Work Text:
More Than Holy
Sherma just finished applying the bandages in the leg of his fellow pilgrim, Harloh.
“Does it hurt when you move?”
The wider pilgrim just tested lightly, and he frowned in mild pain.
“Foolish me. What was I thinking? This shell should have known better than cross through that pesky fog.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, brother,” Sherma reassured, “Faith has a high price, yes, but what we pay for it’s worth the price. I’ll show you. At the other side of The Citadel, resides the warmest and most soothing of hot springs.”
“How do you know of this?” he asked.
“Why, I found them myself, of course! Upon my first day arriving here, no less.”
Once Sherma decided Songclave would be his home for the time being, the Caretaker and Hornet—mostly Hornet—asked him to find ways to help the other pilgrims.
The location itself wasn’t a problem per se. The hot springs were relatively safe grounds; its outskirts too, even.
The problem was the trajectory to get there all the way from Songclave. The path Sherma took on his arrival had been a blind one. Much unable to have a reliable sense of direction.
Since two weeks ago, Sherma and others had been working to find a safe passage to connect the two places, but every path they had found and tried so far had haunted bugs by the dozens.
Lady Hornet had been kind enough to escort them in a round trip, and even clean a couple of times some of the most promising routes. But sooner than later, her efforts rendered meaningless, for new haunted bugs replaced the slayed ones, or by the time they returned, those very same ones returned to what little life they clung to, no matter the injuries.
Sherma knew they couldn’t always rely on her kindness or availability. She had far more pressing matters to attend to elsewhere at any given time.
One of his fellow pilgrims had suggested to wield weapons. Immediately after, a few of them shouted outraged.
“Have you gone mad?! Next time you so much mutter a madness alike, I’ll smite you before this holy places does!”
“Brothers! Brothers! Please, fighting won’t help us. We are not the trials we are meant to overcome,” Sherma said.
He succeeded in pacifying the turbulent waters in the group, but the words of threat, they lingered on his head; he thought... “If we are not meant to use weapons, how would you realize your words true?”
The time to probe another path had come again. Sherma, Harloh, leaning on the former to walk, the two pilgrim that discussed, Silic and Purb, and a bunch of other bugs with somewhat severe injuries. These ones being most new at The Citadel, so they had the most up-to-date information to the state of the dangerous floors in The Citadel; vaguely, if anything.
The two newest members affirmed they had come in through an area that consisted on a point where the Choral Chambers and the Lowers Workshops merged together.
They walked right below the surface of the former. So close in fact, they could still see rays of bright light shining through the cracks and whatever small vents there were in the place. An extensive seemingly never-ending armory extended across five halls.
The three middle ones being the most standard ones. Swords, spears, bells, staffs, a full built in forge at the end of the hall they entered through.
The bottom hall was filled with massive blackboards. Each containing tasks in different areas across The Citadel, all in excruciating detail filling the blackboards from top to bottom. At the end of the nearest end of the hall, there were different mountains of nothing but working tools; the ones at the bottom of said mountains were covered in both rush and cobwebs.
One of the Pilgrims, Shean, approached one of these mountains, his hand hovered one inch to close when a thundering sound broke the silence across the halls.
“What was that?” he said.
“Shhh!” Phean said replied as he stretched one hand on his direction. His singular horn turning to every direction every few seconds.
The rumbling returned, closer and the walls trembled.
On the ceiling, one, single, small lightbulb turned on, illuminating the conducts above the mountains of tools. A brand new lot of tools fell on the very top of the mountains.
Even if there were not enough workers, the ones remaining were not to be relieved from their current duties.
The top hall had by far the best gear. Not only the weapons of a higher quality next to stands with bright armor.
For a time, Sherma considered to acquire some armor for himself. During his path across Deep Docks, a couple of times did he find armor equipment littered on old abandoned rooms.
Little did he know how heavy even some mere shoulderplate hindered him. And the size, sigh, all too big and loose for him.
He remembered the one time he asked Lady Hornet why she did not wear armor. Her red cloak, while it had its uses—Sherma thought—did not believe offered the greatest of protections. Not to mention, unlike most of them, she could actually afford it.
