Chapter Text
And so, it was done.
Of all the ends she might have anticipated, never had she foreseen herself taking active part to bring it about. Never had she thought there would be an end to fight for, not a true one. Never had Hornet thought that she would regret that the Infection was done away with, if only for the cost it exacted as it went.
And yet here she lay, covered horn-tips to claws in that coldest substance, dipping icy blades into the unhealed cuts and memories of brutal cracks littering her shell and drawing out her lifeblood like pus from a wound, like it sought to replace her hemolymph and soul with itself instead.
Yet if it hurt, Hornet couldn’t tell. It was far too cold for that, and far too insistent, far too close to living, like a long-dead corpse shifting in the dark, slowly and intentionally curling its hands into claws and settling its limbs into quietude. It was curling into her, killing her by degrees of warmth lost to its barbed, searching chill, but Hornet found herself unable to move.
Which was curious, she thought slowly, drawing the sentence out long enough to taste every unsaid syllable behind her cold-tensed chelicerae. For she wasn’t restrained at all, and she still lived. Hornet had never considered that she might not want to move, that there might be a dark so deep she could look into it and never surface.
But no, that wasn’t quite right. Hornet wanted very much to stand up and throw herself back into the fight, that was not the issue.
There was something important that she was missing, lying still first because she’d struck the ground hard enough for all sound to turn to a barely-audible hiss where the roar of battle had before run skittering nail-edges over her soul and quickened her heart, and then because that which she had fallen into had consumed her. Hornet had something affixed to her very soul, some terrible, worthwhile purpose that had become all that she cared for. It had had time to grow as part of her, or rather, to cut into her like wire wrapped around a root as it swells with age, biting deep until it couldn’t be cut without making her bleed alongside it.
Something she’d fought for. Something she’d killed for.
But what was it, again?
That was what she could not care for, here in the dark. She was making an awful mistake, laying here, and yet her regrets opened like a yawning glacier moulin, that if only she would allow the void to sap the last of her life would welcome her to its depths and its cold and its numbing pain.
And would she deserve any better? She’d felt the void’s touch before, after all. Stolen it with her needle and her duty, felt it drip over her hands and leave them numb with aching joints that took hours to warm again, even in the heat and humidity of Greenpath, stained just that little bit darker, that the black of her chitin would not reflect back the light until the chill lifted.
And the void remembered as she lay submerged in it, enclosing her on all sides such that even if Hornet’s mask hadn’t throbbed with the force she’d hit the ground with, matching time with her slowing heartbeat, she would not have been able to tell where to push herself away from, which way to recoil that wouldn’t press her to the void-saturated stone she could no longer feel. It recalled all she’d done to it, or maybe it could only feel her own bone-deep memory as it began to worm icy tendrils into her chest where the regret and hatred for all the atrocities she’d ever committed were shoved away, condensed and heavy and just as icy, lying somewhere between her lungs.
Her duty was no more, the void allowed her to know. All that was left was the dark, and the quiet, and the time that Hornet would have to remember each and every dark little sibling that had fallen at her hand. To look into pleading or desperate or crying eyes and feel what she’d never allowed herself to; remorse.
Yes, Hornet thought tediously against the tide. It would be a kindness to succumb to the call of the void now, wouldn’t it? Before she could outlive her purpose and find herself newly alone in an empty world. Before she had to face the last two siblings’ broken masks, their fallen nails should the little Ghost succeed, those last two who had survived her relentless, thorough protection by absence or by their own weighty duty.
It would be far kinder, and she deserved less than to sleep in the chilling dark. But Hornet had not deserved to survive Hallownest, or to live while her mother slept, or walk free while her sibling stayed caught in the Black Egg and pinned beneath the force of the resentful Light, and if death at last was a kindness then it was one she’d fought against so long that it was a punishment in itself, if only out of personal, secret spite of her own.
Hornet closed her eyes.
The void reached within her and her heart flickered, too tired to beat.
