Archive of Our Own

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 it 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. It 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 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 domain 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 it had 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 whence 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, 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 it 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 its 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 get 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.