“The costs outweighs the benefits, never said better. For speed and agility are pivotal to my combat style. All in purpose to favor my strengths and talents,” she had said.
“…” Only then Sherma realized, that was not the answer he was looking for, but then again, what was he looking after?
Hornet seemed to pick on that, “There’s no shame in resorting to magic, Little one, should you harbour the talent.”
Magic.
Well, he believed in the power of music. He knew Pharloom had songs with the power to turn the impossible possible, fulfill the wildest of dreams and grant wishes, but…
If weapons were forbidden for Pilgrims, magic was considered taboo for them to use; they could be victims in its receiving end, but never be the ones to cast it.
Exploring further, they also found Robo-bugs. All in different states of completion and deterioration—all wide open like a grub to a butcher.
Sherma and the others picked what they could carry with their hands and bags. At the end of the top hall, there hang more Robo-bugs from chains several feet off the floor. One of them struck Sherma’s eyes, for it held in its golden hands a pair of tools that remarkably resembled his own chime and pin, if anything somewhat bigger.
He surveyed around until he found a lever next to the post from which the chains was attached to. He pulled the lever down and the whole place shook for a second.
Everybug froze their searches in fear. Next thing they all knew was the chains snapped and the robo-bug fell to the ground with a loud THUN.
The robo-bug’s eyes lit white for a moment, before what little body it had trembled and exploded in a wave of soul. The whole room brightened for a moment as the silk escaped through the gaps and vents that shone down on them. For ten eternal seconds, the whole Citadel fell into silence, and all the other bugs in the armery had their own breathing buzzing their ears and lungs.
Phean moved first and peeked through the vents into the Choral Chambers, but he saw nothing and no one nearby.
He turned around to his companions, “I don’t think someone—“
SQUELCH!
A pin pierced through his face, and he fell flat to the ground.
“Phean!” Shean rushed to his brother’s corpse. Right as it was within his reach, a large growl came through the vents, followed by a rumbling quake across the whole building.
Before anyone knew it, haunted bugs by the dozens hurled themselves with no care at the gratings. The ones at the very front trying to sneak their fingers, only for them to have them broken, if not lacerated by brute sheer force.
Web-like cracks grew on the frames from which the vents were fixated into. The haunted bugs hit and stomped the wall with their fists, claws and weapons relentlessly. The sound of their slamming overlapping one on top of another dozen every second.
One dreg husk, out of the several huddled in the crowd, had his face pressed against the grill. His face already deformed until one of the maidens had their knee push in one strong motion, severing a chunk of the husk’s face covered in cursed silk through the holes, his rotten face falling flat to the floor at the same time the silk in his flesh faded away. All except for one meager drop of silk, descending slowly to the ground in front of a robo-bug’s feet.
Its eyes immediately turned on white and his mechanic heart rumbled to life, followed shortly after for all the other automatons in different states in unison.
The wall gave in and the haunted bugs flooded in, and Shean ended up squashed over the haunted bugs. Silic and Purb, rushed down the extensive hall fast as their legs allowed them to run. Sherma and Harloh tried to do the same, but they could only move so fast given Harloh’s condition. As they sprinted, the haunted bugs hurled themselves to catch them, only for the automatons to stop them in their tracks by cutting them down.
The haunted bugs did an effort to catch the pilgrim members, only for the automatons to stop them in their tracks, the three groups descended more and more into the large hall.
But damaged metal could only do so much against attacks coming from all directions. By every time they saved a pilgrim’s life, they took a grave hit to their cold shell.
The first to fall was Silic when a silk thread wrapped itself around his leg, making him stumble and fall. The husk that chased him hauled himself over him and his silk-engulfed face merged with his. Silic tossed and screamed until his limbs fell flat to his sides.
As the Citadel Chamber bugs flooded the area, the automatons tried their best to keep them at bay, slaying them efficiently as possible, but by every one of them slayed, another five overwhelmed the automatons by brute force, throwing themselves at them. Even those with no weapons, using nothing but their fists with absolute absence of self-preservation, hitting the metal shells as their knuckles broke, yet not stopping there.
