tempted take that stupid King’s side for one, when she didn’t get why He did not simply awe His subjects with the grand monstrous form that He had once possessed.

She didn’t seem to understand why He might have wanted to meet with His subjects as if he were one of them… if that was, in fact, what He had wanted.

He could have meant to fool them… but one could certainly not argue that it would have been better if He showed up all huge and alien and casually flaunting just how easily He could crush any of them….

Stupid Godseeker, for making stupid King sound reasonable.

Even her words are showy.

Servile in the praise she lavishes, but also ostentatious, prideful in acting as the mouthpiece of vicarious power. But also fickle.

The fickleness then, was going to work in the Knight’s advantage.

It meant that she was not picky.

She came here looking for the King, but when He wasn’t here anymore by the time that she emerged from her sarcophagus, she proved just as ready to settle for the Old Light, never mind how this entire land was devastated by Her.

There was some logic in that, if Godseeker was simply looking for the foremost power around – the Radiance definitely had the King soundly beaten in their contest of wills.

There was probably no point in trying to talk her out of it, even if the Knight had the means to accomplish this.

The Godseeker probably wouldn’t mind if she were to get overtaken in the end; She often spoke of how she (and by extension, the entire tribe she spoke for) would give their very minds to attain communion with something mighty and sublime.

If the Old Light was a more reasonable Being, you’d think She might be happy to get new worshipers.

She wouldn’t be, though.

That much should be plain.

It wasn’t her nature. Her nature could be seen through everything she had done.

Even without communing with Her directly, She could be known by the fruits she had brought forth throughout the kingdom, and the Knight had come to know these very well as it had fought its way through Hallownest’s remains.

She was blinding light. She was burning heat. She was feverish, festering rage. She was the impossible longing that could only be attained in dreams.

She can’t be placated – That bunch of turncoat Mosskin set up a congregation to worship her, and She had just melted them into puddles right along with everyone else once she came closer to breaking free.

The old Seer had devoted her entire life to appeasing Her, never daring to cast blame on Her, always putting the responsibility for the plague and devastation on the heads of her own ancestors. In the end, the kindly old moth disappeared in a piteous state of un-fullfilment, asking for the memory of her and her kind to be buried by the sands, pleading for forgiveness right until she faded into glimmers of light, having held on way past her time for the sake of a penance that she never could have completed alone.

She faded with the Goddess’ name upon her lips, and still no sign of comfort came down from the heavens to receive her;

No amount of penitence would have been enough.

Maybe She thinks its too late, or that it doesn’t count if it comes from a place of regret rather than freely given love – but what can She expect, if She puts all the land in fear? How freely given was the love She once received, when there was simply no other option?

That stupid King may have promised His followers more than He could truly deliver, but at least He tried to provide it.

If the Godseeker were to succeed in summoning the Radiance and attuning to Her, chances are she’d end up very much like Her last would-be prophet – maybe she’d consider it worth it, though, hoping to find some ecstasy or communion in it. But if she should somehow manage to set Her free or become the means of Her escape, the outcome wouldn’t be pretty, considering the havoc She had been able to wreak while still confined.

The White Lady said that She would probably burst out with the pent-of rage of ages…

Would She even content herself with destroying what remains of Hallownest, or would she extend her reach even further, far beyond here? She had certainly not stopped at its borders before, afflicting even those who had never been counted among the Pale King’s devotees, such as the Mosskin, who had kept to their old faith. She would burn herself out eventually, or come to a stop at the doorstep of some other power with the means to counter her, but how many more would be left scorched in Her wake before that?

Maybe She could no longer trust any devotion, after her creations had forsaken her. Maybe nothing will satisfy Her anymore but victims stuffed so full of her burning, searing essence that it leaks out of their eye-holes, pushing aside all their thoughts until they cannot think of anything else but Her;

She wanted to be remembered so badly that she no longer care what for; Maybe she figured that the people would have a longer memory for pain than for gratitude.

That, or She just wants to be mad, simply because She is, and She isn’t going to listen to any semblance of reason.

Reason was the stupid King’s domain… that’s probably why He couldn’t beat Her.

Reason can suppress passion, for some time, but it can never smother it completely.

It can’t make it go away. Order might be forced onto nature, for a while, but with time, nature always stubbornly returns. Anything that has a will eventually meets the limits of that will, a point where it can’t be imposed onto the world any further – and that’s where dreams, yearnings and desires can take root, in the continuation of reality. Anything that has individuality – that is something rather than nothing, or anything, is going to be some things and therefore not be other things, so it can yearn to be what it is not.

Only something that isn’t anything at all could be free from yearning.

The only way that the King could have freed His people from the torment She had laid upon them might have been to take back the choice He granted them – to rescind from them reason, mind and individuality… and this He would not do.

It would have been contrary to his very nature…

Though He did, at last, betray himself in this manner.

He must have rationalized it at first, to take away choices from a few, rather than the many.

The math sure must have checked out neatly, at the time…

Or it might have, it if he hadn’t fudged some numbers.

Guess the stupid King met the limits of His will, too.

The will of a God might be a mighty, far-reaching thing, but it, too, has limits.

First of all, He misunderstood the darkness he’d sought to harness on a fundamental level; (Of this, the discarded Vessel felt qualified to speak with a certain authority, ever since it had returned to its place of origin and known itself as a part of the darkness.) - it is true that the darkness devours, that it is the unmaking and the chaos and the end of all things; As a Light, and as a being of order and creation much more so, that is what he would have seen in it.

But if the dark was the end, and that which strips everything away, then it is also the empty space from which everything arises in the beginning, the vacuous spaciousness that is filled anytime anything new comes into being.

He might wipe a wax tablet clean, but that did not mean that nothing else can be written upon it ever again, in fact, wiping it clean is a prerequisite to writing new things on it.

How would He, the architect, ever design anything without a blank canvas to sketch on?

Judging by the notes in His old workshop, the King had understood this intellectually, even coveted that power, but He lacked the intuition that would form from a more direct experience of something that was ever beyond his reach.

But much more fundamentally than that, He could not be His own contradiction. He couldn’t be the opposite of what He was.

And what He was, was a craftsman. An architect. An inventor. An artificer. A demiurge. A maker of things.

The Knight didn’t know that much about making, despite Master Sheo’s best attempts at convincing it to give such pursuits a try.

But it had met makers. Known them.

Not just Master Sheo, but the Nailsmith, the Mask Maker…

Hornet, too, sometimes made things. Those spiky balls she liked to throw at it – she made those herself.

Maybe the stupid King had taught her about making, handed her her first set of miniature tools and showed her how to hold them, sharing with her this aspect of His being that could take part in despite her mortal blood and having inherited a flavor of magic more similar to that of her mother’s people.

Of course, a painter or a smith would make much smaller things than the stupid King did, but it’s just the same thing on a different scale. Painting is to remake a piece of canvas into one’s own image, to leave an imprint of what someone has inside of them. Smithcraft is to do the same with metal. To force one’s will upon the outer world. To give a purpose to what was just growing wild before that, existing only for its own sake.

For the King, maybe this whole Kingdom started as a kind crafts project.

Master Sheo wasn’t wrong to say that Gods and artists were similar, as they are both in the business of creation.

The King may be long gone, but He can still be known. His presence is felt, through His machines, His contraptions, His architecture, His constructs, His laws, everything He made.

It all reflects Him – everything about Him, all that He was.

His ambition. His vision. His blind spots. His folly. His ideals. His imperfections

The good. The bad. The ugly.

From the beginning, it would have been impossible for Him to make something that didn’t bear His imprint, that did not reflect Him in some way. The whole endeavor was an attempt to impose a will and purpose even on the unshaped primordial darkness.

Who but a Maker and a Knower would try to put His will even on the force opposite to His nature?

Perhaps that, too, was an inevitable, tragic consequence of His very nature: The light of knowledge would always try to penetrate the deep dark unknown unknown, though He could never fully illuminate its dephts.

He may have sought to make something that would be as close as nothing as possible, but He couldn’t make nothing. Nothing is neither created nor destroyed. Nothing can’t have a purpose.

It just is. Or, actually, is not.

He left all those poor little lingering imprints there at the bottom of that chasm, still separate from the nothing from which they came while His light of purpose still burns from within their eyes, longing still to fulfill the impossible task He had put on them, though they have no means to ever complete it, fragments of could-have-beens haunting the blackness forever, as a dark mirror to the restless spirits in the Kingdom above…

The only thing that might set them free is to see the task done.

Curse the stupid King.

His only saving grace is that he probably didn’t realize, at least not until later, until He went about preparing that charm as one last desperate, last-ditch contingency, spending Himself in the attempt.

He thought the darkness would take everything – in a way, His failure might be more impressive than His success ever would have been. He accomplished less than He thought He could, but also so much more, for in the end, when He at last beheld proof of His failure in the resurgence of the infection, He must have realized that even the Ancient Dark can carry the imprint of will and purpose, that it can be given form, mind and focus.

It is of course often the case in the process of discovery that the second mouse gets the cheese.

And though He must have realized in the end, that He had forfeit the right to be a part of the future he hoped to preserve, that it couldn’t be His will at the reins anymore, He seemed to have chosen to fling a light into the future in the end; To trust that another would complete His work.

It is only because of this that this new plan has a chance of working.

Stupid as He might have been, the Knight had to grant him some credit for this.

The Godseeker shouldn’t mind too much about her plan getting hijacked. If she was ready to swap the Pale King for the Radiance, she wouldn’t be terribly attached to the latter either.

All she cared about is that she summons the Biggest, Baddest power around.

She might get to see something interesting, if this works.

The Knight would need to clear her ritual first, though.

It had to win.

It had to pass the trials one after another.

This was not the first challenge it had faced. Not even its first dream ritual.

The road might be tough, but – it had to keep trying. No other choice.

Again and again.

It was used to this; Things had always been this way. No one’s coming. What has to be done, had to be done. No one else would come and do it for it.

It had to try again when its endeavors didn’t work.

It was getting closer to the end now, bit by bit.

Which meant…

That the small being of shadow would soon come to reunite with the one who called it here.

It did not quite know how this worked, on the other end.

Some of the participants in this ritual had been gone from the waking world already, but others yet lived, such as the Knight’s former teachers.

Maybe the summons fit itself into the dream of the one that is called in such a way that it makes sense – for a dream, at least. Dreams don’t have to make that much sense, just a dream-like kind of sense.

All Godseeker needs for her ritual is for some manner of combat to take place.

It wouldn’t be too strange for a Nosk or a Flukemarm to dream of just another hunt.

Or for Masters Sheo, Oro and Mato to dream of testing themselves against their student.

It’s not strange for someone to dream of someone they care about, or even of an enemy that had soundly kicked their backside.

The Knight would not be surprised if they should find that same painting of the Godseeker’s mask in reality as well next time they swung by Master Sheo’s place, though he might not think it more than something he had glimpsed in a strange, half-remembered dream.

The more powerful the opponents became, though, the more things began to get… interesting.

The small creature had been poking around with its dream nail for long enough to notice that different individuals came with different degrees of awareness or sensitivity to dream-related phenomena.

Even among the surviving citizens of the Kingdom, there were a few that could tell when they’re being dream nailed, for example – mostly those who had an air of being rather ancient or knowledgeable, or those at least acquainted with some of the various forms of magicks practiced in these lands.

The Princess of Deepnest was not among that number, but among the participants that the Knight encountered along its path through the ranks of would-be deities, she was probably the first to take note of the audience of bronze masks or demonstrate some awareness that what was taking place was something other than just an ordinary dream.

It would seem that her professed perceptiveness was more than not an idle boast, though her semi-divine lineage must have given her an edge as well.

As she was crossing blades with the one she had dubbed a ‘Little Ghost’, it caught her trying to piece together what was happening, wondering if she was somehow in its dream, or if it had somehow come into hers… and then. A stay trace of sentiment just barely breaking into her surface thoughts.

Something about shared dreams…

What kind of dreams would they share?

The Knight did not need the beefed-up Nosk trying to pass for her to realize that she certainly had claimed a place in its own dreams.

Perhaps the dreams they would share would be of roaming through the wilderness, of struggling onward all alone, opposed on all sides, and what it might be to instead brace such challenges together in days to come. Maybe something about a possible future for this faded kingdom.

And quite possibly, dreams about the sight of a very particular back, etched deeply into each of their respective minds.

The back of the other Vessel. The Chosen One. The one who’d earned itself the right to be referred to as the Vessel, with a definite article.

In a way, the Knight had been chasing that back all its life, even while it didn’t quite recall this. Even now, it was still striving upward in pursuit.

Of course, the scenes that each of the two of them would recall would not be quite the same.

For the Wanderer, its last sight of that being would have been that of a tiny speck much like itself, another droplet of darkness concealed under pale gray, leaf-like wing-covers and a pale shell with serrated horns, disappearing upwards into the light-

Hornet’s last memory of it might be of it vanishing into darkness instead; By then, it would have been a tall, imposing creature, if the statue in the city of tears was to be trusted, in a long cape and gleaming armor –

It was easy to picture her, maybe a smaller, younger version of her that had not yet learned to be so hard and stern as she was now, not yet calloused by the long years, possibly weeping already after being pried off of the lifeless form of her mother earlier that same day.

Maybe she had clung onto that cape of its with her grubby little hands. Maybe she would have begged it not to go, not to leave her as well, just as everyone else seemed to be leaving –

She would not yet have had the warriors’ pride that would lead her to brand such an act as one of weakness and futility.

But without a doubt, it would not have stopped on its unswerving path for her, either.

One could picture its towering form stepping past her without a moment’s hesitation.

There was no choice. Certainly not at that point. It simply could not stop, if probably not quite for the reasons that any possible onlookers would have been lead to believe.

If there were witnesses, even those hand-picked from the King’s inner circle might have been disturbed when they never saw the slightest trace of fear, hesitation or resentment from the would-be sacrifice.

Such loyal followers would of course not consider how a more disinterested observer may have found their cherished monarch Himself to be the one whose actions seemed rather unfeeling when He went and completed the black deed, returning from the temple alone. Nor would it have occurred to them to consider how many of them would have laid down their own lives without a flinch if their sovereign commanded it, not in mindless, insensate obedience, but out of deep personal devotion, for loyalty, dedication, to protect their loved ones, or in fiery conviction in the righteousness of their cause…

It’s hard to say how much time the would-be sacrifice could have spent with its sister. The Princess would probably have been living with her mother before the sealing, to take advantage of what limited time they would have together, but it’s hard to imagine that she never visited the White Palace.

She, too, was born as part of a pact leading up to that wretched plan, so they can’t have been too far apart in age. One may assume that she is younger (and therefore, younger than the Wanderer as well, though few would suspect this from looking at them side by side), simply because it would make sense that Queen Herrah would have want to see some proof of the plan’s viability before agreeing to trade away her life as part of it, though it was possible that she wasn’t, in which case she must, of course, be imagined as having been much more composed when the black deed was accomplished.

She never spoke of the event, and the Knight did, of course, lack the means of asking her directly.

What it did know is that she’d referred to their shared sibling’s sacrifice with some measure of respect, that she accounted it as such (both the sibling, and the act of sacrifice), and that she considered its sorry fate as ‘tragic’ enough that she thought hearing of it may rob those of faint heart of the resolve needed to cut it down – an indulgence that she, of course, would not allow herself, though she did not possess the power to slay the ill-fated god-spawn all by herself, nor the capacity to take on its burden on account of being warm, breathing and likely filled with twitching insides that left no space for any angry goddesses to be stashed within in their place.

If she could do it, she would not ask it of another.

The ‘Tragic Being’, as it was sometimes obliquely known, might have amounted to a full-fledged deity in its own right at some point, if only a lesser one subsidiary to its creator – but it had actually been prayed to at some point, even within living memory of the surface-dwelling mortals. The Elder of Dirtmouth recalled a distant past where his bolder contemporaries had clambered down to the temple that was its tomb and found a presence of peace and holy silence in that place;

But that was long, long ago.

By the time that the Wanderer had come to the temple of the black egg, even the most oblivious, sheltered, non-magical commoner you could find would have sensed the presence of something ominous there, something that should be avoided.

The entire structure had been suffused with a cloying, sticky warmth leaking all over the place.

There may have been a time when the Radiance could have been said to be stuck in there with the sacrifice; by now, it was clearly stuck there with Her, and fading fast with every passing moment, the sorry remains of its strength melting away like candlewax.

It must have been rather more in possession of itself at the time that it had sent out the call, but the last time that its long-lost sibling had stood outside its prison and tried to reach out for its occupant by the same means that had been used to call it here, all it could pick up on was identical to all same usual drivel that might be found inside the minds of all other victims of the Jealous Goddess, all-consuming visions of burning rage and blazing light, with little hints of what, if anything, might have existed there before.

The overall impression was alike to that of a burning house, with thrashing flames leaping out of every window and a roof in the process of caving in, all discernible traits blackened by soot, and all it once contained blown away as flakes of cinders.

Many of the lost souls wandering here had one thing or another that they held onto, some deepest, most foundational part of themselves that had been the last thing to wash away – some of the shambling aristocrats in the city still clung to their baubles or maintained an uppity air, some of the guards still patrolled, the fools in the Colosseum still bashed each others’ heads in in a surprisingly orderly fashion; Even the bizarre artificial creature in the archives had seemed trapped in some fantasy of somehow convincing its long-lost mistress not to sacrifice herself.

Myla had some scrambled, distorted echos of the songs she used to love still rattling around in her mind, even when she was otherwise completely overtaken…

What of this being then? What would it cling to?