And then it stopped, just short of her life. Its eyes, many and none, turned away from her and the void was only cold, not consuming and welcoming and sympathetic but only jarringly watchful all at once. With many silences it looked to something, and then its embrace was no longer hers.
It dripped away quicker than water, thinner than air, and in a slow heartbeat Hornet was left alone to her concussion.
Her heart beat. Once, then again. Her head swam and though her eyes were still closed, Hornet felt a trickle of warmth return to her, if only seeming so by the sudden absence of cold.
When the warmth spread to her stilled lungs she jerked, spasming as her chest recalled that it was starved of air. Hornet hauled in a great heaving breath that tore at her throat and rattled hoarsely as she forced it out to replace it with a second, and the air that she’d have sworn was somehow as cold as the rushing wind carving through Dirtmouth above felt like fire, now.
The second breath came out as an echoing, horrified half-sob, more low noise than cry as her voice struggled to recall how to function, as her mind sputtered and fought to pull itself free of that hazy peace that the moment she regained even a spark of soul the void did not immediately sap felt more and more like a trap, snapped shut a hair’s breadth from her mask. All the terrible regrets she had denied, all dredged up and brought to freeze her so thoroughly they were all she could see, began to fade with the cold, as memories do.
She’d never wholly forgotten them, though, and it was only the spasming of her chest that let her force them away again. Hornet’s lungs burned like they were dusted in needle-shards of bitter ice, a vengeful flare she only felt when contrasted with the tepid air, and she sucked in a third breath for a split instant before coughing with all her might.
It came out wetter than she’d expected, sparking alarm in her foggy thoughts, the ringing in her head stilling enough that she could hear the uneven scrape as she got her hands under herself and enough space between her face and the ground, as dry as ever she’d seen it, that Hornet could lurch with each ragged hacking cough until something that numbed her throat and raised blinking stars behind her eyes dripped from her mouth.
It was void, and it was cold enough that she couldn’t feel her face until the last drop soundlessly impacted the grey-dusted, cracked stone she stared at. When her eyes had opened, she couldn’t have said, but the deadly chill was creeping out of her, down the shaking arms and unfeeling hands she could see but not clearly feel clenched their claws deep into the branching cracks, the unmistakable clean furrows of a nail’s deflected edge carved deep enough that she could hook half her hand into its angled rut in the floor, cool but not frigid against her palm.
Hornet crouched there on hands and knees, breathing heavily and deeply and feeling in every inch how near she had come to succumbing, to allowing herself to succumb, before some awareness twitched at her, some nagging thought she could hardly parse.
But Hornet had not lived in Hallownest as long as she had only to ignore the instincts that survival had won her. Yet this was an awareness deeper than that; a cognizance of absence as opposed to warning. In Deepnest, if all was truly quiet, then there was very good reason for it to be.
Though she had not thought of that lesson in a long time.
Hornet forced herself to stand with shaking legs, as weak as if she’d run the span of Hallownest without rest or food. And now, as the ringing she heard was replaced with only a pounding, deep-seated headache, Hornet felt trickling fury to realize that she’d been huddled gasping for breath on the floor for long enough to be vulnerable to any fool with a nail that might have passed by the open Egg.
The nothing of void was still fresh in her mind, so she gave a hoarse, irritated sigh just to feel herself warmed by the anger (not regret, not remorse, something useful in their place), holding it close to fuel her faltering limbs as she raised her aching head to look for her needle.
It shouldn’t have fallen so far at all; the Black Egg was only so large. And last she’d seen it, the orange-dripping point had been very securely wedged into the deep crack spanning the-
Hornet stilled with the thought even as her eyes fell upon the Hollow Knight’s remains.
Yes, her needle was exactly where she’d left it.
And how cruel an end, Hornet thought as her balance shifted, the scrape of her claws on the floor uncertain as she found it again. For the Vessel to find their death not at the hands of the god they had fought for long enough that the world they sought to protect crumbled to ash and empty bodies around them, but with the sibling who had fought right alongside them for just as long.