Furniture and bodies alike dashed right and left across the halls. A cog half as big as Harloh almost hit him and Sherma, they just managed to get out of the way to get an impact each on their side respectively. They rolled out to the ground and Harloh whined in pain as he fell over his injured leg.
“Harloh? Harloh!” Sherma crawled towards him for just a second before the head of a bug flew past him, followed by the rest of his body, and then followed by the automaton with two other haunted bugs over himself. Sparks flew out of his eyes as its head smashed the ground before.
His feet stumbled with the weapon stand and fell over his back, Harloh right behind him falling alike, the weapon stand itself tilted shortly after. Only stopping as its head fixated itself against the wall.
Before Sherma could react, a haunted bug hurled itself against him, but he was too big to pass through the bars in the weapon stand. Mindlessly, it stretched its arms in an attempt to reach Sherma, its blood-soaked hands inches away from his face.
Sherma tried to hold onto the weapon stand to keep the creature away from him, but he would be bound to get tired. The haunted bug smashed the weapon stand with its face and fists until it broke the upper part of a spear in the stand, falling on Sherma’s lap.
“G-get back!” He exclaimed. “Please! Leave us! Get back!”
Before he knew, the broken spear appeared in his hand, arms trembling with an earthquake inside his bones, if not across his whole body.
“I don’t want to hurt you! I don’t-I don’t!” The growls and snarls only grew louder, as his pleas did, but they were overpowered. The strikes and slams intensified, the wood crunched, cracks and splinters grew before his eyes. He was clutching the broken spear even harder. Tighter, tighter, tighter…
CRACK!
The weapon stand broke and the haunted bug fell over Sherma. So soon as the body landed over Sherma, it stopped moving; at the other side of its torso, the smallest tip of metal pierced through the dirty old clothing.
Slowly, very slowly, the now corpse slid off to the ground. As the body hit the ground, so did the realization he had used a weapon, not only that, he had killed someone, he had used harm and tainted his hands, and gone against what could be the most important rule for the Pilgrims.
“No,” He thought. “It’s not… That’s not what I meant…” But he couldn’t lie himself out of what he had done. The weapon was his, and so was the blood. He stared at his hand, covered in red and redder. His eyes drifted towards the rest of himself.
Almost the entirety of his torso was coated in blood. His garments as crimson as his eyes were devoid of light and paralyzed, only to be brought back to life by a Lower Workshop bug cut in half with its mouth wide open aimed at him. It hurled himself over Sherma, but he stepped to the side at the same time he threw one quick cut at its face with the broken spear out of instinct, it barely slowed it down. Instead, it propelled a new bite that grabbed Sherma by his cloak collar and tossed him far away from Harloh.
He rolled over himself as he hit the ground. Instinctively he crawled; his hands staining the floor with more blood, as he could hear the bug’s growls growing louder in his head. It grabbed him by biting one of his boots, but Sherma quickly freed himself by kicking it in the face with his free foot. This only bought him a few seconds before it leaped onto him. Sherma turned himself around, his back against the floor and stopped the bug and its bite attacks by putting the broken spear’s staff like a chew stick.
Sherma used all the strength he could gather to push the staff against its mouth. The two struggled and tried to throw each other off balance, but he could only last so long before his arms grew tired. The more his arms weakened, the closer the bug’s hungry jaw drew to his face.
Sherma closed his eyes waiting for the worst and turned his head away, as if that would make the bug magically dissap—
“SHAW!”
A bright burst of light blinded his eyes, all of a sudden the weight above him was gone.
So was the bug that wanted to kill him.
What followed was a blur of adroit red, blinding white and cold grey flying through the air. From one end of a corridor to the other. All Sherma could do was have his eyes try to follow up incredible lag.
It took him several seconds to process the fact Hornet had lured all the fight away from them until the mighty metal clashes could only be heard through eco. A piece of his mind knew where they were. Their corpses. They had died for his fault. He had dragged them here. For a stupid trinket.
All of them… blood in his hands. He tried to wipe it away, only to smear it all the ever more. He used his own clothes, adding more red to red.
He knew these insects weren't themselves, and that it was all the fault of the curse plaguing Telalejana. But Sherma fervently believed in the day when it would all end and be left behind.