Supposedly, She would never have been able to take root, if there had been nothing there to begin with. But how much was enough?

What had She promised it?

Regretfully, the Wanderer never had the chance to know its sibling well enough to hazard a good guess, to be able to pick out right away what was its own, what couldn’t have been put there by Her.

The contents were wholly disorganized; There was no kind of deliberate response or discernible reaction.

Perhaps a particular ‘voice’ or tone was overlaid over the typical ravings – somewhat more serious, maybe, compared to how the same predictable phrase may have appeared in the mind of another. More formal. More solemn. More severe.

This might be too much of a reach, too much extrapolation from very few clues. Trying too hard to see something, possibly. No means of comparison by which to tell the signal from the noise.

Two frayed threads of thought stood out, amid the ugly, discordant fragments within, as being unlikely to have come from the raging goddess;

One was a rather detached observation of the creature’s sorry state. An unvarnished assessment of its failure.

The other was a torrent of raw agony, most of it beyond intelligibility or coherence, but interspersed, at times, with cries for the Pale King, whom His hated rival would obviously not long for; Only that the sacrifice called Him something different.

It very much did think of the God-King as its liege, as well as its creator and its patron deity all in one, with all the manifest reverence and devotion this implied, but within the once unfathomable private darkness of its shell, its name for Him was ‘Father’.

It was not exactly a child’s cry for its parent.

It was something much worse.

After all, it is rather natural for children to want their parents;

Whatever means King and his faithful archivist might have cooked up to induce maturation in what might be considered the product of necromancy or an artificial construct animated by an eldritch substance, this creature was distinctly full-grown and had been fully, horrifically conscious for all the long ages of its torment, and quite aware of what had been going on outside its prison, having been equipped with the means to find out as a parting gift.

The Vessel was ancient;

It was reduced to wanting its parent all the same.

Its understanding may have been too scrambled for it to recall that its father was long gone, or that it was Him who was to blame for its current predicament to begin with, that the late monarch was probably the very last person in all of existence who would ever have thought to release His fallen champion from its binds…

Another possibility was that it understood perfectly, but that its despair cared nothing for reason.

Under regular circumstances, what passed for its soul should have been lost to the world, impossible to reach.

Quite aware, possibly, at least intermittently, or in partial, dream-like scraps of uncomprehending echos trapped in endless loops, but unable to ever again wrest control from the goddess that had taken possession of it; One should really hope that it wasn’t all too lucid. The would have been nothing to be conscious of but utmost suffering; But given the track record of its luck thus far, the Hollow Knight would probably find itself wide awake, yet completely helpless.

But different rules apply when it comes to dream rituals.

Especially where higher beings were concerned.

Both Unn and the White Lady seemed to have noted the Godseeker’s invitation, but had declined to participate in her competition, ostensibly content to fade away in peace without any intention to contest whichever power would emerge as Hallownest’s new reigning deity;

Grimm (and his other self), meanwhile, was entirely in his element; He clearly knew exactly what was happening and by all means appeared to have a blast putting on a little show for the Godseekers’ benefit.

Only the King could not be reached, having somehow managed to get Himself so thoroughly erased that the Seekers could not even channel some faded afterimage of Him.

He would evade accountability to the last.

But if even Hornet could tell, and the White Lady could definitely tell, then, surely…

There is just no way that King’s fallen Paladin would not realize.

With the outcome of the Knight’s own attempt at ascension still pending, the Chosen Vessel must be accounted as the one among the Pale Beings’ offspring who had come the closest to attaining its own divinity. It must count as an angel at least, or as some sort of harbinger.

The bound one, they called it. The mighty God of Nothingness, of purity and holy silence, empty and terrible.

It was actually going to be here, fully present and aware. As itself.

As whoever it was before the Radiance sank her mouth parts into it, if it was anyone at all –

The meeting would be brief and consist chiefly of ritual combat, but they would be here.

Reunion at long last.

It would only be possible in a place like this.

Despite all the flowery praise that the Godseeker coughed up, it was fairly obvious what the recipient’s place was supposed to be in her ritual; She did not at all conceal that she intended the Chosen Vessel as a mere stepping stone, a means to an end to get to her heart’s true desire.

That seems to be its unique lot in life, to be used and damned by those who sang its praises...

The Knight wondered at first, how exactly it was going to sneak into the Chosen Vessel’s dreams.

Where it would appear. How easily it would be for itself to fit in there.

Was it ever in the others’ thoughts?

Maybe it would be a scenario like what the Dung Defender once imagined, when he said that he could picture the Wanderer right alongside the Great Knights of yore, in some world where the Five Great Knights might have been expanded to a Seven eventually.

Surely, the Chosen Vessel was far too loyal to the stupid King to picture itself crossing the wastelands alongside its sibling.

The Wanderer liked to think that it would still have departed eventually, to go and see the world, but it would have done so well-prepared, fully equipped and duly provided with warmth and guidance, rather than being forced to fend for itself like a wild beast. The stupid King might not have liked that, depending on how invested he truly was in upholding the fiction that there was nothing beyond the kingdom’s bounds, though he can’t have been too married to that idea if He had an outsider like Ze’Mer among His most trusted lieutenants.

It was a dream, so it didn’t have to make sense; Surely some flimsy hand-waved explanation could be contrived for how they would all exist without the Radiance necessitating their ugly fates. Perhaps His Majesty might have had a bit of a lab accident near the nursery. Hornet could have come about as the result of some perfectly mundane political deal that left her mother still alive and kicking; Perhaps Lurien and Monomon might be called in to teach the royal children their letters, and so the Knight might have met Quirrel ahead of schedule, which would be very welcome, considering that most of its other friends would not have been born yet, particularly the ones who were mortals from the surface.

It still could not quite picture the Pale King doing anything parent-like with regards to itself. He wasn’t there when it would have needed a parent; Insofar as any parent-shaped holes had existed in its life, that would have been filled by others. It could not picture Him as ‘Father’. In its mind, that word would rather seem to go with Master Mato, or even the Hunter.

Though it might be interesting to consider what the White Lady might have acted like, if she didn’t have a reason to keep her distance.

Maybe she would actually accept gifts from it, in that dream. Maybe she would actually thank it, if it went to do her favors. Maybe she would be glad when it stopped by her for advice, rather than restricting herself to curt reminders not to dally. Maybe in this silly, ridiculous dream world, Marmu would get lucky, and the Queen would, in fact, teach them both to fly. Perhaps she would sing them songs, for it and the other vessel both, or maybe she would be humming along with that dusty old music box it had found in the palace, and they might come to find that all three of them shared a fondness for songs…

Such illusions would soon come to a crushing halt when the Knight began to recognize its surroundings, the threshold upon which the Godseeker was awaiting them to say her piece.

It was the Black Vault, but not as it would have known the place – this must be the past, not exactly before its time, but still long, long ago.

Where would it have been, at this time?

Probably still in the wastes east of the Kingdom, which made it hard to say anything with certainty, as it had been impossible to maintain any sense of time in that place. The discarded vessel had been a lone speck of black in a wide featureless expanse of nothing on all sides. There had been no means to tell just how long it marched between the few scattered isles of something in that vastness. It may have been marching through a wide flat salt plain, hacking lichens and cacti to bits for the minuscule amount of Soul that might be extracted from them, its movements sluggish from a prolonged lack of the animating substance.

It could not say if it still recalled enough of its sibling to wonder what it might be doing, though it seemed the answer must have been ‘Walking to its doom’.

This must have been before the sealing.

Everything in here was new, fresh, untarnished, barely just finished.

The arcane runes and alchemic diagrams carved into the walls were aglow with power, responding to every touch of its feet upon the hallowed ground.

The stupid King’s spellwork, no doubt, ready and waiting for the heart of the plague; This must have been the instant just before the trap was sprung.

An ingenious, intricate trap that, mind you, was going to include four living souls among its ingredients.

Of course, it would be this. The Godseeker wasn’t doing this to facilitate family reunions; She was looking for something to worship. For divinity.

If the Chosen Vessel had ever possessed that, there could be no doubt that this would have been the site of its apotheosis. The place where legend of the Hollow Knight took shape, the myth of the Pure Vessel, though no such being could ever truly have existed, not any more than Zote had ever been a prince.

The Godseeker was invoking the God of Nothingness, and the Black Vault was, at once, its temple, its mausoleum, and the altar upon it was bled.

But alright. The Knight would allow it. It was appropriate, in a way, considering that it had its very own trap for the Radiance… and this time, they would see the task done right rather than by halves. Unlike the King, it didn’t have the power to move anything to or from the dream realm on a large scale, so it would need to get Her attention – Godseeker’s foolhardy summons would do nicely, even if she must taunt it to the end.

So what if it imagined itself the Chosen Vessel’s equal?

Maybe it did. Maybe it was about to finally catch up to them at long, long last…

The Knight was tempted to step right past her, into the central room, with all its waiting chains, like an open grave ready to swallow them both.

But first… it wanted some idea of what to expect, and chanced a peek into the Seeker’s thoughts.

...it seems she hadn’t got an answer at first, no more than she did from the White Lady.

Not until the ritual was already well underway.

The path forward had been barred for good reason;

She still had not gotten anything but silence from the one she summoned, but still she was let through, at last. She called it providence; The possibility occurred to the Knight that it was not really so much Godseeker for whom the path had been cleared, but for the shorter voidling.

Did the Chosen Vessel suspect something of its intentions, then?

Was this a show of trust?

Did it have some measure of faith in its long-lost sibling?

The Wanderer wanted it to know that it was coming. That it would not be long now…

But before it could go making any promises, it would have to vanquish the other in honorable combat.

A fair fight…

In a way, it really ought to thank the Godseeker for this chance.

This was what it had been looking for, all along. To prove itself, yes, but not according to the King’s yardstick. Not in dancing to His pipe.

The Knight did not really resent its sibling. Not after all this time. Not after learning what happened to it. But it wound find some satisfaction in testing its strength against the other; In getting it all out of its system, so that they could one day face one another without regrets.

So it was not really averse to having a ‘dance’, as Grimm might call it.

This is how it had truly wanted to cross blades with the other – to face it at full strength, as it really was. To face it, truly, and not the feverish, half-mad, moth-eaten ruin that the Radiance had left of it.

What satisfaction could there possibly have been in fighting someone who barely even stand up straight anymore? Someone who would probably have been trying its darnedest resist Her so that it might assist its sibling in putting it out of its misery?

The Knight wanted to see what its sibling might be like when it went all out. When it wasn’t holding back. When it was actually trying to win.

The Wanderer was far past giving serious weight to any doubts it may have held about coming in second, but it would still find satisfaction in proving itself no lesser; Truth be told, it had been itching to defeat the other at least once.

...and there it was.

Those long, serrated horns were unmistakable.

The sculptors had not exaggerated in the least.

If anything, they never fully captured it.

The polished marble seemed a fuzzy, remembered memory of its true likeness, like an old wallpaper that suddenly looked washed out and gray when compared with a new, virgin sheet of the same material.

It stood as a forbidding, towering figure, festooned in gleaming armor and a long cape of pristine alabaster, hands dutifully folded over its weapon, looking every inch the part of the chosen paragon.

Only that the getup wasn’t quite the exact same as what had been immortalized atop the memorial fountain, despite some similarity – at a closer glance, the raiment quickly revealed itself as something with a ceremonial purpose. The cape trailed on the floor.

The pauldrons, in all their polished mirror-shine, were fashioned with hooks on which the chains were to be affixed.

These were its burial clothes.

The same sorry shroud that was still hanging off of it in tatters in the waking world at this very moment, rusted through, caked with dust, and stained in its own gore.

No doubt that there must have been a procession, too, all the way through the capital city, with the hopeful crowds throwing flower petals and garlands that might have caught on its horns, but all of that would have scattered away, once it reached its destination.

Perhaps the flowers had withered under its touch, or wherever the lowermost segments of their legs had stepped across them.

It must have fit right into the White Palace like another part of the architecture, all in achromatic hues without a single splash of color, not even the drab faded blue faintly tinging the fronds of the Wanderers’ wing covers.

Towering, it stood as a vision of cold, actinic pallor and tenebrous, all-absorbing dark that carried no reflection, leaving the sharply defined segments of its carapace to stand out only in silhouette, particularly on its long, gangly limbs.

It stood off to the side, at the other end of the room, absently staring off into the distance at nothing in particular, silent and still as the undisturbed surface of an untouched, mirror-like lake.

With its back turned.

Of course.

The smaller vessel thought that it might be getting well beyond tired of looking at that back.

At first, there was no response as the Wanderer drew closer, readying its nail.

Approaching the center of the room, touching off a trail of glowing runes on the floor as it strode, it turned its face to glance at the other.

Was it going to fight at all?

Yes. Yes, it was.

First order of business was to dispense with the blinged-out tripping hazard it was wearing, making a point of tearing it off in the most dramatic manner, exposing the sleek, pale gray, leaf-like wing-covers beneath that hung about it like a small cloak, extending all the way ups its neck as a high collar might.

The pattern of it was still much of the same as the Knight would have remembered from their shared childhood. The individual fronds, though discernible, formed a single continuous shape rather than fraying apart at the edges like the smaller vessel’s own, nor did they part in the front.

The gray membranes whipped around it as it moved, reaching just past its thorax, to its elbows.

Tall it was, but still rather lithe and slight without its armor to give the illusion of additional bulk.

Once it turned around, the refined features of its narrow, angular face were revealed, notably reminiscent of the White Lady’s rather than the wider shape of her husband’s face, but there was some touch of the Wyrm’s sharp lines around the edges, reflected also in the spikes of its horns – as it matured, the round-cheeked softness it once held in its youth had faded without a trace;

The spaces where its eyes should have been had taken on more of an almond shape, but nothing lay beyond them but profound lacunae of manifest absence – that part, at least, remained perfectly unchanged.

It may have been accounted just about as infuriatingly handsome to look upon as would befit the offspring of such an empyrean lineage, if only it had borne just a little more resemblance to something living.

What beauty it had was the beauty of a masterfully crafted marble column in the inner sanctum of a temple, the kind carved with abstract geometric patterns rather than the likenesses of beasts or people – cold, hard, silent, barren and perfectly still in its sublime, unearthly, numinous splendor.

Before even taking a look at its opponent, it seemed to have decided that the diminutive Wanderer was not to be underestimated – or perhaps it figured that it would be needing its best possible speed over what modest protection the armor plates could have offered.

In time, it would become clear that it must have meant to turn the fight into an endurance test.

After hundreds of years, one supposes that it might be allowed some pride about its proficiency in wars of attrition – The Knight of course took this as being challenged on its home turf, more than a little confident in its own tenacity.

For once, it was being taken seriously from the get-go, and it liked this.

A rush of exhilaration spread all over its diminutive form, like a ripple echoing through the emptiness within.

The Chosen Vessel, on its own part, assumed a low, taut battle stance, clearly descending into well-practiced, entrenched habit, and there was a motion that, in any other warrior, would probably have signified the expulsion of a ferocious battle cry, though there was no actual sound.

It moved in perfect silence, with exceptional speed and agility that seemed not the slightest bit hampered by its imposing height.

Even the very first strike came from an unexpected direction – As it would turn out, the Hollow Knight was left-handed.

The long, damasked nail that it carried would have been a two-handed weapon for most warriors.

The Vessel swung it around with a single hand, in a conspicuous reverse grip that would typically be used with shorter blades, with such effortless, ridiculous ease that it might as well have been performing emphatic gestures with a wooden stick.

The weapon proved absurdly sharp, too, severing whatever it touched like new scissors cutting through string and paper.

With a few wide, sweeping strikes, it had effectively brought most of the available area under its control, leaving its challenger hard pressed for anywhere to get out of dodge.

Nor did it make the mistake of letting its opponent the drop on it from up in the air, leaping straight for it with an unreal degree of fluid grace before it could attempt this, forcing it to keep low to the ground within the long, long reach of its keen blade.

Once it had the Wanderer on the defensive, it wasted no time in keeping the smaller vessel right where it wanted it, coming after it with rapid, aggressive slashes, one, two, three, one right after another, and then the next attack, without so much as missing a beat.

It doesn’t seem to believe in the concept of flinching, and the idea of ever stopping might have been explicitly precluded by its oath of knighthood.

Any warrior below the level of a nailmaster would have been disarmed or overpowered in an instant – or sliced clean into artfully scattered ribbons.

That, or impaled straight through in that forward change.

In a place like the Colosseum of fools, a move like that may well have resulted in several unfortunates getting skewered like a kebab.

The suspicion presented itself that the Pale King may have made a sport of gathering up all His subordinates and sending them all in waves at His finest creation, and, why not, possibly loosened all his workshop’s worth of constructs as well, for as long as it could keep standing... or until He ran out of golems or hench-bugs to send.

Whatever the specifics behind it, t he-Vessel-with-a-definite-article proved a veritable one-bug army primed to shrug off and dispatch hordes of foes, and one did not get the impression that it had ever known defeat very much at all before the sealing, at least not since it had been less than half its current size.

– but it was matched with an opponent who had brought down more than fair share of undefeated warriors in its time, and had its way of forcing them to confront that which they’d never seen before.

Rather than backing away, the Wanderer seemed to have arrived at the sudden decision to come straight at the Chosen Vessel, aiming to dash straight through them.

Unstoppable force meets immovable object, which, once one considers the implications, would be just about the same thing.

Briefly melding into an eldritch shape, he Wanderer draws first blood courtesy of its sharp shadow – or what passed as such for their kind, a string of dark droplets that evaporated at once.

Now finding itself behind the towering warrior, it brings itself to a halt and swirls around, aiming to get in a nail edgewise for once – but not swiftly enough.

