Chapter Text
Ragged breaths filled the temple, circulating air thick with sick-sweet infection. Hornet's head swam, both from her presence here and the force that had thrown her around. Something happened after both her siblings fell still, Hollow tangled in her thread, then both them and the Little Ghost falling into a stupor upon slashing Hollow with that strange, ephemeral blade. What was it? What happened? What had they done?
She pushed herself to hands and knees, and the world spun. She crouched, and her vision filled with stars. She stood, and her head strained to burst. But while the headache refused to abate, her eyes soon cleared, and she saw what remained of her sibling.
Little Ghost's mask, broken in half, little pieces of their shell swimming in a draining pool of Void. Their eyes were always blank, so much so it felt like the nothingness consumed you if you stared too long. The strangest aspect of a Vessel by far, in her opinion, beyond their cold bodies or subtle un-bug-ness. But this, this was somehow worse. This was the difference between nothing and nothing.
Her eyes fell to the ground, unwilling to stay on the empty mask. Their belongings, not usually kept neat but hidden away save for the charms on their cloak, were all stained black, in part from Void, in part from the small pot of ink on the ground. Ink had a shine to it. Ink could be cleaned. Some things could be salvaged.
She reached for their mask, hesitated, took up their charms and map instead. This would help her find people who needed to know what had happened to them, or people who could at least help rebuild...
Rebuild what?
Grief gripped her, squeezing so tight around her throat and midsection she thought she'd pop apart, head, thorax, and abdomen joining her sibling's pieces. They were gone. Herrah was gone. The infection was gone, but so precious little remained.
She pressed the heel of her hand to her eye, willing the tears to stay away. She needed to get up. She needed to go somewhere, make a plan. She was protector. She was princess. She couldn't afford this.
Hallownest needed to recover more than she.
She stood, at last, taking up her needle and stashing the map in her cloak. Dirtmouth was mere minutes' walk from here. There first. Breathe. Plan.
The trek through what had been Hollow's containment felt muffled. The sigils wavered. They barely breathed the whisper of the spell that lit them. Maybe she'd been more hurt in the aftermath of Hollow and Little Ghost's fight than she thought? The idea rushed through her veins like ice – she needed to be strong and capable.
Protector.
Princess.
Light from the Crossroads bled in at the temple's exit. Her grip tightened on the needle, bereft of all but a sad strand of thread. She had another spool, she knew well to be prepared. Even if it meant anything malicious could harm her all the easier. Even if every creature beyond that door's eyes may well be trained on her. It was only a few minutes to Dirtmouth. She could tie on the second spool there.
Chains dragged and scraped against the temple's floor. Movement! Her heart pounded and her head matched its beat. The Old Light hadn't died yet, her sibling still suffered. She'd been wrong, the Little Ghost failed.
She spun to face her enemy and readied her needle. Threaded or not, she'd do what she could. Even if all the blood and Void in her veins froze up.
Hollow towered above her. But not like they used to. She'd grown. They hunched, more than they ever had. Their mask no longer gleamed, dusty and spattered with drying pus. The crack in it leaked Void where she'd struck them. More black dripped from their right side, trailing along their tattered cloak and the ground.
She tamped down the voice screaming in her not to fight them, that this was her sibling, what was she doing? She had lost one already.
Hollow shambled for her. She couldn't dive at them, they were too big for that. If she was fast enough, maybe she could-
They keeled over and collapsed, arm outstretched. Their breaths wheezed. Pitch-black eyes stared at her, empty as ever. As if the glowing pus she'd seen dripping from them, the furious hate, was nothing but a dream. As if they'd never been so sick their torso bubbled with it.
Her feet moved without her command. She stepped closer, needle still ready to strike, until she crouched before their mask. She studied them, seeking something to really, truly tell her this was the sibling she'd known. The one whose memorial she spent too long in front of, watching the tears on its face drip into the fountain below.
Their arm moved and a massive palm bumped up against the underside of her mask. They cradled her, too weak, too unwilling to crush her. Their fingers curled around her horns, pulling her into their touch.
The nothingness of their gaze met the intensity of hers. Needlepoint pricking at their wrist, she grasped their thumb, her fingers barely able to encircle theirs.
“Hollow?”
The smallest twitch of their head, enough for her to know she had their attention.
“You're dying.” Her voice cracked, tears threatening to well up again. The flow of Void was slow, but their entire arm was gone, if she didn't do anything, if she couldn't do anything, they'd fade away right in front of her.
They sighed. To anyone else, it would have been a simple exhale. Even after all these years, though, she knew.
“You need help.” She didn't want to, but she stepped away, their hand still on her cheek.
This, they hesitated at. But their hand fell away, arm folding over their eyes. It was time for them to rest.
As for her, she ran.