For it had to have been her doing, Hornet thought as she steadied herself and forced back the shakiness and some awful weakness that welled in her stinging throat like blood might, threatening now that she was at her feeblest to overwhelm and betray her. For the Hollow Knight’s mask was shattered to pieces, with her needle fallen among them like it had been the fulcrum to pry the shards apart at last.
How had it felt, Hornet suddenly tried to recall, to have her needle fixed between the halves of their skull? How deeply had she driven it, in those last moments her sibling had lived? Had it been only the rush and narrow focus of combat, burning bright in her veins like life itself, or had she felt the wrongness inherent in their mask’s gritted edges against her blade’s jolting up her tensed arms, even then?
Always, always Hornet had regretted the part she had to play, but it was different this time. Had she thought often enough of the Hollow Knight, the only constant that she knew at her core remained fighting as hard as she? And when had those thoughts, that comfort she took in that she was not the only one to resist, turned to camaraderie? When had she begun to think of them as a friend again, if only in action and never in word?
She’d loved her sibling once, perhaps, but that had been the misperception of a child. How ironic that she’d had it right the first time.
She wanted to cry, and rage, and though she’d never deluded herself to think that any other outcome than this might ever have come to pass, Hornet wanted to demand that it had. And she found she could not do any of those things.
It all caught in her throat, and even as she knew now, with the headache receded to a slow, throbbing pound out of sync with her fast heartbeat, that there wouldn’t be anyone brave enough to venture here of all places, no one left curious enough to seek the source of the terrible screams and no one foolish enough to try the same, that she was utterly alone (more so now than ever, perhaps), Hornet could not cry.
For once in the entire span of her life she had both the cause and the privacy and, truly, nowhere else to be just yet, no time precious enough anymore to be considered wasted, and yet Hornet could only stand in silence and stare down at the Hollow Knight’s massive mask in pieces before her, somehow emptier in death like the splinters of an old carapace, as her chest felt empty in a way not at all like void, or perhaps far too close to it. Even as she kept expecting it to move, because it wasn’t right that they struggle so long and be broken for it (when she still survived), waiting for the Hollow Knight she hadn’t seen before an hour ago (or two, or five, her head still throbbed and time was difficult to guess in the quiet) since she was very young (when they’d been her friend only for her misunderstanding, or so she’d once thought) to congeal back out of the damned void before her eyes.
Like the little Ghost.
Oh, no.
Hornet left her needle, at once violently on edge for the absence of its weight in her hand or at her back and yet unable to think of the crackle of dry, snapping bone that pulling it free would make, and the conflict making her rage tick higher all over again, rage that had no true cause and nowhere to go, for her purpose was gone and so was her enemy.
That was good, though. Anger was better than sorrow, and more suitable, even if it was a useless anger at best. If she was angry, she was not hollowed.
She found little Ghost only feet away, such that she might have turned her head and seen them if she hadn’t been forcing back the lingering chill and mourning the sibling she’d known longest.
They were still so small. Just like all the others, but they’d been stronger. Or had she only been desperate, to allow them the time to grow strong that she hadn’t given any before them?
It didn’t matter. She’d done what she’d had to do, and Ghost had done the same.
But their mask, too, Hornet saw and thought it nearly unreal that it was so still, though at least of their like (the small ones, with rounded faces and eyes and faltering little hands) she’d seen dozens similarly broken.
How cruel she’d been to them all. It had been necessary, every time, but oh, how cruel she’d been to allow this one to care for her. How foolish she’d been to care for them in turn.
And now she had all that she’d fought for, without any she’d cared to save. Hallownest lay quiet again, ready for those few stragglers and travelers to file in and claim their places within it. In time it would be a kingdom once more. Never would it be as it was, but it would live. Deeply scarred, haunted by its past and its culling, but it would live.