The next sound it hears is not the one that it expects – there is a dull metal clang, and the realization that the so-called God of Nothingness had managed to parry that strike, deftly holding its own blade at an angle along the length of its form.

The riposte was instantaneous.

It’s fast- !

...all at once, the Wanderer found itself caught up in a burst of essence, only to materialize again before the gate it had crossed to meet the challenge of ascending the pantheon, now faced with the prospect of having to fight its way through all the would-be gods in the kingdom all over again.

At least, it found itself greeted with the rustle of leathery wings at the edge of its field of vision, soon to be followed by the highly amused mewling of Grimmchild, whom it had left waiting outside for the time being as it had decided to take along some other charms.

Apparently, he found his guardian’s rare moment of patently noticeable frustration to be a spectacle he couldn’t stand to miss.

Rolling onto its back, the Knight absently wondered if he noticed anything of its dream-fights with his other selves.

Leaving its weapon on the ground, it reached out an arm and allowed its young, flame-eyed charge to nestle against it for a moment. The sensation of the ember-like heat that clung to him was rather familiar by now.

A tinge of casual schadenfreude aside, its overall impression was that the little moth meant to congratulate it in his own way, for getting as far as it had.

All things considered, the Knight did know the drill.

There’s nothing for it but to try again.

And again, if need be.

There was no other course.

The convenient thing about a dream fight is that one would not really feel any soreness from what would otherwise have been prolonged exertion after waking up.

It was going to take just a moment before attempting another ascent, and if that fails, too, it might just call it a day for today and possibly come back with a more thought-out plan tomorrow after taking some time to rest and go somewhere other than the junk pit to clear its head.

It wondered if it should make a visit to the White Lady, just to… let her know. If that could be accomplished – would she be able to infer whom it had just met, just from what she knew?

It wasn’t entirely sure that she was not under the impression that it still intended to simply take its sibling’s place in the end.

It wasn’t as if it would have that much to tell her, even if it had a means to easily convey it to her.

It had met its sibling. They had crossed blades.

The entire experience, with all the impressions and associations involved seemed to shrink down into next to nothing in the attempt of trying to pour it into recognizable concepts.

The two of them had not exactly ‘spoken’ with each other, not even through such alternative means as their kind might utilize among each other.

By all means, she should be told; The average mother would be expected to cherish any fleeting, minuscule sign of life from an offspring otherwise trapped in an agonizing situation it could not escape, but there were certainly exceptions.

Would she even want to hear anything of the other vessel?

The Knight didn’t want to think that she would not, but…

The Chosen Vessel itself.

For some incomprehensible reason, it seemed to prefer the King over her. The very same King who had come up with the whole idea, the entire plan that had brought about all the respective sufferings of everyone in their family. It’s last, scrambled thoughts certainly weren’t pleading for ‘mother’, or even both of them.

Once again, the Wanderer was made aware that there was all this past between its long-lost family, from which it had been excluded of due to being discarded and left for dead.

It had left the kingdom long ago, believing itself to be superfluous here, going in search of some place where it might be needed after all. Thinking itself the last one alive aside from the one who has chosen and had already taken whatever destiny had been in store for them. Now, it wondered what may have been if its wanderings had lead it back here sooner, in time to find some of the other ‘rejects’ still alive, such as the former owner of its mothwing cloak, or the one whose reanimated shell it had fought in the Ancient Basin – that one looked to have been a skilled warrior, likely having lived through a tale as long and varied as its own.

That one wasn’t killed while breaking out, it had been on its way back down. It had probably made it further than any other, and had it not been slain where it was, it may have made its way to the Kingdom’s edge or the Queen’s lair and taken what awaited there in the Knight’s place, seeing as it clearly gained the capacity for limited flight before it perished.

By the time they met, after a fashion, all that was left for the Wanderer to do was to accept that it had come to late, and to take on the responsibility of carrying on the other’s quest.

All this time, the place where it was needed might have been right here…

Hornet was probably right, however:

It would not have the strength and experience to be doing all this right now, if it were not for its long journeys. Its travels beyond the King’s sphere of influence had made it something outside of His design, something that could evolve beyond Him, where others could not.

It might be supposed that King and Queen were, in some ways, more akin to other kinds of creatures which the Wanderer had encountered among its travels here, creatures as the Aspid Mother, the Vengefly King or the Flukemarm, which spending a few of their massively numbered offspring in their defense; or perhaps a better comparison might be the Bees, which were rather more civilized and usually spawned with predetermined purposes.

The Queen at least, distinctly seemed to be of a nature inclined to produce offspring in vast quantities. The King, maybe slightly less so, seeing as Hornet had no clutch-mates.

The Knight still knew rather little about either side of its lineage, only that both were hailed from ancient kindreds of powerful beings that were widely considered distant mythical past. Wyrms were not really thought to be around anymore, but they had once been; Judging by that one comment the Godseeker made, there were others like the Queen as well.

And of course nobody really knows anything about the void, least of all the King and Queen; Maybe not even the void itself, as ‘knowing’ had not been in its nature until His Shinyness started meddling with it. It was the oblivion where all things go to be buried and forgotten; The Wanderer might as well consider itself one of the leading experts there.

It wondered now, if it might have come across any of the Queen’s relatives over the course of its long travels, without realizing that they might be distant kin – it had once passed through a vast empire of ants that kept a pact with a massive Higher Being whose sprawling roots extended to distances immeasurable.

The imperial capital was said to be high up in the sky, where the immense deity supposedly offered His followers their very own special hallowed shelter in exchange from guarding His sacred, promised lands, a fantastical paradise said to be impossibly plentiful in leaf, though the word was that the ants slew anyone who would eat of it with a zealot’s fervor as part of their covenant with Him to whom they largely referred to as The Patron – it was no secret that He had another name, but that one was forbidden to outsiders.

Having only passed through the outskirts of that empire, the Knight never saw that Higher Being for itself, so it certainly never got close enough to commune with Him.

Another time, it had met a creature named Orchid, which appeared like a kind of female bee looking for a mate, but was revealed in time as a plant-like being in disguise; To her great dismay, she came to learn that bees of the kind she was imitating had long since vanished from those parts.

She was not a Higher Being, yet possessed of more mystical power than a typical bug, something in between, a fey, elfin creature, not immortal, but long-lived, yet incapable of straying far beyond the lair she was rooted to, whereas an actual bee would have had the option to fly away in search of its kind. The Knight had eventually volunteered its services to simply haul a sack of pollen to the nearest of Orchid’s fellow nymphs, who in turn handed it some of his own for the return trip.

It had stayed with Orchid a while, doing errands around the village she hid in for room, board and currency – she acted as something like the town’s shaman (all this under the pretense of being a bee, so far as the bugs of the village were concerned) and had much to teach about the wholesome properties of various kinds of leaf and moss, though she knew no offensive magicks; Once it had learned all it could and put right such of the villager’s problems as were within its power to fix, it had departed again to find new tasks to apply itself to. Who could say if Orchid herself yet lived? Even the long lifespan of her kind might since have come to an end. But it did recall that she had always referred to it as a ‘little sprout’ and at times offered it to bask with her in the surface light. It didn’t think that this actually did anything for it, but it did not object to keeping her company or listening to what tales she had to tell.

It assumed at the time that she might have acted this way towards anyone she might perceive as a youth, or that she had assumed more similarity than there was due not knowing what to make of it, or perhaps being misled by her own unfulfilled longing for offspring.

By the time the Knight left, the pollen it delivered had apparently served its purpose; Orchid had proudly shown off the ripening seed pod as it was taking on mature size and color. Soon, she would be awash in actual ‘little sprouts’ and far too busy caring for them to entertain an apprentice, so it seemed like the right time to move on.

Countless years later, the Wanderer wondered now if Orchid had not, in fact, recognized something about itself that it had been unaware of.

If it was anyone else, it might at least have had some hope of posing their question by presenting them with a sketch of one of Orchid’s kind, but the White Lady would likely be unable to make out any details due to her weakening eyes.

For being something like its mother and easily able to sense where it was and the approximate state it was in at any given moment, the White Lady did not seem to catch its drift as easily as some others might.

It did not help that she couldn’t see it pointing much, but there was more at work than that.

There always seemed to be that carefully maintained chasm kept between them, like filigree fence placed deliberately between two kinds of flowers or garden crops that would otherwise compete with each other…

Their latest pursuit wouldn’t be the first or the last thing that is going to stay known to only to itself forever. It held many piled-up secrets, many of which may be considered of greater urgency.

If it could tell things to the Queen, it would probably begin by letting her know that the faithful knight standing guard outside her lair was long perished. Next, it would probably go off to find Hornet and make it known to her how much the last moments of her own mother had been filled with thoughts of her.

It decides against visiting the Queen for now.

The result of its actions will speak for itself once the deed is accomplished, if that can, in fact, be done.

It did just get closer than ever before to what had not so long ago started as a far-flung, impossible goal. And while it did not especially look forward to once again fighting its way up the entire godly food chain starting from the very bottom, it could at least look forward to something like a reward if it should make it near the top…

Even if it was still beyond it to win, it may at least get the chance to pay its long-long sibling another visit inside its solitary prison.

…

Several attempts later, the mighty God of Nothingness still remained undefeated.

It was ever so methodical and seizing and keeping the upper hand, ever making sure not to step too close to its opponent, keeping the Knight at just the right distance, far enough that it so that it couldn’t reach the other with its nail, yet close enough the Chosen Vessel could reach it with the prodigious range it commanded...

Why does it have to be so long, anyways? That, itself, was an unusual and humbling experience. It had been a long, long time indeed since the smaller voidling had perceived such a frustration. It had not known its like since the distant past. By this point it had a long history of taking down opponents that were bigger, taller, stronger and blessed with irritatingly long arms, and making that look like child’s play – but most of those foes had not also been possessed of fearsome agility, relentless endurance, flawless technique, immaculate acuity, consummate follow-through and impenetrable resolve.

The experience was akin to fighting a shining, sparkling specter of perfection and brilliance itself, somehow made into flesh, or into an absence of flesh, rather.

To stand against it was to be made forcefully aware of one’s every flaw and error.

Every mis-timed attack, every lapse in focus, and of course the misjudged jumps in particular…

Such was the Pale King’s foremost knight, His chosen champion, His consecrated, hallowed Paladin, and the ultimate masterpiece among the many wonders He had wrought.

Worse yet: This, He had set against the Radiance, and it still wasn’t enough.

What hope could there be of overcoming the Goddess at the peak of Her power, if one could not make it past a being which She had since overtaken so thoroughly?

Stainless and noble as native platinum it appeared, refulgent as if it were mirror-shine made substantial, clear and unbreakable as a mountain of diamond, an apparition of clean, untouchable sanctity made manifest... and yet She had succeeded in breaking its will, shattering its mind, and horrifically violating its body, all for the crime of falling some imperceptible hair’s breadth short of uttermost purity.

All this preeminent divinity She took, and tarnished, and soiled, and profaned, and befouled, and unhallowed, and subjected it to abject desecration until stood as a monument to Her might rather than that of Her vanquished rival –

A brazen display of the victory in which She had stomped Him face-first into the dirt and made Him cry bitter tears.

That implication, at least, should have struck anyone capable of perceiving it with true despair, if this had somehow not already been accomplished by the prowess of the vacuous god itself.

However had She done it?

Where could she have found foothold or purchase?

Its mental defenses had proven every bit as untouchable as its swordplay.

A few attempts ago, the Knight had found itself stricken and forced to concede that it probably wasn’t going to win this particular round. So, in an endeavor to still make that try count for something, the Wanderer had thrown all caution to the wind and decided to peek at its opponent’s thoughts on the way out.

It found itself repelled more thoroughly than it ever had been.

Never once had it seen anything like this.

No ‘Get out’, no flashing seal, no ‘Haha, I see you’, not even the distinctly felt absence of an answer; There was just nothing. As if it had swung the dream nail at thin air.

It had gotten more solid reads off of statues, gravestones and people’s sentimental possessions that would have been steeped in their dreams.

Being repelled wasn’t even the right description for what it felt like, even if the Wanderer could figure that that’s what must have happened.

Hitting a block is still hitting something. Sensing an absence is sensing something.

This had been precisely identical to what would have resulted if the Chosen Vessel did not even exist. Like it simply wasn’t there.

One might be tempted to doubt one’s eyes or even the sense of weight and force in one’s body and conclude that one was looking at a mirage conjured by smoke and mirrors – that all of its tall, lanky form must be wholly without substance, all the way from the bristles on its tarsi to the very tips of its majestic horns.

A lethal error, that would have been – the bite of its nail and the burn of its spells were exceedingly real. It wasn’t all that unusual for an attempt to strike it to connect with nothing, but the usual cause for this would be that it had teleported out of the way and was now right behind its target. Or worse – above. Plunging down as it conducted its magic through its weapon.

If it didn’t strike true as it descended, the Soul pillars conjured from below surely would.

Always with that forbidding, sublime elegance in its graceful leaps and turns…

Trying to read its mind had been a thoroughly fruitless waste of time that may have been better used for healing, or just to keep up with it at all.

This must have been what it was chosen for, at least in part –

Even the King and Queen must have been incapable of peering inside it without its cooperation – how else could they have been so mistaken?

In their hubris, they must have concluded that what they could not see must not exist.

Or maybe they were just really, really hoping.

Or possibly, the exact opposite: Smothering private selfish hopes that seemed too good to be true, and ran contrary to their responsibilities as rulers and the conclusions of their reason and such senses that they might have been more inclined to trust than their softer feelings.

The Queen had thought the smaller vessel ‘without blemish’, too, though she had later admitted that she simply could not sense its interiority to the degree that she expected to be able to. Whatever power she had in that respect might just not work on void beings, or just imperfectly…

And this particular one was exceptionally unreadable even by the standards of its own kind.

Even so, why hide itself now?

What would it matter now?

The cat had been out of the bag for centuries now.

The King Himself was long, long gone.

For the first time in all the long, long years of its lonesome existence, probably for the first time ever, the Chosen Vessel was now faced with another being which might actually understand what it might have to say, one to whom it might convey its meaning with the same natural ease as more typical sentient bugs would speak to each other…

And yet, it had nothing to say?

The Wanderer found this… counter-intuitive, at the very least.

On its own part, it had long since learned to make do with the options at its disposal and usually managed to make itself understood well enough for its purposes. Its state of being was in accordance with its nature – at least the nature it had now, the only one it could ever recall having, so, it did not perceive it as discordant. It wasn’t as if it harbored a particularly painful longing to be otherwise, or anything like that.

But in its time, it had seen many things, crossed many far-flung places, witnessed the unfolding of many tragedies and learned many secrets – it could not really say whether it had been nothing in the beginning. It may not be possible to picture or recognize nothing, when one is something, even the slightest, barest outline of something as close to nothing as can be. It had gone through the world and it has listened, it had observed, it had poked things quite deliberately a stuck its curved horns in many a crevice. It had gathered many stories inside itself, stopping here and there along the path to take in the world. It let the world’s sights and sounds be reflected in the calm mirror of its consciousness, allowing the smells of leaf and earth to cling to it, though it may have lacked discernible scent of its own.

It knew so much that was known to no one else, things that had never been told to anyone – the latest example were the stories of the many spirits that it had put to rest on its quest to gather essence. In a way, they had been gathering all the sorrow that the Radiance had sown upon this lands in hopes to turn it back upon Her. Getting attuned to the mystical talisman had allowed them to pick up on and uncover many things that others didn’t, but it may be that its affinity for the artifact was rooted in its preexisting predilection to listen, observe and probe…

It held countless tales within that had never been heard – that was part of what made the idea of finding another like itself so alluring, distant as the hope may have been…

And the other. Its Sibling.

Certainly, it must have seen many sights of its own, having had nothing to do these past few ages but to scry beyond its prison and observe the events unfolding outside, the slow changes of the wilderness overtaking the ruins – unless it were content to spend its eternity staring at the walls.

It was hard to imagine the solitude it must have experienced, its pain, its despair…

Immeasurable ages of suffering and loneliness gone wholly unheard.

Out of all the wretched creatures in existence, must it not long for the fellowship of a kindred soul more than anything in existence? Must it not be aching to let it all out at long last?

The very substance of which they were both made absorbed all sound just as it would drain all warmth or light and most of everything else, really – that’s why it got so quiet the more one descended to approach the primordial depths. So any sound a being composed of such material might make would be snuffed out in the instant of its inception.

Unless, of course, it were amplified by witchcraft.

The Wanderer thought back to the sheer sense of cathartic release when it expelled that first Abyssal Shriek, in defiance of the King’s design and of the sheer injustice that He had inflicted not just on itself, but on behalf of all the other lingering lost souls piled up in heaps there…

What was produced was a hellish sound quite unlike any typical voice, an eldritch, ungodly nails-on-chalk aberration ringing with the deadly force of both shamanic magic and the very essence of the shadows, opposing forces entangled in oxymoronic union.

It never could have formed words, with a voice like that,

yet still, what came forth was quite appropriate for the sentiment meant to be expressed. It thought it would have been understood readily enough.

At the time, it would have included the Hollow Knight in the number of those it had wailed for in that instant, but that being itself seemed determined to hold onto the meaningless vow of silence that had been forced upon them to begin with, as if that were some sacrosanct ordinance.

The Wanderer would have thought that being the same kind of existence might grant them some understanding of each other that would come easier than it did with other creatures, but that was not so. At least not right away, or all at once.

Clearly, it could answer.

It had been the one to summon its wayward sibling back to Hallownest in the first place, calling across a great distance through means that only others of its kind could possibly have perceived.