The chain leading up to Dirtmouth was not far. Her feet tapped against the dusty, pus-spattered ground, a rapid patter. She cleared rubble and ledges with hardly a thought for how her head ached and her legs burned. She leaped onto the chain and climbed, the effort melting away with her desperation.
And at last, Dirtmouth and its sentinel met.
An old bug raised his head, the only one standing out in the rickety little town.
“I need help!” she called, the words unfamiliar, weird, childish. She skidded to a stop in front of him, rocking her weight from foot to foot, looking for anything promising. A few buildings with lights flickering inside. Maybe, maybe. “I need more hands. People who can venture below.”
He pointed her towards a storefront, and she burst through its door. Inside she found two bugs, one hunched over a counter, the other roused from sleep by her commotion. She told them she needed them to come with her, help someone who had been injured and she could not move alone.
The woman picked up her nail, and both promised their assistance.
She led them down the chain, swooping from it towards the temple. She flew ahead of the other two, her steps springing light across the rocks, dancing around the corpses. A few creatures chirruped at her, too frazzled to truly act. Some of the once-infected lived on, so it seemed, at least for now. Others were burst, pockmarked so thoroughly there was no hope they could be alive. She pushed on. They pushed on. They had to.
Both of the bugs faltered when the temple came into view, and Hollow with it.
Hornet ducked under Hollow's remaining arm; they were not too heavy, not like their size would have one believe, but still too much for her alone. She directed the other two, and together with what feeble effort Hollow could provide, they began to move.
“There's a stag station nearby,” the man – Cornifer, right? - said. He grunted when Hollow's head hit a rock in the ceiling and they listed, and he had to take on more of their weight. “Your, ah, your friend here should fit in the tunnels.”
Yes, and there was a station just above the hidden village, where she had called home for so long. They could go right to Deepnest and get to work on making Hollow better. Even if all the Weavers had left, their knowledge and spellwork lingered. She nodded, and pulled out Little Ghost's map.
The sight of the hand-drawn lines, the punched-in pins, every detail Little Ghost made, stabbed her heart. She glanced at the stag pin, traced the path to it, and shoved it back in her cloak, ignoring the pain and welling nausea. She had to save one sibling. One she'd known.
Iselda rang the bell. Hornet sat by Hollow's side as they rested, producing a smaller mending needle and second spool to see if she could, in any way, sew up the wounds. The one where the arm once was, and the ones where they had stabbed themselves, or Radiance had stabbed them.
No will to break. Nothing for her to fight when Little Ghost entered the chamber.
Hollow did nothing when the tip of her needle sunk into them, thread slipping through and crossing over as Hornet closed up a stab wound. If she did not know their mannerisms like she did, she may have thought them dead.
She hated to thank her father's craftsmanship, so instead attributed to Monomon or some blessing of the Void the fact that, while Hollow formed a shell, only Void swirled inside, unlike the myriad details of anatomy within a normal bug. She knew field medicine, of course, but the stitching of anything beyond flesh was out of her range.
The stag thundered to the platform, mud and dirt flicking up as he stopped. Iselda and Cornifer immediately approached to try and explain the situation to the best of their understanding, but the old stag's eyes were set on Hollow, head barely cocked towards the couple.
Hornet got under her sibling again and helped them off the ground, their feet and hand scrabbling against the brickwork as the couple joined in and the four of them crawled up to the stag.
“Eh, you're not so small any more, are you? And no Knights with you this time.” He leaned into the Void-black arm that wrapped around his back, fingers burying into his long fur. He struggled with their weight, too, but with careful maneuvering they were able to rest Hollow's upper body on the stag's back. Their legs dragged off his back, necessitating the three smaller bugs to help carry them. Best not to risk further injuries, and the stag didn't need the extra drag holding him back.
“Can't exactly return you to the palace, can I?” the stag rumbled, looking back to ensure his passenger was as secure as they could get. His gaze lingered on the Void dripping onto him. “Quite the wounds.”
Hornet heard him add a muttered, “Poor soul.” As she gave Hollow one last check, she wondered bitterly how often the Knights had to remind him, or any of the other stags, of proper Pure Vessel etiquette.
“Where to?” the stag asked. He gave a slight lurch before starting down the tunnel - much less than Hornet would expect of him, between his age and Hollow's weight. And, between both, he still plodded at a good pace.
“Deepnest,” Hornet said, careful to keep from squeezing Hollow's leg too hard. At once the name was familiar and not. Unspoken in so long, unseen in the unknowable span between the Weavers' flight and her mother's final death. Home, allegedly. Allegedly.
She ignored Cornifer's unnerved squeak. She would protect him, as she would any other of her charges. He could survive the short foray into the actual Deepnest from the station.
Hollow, though...
She did not plan on losing two siblings that day.
She did not ignore the potential that she would.