Hornet supposed she should be glad for this; she had inherited a kingdom. She had the beginnings of a people to protect, the remnants of those who had been and the sparks of those who had come anew, both. They would need her, for her guidance and her protection. She knew the many better than she knew the gods, and Hornet doubted the White Lady would deign to care if they all ate. She would not be purposeless, as the void had soothed her to sleep to say. It would be hard, thankless work, but that was the kind Hornet felt she did best at; she did not appreciate thanks.
And in a way, she was glad. She’d never wanted to have to fight her war of attrition so long. The future was the burden she bore now, the regrowth of a kingdom long burned to the quick, and Hornet could only grimly hope her cruelty had all been spent, that she might protect it still as it needed her now more than ever. That there wouldn’t be a need to be so anymore, ever again.
Hornet looked over Ghost’s opened little mask, and thought that, even so, the cost had been too great.
The room grew colder then, a deep and clawing chill that made her shiver against her will. She knew the coldest reaches of the Kingdom, and this did not feel like them. Hornet kept carefully still, irritation plucking at her such that her claws twitched to reach for her needle, still feet away and buried in the Hollow Knight’s skull. Of course, there would be something else. She’d nearly expected something, in the quiet that was left.
The chill deepened, and she felt herself watched. It felt just like the void had, though dampened by the air and distance. Pointed in a way, like a stare.
Hope sparked in Hornet’s chest, and she brutally ground it back down. The masks were ruined, shattered, and Ghost had never taken so long to find their way back. The memory, as obtrusive and unwanted as it was hurtful and stinging all the sharper in wake of the Void, caused her to give a wounded hiss and jerk her head the way that felt the coldest, like a heavy fog just this side of giving way to icy sleet had settled there. It was void, it had to be void, come to defile her cursed, broken siblings a final time.
Could that dreaded emptiness take her siblings’ masks with it, too, dissolve them like their bodies into so much formless black to drip down to the bottom of the world, where the Abyss pooled and lurked with its closed eyes turned ever upward? Could it take the only siblings’ masks she’d ever the chance to truly mourn, the ones she’d nearly fallen to care for in spite of it all?
That thought sparked cornered fury in the hope’s place, and Hornet had no need to fight down such a thing. She turned her back to Ghost’s corpse with bared claws and pitiless warnings in her mouth, and both fell unused.
It was void, yes, but not only void. It was a shade, a Vessel-remnant, and it was huge.
It towered before her, dark and grim, and looked down with white eyes and a fracture just as white crawling back over its nearly-formless head, pointed into two serrated horns arching toward the Black Egg’s high roof. It stood straight though it had no legs to speak of, unpained and steady, and as Hornet stood missing her needle before its chill and its watchful gaze, it never glanced away from her.
They stared at each other as Hornet didn’t dare breathe, recalling the despair and resignation the drawing of her soul from her body had inspired, feeling the quickened pounding of her heart in her chest like it was fearful of the same happening once more.
But Hornet was not an easily frightened bug.
So, she rallied. “What below the earth do you think to do here?” She barked up at it, her voice loud and demanding in the hushed, unnatural voidborn-silence.
The shade reeled back, sharp-edged tendrils silhouetted for only a moment against the grey stone where they flicked, disquieted, and Hornet pressed the advantage. “Gods-damned revenant, can I not mourn my dead? Must I strike you down too, to protect them from this final indignity, at least?”
She snarled, striding to the Hollow Knight’s cracked-open mask to pull her needle free, pretending she hadn’t heard the exact crunch of bone she’d anticipated under the growing rage, that even if she’d never had the option or ability to be kind to her siblings, never been able to protect them, too, and still fulfill her purpose, that another would dare to touch what remained before she had even the time to bury them, before she’d even the time to grieve.
The shade retreated, folding its mass into itself as she ranted at it, raising her needle to strike should it come closer. Dripping red with fury her vision might have been, but Hornet was not one to put her mother’s gift at jeopardy for naught, and if she was to fend off some long-dead specter then she would have it make the first blow.