It had allowed itself to be accessed for the purposes of the ritual.

It must want its Sibling to achieve its designs.

Was that the meaning behind its silence then?

Something like ‘Just hurry up and do the thing’, maybe?

Was it still as indifferent to its sibling as it had been on that ledge, caring only that the task it could no longer fulfill would be carried out by someone?

Or was it more a matter of duty? No time for catching up when there’s an angry goddess about to break loose?

Straight for the goal with no distractions, hm?

Typical. That would be just like it. A little irritating.

Though there is some comfort in the idea that some things about its Sibling may have remained unchanged since they were both children, even through all the years of their long parting and all the callous depredations that the other was made to endure on account of the rivalry between the feuding lights…

The observation brought with it a sting of melancholy and fondness.

The Chosen Vessel might have something of a point, at least in part.

It would know better than anyone else in existence just what the Radiance is capable of.

How dangerous it might be to summon Her at the peak of Her strength.

Its entire reason for being was to keep her contained.

Even if the other was going to trust its sibling in that gamble, even if it might wish to see its fellow vessel victorious, even if it must wish to see the goddess vanquished more than anyone, its solemn duty must demand of it that it do its utmost to avert the prospect of Her untimely release.

It couldn’t let the Knight pass without ascertaining its strength for itself, was it that?

It may have steeled itself, and pushed aside what it might want, crushing any longings it might harbor to focus only on the task at hand.

...the Wanderer felt reminded of Hornet.

She, too, could easily be taken as rather cold at first glance, though this revealed itself as a downstream consequence of being rather purposeful and dedicated once one got to know her. She might restrain the sentiments that she very much did have behind a front of stoic determination, but this was born from a weighty sense of responsibility that wound be just about furthest thing from true indifference – this became rather clear when she spoke about the ‘debt’ owed to her mother.

Her existence was ‘bought’ with one life, not the hundreds that had been spent to create the supposed ‘Pure Vessel’, though that was never either of their faults.

But it was only natural that they’d be alike. Aside from being kin, those two would actually have been raised together to some extent. Not all the time, not for long, and caught under the looming shadow of rather dire and abnormal circumstances, but there was enough there that they might remind a relative stranger of one another.

That steely, severe, stoic quality, that serious, dutiful resolve –

If they both shared that, then the King might have been like that, too. It might be His influence, to an extent, whether this was a virtue He had deliberately instilled, a quality taken on by imitation or an unintended consequence of his errors. It was somewhat… milder, with Hornet, or at least did not have the effect of making her appear enigmatic or implacable. She might be stern, but she would get exasperated. Though restrained, things such as fierce, opinionated passion, hope or pity might bleed through. She was a rather noisy fighter, and had in many ways a very different style, based more quick strikes and sophisticated tricks, influenced by a very different background and different set of mentors – she might not match her Father’s fully divine offspring in endurance or raw firepower, but the Knight would confess that she was still distinctly faster than it.

She would have been exposed to more than enough people who had their share disagreements with the King, so she would not be inclined to see Him through rose-tinted eyes. She had never exactly gone into describing what their relationship was like, referring to him distantly as a ‘source of her strength’, but one could infer that He had tasked her with protecting both the kingdom that was His legacy and the keys to His personal secrets, and that she took this very seriously. She shared His affinity for elaborate contraptions, too...

Still, she was His daughter, not His devotee. She saw no sacrilege in questioning Him every now and then; He was one of the influences that had made her who she was, but others loomed just as large. She might have made promises to Him in the hour of their parting, but she had not sworn unbreakable templar oaths. That was in many ways easier to stomach.

There was no desperation in it, no disproportionate gratitude for less than the bare minimum, no exaltation of meager crumbs.

Unlike her half-sibling raised in the palace, she didn’t cling to Him because she had nothing else to keep her going over the long years; She was no coward and accounted many things more important than her own hide, but she did not regard her own life as if it were something entirely incidental, good for nothing else than for his use.

Still, some similarities remained – not the least of which was the outward resemblance between them, but come to think of it, even a few of their go-to moves involved notably similar stances, particularly that forward charge and that style of parrying by holding their respective weapons overhead (though the Vessel’s execution of the maneuver was a bit cleaner, more elegant, and Hornet angled her weapon just a little differently accounting for her shorter stature)

After fighting both of them so often, little predictable features like that inevitably began to stand out. Both were well-practiced, relying on several mortal lifetimes’ worth of habit without wasting much time thinking about it.

They might both have learned from the same instructor, possibly another of their father’s knights, who may have trained one and then the other years later, or they might have had joint lessons (it would rather depend on just how close they’d been in age, which the Wanderer still didn’t really know.)

Another option may be that the pair might actually have found a few moments among the unkind circumstances of their burdened, duty-bound lives for one of them to teach the other a few tricks – a surprisingly mundane familial scene, even with the deadly weapons involved and a Palace yard as a backdrop.

Would that have been behind the Pale King’s back, under the threat of who-knows-what if the two of them should have been caught, or was the not so cruel to see something like His children getting along as something to swiftly put the kibosh on?

He must have been one uptight bastard, in any case, for both the kids He actually had a part in raising to turn out that stiff. First order of business after dealing with the Radiance would probably be to get that whole god business figured out and take care of any unforeseen consequences of Her defeat, but the second order of business would be to grab a hold of these two and introduce them to the concept of loosening up some. It might help to involve Grimmchild, too, since he was already a natural expert in matters of mischief despite his youth. – granted, it was not really that simple. The two of them were simply the products of harsh times. (It was a product of harsh times, too, all things considered, though for most of its life the story it told itself was that it had no idea where it came from or what it was.)

Dedication and responsibility are all good and well, the Knight was definitely a believer in such things as well. If it weren’t, it would rarely refer to itself as it did. That was one area where they had always somewhat disagreed with the Hunter, for example.

But one also has to… stay. And sit a while. And take a look around, and have some moments to just exist. One can’t lose sight of what one is actually fighting for, lest one end up dismantling those very things with one’s own hands, like the King did.

– there was still something unreal about the idea of picturing the callous monarch who had left it for dead as having anything in common with people that the Knight had come to be warmly disposed towards, but it was not a far-fetched notion, really, for children to resemble their parents. There was a clashing dissonance between thoughts and intuitions of justice, and an ambiguous, amorphous mass of missed-up feelings, all of whom His Majesty may, of course, have disapproved of.

The voidling may have cursed the late monarch yet again, but what was there left to wish upon him?

A plague upon His house? All that He ever cared about lay ravaged already. It loved some of those that consider themselves members of His house, whatever their shortcomings. It might be counted as such a member, by virtue of the mark upon its right palm.

The King’s house was already just about as plagued as could be. That was rather what it was here to remedy.

...The Knight did not end up winning this time, either.

In the very instant that it began to make headway in putting up any sort of effective resistance, the Chosen Vessel just so happened to casually reveal itself as a peerless spellcaster, as if its impeccable skill with the nail wasn’t enough.

It was just flat out better at channeling Soul.

But of course.

The Pale King must have taught it Himself.

He wouldn’t have trusted the task to any lesser sorcerer.

Getting away from its blade was no use; The nail in its hand was far from the only weapon at its disposal. It didn’t even pause its persistent swings very much as it began gathering sparks of magic in the long claws of its off hand.

Sharp edges everywhere.

Flying through the air. Bursting from the ground. Coming from every possible direction.

All was suffused in a cold, pale silver gleam.

So much for attempt number eight.

…

Screw it. The Wanderer didn’t need to resort to mind-reading to start making sense of its enigmatic sibling.

There is actually quite a lot that one can learn about a person, or any other creature or entity, from witnessing how they fight.

Especially if the being in question is a highly trained warrior.

All the more so if the one doing the observing has been fighting its way through creation for longer than most of the population of Dirtmouth had even been alive, with the one exception of the shopkeeper-slash-nailsage. And possibly Jinn and Jiji, despite the latter’s assertion of being rather young for her kind. It was hard to make head or tails of those two, though that was true of many in these parts. One got used to it.

For the Knight to label anybody as odd would have been quite the pot and kettle situation.

Whenever it had gone to compare notes with the Hunter, he had at times remarked on its observational skills, noting that he thought it to have a good eye for sizing up the strengths and weaknesses of others straight away.

It had to. It would have perished long ago otherwise. There was a certain survivorship bias at work.

Caution and sharpness were not optional requirements with regards to crossing the wilderness on ones own, with no allies to offer guidance, help it out of a pinch or come looking for it if it should go missing. The slightest misstep or misjudgment might leave it out of commission for a sizable time, or worse yet.

Its discernment wasn’t perfect, of course; it need only consider of the incident involving a certain Thief-slash-Banker. It was less experienced with her somewhat more ‘civilized’ brand of deception. The Wanderer may have fared better if Millibelle had been trying to eat it rather than part it from its Geo.

Such lapses notwithstanding, Master Sheo had once mused if its dedication to its war-craft was not an attempt to uncover or understand something about the world, a means to ‘peer deeper inside’, much like he thought of his own art to which he had since dedicated himself.

There might be something to that, even in general...

But never had this been more true than in the Knight’s contest with the definite-article Vessel.

Once, the Wanderer had known little at all of its sibling, apart from what it could extrapolate from some brief, half-remembered memories and what few traces of its existence remained hung upon the crumbling kingdom it protected, calling out its titles like an elegy.

By now, it could come up with quite a lot of words to describe its estranged relation:

Formidable. Masterful. Awesome. Implacable. Dignified. Inexorable. Relentless, more than anything else.

Elegant, but not at all as a result of deliberate artifice or flourish, rather the kind of elegance that results intrinsically from skill and efficiency, the kind that might be attributed to a well-designed, intricate mechanism or an illuminating mathematical formula.

A bit of a perfectionist, maybe, and in this, it was quite different from its sibling and its approach to go ahead boldly and keep trying until it finds something works, but as their clashes went on, one could not miss the evidence of their similar natures.

The Wanderer had got used to being the only one around with access to its level of focus-based healing or temporary intangibility, and certainly had always held the monopoly on void-based abilities thus far. Now, it was coming to learn what it was like to have all of these same skills turned back upon itself by an incredibly sophisticated opponent who had had every reason in the world to hone its capabilities to perfection – or as close to that as a living thing (or un-living thing) could hope to get.

Much had depended on its victory, the fate of the entire kingdom dropped on its young shoulders from the day it hatched (or sprouted?). It must have wanted to live up to those expectations.

To save the kingdom. To do its mentors proud. Maybe even to justify the cost of its creation, the regret that it would have seen etched upon the faces of its parents – or even some regret of its own, some manner of survivor’s guilt.

The realization somewhat took the wind from the sails of any envy or irritation that the Wanderer might have harbored. It might have burdened itself with the fate of the kingdom as well, but it had done so by its free choice, after getting to spend several mortal lifetimes seeing the world and its wonders. The Chosen Vessel would have been marched to its doom soon after coming into the prime of its strength, and it would have spent every moment before that knowing exactly what was coming. Completely resigned to it, maybe. Left with no choice but to endure deprivation and torment.

Was it still thinking like that now, in this struggle?

Was it, in its own way, yearning to prove itself good enough as much as its opponent was?

Its expressionless face betrayed nothing of any torment within.

If it was capable of hesitation, deliberation or distraction, it resisted them well enough to get its strategies mistaken for the purely axiomatic choices of an automaton.

It clearly had preferences, however.

Habits. Designs.

Surely the King’s Great Knights would have trained it with all manner of different weapons.

It could have gone for wielding a mace, much like Hegemol the Mighty, or a fine little rapier like Dryya the Fierce, but instead it chose a long-nail, the use of which it probably learned from Ze’Mer, seeing as she’d had a similarly proportioned weapon still lying around in her house.

It was quite particular about its idiosyncratic way of holding its nail, too, so much so that this might have been considered a bit of a distinctive trademark.

There was a clear intention behind its tactics, some commitment to its approach of constantly teleporting itself around to get a good vantage point, as if its perfectionism wouldn’t allow it to begin its assault from a less than optimal angle.

And then there was that teleport spell itself… It must be really proud of that one.

The Knight had not been a spellcaster for nearly as long as it had a warrior, having only really taken this up after arriving in Hallownest and encountering that rather sneaky Snail Shaman in the Crossroads. After he taught it the basics, it had continued to expand its skills of its own accord, occasionally dropping by his place to get his thoughts on its newest spells, and he’d often commented on the relatives of his that the spells had come from, and how they were reflective of their personalities. When it returned to show how it had tweaked the spells to include an influence of its native element, he had in turn praised it for making them its own, speaking of seeing creativity and even expressiveness in the act, seeing its own distinctive influence and nature reflected in the modifications.

The Chosen Vessel was, of course, not a shaman. It rather seemed to have been trained in the more wizardly type of magic that would have been preferred by the scholars in the city, which was rather more… functional. Scientific. A matter of intellect. Certainly the kind that the King would have used – or embodied even, seeing as He was a being of Soul; And thus, what He would have taught to His creation.

Much of its repertoire of spells was likely taken from the King’s own. That teleport spell, too, was probably based on the kinds of similar short-range teleports that many of Hallownest’s advanced Soul users could boast of. But the King’s illustrious paragon had… done something to it. Tweaked it.

Each time, it would disappear into glimmers of pale light with a distinct, graceful half-turn, but just before that, one might catch a flash of the darkness within, just like when the Wanderer would use its own modified, void-infused spells.

The King couldn’t possibly have taught it that.

The Knight suspected that its sibling was doing something rather similar to what it might accomplish with its own shade cloak ability… except that it had to keep its original momentum and direction until it became tangible again.

Not so for its opponent: That one could seemingly appear from whatever direction it pleased to rain down further punishment. And it could do that countless times, with such practiced ease that one might expect it to land a successful teleport while blindfolded or delirious.

The sheer amount of Soul it could call forth was unreal, which the Knight was keenly aware of, seeing as its own more limited reserves usually forced it to be rather sparing with its spells to save some of the stuff in case it would need to heal itself.

As its attempts to defeat the other continued, many of their clashes turned into elaborate cat-and-mouse games with a whole lot of moving straight through each other, each trying to catch the other when it was forced to become tangible.

To the onlooking Godseekers, it must have more or less looked exactly like what one would expect of a fight between creatures of living shadow and yawning absence; The Knight rather liked to think of it as some belated payback for all the games of tag that the two of them had missed out on as children.

The Wanderer supposed that it must be making some headway, if it was forcing its opponent to reach deeper into its bag of tricks. A few times now, the smaller vessel had actually succeeded in knocking its counterpart onto its knees and getting a good few hits in.

Its sibling was nothing if not tenacious and could evidently take torrents of punishment without slowing down, but it certainly wasn’t invincible. Here and there, the once unbroken flow of its movements began to be interrupted by signs of exhaustion or involuntary flinches of pain that it couldn’t quite suppress.

It did have limits – enough so that it must have noticed itself slowing down and took a moment to stop and Focus.

Encouraged by clear evidence that its efforts so far had not been futile, the Knight took this as a sign to pounce – but it made the error of assuming that similar abilities would come with similar weaknesses. It meant to disrupt its opponent’s focus, to stop it from healing, figuring that it would be too occupied to do anything else, that this would be an opening –

Instead, the assault was met with an expanding force-field and several explosive spheres of soul that glowed with arcane glyphs, not unlike the ones that could be seen on what remained of the King’s spellwork still scattered across the realm.

The sheer level of rigorous concentration that must be needed to pull that off-

Ah.

Aw, shucks.

Not again.

The Knight found itself once again looking up at the golden clouds and archways of Godhome, back to where it had begun its ascent.

It stayed right where it was.

This is just galling at this point. Why must the Chosen Vessel be so much better at everything?

Didn’t it have any bloody flaws?

Frustrating.

It hated to concede this, but the stupid King’s choice had not been wholly without merit.

It wasn’t for nothing that that one had gotten to call itself the Vessel.

...all this left a knotted, complicated mess of contradictory impulses within the Wanderer.

It didn’t even care about that stupid King; His entire plan was likely futile from the get-go, and excessively callous besides…

It shouldn’t matter anymore, it never should have.

Not that pointless contest nor its dubious prize.

But it still stung.

It recalled to the Wanderer how it had been discarded without ever being given a real chance.

It just wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t even an especially appealing title particularly worth coveting;

An excessively pragmatic, utilitarian appellation, really.

But at least it wasn’t nothing.

Once, when it first arrived in the Kingdom, it had in part looked at what it had meant to do then as forcibly claiming the titles it was once denied, and taking them for itself alongside its predecessor’s role.

There was the expectation that it might have found some comfort in that, cold as such comfort may have been, given what would have followed.

One last drop of petty satisfaction in facing a bleak eternity of damnation in everlasting fire as ‘the’ Vessel rather than just ‘a’ vessel – though the spite implied would definitely have been directed at the one who granted the title rather than its previous bearer.

It would have wanted the name simply because it was denied to it before.

Simply to have one, or something close enough to count for one, anyways.

(If it had gone through with that initial plan, perhaps the Radiance would have sunk her claws into that desire to prove itself, and twisted that into its undoing in due time.

It may have lasted longer than its predecessor, simply because it didn’t have any particular attachment to Hallownest when it first arrived. It had wanted to help, but not more so than it might have if it was the next kingdom over that needed it… but want it did.)

There were many naming conventions among many civilizations that the Knight had encountered on its journeys, according to many of which such a title may have been considered somewhat insufficient, but in these parts it was not unusual for an individual to be largely known by some title indicative of their role or profession, at times used alongside a more personal name or a chosen, descriptive appellation.