But for that to happen, the haunted bugs had to stay alive.
And he had just snatched that future away from one of them…
Sherma was so frozen in his thoughts he had not realized when the screams and the fights actually stopped.
Hornet finished the last bug. She gave a quick probe of the place, finding nothing but yet more obstacles overcame waiting for new ones to take their cold places. Her eyes darted to Pilgrim closest to her and walked to him.
Moments before standing in front of him, Hornet had to remind herself to put her needle back on its sheath.
“Are you injured?” Harloh’s breath began to slow down. He shook his head. “Good. Stay put just a moment here. Then we are going back to Songclave. Can you do that for me?” he nodded his heads eagerly.
Hornet turned her attention swiftly back to Sherma. His eyes still fixated at the blood on his hands and the empty space beyond them—the space beyond them that had life just a few minutes ago.
She sighed and prepared herself mentally.
“Sherma,” She called firmly, but his mumbled babbling didn’t falter. Hornet kneeled in front of him, “Sherma. Look at me, Look at me. Where are they? Tell me where Harloh is? We need to find him.
“…H-him… I ki-ki-ki-lled him…”
“You are safe now. Harloh too. Thanks to your action. Now all you have to do is find him.” Hornet grabbed him by his shoulders but Sherma jerked his arms towards her. His hand still clutching the broken spear piece, slashing a cut into Hornet’s left arm.
The weaver barely reacted. If anything, she checked her new wound briskly so she could determine it could wait.
“Sherma. Hand me that. I’m not mad, nor I’m going to hurt you. No one is going to hurt you so long I’m here.” Upon extending her hand again Sherma lashed out as well, the adrenaline still kicking on. His stab attempt flying straight on a very stiff arm, only reaching half way before he couldn’t reach any further.
The broken spear flew out of his hand with one swift disarm motion. She made sure to do it as gently as she could, so not to agitate Sherma any further.
“Tell me what happened. Nothing is going to happen until you tell me.”
“I-I wa-wanted t-to run, I Heard s-screams everywhere,” He shut his eyes tight and turned his head away, “I wanted to help them-I couldn’t!”
No matter how patient Hornet wanted to be, a big part of her told her to get this over with. There was one option she could resort to, but she didn’t even know if it would work—not to mention, she didn’t want to do it.
But there were a great many things Hornet didn’t want to do across her life, regardless of her feelings.
SLAP!
That never helped settle with the guilt.
Hornet slapped Sherma just like she did with Nuu and Grindle. “From the top, tell me what happened.”
Sherma breathed heavily for several seconds, his back against the wall, as close as he could physically get himself to. “T-They came from everywhere. I tried to help… Silic and Purb… oh, absolution, where are they? Where are they?” He got up his feet, only to stumble over himself shortly before Hornet caught him, but he immediately struggled to get free from her hold.
Hornet looked to the side where she had left Harloh and signed them with a nod to step closer.
Suddenly upon seeing them, Sherma breathed a lot easier. He struggled one final time against Hornet’s hold as he attempted to rush to Harloh. Hornet only allowing him to go slowly, bit by bit.
The two pilgrim immediately merged into a hug with intelligible babbled words of relief.
For a while, Hornet stood there awkwardly. Despite the near-death experience Sherma just had, he still had the soul within him to be happy. After tragedy had struck and after the dust settled and dirt and blood stuck in his fingers.
A part of her wondered how long until he found being alive only a reason to be less irritated.
And how long until being alive was a reason to be irritated.
Lazily, Hornet pulled herself out of her mental gutter, lured by the sight of Sherma’s hand. “We must get going. Better not to give corposes a chance to strick back.”
“Oh, yes, yes. Harloh, can you walk back to Songclave?”
Harloh just opened his mouth when Hornet spoke first:
“We are closer to the hot springs. Your friend will need it. So do you.”
“I’m not hurt, I assure you red lady, I was only agitated. I just need some—“
“Your hand.” She signed with her hand; she resisted the instinct to point with her needle.
Sherma lifted both of his hands in hurried disbelief, as if wanting to say she was mistaken, or she was seeing things, or that that blood was not his-
B-blood?