That did not stop her from calling it every name she could first call to mind, though. All the helpless anger came to a boil within her, and that it was not true anger but, instead, fueled by something eerily similar to anguish did not escape her notice. She did not care for the difference.
“How dare you, you rot-gutted, stag-dung bastard!” Hornet screamed at it. “Did I kill you? Is that why you’ve come? I do not need you to tell me to regret! Is that what you want?” She demanded, leveling the point of her needle up at its face, between its widened eyes. “You won’t touch them! Piece of-“
“Sister!” Someone exclaimed very quietly from nowhere she could pin, with a voice like a thought and somehow still faintly admonishing.
“What?!” Hornet called back, exasperation harsh in her raised voice.
Then she drew up short, her anger doused as a flame beneath a heavy cloak. She froze where she stood, and knew there was no one else in the Black Egg but they two, and the corpses.
“What?” Hornet whispered.
“It is only me, there is no need to curse.” The shade spoke again. “I’ve not come to make you regret.”
Hornet hardened, brushing aside the shock, and raised her needle where its tip had fallen only an inch. “Then why are you here?”
The shade was silent then, tilting its angular head down some so that its blinding eyes were not trained on hers, as though in thought. She waited impatiently, stubbornly not feeling how her arm began to shake from the weight of her needle held aloft. Of course, the effects of the near-snuffing of one’s life by void could not be shaken off as easily as she’d hoped.
She would hold out. She knew herself well.
When the shade spoke again, it was quieter still. “I don’t know. I did not come to make you regret, but I can feel you do. It is strange. It is very strange, but I do not hurt, so I suppose it’s better.”
“That’s not a reason.” Hornet told it sternly.
The shade, bafflingly, looked up and made what felt like a short, fond chuckle then, soundless as it was. “No, I suppose it is not. I’ve missed you, though. If I’m not to know what draws me back from sleep, I may as well ascribe my own meaning. If you must have a cause, which I should have expected you would, let us say I am here for you.”
“For me?” Hornet picked out, refusing to consider what else the shade had said. It made too little sense, it sparked too many old memories that could not be related to the remnant before her. Threat was understandable, and more familiar than all else.
“I never spoke in life, not to you, but surely you remember me?” The shade asked, a note of despair in their distant-close voice.
“… Tell me your name.” Hornet commanded them.
“Would you believe that I hadn’t had one? I will give you my title, in its place. I was the Hollow Knight.” The Hollow Knight’s shade told her. “And however glad I am to speak to someone without madness or fear at last, I worry for what it means for you.”
Hornet wanted to disbelieve them, yet the crown of their horns was as striking as it was familiar.
She was willing to blame the lingering headache growing again behind her eyes as she strained not to shake, to stay ready and guarded before her killed, long-suffering sibling, for having not drawn the connection until that exact moment. Perhaps it truly was a concussion.
“You’re tired, sister, you are afraid I will do you harm when your arm gives out.” The Hollow Knight told her, their concern a hum nearly strong enough to rattle her fangs beneath their insubstantial voice. “How can I make you believe that I would not hurt you?”
“Don’t touch me!” Hornet hissed. “I do not fear. How can I trust anything you say, if you can know my thoughts more easily than I?”
The shade crept a little closer, then floated back the inches as Hornet swung her needle at them, the blow disgustingly uncoordinated and all she could manage. Her vision hazed and blinked at the edges, and Hornet shook her head sharply. It did not improve.
“I cannot do that, but you are of void just as I am.” The shade told her, their silent words given so quickly they blurred at the edges of their meanings. “There is a certain level of understanding between us. Can you not feel me?”
“It doesn’t matter if I can, you cannot be them. You’re just a,” Hornet cut herself off to regain her footing, annoyed as her center of balance listed. “Just an imprint. A vestige of what was, not my sibling. And I will cut you down if you dare raise a hand against us.” She promised, meaning every word even as her voice went vague and low.
“Sister-“ The shade insisted, spiking with panic as Hornet’s knees finally gave out, and then she knew no more.