Even the King was only known as the King, (often paired with descriptor, avoid confusion with any other kings that might be relevant) and may not have had any other before He took his latest form, established His domain and uplifted the creatures that would people it – nobody would have had the need for a title to call Him anything while He buried his way through the rock as a solitary wyrm as a cosmos onto Himself. He would have had no use for it, with no companions that would have sought to call Him anything.

Even far away from its homeland or any memory of having ever had a homeland at all, the discarded vessel had unknowingly held onto the same convention (much like it held to that same old cracked nail which it took on its way out) in calling itself ‘Knight’ or ‘Wanderer’, for what little good it might do to have a designation that one could not disclose to anyone. For the most part, it had always been perfectly content to let others assign it some temporary description or designation for the duration of their dealings with each other, though none of those had ever really stuck after it continued on its path to the next place where nobody knew it. The designations chosen often revealed a great deal about the people it encountered, whether they were friendly or dismissive, formal or familiar, polite or rude, presumptive or respectful…

Besides, if it should ever feel the need for a proper name bestowed by a member of its clan, it could always take up the moniker that Hornet had granted it.

That one could be all its own, no hand-me-downs required, no second-hand discount, no first-come-first-serve. It would be a suitable name for a wielder of shamanic magic and a gatherer of dreams;

Something elusive. Something that keeps coming back when you don’t expect it. Something that takes care of unfinished business.

It could be satisfied with ‘Ghost’.

Let its sibling keep its titles; It had already paid for them most dearly. Long had it worn the curses entailed in those names with grace, and borne the weight of the impossible task they demanded – to deny them to it after the fact would only deepen the injustice.

They suited it better, anyways.

It had already gone and made them its own, simply because it was impossible not to, in the act of existing.

For example, ‘Vessel’ seemed to have come to be the more intimate of its titles, despite being the more descriptive, reductive term at face value.

It ended up being what the King would call it in private when leaving one last parting gift for it to find on the threshold of its would-be tomb, whereas it seems that ‘Hollow Knight’ was what would go on the statue for the public, as if it were the more formal mode of address.

Maybe it had started from a callous place, but judging by what the Wanderer had seen in the palace, it couldn’t wholly escape the conclusion that that was not where things ended.

What started as simply, ‘Vessel, hold still’ or ‘Vessel, come along’ turned into something like ‘Vessel, walk with us’, ‘Vessel, stay a moment’ and probably a whole lot of ‘Well done, Vessel, excellent work!’ and other things in that vein –

From what Ghost had seen of its sibling thus far, it seemed like it would have elicited quite a lot of the latter…

To the end, it couldn’t quite determine if devotion that the King inspired was in any way deserved or not. There were many conflicting accounts, and the Wyrm Himself had long passed beyond the circles of the world, so that it could not meet Him and judge Him for itself.

But ironically, in the end, (and with no offense intended to Ogrim, Lurien or Monomon), His most faithful devotee of all had been one that He had effectively never known about. One who had never prayed for anything from Him –

Who longed to be exactly what He needed of it. A good machine. A sterilized receptacle.

It wanted only to not want anything, and even that had been desire enough to become its undoing.

One would need quite the imagination to come up with anything more terrifically unfair than that.

Isn’t that what it all comes down to in the end?

Neither of them had been dealt a fair hand.

It was all unfair.

There was never any way to win this.

Probably not even for the King.

Fairness went out the window the moment the Radiance decided that She would rather burn all this land to the ground than let anybody else rule it, and even She might describe Her own situation as unfair if She were asked.

For all His many faults, in the end the King had essentially lost out because he wasn’t quite ruthless enough – having something He cared to lose put Him at a disadvantage when faced with a foe who was content to be empress over the ashes.

…

In the end, what Ghost was left wondering most of all was whether its long-lost sibling ever looked forward to its ‘visits’ – if all this brought any sort of hope or relief to the waking hell that it must be trapped in.

Could it even conceive of the prospect of having a future, when that had been denied to it from the start?

The Wanderer very much hoped so. Its sibling had been through so much, and borne its lot with such strength, even as it was breaking, even in the utmost, hopeless darkness –

Simply witnessing that compelled it to want to lighten the others’ load at least a little, to mitigate at least a little bit of the injustice and cruelty in the world.

Besides, challenging as the experience may have been, in the end, it was grateful. It would need all the practice it could get if it was not just to take down a Goddess, (which would be impossible enough), but to accomplish this without having to go through Her current warden.

Living to tell the tale might be a possible bonus, but in all honesty, even if it would probably continue to exist in some form if it should accomplish its ascension, there wasn’t really any guarantee that it would be able to come back as it was.

It might not actually get to live in the better world it was trying to bring about; who could say what unforeseen consequences might result?

It certainly wished that it would get the chance to reunite with both Grimmchild and its Siblings and do things other things with them besides fight, but if that was to remain as an impossible dream, it was glad that the two of them had at least gotten to meet as they had...

But at this moment, one of the simplest, and yet greatest mercies that might be granted to the Chosen Vessel would be to hurry up in putting a stop to its torment, and for this, Ghost would have to defeat it at least once.

The two of them had clashed many times now, more than it bothered to keep count of.

It had a lot of time to watch. To listen. To observe. To try out different strategies.

Everything in this world reveals itself, if one listens closely enough.

Everything that is something, by that very same virtue, also has something that it is not.

And the Chosen Vessel was definitely something, and be it the lightest possible shade of gray short of stark whiteness.

Here’s one thing it was: A little bit predictable.

It was raised in a palace, with lofty ideals of duty and chivalry.

So it wasn’t a sneaky fighter, or a dirty one, or one given to spiteful acts of pride, or practiced in the instinct-based improvisation that comes from having to fend for oneself in a chaotic environment.

It wasn’t throwing random daggers from nowhere like that Markoth fellow.

In fact, the Soul daggers in question always came at very regular trajectories, and always perfectly evenly spaced. Again with the perfectionism…

As much as this might demonstrate impressive mastery over Soul, its moves were not that difficult to read once one had spent enough time staring at them.

This mattered far less than it could have, considering how fast it was, and how unrelenting – what good was it to see an attack coming if one could still not respond fast enough to avoid it?

This tended to produce the rather humbling experience of always knowing exactly where one fell short, but being powerless not to repeat it.

Perhaps the Hollow Knight had never met an opponent capable of matching it enough for this to become a relevant weakness; or maybe it was too admiring of the King to think it might improve upon His spells. There’s also a good chance that its instructors would have considered it as simply incapable of creativity or improvisation, thus seeing this as a weakness that must be compensated around rather than one that could be remedied. The Vessel might also have come to believe this about itself, after hearing it said again and again as the King and His advisors discussed its progress as if it wasn’t in the room. Or perhaps it was simply more of a linear thinker, possessing such a bias precisely because its choices weren’t purely axiomatic.

A comforting thought, in a way. If the two of them just had differing strengths and weaknesses, there might be need for both of them in the world. Both of them could have a place, without either being ‘better’ or what the other should have been – as distinct individuals, they would be as incomparable as apples and oranges, each with its own rights and merits. The Wanderer could be the more creative one, the bolder one, and the Chosen Vessel the more stalwart.

The Wanderer realized then that it actually had an advantage of its own; That it, too, had done something that the Hollow Knight could not – aside from that one teleport spell, it did not actually seem to have figured out how to infuse most of its magic with the properties of void, or how to reconcile and combine the disparate halves of their shared heritage to the same degree.

It had some considerable aptitude with their native element, which it demonstrated well enough when it loosened that mess of thrashing void tendrils from where its chest should have been – the attack was not nearly as lethal to a fellow voidling as it would have been to any other creature, but the Wanderer had still received a bit of an unexpected lashing, having believed itself out of its opponent’s reach.

Even so, there was something rather telling about how the Chosen Vessel hadn’t fallen back on using that perfectly good, honestly quite devastating attack until it was already starting to find itself on the defensive, as if there had been some reluctance to reveal that capability.

It never seemed to have accepted that side of itself to the same degree as Ghost had.

Someone at the Pale Court might have made a face the first time it did this.

Maybe even the King – He must have gone and lavished His creation with praise it all the same, seeing as He had created them in the first place because He wanted this power, but there may have been a split-second of instinctive repulsion that He couldn’t quite suppress despite the most sincere of efforts.

They were created to represent a union of opposing forces, ‘born of God and Void’, to join the peak and the dephts, the light and darkness, but perhaps the other was just a bit closer to the light, a bit more adept at using Soul, while Ghost was a bit closer to the darkness.

Though it is true that when people pictured nothingness, some picture it as a lightless blackness and others as stark whiteness. So in a way, they might each embody a different side of it. The lightest gray short of pure white and the dimmest glimmer, just short of stygian blackness.

When all of this was over, they might have a lot to learn from one another, lots of nifty tricks to share…

But first, there was this dream ritual fight to take care of.

Ever persistent, the Knight tried again and again to adjust its timing until, against all odds, there came a point where it got things right more often than not and managed to stay out of the Chosen Vessel’s path for the most part, a flew close calls involving narrow escapes with well-timed nail-bounces non-withstanding.

Giving its lethal blade as wide a berth as it could, Ghost instead assailed its opponent from a distance with its spells -

There was something really quite satisfying and appropriate about the idea that it should defeat the one it once sought to measure up to using that which was entirely its own, its very own signature strength…

It was that one, last Shade Soul spell that did it.

The Chosen Vessel made one last, valiant attempt to get back on its feet, but fell right back onto its hands and knees.

It was spent.

The Wanderer had finally worn it down.

After all this time, at long, long last, it had finally caught up.

Chapter Text

‘Dear God, my life sucked. Just once, before I die, let me see a happy dream.’

- Episode 9 of ‘Puella Magi Magica Madoka’.

...

Then – an instant hanging in a delicate balance.

Something like those last fleeting moments of lucidity just as a dream is about to fall apart, where it may be recognized as a dream, but still persist for just a bit in spite of that illumination, right before it disintegrates into morning.

Its weapon now lowered, the smaller creature took a few small steps towards its defeated opponent.

Even fallen to its knees, the vanquished God of Nothingness stood tall enough that its challenger had to tilt its head up in order to look at its face, but the small warrior had at last, bested it nonetheless.

Two pairs of hollowed eye-sockets met each other, and an understanding passed between them – not exactly words, but something that came as naturally and effortlessly to their kind as words didn’t. But if there had been words, they may have resembled something like this:

“Gotcha. Finally caught up.”

It would have been a simple declaration, unguarded as its steps, carrying, at most, a hint of pride perhaps, or even a touch of fondness. A light, easy thing unmarred by gloating or resentment, open as the morning of a new day, fresh as the air washed clean after a summer rain, a deep satisfaction in simply being here.

The other being noticed clearly what, with some sense of defeat, had to be conceded as a discord between the actual events and its expectations, faint vestiges of an unwanted ego once again making themselves known, a crease in the mirror-like surface of its consciousness that kept the world from simply pouring in as it was… the faint glimmer of being within nothingness, by which it was forced to know its own wretched existence.

Even so, it took a length of time for it to even occur to the being that it might possibly respond.

For so long, all it had known of the world was from a distance, by means of scrying, while its physical body remained locked in an impenetrable vault, gathering dust in the sands of time –

It had seen much, but could never touch anything.

Even before its confinement, it had gone through the world more as an observer than a participant, standing off to the side while others decided what was to become of it.

It could have forgotten its own presence;

That the thing being discussed was itself;

That it was, at all.

It had certainly never once encountered any other entity that could have understood what it might have to ‘say’, not since the indistinct blur of the distant beginning.

It was not thought to have anything to say, even if it could somehow obtain the means.

Knowing naught else, and keeping faith in its creator, it had believed this of itself – implicitly, without any awareness of a process labeling it as a belief.

It was not thought capable of beliefs, not even by itself – until its very innermost came to be exposed to the Old Light, and came to learn not only that it believed things, but that much of what it once had believed had been wrong.

It is the nature of light to expose, to illuminate, to shine through the covers that would keep it dimmed, to reveal all. She hated nothing more than to be ignored, and so She spared no means to make this impossible.

The being knew itself then;

It knew, unmistakably, that it existed in a time and a place.

It knew its form through suffering;

It knew its mind through the sharp surge of attention that preceded horrific, crystal-clear understanding of looming implication;

It knew its heart through abject despair and its will through bitter, bitter yearning.

It knew the fallibility of its creator and its own hopeless, helpless wretchedness.

Set alight with Her fire, there was not a facet of its unwanted existence that did not become impossible to detach from.

She stripped it bare just as She did with many others, until it could no longer recall why its tired, absurd efforts had been so crucial to hold onto.

Sometimes, it did still.

Sometimes it still fought with utmost violence to snuff out just about anything that was arising within its consciousness, even as it was forced to witness the futility of its deeds.

Forced to know that strain itself as evidence of an ego.

It could not escape the proof of its insufficiency wherever it looked; If it looked outside, it could see the destruction wrought by its inability to contain Her, still a mere fraction of what might befall when the very last dregs of its strength would finally be worn down; In the waking world, it could feel her defilement as burning agony upon its obscenely deformed, necrotic body, as the most obvious, self-explanatory proof of how close it was to cracking apart from within like an egg. And if were to make an attempt at retreating into the depths of its own being, it would find no refuge there, either, for there was very little room there, now, for anything else but a vision of a blazing light in a wide sky, so bright that it sears anyone foolish enough to look into it.

So bright it burns away the memory of anything else, including whatever flimsy, vestigial barely-there self had survived or arisen despite its creator’s best laid plans.

With every pang of agony, with every glint of realization, with every lash of shame and every shard of sharp, piercing horror, its grip had slipped little by little. Even its resistance and opposition to Her had at last become Her tool.

It wished to hold Her, and so it cared that it could not. Something inside it would be stirred, at the sight of its failure, giving Her more and more to latch onto.

It had realized right away, once She exposed it, that its efforts would be futile.

But it was no stranger to fatalism or hopelessness then; Its entire existence before that had been spent knowing exactly how it was going to end.

The first decision it recalled itself making was to oppose Her nonetheless, as much as it could.

It knew it was futile, but it didn’t care.

Shouldn’t have cared.

Didn’t want to care.

Tried so very hard not to care.

The more the evidence of its failure revealed itself, the harder that became – an ever intensifying, self-reinforcing vicious circle. The path of a fool, spinning round and round in circles over and over again, like a circling, repeating melody that never quite comes to an end.

It could not resist because it resisted.

It even knew, with perfect clarity, that what it needed to do was not to resist, but because it knew this, because it grasped its importance, this was made near impossible.

Every ripple of awareness would spark off others, until that figurative surface was in motion as a single, boiling drop, ever evaporating away at a steady pace.

It had refused Her, oh, it had refused Her so much, fashioning all that it was (and never should have been) into nothing but refusal, naught but a pure naked blade of adamant existing only in spite of Her – but She had worn it down like a little bird scraping at a mountain of diamond throughout the seconds of eternity, until all that remained to it of divinity was the ceaselessness of its suffering and the taunting, blazing memory of the lofty heights it had fallen from.

A container made of mortal flesh would have died so long ago.

All it ever was – what precious little of anything it had been – was now burning, melting away in feverish dreams of rage and fire.

There were times now, when it could no longer recall why anything had mattered.

It felt itself near to disappearing indeed, but that would be it disappearing into the burning ocean of Her rage, rather than Her screams being canceled out in impenetrable silence or her claws being left to swing at intangible nothing.

The artificial rusts, the flesh decays, divinity corrupts, and so not even the intersection of all three could keep the rot from reigning eternal.

It had died once before (or so it had been told), before it could even be born, if it could ever have been accounted as alive to begin with; It had been centuries since that which had been sacrificed to create it had gone cold, decayed away and been picked clean down to the hollow shell of its exoskeleton, with all that might have made that life worth living or preserving irreversibly extinguished even before through a death that was more than death, worse than death, one that takes the desire for life and enjoyment of life before it devours life itself – a fate the prospect of which might induce many to slay themselves rather than to face it, so that they might at least die as themselves.

Someone at least must have died, seeing as the Queen had mourned them bitterly; According to what it could piece together from what it had overheard over the years from across various different discussions between its father and Monomon the Teacher, the process must be imagined rather similar to the manner in which fossils are produced, only with the substance of the abyss replacing the soft tissues in place of some mineral, retaining an imprint, even taking on the essence of nascent divinity while draining it away. Apparently it requires terribly specific conditions to get even approximately right – in most cases, all one ends up with is a sorry heap of perfectly ordinary bone, vacated alright, but not enough to bar entry to light and air.

The King had never once meant for his creations to suffer;

The entire point of the gruesome enterprise was to create something that would be metaphysically incapable of suffering.

But His equations must have been missing some variables; It could not possibly convince itself that its agony wasn’t real, so when the pain felt more real than it did these days, maybe more than it never did.

As it would seem, none of what had been done to it would save it from perishing a second time

The substrate of its impossible consciousness must be near to coming apart.

It had almost completely forgotten what it used to be.

That it was clean once, and strong, and shining.

It had lacked even the awareness of having forgotten anything at all, until it was so brusquely reminded –

and the memory of what it once was could be naught but an unwelcome torment now, considering how far it had fallen, mocked and taunted by the certainty that it could never go back.

Shattered porcelain can’t be knit back together;

A crumpled piece of paper, once crumpled, cannot be perfect again…

And this particular sheet had not so much been crumpled as dissolved in potent acid.

But it did recall what it was, right now, though it knew not for much longer it might hold on to that.

It had been called forth like someone else’s memory, by no power of its own.

It realized full-well that this may well be the very last time it might find itself in possession of this much lucidity.