Not his?
Then whose?
His right hand had a cut across almost his entire palm.
When had it happen? How did he not notice?
Likely from the struggle or when he the haunted bug impaled himself in his the weapon. From her cloak Hornet pulled a roll of bandages and a small needle with plasmium. She kneeled in front of him with and laid her needle don the ground—within reach. Hornet extended her palm towards Sherma, the little pilgrim understood and rested his arm on her hand.
“It will hurt?”
“Yes, but only for a moment.” Hornet inserted the needle in Sherma’s shoulders. Afterwards she applied the bandages on his hand until the blood stopped almost entirely. “This will suffice until we get to the waters,”
Said and done, the trio resumed their journey and arrived their destination with no further complication. Harloh’s face became an amazed poem and his eyes turned into high notes. Hornet and Sherma helped him undress most of his clothes and enter the water.
“This is beyond anything I have ever felt in the entire kingdom!” Harloh deligheted.
“Ha-ha! I told you it would be most soothing!”
Silently on the back of the room, Hornet grabbed a small bowl nearby and filled it with the healing water and prepared new bandages.
“Sherma.”
The little one hummed in confusion before he understood. “Oh.”
The process carried on mostly unspoken, saved by the occasional sound of eddies in the pool caused by Harloh. Sherma, lost in thought, did not requested reassurance, and Hornet offered none—or that’s how it would have gone, should Hornet find herself in this same situation with almost anyone else. But Sherma struck Hornet as two types of bug.
The type of idolized bug Hornet grew up wanting to serve and protect back at Hallownest when she trained to be like one of the guardians she read or heard so much about. The kind of bug Hornet saw on the world her every mentor wished for her to carry on.
And most importantly as the second type:
The type of bug that wouldn’t last a day in Deepnest.
Her mother tried to educate her the best she could, but Herrah only had so much time before she became a Dreamer. Only time for lessons on the world that would await for her. Or in other worlds, the world she’d come to face. Not how to actually live in it.
“You just killed someone. Do you want to get something off your chest?”
It almost seemed Sherma hear her not. “I-I don’t know…”
“I was under the impression you pilgrims could not defend yourself.”
“That’s not… We don’t-I… is not that simple…”
Hornet nodded. “Are you to tell someone of your transgressions? The caretaker, perhaps?”
Sherma shook his head tiredly. “We are meant to hold ourselves accountable, first and foremost. Only we… Only we know how pure and noble to our ways we remain.”
“And your ways say there no exceptions?”
“No.”
“Even if it’s not your fault?” She said as she glanced at Harloh from afar. “What of him? Is he to be hold accountable?”
“I-it was not his fault! He did nothing wrong! He… he just…”
“Sounds like an attempt at an exception.” There was no judgement in her voice. It was all matter-of-factly.
What did Sherma needed? This was a question both Hornet and Sherma himself asked. These kinds of dilemmas were not what he expected when he decided to become a pilgrim. So much for being a pilgrim saving him.
So, if being a pilgrim was not ideal in this situation, what was it?
“What… What would you do?” Was all he managed to think of to say.
Hornet thought for a moment. “Let me tell you a story about where I come from, a time when a large deal of citizens committed atrocities in the name of the royalty when an incurable illness struck the land. People turned on their neighbors at the smallest chance of contagion, putting everyone to prey for the weaker ones. Piles of burned bodies amassing in every plaza, growing larger by the day until they had no one but themselves to throw into the pile once the infection got a hold of them.
“I, for as long as I could remember, had been training my entire life to serve and protect my kingdom by becoming a knight. The other knights and I tried to keep peace as best as we could, but we were stretched too thin at every end. Some turned on us, deserting their loyalty to the crown to try and take control by themselves. Those of us left tried to remain loyal, only for laws to become harsher and harsher. We became judge, jury and executioner in all but name. Only some of stepping to fill into said roles.
“Eventually, we did things—I want to believe—most of us were not proud of.”
“What did you do?” Curiosity got the best of Sherma before he bowed his head. “Apologies. I shouldn’t have…”
“It’s funny,” Her face showed bitter amusement, “Often I was asked that question. Do you know what I said?”