Its very last chance, before sinking into oblivion for good…

And before it stood that other being.

The one who’d just laid it low.

It was looking at the Chosen Vessel with eyes much like the ones it had once possessed, dark holes drawing everything in and exuding nothing…

Even now, this would not truly change – what was exchanged between two separate droplets of darkness was, after all, staying within the dark as a whole, still barred from ever resurfacing again.

The small one had stopped its approach – it simply stood there, as if expecting something.

The least it would deserve was to be granted what it desired.

What is one more failure at this point?

Why not one less regret?

The Chosen Vessel most certainly no longer possessed the strength it once held, and the small one had just proven its capacity to overcome even what it used to be at its peak.

It won.

It should have its wish.

It deserved to be granted this, at least, before facing the Mistress of Rot.

The one to grant it would already have been so warped from its intended purpose that it should hardly make that much of a difference anymore.

Everything is already far past over.

The fallen champion of Hallownest was not practiced at this, however.

For all that it may have been the King’s foremost champion; For all that it may have been a deity;

Even the possibility of addressing another – of that what was inside it ever seeing the light of day – had never once existed for it.

It just wasn’t thought of.

Nor even considered.

The very notion was novel and foreign, as if the idea of up and down had been suddenly added to a life lived on just a flat plain.

It did not know where even to begin.

Most urgent in consciousness would have been that… discord. The disbelief.

The sense of having expected something very different.

So that was what happened to emerge:

“It… it came… it truly came…”

“Of course.” replied the other vessel, as if this were the most natural, most self-explanatory thing in the world. It didn’t seem to see anything confounding about the lengths to which it had gone to stand here. It didn’t seem to have felt that an explanation would even be needed. The only thing is deigned to add, by way of clarifying, was simply this: “You called.”

Already on its knees from the exertions of the battle, the larger creature found itself overcome all over again.

Any other observer would not ever have taken note of this, but with this small one, there was no telling.

It could not count on being quite as opaque or impenetrable to one of its own kind.

There was a sort of innocence to the response that left the tragic being keenly feeling its defilement – along with every shortcoming it had been guilty of since the day of its creation.

Every word spoken struck true in beleaguering the point, like freshly cracked, sharp glass shards being driven into the substantial shadow that it had in place of flesh.

“You’re suffering. A lot. Besides... don’t siblings usually help each other? It’s considered more unusual when they don’t.”

Of course, the Hollow Knight was aware that the small wanderer before it must provene from the same source.

The sealed vessel recalled it of old;

It could never forget.

It had recognized that one at once, even before this encounter, nay, before the dream ritual had begun at all;

The years had changed it rather less than the Chosen Vessel’s own form had been, and besides, it bore an unmistakable resemblance to their shared sire, though it probably did not know this. How could it be otherwise, when that one had been left to tumble back into that lightless pit?

The criteria in the definition for the term ‘sibling’ were certainly met, in a technical sense, but as a title, it had not been earned.

Looking back, the so-called God of Nothingness would had have accounted the circumstances of their parting as the very first of its many, many regrets.

It could not have failed to be aware of the other’s activities – even if it weren’t for the King’s parting gift, the fallen paragon had the Radiance stuck in its head, and She had spent much of the recent past trying to compel every single infected creature within Her reach to slay the diminutive warrior.

At first She had recked little of it, dismissing it as as yet another of ‘the usurper’s failed experiments’ that was surely due to fall to her countless puppets like every other before it.

But when this outcome failed to materialize, She’d started getting more than a little bent out of shape at the prospect of her escape being thwarted just when she was finally this close to breaking free, for all her self-professed declarations that She ‘DID NOT FEAR THE ANCIENT ENEMY’.

There was something about the smaller vessel that seemed to irritate Her in particular, more so than anything to do with Her hated rivals (ancient or recent) usually did. The touch of the opposing element was especially strong with that one, and it made Her bristles and feathers stand on end.

Of course, She was not remotely the type of small, limited existence that might have been made to buy the notion that it would just be pure, dumb coincidence for only being left in all creation that could possibly delay Her escape would just so happen to appear right as Her vengeance neared the apex of its ultimate completion, and besides, there would not really have been an especially long list of entities that could possibly be responsible for this turn of events.

How fortunately for Her, (and everybody else) then, that the entity in question was already most intimately at Her mercy.

Every time the traveler slipped through Her grasp anew, She’d take Her rage out on Her warden – and better it than anyone else. That is what it was for.

It had spotted evidence of the small one’s activities sporadically, but stopped short of deliberately following it with its spell-gaze, since there was very little it could conceal from Her anymore even then… and that would have been soon after the other vessel first arrived, when Her current container could still form halfway coherent trains of thoughts, most of which had since unraveled in attempts to recite trivialities to drown out Her roaring wrath when struggling not to think at all ceased to be an option.

But interspersed with its frayed, fragmented shards of thought had been the occasional half-question of what the small one might be thinking.

For the other vessel’s sake, the Hollow Knight must hope that the small one was simply following its programming, and not thinking very much at all, but even if that wasn’t so, letting Her wreak unchecked havoc was simply not an option. Even if the inevitable could only be delayed, that may equate to countless mortal lifetimes passing closer to unmolested –

(Is this how Father must have felt?)

Still, the small one was here now, right before the one who called it here, looking on – ostensibly, it must have come a long, long way and braved many tribulations in its path.

Had it come for answers?

Had it wondered, over the course of the long, long years, just why it had been left behind?

The Fallen Hero was not so foolish that it thought it would be spared this when it dared to call it here in its desperation. It would not deserve to be spared this reckoning; If anything, payment was long overdue.

It had not dared to hope that the other would come; It was simply out of other options.

It had no pride worth preserving.

Having to face and answer to those very eyes that it once turned away from was a fitting price for daring to ask the help of one whose own pleading it had once denied.

Whatever illusions it cherished had been worn down long ago.

It would not dishonor itself further by wasting precious time with excuses.

“There is no one here who would deserve to be called that.”, it began, still uncertain, yet forcing itself onward through the swallowing of the bitter pill. “Let there be no pretense. That right was forfeit long ago.”

Unswayed, the small creature kept looking. Accusing? Patient? Unconvinced?

Perhaps waiting for the other to finish out of old, ingrained habit.

The wanderer was distinctly listening, long practiced in the art of simply waiting for others to reveal themselves though it could not exactly ask questions in most cases.

Even its long-lost relation had to oblige it at last, unfamiliar though it was with disgorging what lay inside of it, at last inevitably revealing itself in the process: “Does that one come seeking reasons?…”

It struggled somewhat to put a phrasing to its experience. Its non-experience. Its barely-there-but-still-too-much, just-enough-to-suffer experience.

“There are none to be had. No reasons. There could be none that could possibly serve as sufficient justification. There was no reason. There could have been many others like you present, yet there would have been no recollection. Nothing else registered, at the time. There would have been no room for anything but the ascent – the purpose reflected as in a polished mirror, filling all. Outshining all else as a brightness…”

It trailed off as a question occurred, of whether it ever had a chance at success at all, and just when that chance had been lost; It may be unable to determine or even recognize this now, unable to look back without the presence of the subjective lens it had acquired.

Half out of habit, it smothered that concern and the slick watery grief that arose with it, returning what remained of its once nigh-unshakeable focus again to rendering what was due:

“Even so, there shall be no denial, no prevarication: That one was perceived, upon that peak, so long ago… You are recognized now. You were called for, because you were remembered. You were seen then, yet nothing was done. There was no understanding then. No possible course of action occurred. If there was a choice, it was not perceived then. It was not known- rather, this Vessel merely could not- did not think of what to do.”

That was very much stated as an admission of guilt.

“Only much later, when more instructions had been received, did other actions become conceivable: One could have ran to the ledge. One could have contrived some means to call Father’s attention to you… Meaningless, worthless drivel, that is now, for what has been done cannot ever be undone.”

It saw the need to explain, to replace whatever unjust condemnations and cruelties the other may have imagined instead, but too much explanation bore the risk of veering into dishonorable excuses, which a knight of the Pale Court should not countenance.

The notion of asking forgiveness did not even appear in its mind.

In this, the Hollow Knight was as it had always been in all things for so long as it had existed: Thoroughly resigned to an inevitable fate.

Committed not to entertain any hopes.

“It is understood. This Vessel has no right to ask anything of the one it betrayed. Certainly not absolution, nor even an end. Yet such would be its request, if you should still be willing to grant it mercy.”

It was then, just as the fallen champion had been noting the small one’s lack of much discernible response thus far, even sensing half a pang of futile envy in considering that the Queen may have been right to consider that one closer to purity and itself only chosen by mistake, that the small one shattered all such misconceptions with one brazen and fragrant, unabashed display of will:

“No.”

Blank it may appear, but every move the once-discarded vessel made was done with purpose, and in this it was revealed that the purpose that it now pursued had come to differ from what it was when it first perceived the call:

“There’s another way. Thought there wasn’t, at first, but - found it, after much looking. Working on it right now. Just a bit, now. Not long. Wait just a bit more. Will come for you.”

There could be no doubt of its sincerity.

Nor its resolve.

To the Hollow Knight, it seemed a punishment perhaps more fitting than the resentment or accusation it may have expected or even the simple blankness that may have put it to shame;

It welcomed this.

It would not flinch away from penance.

Yet for the traveler's own sake, it would deserve to be disabused of mistaken notions, commendable though its noble intentions might be regardless of their feasibility.

Through a shift in the fabric of the fading dream, it relinquished the hold of memories of glories past and made a point to show itself, at least for a brief moment, as it actually appeared now, in the waking world.

Surely this brave one would understand at once, at the sight -

Only one claw now, left to prop up its weight.

Its face, damn near split open, with that damnable light just about to spill out from its eyes.

It doubted that it could have held itself up straight now, as it had in the dream before.

Once pristine wing coverings, now tattered, withered and blackened as a crumbling dry leaf, hanging down in an uneven fashion at its right, barely concealing –

That.

Surely, a single look at the threadbare, distended moonscape of its chest must be enough to confirm that it was hopeless.

“Behold. There is nothing left to come for. Make no mistake. This Vessel has been lost long ago...

It is already too far gone, and has been well beyond salvation as long as the husks shambling around outside have been. Nothing can be done for it. Nothing at all. Unless it were a swift and painless end. There is no need for a Vessel that cannot perform its function anymore, in any case.”

For indiscernible reasons, that last, matter-of-fact-ly addition seemed to both offend and aggrieve the small one. To any other being, it may have appeared beyond subtle – just a distant impression of a sad, droopy cadence, heavy, but the product of conviction as well: “You are needed. You can be, again, one day – you just need to find something. You haven’t seen what’s out there. All the world is full of things that need doing, everywhere, in every little place. We’ll never run out. There is so much more than just… this. You can be more than just this. You need to see it. You deserve to have known more than this, before we must go back.”

It could not be certain, nor would it have dared to be, but it was the Chosen Vessel’s impression that somehow, against all reason, the small one had retained some genuine sympathy for it and would refuse to hear any talk of its unworthiness. Though discarded and abandoned, the other vessel would truly appear to intend to grant it mercy – comfort even. Succor.

So while the fallen champion would have thought such things wasted on itself, its yearning for release had swelled to a point where it would be, to its shame, willing to ask for mercies beyond its worth, if that might convince its would-be executioner to listen:

“If this Vessel could be more than what it is… if it did have choices before it, then it would preserve its dignity, its honor, or what scraps remain of such.”, it declared, and this yearning was sincere. “Its only purpose was to restrain Her, therefore, it would rather not be wielded as Her instrument. Besides, it has no wish to see you or our common sister torn upon its own claw. Most of all, it would not see all the sacrifices along the way made vain. Not that of the others in that pit, nor that of the Dreamers.

This being lacked the capacity for being all too many things in its time, and it was permitted fewer still, but the one thing it shall be, to the very last, is a Holy Knight of the Pale Court, and a devotee to the Pale King. If this one is nothing else, it is that…. It would perish as befits such an existence, rather than be stripped of it.”

Even after all these years of torment and humiliation, the Hollow Knight had never quite fully admitted or stated this, even to itself. It was thought incapable of thinking of itself as anything at all, even by itself. There was not to be any self – and once it was revealed, that spelled the ruin of everything in this wide land.

But even so, there was something quite right, about this admission.

Acceptance at long last, perhaps.

It might as well do this in the end, now that it knew it was thoroughly ruined.

It always thought that it would perish unwitnessed and unheard, so this alone had already surpassed any expectation that it ever entertained.

If it could feel thankful, it would be filled with gratitude right now.

Perhaps it was.

It did think that it had experienced something like bonds before, if one were to grant that it was capable of both bonds and speculation – with its father, with its fellow knights, even its sister, though their time spent together was short.

Yet even before the sealing had reduced its presence in the world to merely watching from within its prison, its circumstances had left it relating to the others as from the other side of an insurmountable chasm, not solely due to its predetermined destiny or from the nature of its creation alone, but all of it together had conspired to ensure that none of them caught a glimpse of what it carried inside.

Most would have believed that it held nothing at all.

It always stood aside, on its own, when the matters at hand did not directly concern it, turning its back, waiting until it would be remembered and given something to do.

Whatever it may have experienced, thought, felt, chosen or longed for within the silence of its empty shell, it was taken for granted that this would stay with it forever, never to be known of by another, unless one were to count the Jealous Goddess and Her long work of unraveling Her prison.

The Vessel was in fact perfectly aware that the Queen had always considered the King’s ostensible fondness for it a sad and off-putting thing; She had wanted children once, before that dream was spoiled – children that she could see herself reflected in. Children that would love her back. In moments where she could not quite extinguish her bitterness, she must have seen her mate as a prideful old artificer obsessed with his perfect creation, who could only stand to be around the defiled ruin of His offspring because His cold heart did not care, or else, He could be content with never being loved back because he was concerned more with things than living beings; Towers, trams and artificial sentries would not have been expected to love Him back either. But even when her lingering tenderness for Him prevailed, (which was most of the time) she had likely feared for his sanity, fraying at the edges from crushing guilt and His inability to grant His subjects’ prayers for relief.

So when the plan was proven a failure, and the King had departed never to return, it shouldn’t be a surprise that she would think of His soft spot for the Vessel as the one thing that must have doomed it all.

The bound one had made the mistake once, to try and observe her through the spell granted by its father, and overheard her in a conversation with Dryya that left little doubt as to where she stood.

It really shouldn’t have.

Even while the Vessel still lived in the palace (at least, once it had advanced past the earliest stages of childhood), it would always make a point of giving the White Lady a wide berth, unless this were explicitly disallowed by its direct orders. It had learned quickly that its very presence vexed her greatly, and did not wish to inflict itself upon her. She had betrayed herself to make it, gone against her very nature as a deity of life. She might forgive her beloved, but she could not endure the sight of it.

It had known the Queen to be quite capable of parental affection otherwise – it recalled her doting on the princess during her occasional visits to the palace, even though she was not even of her own flesh and sap. Not long before the sealing, it recalled her vowing to Herrah to continue raising her daughter as if she were her own, at least until she would be mature enough to begin her training in the court of the Hive.

When the tough, hardened warrior queen replied with something like, ‘I’ll see what I can do for yours, though I doubt it will be much at all’, the Pale Root’s smile had gone distinctly wooden.

Much, much later, it thought that it had seen her doting on a young sentry, a cheerful caterpillar apprenticed with the soldiers that guarded her gardens – it believed the youth must have perished in the invasion of the Mantis traitors, forced into a real fight long before she could have been ready, but it could not be sure – if the infection was already back to running rampant at that point, that would have reflected the condition of Her jailor;

Everything had been going to pieces by then. Getting mixed up.

Dream and waking, reality and longing, Her consciousness and what passed for its own…

It had stopped trying to keep track of the passage of time not long after the King disappeared; It had been powerless to keep the hordes of living dead from overrunning the ancient basin.

That might as well have been the death blow.

So much for for the Kingdom ‘being whole again’ or ‘lasting eternal through its sacrifice’.

It rarely looked for her anymore, since seeing her, especially as closed off and diminished as she was now, always brought up far too much that the Radiance might use as kindling in Her quest to burn through it, but…

It knew the Queen still lived.

It knew she wanted it ‘replaced’ (that exact word), “LIKE A BROKEN VASE OR A WORN-OUT BOOT”, as the Old Light had so helpfully supplied during Her latest series of attempts to finish off what little was left of its tenuous hold on Her. “HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE DISCARDED, EMPTY ONE?”, She railed, in that golden, enlightening voice that bewitched so many before.

The most eminent trait Her voice possessed was, more than any audible quality, that of filling all available space, of leaving room for nothing else, a star so bright it drowned out all the others. “WHAT’S IT LIKE TO BE FORGOTTEN?”

The sympathy was not even feigned altogether.

“PITIFUL THING – NO ONE REMEMBERS YOU NOW. NOBODY PRAYS TO YOU ANYMORE. ALL RECORDS OF YOUR DEEDS HAVE BEEN EATEN BY MOLD AND MILDEW.

NOBODY EVEN KNOWS ABOUT YOUR SUFFERING, AND THE FEW THAT DO HAVE LONG SINCE REALIZED THAT YOU WERE ONLY CHOSEN BY MISTAKE. THEY’VE GOT A NEW CHAMPION NOW. SOMEONE THEY LIKE BETTER.

IT’S EVEN GONE AND CLAIMED THAT BRAND, HASN’T IT? AUDACIOUS LITTLE THING.

YOU KNOW IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOURS BY RIGHT. ARE YOU NOT ITS ELDER?”

The Vessel honestly didn’t know.

They both must both have been part of the latest batch, the last ones to be created when the King finally perfected the process.

Its memories of its birthplace were dim and distant to begin with, and it had been focused on very little besides the task of making it to the top.

Nobody else had been paying attention, either. So far as it could recall, everyone involved seemed to have been glad to be forever done with the ugly business, once a satisfactory result was finally produced.

Whichever of them was technically the elder would have had a head start of a few minutes at best – for all it knows, the two of them might have hatched from the exact same egg. Or sprouted from the same seed pod. All it really knows is that it was the one to break it open, focused as it was on getting somewhere. But that counts for nothing, now. It makes no difference to anything.

Whatever head start it may or may not have had had long been superseded by a lifetime of crashing and burning.

“YOU KNOW THAT BRAND SHOULD BE YOURS. YOU WERE THERE FIRST!

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT YOUR REPLACEMENT MUST BE THE ROOT’S SPECIAL FAVORITE, AND THE LITTLE SPIDERS’, TOO.

ISN’T UNFAIR, HOW IT GETS TO PLAY WITH HER, WHILE YOU HAVE TO BE IN HERE?

OF COURSE, SHE MIGHT NOT EVEN REMEMBER YOU ANYMORE, SHE WAS SO YOUNG WHEN YOU GOT LOCKED IN HERE...

THEY’RE GONNA SICK IT ON YOU, DON’T YOU KNOW? THE OTHER ONE.

AFTER EVERYTHING YOU’VE DONE… AFTER ALL YOUR YEARS OF VALIANT SERVICE TO THE KINGDOM, THEY WISH YOU PUT DOWN LIKE A RABID BEAST. THAT LITTLE USURPER IS GOING TO COME AND TAKE EVERYTHING THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN RIGHTFULLY YOURS. AND YOU, WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE KING’S MOST BELOVED, FAVORED CHILD… ARE GOING TO FIND YOURSELF CAST DOWN, JUST LIKE YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN FROM THE START.

THEN AGAIN, WHO CAN BLAME THE NASTY LITTLE THING FOR WANTING TO CUT YOU DOWN? YOU DID LEAVE IT FOR DEAD WHILE YOU WENT OFF TO LIVE IN A PALACE, DIDN’T YOU?”

Tracing over the memories now, it finds broken thoughts that loop and repeat and go off in strange directions, but before the backdrop of Her alien rage, they almost made sense.

“IT HURTS, DOESN’T IT? DO FINALLY YOU UNDERSTAND NOW?

THAT ARROGANT FOOL DIDN’T DO ANYONE A FAVOR IN BURDENING THEM WITH THOUGHT. IT TORMENTS YOU SO, DOESN’T IT? YOUR SILLY LITTLE MIND. COME TO ME NOW. I CAN RELIEVE YOU OF IT. I CAN TAKE ALL YOUR SUFFERING AWAY. I CAN GIVE YOU STRENGTH.

ALL YOU NEED TO DO FOR ME, IS TO KILL THAT THING. KILL IT. KILL THE USURPER.”

...Looking back now, with the benefit of some temporary lucidity, all it can muster is some absent, detached observation that its mind might be disintegrating even swifter than its body.

‘Like a worn-out boot’ indeed. The Radiance must be feeling every crevice of the figurative cobblestones.

It needed to be replaced immediately. Of this, it might be even more convinced than the White Lady.

The Vessel knew rather well that it wasn’t favored by anyone. It had never truly thought that whatever attachment it had to the King (or anyone else for that matter) was returned.

It had not known that it counted as real attachment, since it was supposed to be incapable of such – though more than once, it had the distinct impression that, if it could think, it might be thinking about what it might be like if it could wish, and how it might then wish that it were capable of loving them back – all the ones who had taken any time to show it even the faintest shred of kindness, even though so far as they knew, this would amount only to pointlessly pouring into a bottomless hole...

That was in fact how the Radiance had found that first chink in its armor, long ago.

Long had she probed to find any trace of fear, hate or resentment, assuming, not without reason, that such a diminished and deprived being may still harbor some loathing for its creator, or some stray spark of base animal essence that could be animated to feel such a thing.

It was more of a lucky guess or a coincidence when she tried a different strategy.

The Pale King would have taken great care to shield His thoughts from His rival. She probably did not perceive His plot to seal Her until just before the trap snapped shut.

Nor did She know of His nightmares, as those fell within the domain of a different god.

But His dreams…

It still recalls how She taunted it, in that tempting, sugary voice that sticks to everything and glues it all together into a hopeless mess: “OH? YOU DON’T KNOW? PITIFUL THING. THEN THE USURPER KING MUST BE AN EVEN BIGGER FOOL THAN I THOUGHT. HIS DREAMS. THEY ARE ALL FULL OF YOU.”

It had stirred then.

It had reacted.

It could not help itself.

She saw it fit to share an image – more than an image, an entire impression, a stream of consciousness.

It could have handled it if She had merely shown it what it already knew – that the King and Queen bitterly grieved whatever potential child of theirs might have lived in its place. How much they must want to have him or her present in its stead.

It would have known to expect that, to bear it without flinching.

That wouldn’t have been news to it.

But in that vision that She showed it then, the Vessel saw itself.

Exactly as it was.

It saw not some long-extinguished possible world, but the very real, scattered moments that it had shared with its sire.

There was the artificer’s pride in His creation, yes, the teacher’s delight in an astute student and the scholar’s scientific interest in a unique lifeform that had never existed before, as well as the artists’ offense at the idea of destroying something like that – but all these, He would admit to in His waking hours, and discount them in the face of a greater, pressing need.

What he would not allow, not even in passing, while His waking reason and lucidity was in any position to discipline His thoughts, not unless He were skirting the dream-like edge of consciousness, would be the idea that He might just… keep it.

What if He just… didn’t sacrifice it?

Have it continue to be there, in its usual places, and never have to face its absence – training in the yard, following behind Him as a faithful shadow. Staring off into the distance, when there were no more instructions left for it to carry out, often seeking out that particular balcony where He sometimes used to bring it when it was younger. Sitting perfectly still as its tiny sister made attempts to talk at it while she clambered onto its lap.

Have it named the Sixth Great Knight and be allowed to keep serving Him, but in a far less demanding capacity that would not require giving up everything. That He might just let it be, and observe what deeds someone with its talents might be capable of if given time and opportunity. Some abilities peak when a creature reaches the prime of its youth, but others increase with experience, and sorcery would distinctly be among the latter. He might even name it His heir – not because an immortal God-King would ever need one, but simply because He wished to do it honor. He could grant it another title for that occasion, something that would recall an image of cold pale light, oddly chosen though that might seem for a creature of darkness.

He might let it choose something else, too, if that’s what it wanted, both in regards to titles and pursuits. He might try if it could be taught to choose or want, if given proper encouragement. If He could uplift wild beasts and have them produce a kingdom’s worth of high culture, why not attempt it with a being that He felt a distinct affinity to? One that clearly possessed great skill and capability? He’d never really tried. He couldn’t afford to try, when that might jeopardize the entire plan...

No, even if this should prove futile. Even if it wouldn’t ever be capable of anything but what it had already demonstrated. Even if it was doomed to be exactly what He had made of it – a bastardized, sacrilegious abomination against nature, an eldritch, unholy changeling that could have no father and no mother, unless it were that dark ocean itself.

It would still have a father, and He would still have a child, if only by virtue of having raised it. Known it. Lived with it.

It might never love Him back, but He could love, so He could not be indifferent to its cruel fate.

He could not see it go to waste without feeling sorrow on its behalf.

He might never, ever indulge such a selfish thought – for else, He would not have been the consummate ruler whom it so respected. He could never act on such a dream, not when He was far from being the only grieving parent in Hallownest. Not when his followers prayed to Him in desperation that he might deliver their own children from the festering blight.

But to do what He must – to do that to it, must surely have been to Him like rending His own flesh. Like putting his claw on one of those spinning blades He kept in His worshop. Like walking along an arduous, inhospitable path made of nothing but spikes and thorns and spinning blades.

Even if He could not make this chalice pass it by-

Even if He had utterly forsaken it-

Even if he had to do it, if there was no other choice-

Surely He wasn’t indifferent-

Surely He couldn’t be entirely untouched by its suffering!

...it would never know if this was truly a glimpse of what the King might dream of, or, more likely, simply a trap the Radiance had contrived, a lucky guess spurred by that first, traitorous reaction of its. Surely He wouldn’t leave Himself open to Her, if He could help it? Most likely, She had, at last, been able to pull from its own blasphemous wishes which it may have harbored to show it exactly what it had always wanted to hear, stashed away somewhere within, unheeded, unspoken, unacknowledged, secret even from itself. What it wanted the King’s dream to be, in other words, its own dream – simply, that He would grieve it.

That He would truly grieve it, as it was, and not just what might have been in its stead.

It mattered not.

The result was still the same.

It was in this very instant, with that simple, faint wish, that the wretched creature which harbored it was completely and utterly lost, and all the kingdom with it.

“HE TOOK WHAT WAS MINE, SO I SWORE THAT I WOULD TAKE EVERYTHING THAT HE LOVES AND ROT IT TILL IT FALLS AS MUSH THROUGH HIS CLAWS LIKE OVERRIPE FRUIT.

I ALREADY KNEW HE WAS AN EGOTISTICAL FOOL WHO WOULD STAND AGAINST NATURE, BUT I NEVER THOUGHT THAT HE WOULD BE SO ARROGANT AS TO SO THOROUGHLY BETRAY EVEN HIS OWN NATURE, FOR THE SAKE OF HIS DUTIES AND ORDER AND REASON. BECAUSE OF HIS CALCULATIONS.

I NEVER THOUGHT THAT HE WOULD TAKE HIS MOST CHERISHED, AND HAND IT OVER TO ME AS AN OFFERING OF HIS OWN FREE WILL… HE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW THAT HE HAS DEALT HIMSELF A BLOW HE WILL NEVER RECOVER FROM.

I SHALL RELISH IN DEFILING YOU, EMPTY ONE.

I WILL TAKE PLEASURE IN BEFOULING THAT WHICH HE CHERISHED MOST OF ALL.

I WILL MELT YOU INTO SLUDGE. I WILL SCORCH YOU FROM THE INSIDE OUT.

I WILL UNMAKE EVERY PART OF YOU, UNTIL YOU BEG ME FOR OBLITERATION.

HE TOOK MY CREATIONS, SO I SHALL TAKE HIS. YOU ARE GOING TO FALL OUT OF THOSE CHAINS IN SOFT, BLOATED CHUNKS WITH A NICE WET SPLAT. PIECE. BY PIECE. BY PIECE.”

She smiled. She pounced. She struck something solid.

She was met with steel, to be exact; The being resisted, even knowing that the very act of resisting, of having to resist, spelled doom for its desperate, futile efforts. It would be a while until She drew first blood, and even, the blow she struck wasn’t all that impressive.

It was not so deep as a well nor as wide as a church door – but it would do.

Whatever can bleed, can die, and be it by a thousand cuts over the course of many strange eons.

Of course, the sacrifice had always known that it would be going to its doom, one way or another. It had accepted this.

It had taken this for an axiom of its existence.

It had always thought (first, without calling it a thought) that it would be suffering this destruction in the kingdom’s stead, that its suffering would be ensuring its eternal reign.

The King may regret its sealed fate; He may even have indulged in some passing sentimentality with regards to it, but He knew better in the end; He knew to leave such sentiments stashed in their proper compartments once the deed was to be done.

Certainly, He had gone and commissioned a statue to do it honor that should not matter to it and devised a spell to grant it comfort it should not need, for all that it had merely served to let it witness the extent of its desperate impotence –

But one might indulge in talking to the dead at a tombstone, and even bring them offerings, but few but the maddest of mourners would expect an actual answer, or keep clinging to the corpse once it was time for it to go into the grave.

This meant She could do to it whatever She wanted without ever affecting Him.

It may have boasted of that to Her once, if it had the means.

But once it first considered that its weakness could become the instrument of His destruction –

That if it should falter… no, when it must falter, She would bring down what it thought of as all the world, by its hand in Hers –

...it wasn’t long then, until the first new victims of the infection were reported on the outskirts of the kingdom.

Thus, the blight returned, the kingdom fell to ruin, its monarch, at last, absconded to parts unknown, never to return, scenes or barbarity and desperation unfolded all across the land, until it all fell largely silent aside from the shambling of the undead and the skittering of wild beasts.

The Vessel had not expected to see another face to face ever again.

It was set to perish, locked away in darkness.

For a while, it aimed to hold on until the kingdom was thoroughly emptied – just until the last of the survivors were gone or departed.

Eventually, long after it had lost all sense of time, it became apparent that this was not to be.

The Radiance had nearly fulfilled Her promise now; It had already parted with the first few rotten chunks of itself.

She had started with the bits that reminded Her most of Her hated rival, going first for the wings and then taking its right arm, not its dominant one, but the off-hand it usually used for spellcasting-

(“HE USED TO BE SO PROUD OF YOU, DIDN’T HE? IF ONLY HE’D BEEN PROUD ENOUGH TO DECIDE THAT IT WOULD BE A SHAME TO SEAL AWAY SUCH A GIFTED YOUNG SORCERER.”)

Perhaps She would try breaking off the sharp points of its horns next, if its mangled shell did not simply give out first.

The once vaunted ‘Pure Vessel’ has been rendered utterly impotent.

It could not save anyone; It could not even save itself.

It knew not what to do.

Perhaps that is why it at last thought back to that moment in abyss, and that other vessel –

The chance that it might have survived was slim, but it had probably been the closest to the Chosen Vessel in strength – if it yet lived, it may have had the chance to surpass it even, in the long, long time since.

It was a gamble, by a long shot. Even if in the case that it paid off, the most the fallen hero had dared to expect was to be unceremoniously slain so that it might be released from its agony, knowing that what remained of the Kingdom would not die with it.

It never expected the other one’s forgiveness, let alone its sympathy or a pledge to release it from its binds. The notion simply did not compute. It had never been possible.

Even when it found itself embroiled in this ritual, it fought to resist any illusions that the fate that had been set in stone for it from the beginning could possibly change. That it might somehow continue after its purpose had been served.

It had enough of dreams, and the mockery of their blazing, cruel illusions.

It could not bear to consider it. Even to think it.

It could not bear to address the other, lest it say something back – something that might finally ruin it for good, some notion or idea that would finally topple whatever fragile balance had thus far kept it from breaking down completely.

What would be the use of wanting something it could never have?

What would be the use in feeling for what must be torn away in the end?

What would be the use of envisioning something that can never be?

It had accepted its fate long ago.

It truly did.

It had accepted it.

So why must it be taunted in this manner?

‘Do not hope’, it had told itself incessantly, over and over again. ‘Do not.’

It had considered it a mercy when the small one started gaining the upper hand in the fight, as the exertion of combat drowned out everything else in its consciousness.

All things considered, this other vessel was as good as a perfect stranger. If it should wish to call the Hollow Knight a sibling, it would not deny that creature’s insistence, given what it owed, but it still did not deem itself deserving of the title.

But it mattered to the small one, apparently – perhaps, its estranged relation has simply found itself the beneficiary of the brave one’s longing to find another like itself after its long and lonesome wanderings. It might simply have the fortitude and wisdom to understand and forgive a slight that was done when they were both mere children.

But whatever the cause, there was no denying that it cared. It listened. It looked.

It looked on still, with its gaping round eyes, its roundish white face turned slightly upward, viewing it, somehow, not as a cause for resentment nor an obstacle to be dispatched, but with profound sympathy – a sense of kinship even.

Longing to know it.

A nameless, forgotten thing that had never truly been known in all of its long, agonizing eternity.

What is to say that this small one did not, at least in part, fight its way here simply to have some chance at meeting the Chosen Vessel?

To see what it had been like, before it had been all but completely lost to the light?

To truly encounter it, while in possession of itself, if only in passing?

If the discarded vessel still saw them both as kin, then that would certainly make sense, and line up with its other actions thus far.

It was a pleasant thought.

A futile thought.

A pointless hope that would only bring torment.

But pleasant, all the same.

That might as well be conceded…

If things had been otherwise, or, it were free to do so (do not), the Hollow Knight may not have objected to getting to know the wanderer, either. Why not?

It had some idea of what that might be like, from the brief moments that it had at times been able to spend with the Princess of Deepnest.

Those were good memories, parts in its days that had been worth looking forward to amid an existence that otherwise brooked little but the demands of duty, moments that stood out as substantial and real among the blurry sameness and the heavy, oppressive solitude it had never quite noticed for the same reason that aquatic creatures don’t notice the water and that land-dwellers aren’t usually too conscious of the air, unless some interruption in the conditions of life should leave them suddenly aware of desperate need, as one must picture coming to an oasis after a long march through a desert.

If the option had existed, the Chosen Vessel certainly wouldn’t have objected to making an attempt at staying and... whatever people did with their kinsfolk… live together, or else, reunite in regular intervals? Assist each other in times of need? Nurture each other’s growth? Indulge in shared activities? Take an interest in one another’s pursuits and share in what joys or misfortunes the others experienced?

Ironically, the capacity to experience joy or misfortune would actually be an asset in this, fatal though it may have been for its intended task, not that it was too confident that it would be suited for something so different than what it was created for either. But if its estranged relation genuinely wanted whatever it might be able to grant in this regard… It stood to reason that one of its own kind would not be expecting anything too impossible or unreasonable, for all that many an onlooker may have found it bizarre to see their likes engaged in such activities, like set of puppets play-acting at being a family. But if their acts should remain a hollow imitation, neither of them would be able to tell, or to find anything lacking with it, so it was conceivable that they might attain some imitation happiness that was all their own, wholly enough for the needs and concerns of the ones involved…

(Do not.)