Sherma shooks his head.
“Nothing. I said nothing. I did nothing. I let them commit atrocities and crimes trusting their judgement. I believed at the time in what we did and what we stood for, so I allowed it until we were the ones the cause for the piles of bodies we had to burn. All of this so I could still have a hand on protecting the kingdom, until at one point they began to kill citizens by the bidding of high nobles, nobles that had been sheltered in their towers, away from the looting and kingdom decay. I let it all occur, so I might as well have done it myself.
"Until one day I couldn’t take it anymore and I took the personal task to hunt them down by my blade. One by one I hunted them until I stood alone. I killed many who deserved it, and many who did not. Over time, I grew tired of lamenting my regrets."
“Why are you telling me this? What made you change your mind?”
“I had the wrong blood in my hands to be the protector I wanted to be. A mistake I promised myself to never make again.” She tilted her head and leaned closer to Sherma, “A mistake you have not committed.”
Sherma swallowed a heavy gulp. “If I ki… do it again, how will I tell one bl-blood from another?”
From behind him, with the same hesitance, Hornet extended her hand towards him, stopping momentarily for a few seconds before she pat his head lightly. “No one but yourself can tell that, little one. Truth be told is, if you follow this path, you will be bound to end up with the wrong blood in your hands regardless.”
Sherma fell quiet and Hornet joined him, sharing the silence. They remained like that for several minutes, overseeing Harloh and occasionally checking Sherma’s bandages until the little pilgrim said:
“Am I not holy enough?”
There it was that question again. The first time Sherma doubted like that was back at the Whiteward, after Lady Hornet had saved him.
First his illusion on the world around him had fallen to leave him stranded and stripped of everything that ever ignited his optimism and faith.
Now, he had taken his faith with his own hands and crushed it himself.
“No,” Hornet said.
Sherma shrieked and his hearth shrank.
Of course, how could he expect to remain holy, now of all-
“You are more than holy.”
He turned his head in disbelief. “W-what?”
“You are far more valuable as you are than all the holiness you could strive for. You can still strive for said holiness, but keep in mind who you want to be can lead you to path you never intended for yourself, and you may not notice it until it’s too late, if you ever do, that is.”
A while after, the group returned to Songclave. Harloh was the one to tell everybug about the thermal waters as if it were a miracle. Contrary to Hortnet expecting Sherma to do just that as far as she was concerned.
They had arrived right at the entrance to the shrine where Sherma had his own tent, like a couple of other pilgrims.
“T-thank you again, Lady Hornet for… saving me, saving us, for everything. I don’t even know how to begin to repay you.”
She hummed simply, and stood pondering. “I may have an idea. Wait for me, will you?”
Hornet walked to Jubilana’s shop at the other extreme of the place. Sherma saw them talking briefly. Jubilana searched through her wares and pulled out a small shield. Hornet drew a small bag with rosaries from her cloak and gave it to her. Then she returned to Sherma and handed him the shield.
“You can begin to re-pay me by using this in service of others."
His fingers had just finished holding on to it and taking its weight when she heard Hornet’s words. The shield almost fell from his hands. “B-but-! I have no strengths as a warrior! I cannot even fathom beginning to use it for attacks.”
“Who said anything about attacking? Or using violence on that matter. As far as I’m concerned, you only defended one of your contemporaries. You can focus on that, or wish he had died without your aide, if that means your hands stay clean. Look, I wish I could offer less crude advice. Nonetheless, this is better than the alternative. I can’t choose for you. I can only do like you do and pray. To dwell on the dead is to wish to join them. I’m not asking for a miracle. Today you saved one life, I just pray tomorrow you may save one more.”
Hornet marked her leave and he was left alone.
Sherma looked at his reflection at a dim shining wall, lit by holes in the ceiling. The shield in his arm across the handle and the straps in a poor attempt of a heroic pose. It was heavy despite its size. So were rosaries, often it was said among pilgrims, the more rosaries one had, the heavier the load, and thus, a grander devotion.
Hopefully, he prayed, he could get used to this new weight.