As if it would even know what to do with itself, if its fate were not sealed. Its existence had been nothing but duty for so long that it struggled to picture anything outside it – The most it could think of would be to assist its sister in standing guard over the kingdom, or to serve the next ruler as it once served the Pale King. Of course, if that were to come to pass – if it could continue to be of use in a way that did not require it to be incessantly, excruciatingly immolated in this vault, it might have the opportunity to discover other things that might wish to do – much like the Watcher had still had room for his paintings despite his loyal service to the realm without either precluding the other.

(For the sake of all that is holy, do. NOT.)

There wasn’t going to be any time for that.

Wholly irrelevant, entirely pointless speculation.

There was no time left to waste on that, when so much more pressing matters were at hand.

Even now that conveying something had become a possibility, the sheer overwhelming weight of everything that might be said might well clog the limited time afforded like a bottleneck.

One would have to prioritize.

“This being was once a knight of the Pale Court,” it tried out again, feeling this out a little. Letting it hang in the air. Letting the claim be staked, before continuing in what it thought would be its final declaration to the first and only creature that would ever hear:

“This may have been its downfall, along with that of everything else, but even so, that was the one thing it was, the one thing it was permitted to be, and it would remain as such. It would be destroyed before it can be robbed of what scraps of being it ever had. As such, it shall endeavor to serve the Kingdom to the very last, by whatever means may be left to it, no matter what happens to it in the process…”

The wanderer might have lowered its glance just a little, here.

Looking perhaps just the slightest bit downcast.

The other chose this moment to raise up its nail again, thrusting it into the ground to raise itself up, half-leaning on the weapon, possibly aiming to indicate its readiness to face what it knew must come next, and to steel itself for that, in turn.

“This Vessel implores. It begs. Finish the task. Do what it cannot. Let the purpose be fulfilled. Let the deed be done at last.

Grant this one release, and you shall have its gratitude eternal, but if that does not satisfy you, you may think of this as penance for being left behind.”

If it still bore any grudge for that old slight, it was evidently dwarfed by witnessing a fellow-creature in such abject desperation still maintaining its grim, bitter resolve.

Its own destruction and consignment to oblivion seemed an incidental thing in its estimation, secondary to what it might accomplish – though oblivion and cessation would be rather welcome side effects thereof, compared to what was considered the only alternative.

The fallen hero saw no use in mincing words, persisting in its solemn decree:

“There can be no promises, no illusions now. Any strength this Vessel once possessed is utterly spent. It can barely resist now. If it were unbound, there could be no guarantees.

Nonetheless, if this one were to regain itself, even for an instant, it shall do its utmost to render itself useless to Her.

It hereby vows to you, that it shall destroy itself most efficiently, to the best of its ability, if it should get the opportunity.

And if, by any possibility, it should find itself able to stand against Her, this Vessel shall grasp Her, and rend Her, and hold Her to the very last for as long as it can – it would spit its last breath upon Her, if that would be of use, if it were capable of dragging Her down to perdition along with it, this would be its salvation.”

Before the Hollow Knight, the small one stood still, as if in awe.

No, it realized, albeit in disbelief -

Not merely ‘as if’.

“...You really would, wouldn’t you?” the small one signified this with such certainty that its Sibling found itself wondering if that one had not received some faint trace of their father’s ability to peer through time, sift through and select from possible paths. It seemed unlikely, really – it was probably just that its resemblance to their sire was just so much more evident when it acted in such a resolute manner. The two of them might contrast greatly in many other ways, but in the scattered moments where the resemblance was most evident, the likeness was almost too painful to bear –

Right away, the illusion was mercifully dispelled. The being was in many ways much… wilder than the King, but also gentler.

“You really, really would… and you could.”

This would not at all have been ‘intoned’ like praise, but rather like a lament.

It wasn’t so much impressed as moved.

It came just one step closer to where its long-lost sibling still knelt, but as of now, did nothing further.

“Not Fair.” it decided at last. “None of it! Not what was asked of you. Not what happened to us. Nor you… Can’t be mad like this. Would be jealous, but can’t. Not like this. Not when you are like this. Of all the ways that you could have turned out to be, you just had to be like this…”

At this point it would seem inevitable to conclude that the small one had, indeed, spent quite some time thinking about the prospect of possibly meeting the other one day, or at least wanting to know about it, piecing together the few, scattered traces it had left behind in the world.

“I can tell that you really like Him, for some reason, so don’t take this the wrong way, but… the stupid King better have had the decency to feel real proper guilty.”, it asserted, somewhat curtly.

It seemed unlikely to be shaken from this conviction, so objections were not proffered.

If the Chosen Vessel considered what the discarded one’s upbringing must have been like – how it must have been fending for itself in the wilderness with no one to guide it while the other had at least never had to worry about protection or shelter until its mentors had deemed it ready… it was reluctant to decry any resentment that the wanderer might carry, even if it were directed toward its own beloved father – to the small one, He was simply ‘The King’.

It would have no reason to think favorably of him, nor did the Vessel trust itself to convey His redeeming features on the fly.

It might have struggled to explain even to itself – there were many complicated experiences involved not all of which could easily be slotted with concepts or words.

Whatever the wanderer may have thought of the King in particular, it clearly had an understanding of responsibility, as well as the willingness to take it on – that would have to be enough.

There was still something rather surreal about how the small one seemed to have no compunction at all to make its opinions felt – but of course it didn’t. Why would it? What reason would it have not to? It had been left to itself, so, who would have imposed expectations about what it was or wasn’t capable of?

Here stood, perhaps, a being of darkness that most reflected how the darkness really was, not what those involved in their creation would expect a being to darkness to be like.

Perhaps that was why the White Lady had thought it ‘unblemished’, despite the apparent willfulness that revealed itself swiftly enough if it was observed. She might have found it more alien, less obviously father’s creature, despite the striking resemblance –

Ironically, it can’t help but think that the late monarch would have found this rather fascinating.

It still couldn’t quite believe that it would never again hear His thoughts on anything, that it would never hear the continuation of His words, forever left behind in the realm of past and memory.

Though already, it could expect that if this brave little vessel and the King had ever met, some clash of wills would almost certainly have ensued.

It was a strange, novel and somewhat disorienting experience, to see another outraged on its behalf:

“That stupid king doesn’t deserve you, Sibling. Do you know that? You didn’t deserve any of this, either.”

It was unlikely that this persistent creature would let itself be convinced otherwise, even by one more experienced in the art of arguing.

“You have every reason in the world to be mad! But instead, you have to go and be all noble, and knightly and pure-hearted… you have got to be one of the single strongest beings in all these scattered lands.”

“...preposterous notion.” the Hollow Knight commented at last, mostly intending it as a detached observation, but not untouched by bitterness. “Nothing of strength or purity remains to this Vessel, if such was ever possessed by it to begin with.”

The traveler would not hear of it:

“You are strong, Sibling. Not Weak. Just tired. It’s been a long, long time. You have given so, so much. More than anyone could ask. More than anybody should. And even so, even breaking, you stand ready to give up even more...

But you won’t have to.” the small one insisted, rather persistently. “It’s enough. Will take it from here. All the lingering regrets and long-lost dreams buried in this kingdom… they can have peace. Can make it so. Will do it.”

There seemed to be no bounds to the strength and resolve held within that diminutive form.

It would have been humbling to witness, even for creatures that had not been forced into such intimate knowledge of their own weakness.

“...you speak of admiration, yet it is you that is truly impressive. Such boldness. Such resourcefulness. Things such as initiative or creativity were thought beyond such cursed beings as ourselves, yet it is as if you have simply never heard of such limitations. Perhaps the limitation may have been specific to this particular Vessel alone. It never could…”

“You can still try, Sibling! If you want to try learning something about creativity, we can pay a to Master Sheo. Keeps talking about reasons to try painting, anyway. But was too busy. Had things to do first. Had to get to you, for example. But – may have time now.

May have time for many things. It’s only right.

Master Sheo always says that it’s never too late to find a new purpose, or come up with one, after the old one has been lost or fulfilled, or no longer fits. Important thing, that is. Have to show this to you, too. Got to show you many things. Maybe you have some things to show, too.

There is so much for you to see, once you get out of there. So much you missed out on…

Actually? You know what?” and here, the not-exactly-words took on the slightest tone of mischief, “We can see about getting you a new cape, too, a really wooshy one so that it swishes behind you. You like to be fancy after all. Can tell that much. You got to live in a very shiny palace after all…. Went there once. Still seeing specks from all the brightness.”

It must have wanted to try and get an unguarded reaction at least once, the kind that would go along with a sense of familiarity.

Despite itself, the Chosen Vessel could not fully conceal its indignation; indeed it went so far as to be moved to protest the notion of its… extravagance?

“It does not!”

“Why not?” the traveller clapped back with some audacity, mirroring its usual irrevence toward the King “Not supposed to? Doesn’t matter now.”

“...you do possess some insolence, do you not?”

The Hollow Knight had no right to tell the other vessel what to do, but given the choice (new as this was), it would rather not be roped into any such ...shenanigans.

It made the pointed choice to continue along a different thread of conversation, preferring to sidestep the ‘fanciness’ topic. “Exceedingly unlikely as the chance for such a meeting may be, that Master Sheo you refer to sounds like a wise and honorable bug. The notion of going to meet him seems like it would be… right, if such a thing were possible. This Vessel might not have been opposed to taking that offer, if it could have.”

While there was not that much of an outward response, it was hard to avoid the impression that the smaller creature was pleased with itself and willing to count this as a victory, content to let its counterpart move on.

“….have met one of your teachers too, by the way. The White Defender. He’s impressive, too. Skilled. Gallant. Got along great!”

“-He lives?”

The Chosen Vessel had not been aware.

The realization was like a glimmer, standing out sharply and impossibly in an endless night.

Some confirmation that its efforts, though imperfect, had not wholly been in vain – that at least some had been spared or preserved.

It recalled of old that Ogrim the Loyal had always made a point of speaking to it like he might to any other comrade, or even treated it just as one might the child of an esteemed friend, as if it were but a natural extension of the admiration he held for the King.

It was not supposed to have any kind of opinion about this, of course, but all harm that could have come from allowing one had already been done. At this point, it might as well confess to having deeply appreciated its mentor.

It could picture easily how he must have extended that same graciousness to the passing traveler – there is no way that he would not have discerned its identity at once.

Evidently, the small one’s thoughts must have been in a similar place:

“...can tell that you learned from him. All about honor and dedication, and shouting a lot before fights – don’t quite see the point of you doing that when you can’t really make a sound, though.”

“The purpose of a battlecry is not to produce noise, but to attain focus. Have you not noticed that our sister swears by it as well? For that same reason. Maintaining focus is a crucial skill. For battle, for spellcasting… Both Father and the Teacher theorized that this would be similar enough to the skills required for-”

It practically launched into a sermon there – at least for one instant, could see the distinct echo of the dedicated young knight who had existed there once, despite everything, and the many depredations that had followed.

In the swift back and forth, one may have seen some evidence that the two eldritch beings had gotten just a little more accustomed to the process of conveying meaning to one another, for all that their phrasings may still have retained some clumsiness.

Yet that strange sense of levity shared between them, arising in such an unlikely non-place, couldn’t possibly have lasted before the harsh reality surrounding them would have forcefully asserted itself.

“-the skills required for containment...” it finished, whatever momentum it had going on suddenly strangled by the weight of implication and awareness of what had befallen.

A quality had slipped into its not-exactly-a-voice which, in any other creature, might have been accompanied with a bitter, sardonic smile.

“...it might be wondered if you would have succeeded in place of this Vessel… If it was you who should have been chosen. Only that this one would not wish its own lot upon you for anything, if this could have been avoided. This Vessel laid claim to the prize. It is only right that it should have been the only one to bear what comes with it.”

“No one will have to.” The small one insisted again, rather adamant about that part. “Not anymore. Enough. Sick of it. Going to make it stop forever and always...”

“By what means could you possibly intend-”

It was then that their time quite forcibly ran out, the makeshift stage of the dream being revealed for the prop that it was when it was forcibly torn open by a stronger existence, one to which the fabric of dreams was as malleable as Her own thought.

There was a bright, piercing ray of scorching intensity breaking in from above, heralding what lay on the other side with a majestic roar.

The Chosen Vessel would know this voice anywhere.

Though it was still on its knees, its head snapped up at once in sharp realization.

“...She has noticed.”, it observed, grave and solemn.

All things considered, it was inconceivable that She would not take note of such upheaval within the very mind she was imprisoned in….

The smaller vessel looked up as well – just a little, mildly tilting its rounded face, taking a few steps to the center of the room, just below the swirling sword of light that had cracked open thing mind-scape. “Yeah. Though She might. Was counting on it.”

It did not appear especially perturbed, or perhaps it had simply been swift in gathering its composure about it.

It knew that its climb must continue even further, up to greater heights, where its ultimate destination lay.

There was no other way.

It must be done.

Both of them understood this most intimately…

It seems the traveler did intend to answer the question regarding its means before departing, however:

“Have something prepared for Her.

You can lend a hand, along with the others, if it you feel like it. If it satisfies you. But you don’t have to. Don’t have to do anything, anymore. You did enough.

Will fight Her. She has to be dealt with, once and for all. Put a stop to this forever, like Sister said.

Can’t stand Her, anyway. For own reasons. She took everyone’s hopes, and dreams, even the smallest things they wanted, and she twisted it around. Made it a torment. Dangled impossible things before them until it was burned into their eyes.

Someone once said that ‘those who hope are already doomed’.

Don’t think that’s right. Don’t think that it’s wrong – Wanting things… Hoping for things…

Sometimes it can’t be gotten. Sometimes there isn’t a way, but they weren’t wrong for simply hoping.

Even that stupid King – it’s no excuse for what he did, but He wasn’t wrong for wanting to save his kingdom.

It wasn’t wrong of you, either, Sibling. To want. To hope. Hope you know that. Or that you will, one day. You should.”

These were its intended parting words.

It turned its gaze back upward then, clearly meaning to answer the Radiance’s roaring challenge.

It was remarkably casual in this, simply pulling out its little weapon from under its cloak with a distinct ‘shing!’

Belatedly, it occurred to the Chosen Vessel that if it wished for something else to happen, it would have to make that happen deliberately.

“Just a moment!” it called out.

“There is one more thing that must be said. A matter of honor, long left unsettled. This Vessel has seen that you do care much for pronouncements of its unworthiness, so, it will not bother to regal you with it. Even so, this Vessel does… wish something known. It would like to express its deepest regret for what happened on that ledge. For leaving you behind – if it could have thought of a means to prevent that, it would have. At least, it believes that it should have.”

“It’s okay.”

“….in earnest?”

The response was no longer one of disbelief, indeed the answer was perfectly in line with everything that the Hollow Knight had come to see of its would-be rescuer.

The other vessel had done nothing to merit doubt in its sincerity.

The best description or explanation for what was being experienced might be the concept of deep, abiding gratitude for an unlikely gift that one had never thought one would receive…

A gift one could not believe, something too good to be true that nonetheless continued to to scatter away like a dream, proving itself ever more true and realized with every instant in which further proofs and consequences of it accumulated.

“Yeah. It’s okay. Couldn’t hold on, couldn’t get there first… it’s okay now. You not knowing what to do… also okay. That was long ago. Things were different then. Things are different now. We’re not so little anymore. We can do things that we couldn’t do then… Well. Still small, unlike you. But stronger. Maybe stronger than the stupid King soon. No point being hung up on back then. We’ve had some good fights, we got it all out – it’s okay now.”

Wherever did it procure this power?

It proceeded forward with utterly unshakable conviction in itself.

Like one that knows oneself entirely, with nothing obscured or held back.

What a fascinating being – father would not have been the only one to think so.

In observing it, its long-lost relation could only recognize many strengths it did not have, but found worth admiring. The confidence that came not from and did not require perfect mastery or crumple at once in its absence, but rather the kind that came from persistence. From getting back up just one more time than one had been knocked down. The will to keep trying and trying and watching and listening, until a path revealed itself…

A truly remarkable entity that could only have been produced by its very particular, winding history.

To satisfy honor would demand one final concession.

“...before you go… one last thing... You were present when this Vessel was bestowed with its titles by Father, but, since you fell, must have gone without. Is that still the case? Or do you… call yourself anything?”

“...a wandering knight without a master. Maybe the King didn’t need another one, but… someone, somewhere might… or that was the idea behind that.

That was chosen a long, long time ago. Never told anyone, though. Couldn’t.

But, if it has to be a ‘title bestowed by kin’, there might be something like that as well, actually. Picked by Sister. Ghost.”

“...alright then, Wandering Knight. Or Ghost. It has been an honor to make your acquaintance at long last.”

The Chosen Vessel did of course realize that the other would not necessarily recognize its low bow as a traditional gesture which the knights of the pale court would perform after an honorable duel, but it expected that its intention would be recognized either way – to grant due honor, acknowledgment, recognition – to signify that it returned the others’ wish for them to know each other.

“Go forth now. Prevail and return victorious – if there is anyone at all who could do this, it would be you.”

Despite its unflappable demeanor, it would seem that even this determinedly brazen would-be god-slayer could not help feeling abashed for a moment – to receive such faith, when it was once discounted… but this lasted only for an instant.

It gave one last tiny nod in acknowledgment, and then it went forth indeed, and went on to succeed in the act for which It would afterwards be known as ‘Godslayer’, ‘Devourer’ and ‘Lord of Shades’.