Chapter Text
When Lace felt rested enough, she shook off the moss, mildly irate as she looked down and noted that her body was now stained with green.
Taking stock of any potential change to her surroundings, she spied Hornet, sitting perfectly still in a state Lace couldn’t tell whether she was awake or not. It was hard to tell if she was still alive, though her soft breaths— even with far too long of a gap between them for any normal bug to survive without air— proved her to be still alive.
As she rose, Hornet snapped to attention and turned her gaze to her.
“Good morning, Lace. I was somewhat surprised that you are capable of sleeping.”
“Tch, hardly. I merely lay awake but still. It is relaxing even if sleep is beyond my grasp.”
The spider nodded in understanding.
“Well, whatever. You could have at least tried to warn me that the Cradle was sealed off!”
“I was in fact attempting to, before you interrupted me to run off on your own. There is a less direct route in, however, that I intended to lead you to should you still desire it.”
Lace’s eyes narrowed, some embarrassment flowing through her.
“Very well. Escort me, spider.”
As she stood and approached, Hornet turned and began walking away. Lace hurried to catch up to her, almost grabbing her cloak before staying her hand and following one step behind.
Hornet led her to the ventrica tube, but paused and turned her head back to her.
“I would rather not lose sight of you, Lace, though it will be a tight fit.”
Tch. I suppose that’s fair, but being that close... if anything were to happen, I would be immobilized.
Well, she was strong enough to slay mother.
Hornet walked in first and turned around, squishing her body against the back of the cylindrical chamber. Lace awkwardly entered, at first facing her, but spinning around to avoid the unrecognized feeling that washed through her at pressing her face against Hornet’s body.
Hornet pressed a button— Lace saw it to be the one for the High Halls— and they began to move.
Lace was intimately aware of the spider hands that found themselves around her waist, and the heavy breathing coming from behind her, though she couldn’t understand the reasoning behind them. Hornet certainly didn’t provide any elaboration, merely quieting herself and releasing her grip as soon as Lace’s head turned back towards her.
A few more moments of silent travel, and the telltale clang of the ventrica pod hitting the ground interrupted their silence.
Lace stepped out, and paused for just long enough that Hornet could walk just ahead of her, making sure to follow close behind. She dropped down to a lower level, and stood below, as if waiting to catch Lace.
She followed after, pointedly landing on her feet directly beside Hornet, avoiding the chance of falling into her arms.
Hornet simply nodded in reply, and continued her walk through the hall. Lace, for the first time, was forced to admire the wreckage that had been wrought upon her home.
There was rubble everywhere. The glass flooring was cracked at every tile, chunks of stone ceiling having fallen all around. Some small bubbling pools of Void remained, remnants much like the possessed Memoria worker that lunged at her.
A mechanical whirring and clicking rang out from behind them, the signature sound of the silkmaidens interrupting her remorseful thought. Hornet drew her needle, but Lace simply gestured behind her to have it go away, and had her escort continue. She was somewhat annoyed when it didn’t listen to her command, but she didn’t have any reason to suspect anything was wrong until its legs grabbed her and began trying to unravel her.
She screamed out, demanding that it halt, but it was relentless until Hornet skewered it and sliced off its legs.
“Are you injured?”
Lace sputtered briefly. “Fine. Those things should recognize me! They were programmed specifically to exclude my body from what qualifies as harvestable silk!”
The sound of three more crawling towards them interrupted whatever Hornet was about to say, and she simply pushed Lace back so abruptly that she stumbled and fell on the glistening glass flooring, having no choice but to watch as the pale spider flicked her needle.
“Stay back, Lace. You are more at risk from them than I. I will take care of this.”
She dashed forward and a storm of thread lashed all around her, with Lace just barely outside the spherical radius. It cracked the shells of two, though not enough to stop their assault as they began to focus on Hornet, rather than herself. The third skirted around, though, and almost reached her before one of Hornet’s red-painted cogflies bashed into it to throw it off course.
She was elegant in her fighting style, something Lace could now appreciate since it was no longer her that was being fought. Even as they began to take Hornet’s own silk, she gave no indication of being thrown off balance, tossing out bundles of sharp spikes and kicking the silkmaidens into them with the aid of her cogflies.
The least damaged of the trio began to weave its pilfered silk into the shape of a large spike, aimed at Hornet while she was distracted by the other two.
Lace grabbed her sister’s pin and threw it at the machine, able to knock it off balance enough for its lethal attack to merely graze Hornet rather than impale her. She looked back at Lace, and gave a quick nod, before spinning three smaller spikes of silk and throwing them at each one, all leaving significant damage to the respective silkmaiden they had homed in on.
Hornet leapt back towards Lace, and briefly turned her head toward her as she spoke. “When I jump, you jump with me.”
Lace simply nodded in reply.
The silkmaidens all approached the pair in direct straight lines as Hornet walked backwards, pushing Lace further back with each step. Once they were all in a straight line in front of her, she paused for a moment, before throwing something on the ground. She waited a second, before kicking it slightly and leaping upwards, Lace following suit.
The small spike she drove into the ground erupted into a column of electricity, angled away from them in such a manner that it struck all three silkmaidens at once. The five of them all landed back on the ground simultaneously, but while Lace and Hornet were perfectly fine, the silkmaidens all lay fried and barely able to even twitch as they fell to pieces before her eyes.
Oh. She... she was holding back against me, wasnt she. If she wanted me dead, I wouldn’t have even had the chance to interrupt her sacrifice, let alone be dragged from the void.
Hornet poked each one to confirm their destruction, before turning back to Lace, checking her over. “Are you injured, Lace?”
“No, no. You don’t need to worry, I’m fine. Just confused.”
“You acted as though they should be obedient to you.”
“They’re supposed to be! All citadel mechanisms have been designed with me in mind. Nothing here should be able to harm me deliberately.”
Hornet nodded. “Perhaps it’s due to their connection to your mother being severed that they don’t recognize you, although that shouldn’t... oh, of course. That would explain that, wouldn’t it?”
“What would?”
“How would they otherwise recognize you?”
“Well, its very simple, the specific composition and arrangement of my silk-body is unique, so—” Lace stopped, immediately understanding what Hornet realized a second prior.
“When I rebuilt you after that little stunt in my bellhome’s sauna, the composition of your silk changed significantly. A Weaver-Wyrm hybrid’s silk, as opposed to the purest form of silk given directly by its primordial source, and that says nothing of the ways I may have failed to replicate the exact whorls and knots.”
Lace inched closer to her, and grasped at the edge of her cloak. “I’m... not safe here anymore?”
“Of course you are. You are a competent fighter in your own right, and I will remain at your side. Nothing will harm you, because nothing will be permitted the chance to.”
The reassurance helped, somewhat, if only the part where Hornet promised to remain with her. “Of course. It’s not like I was scared, or anything. As you say, I am a skilled warrior. I merely was annoyed at the possibility of needing to watch my back.”
Hornet stared her in the eyes again for several unbroken seconds, before nodding. “My apologies if it seems I doubt your skill. I did not mean to prevent you from defending yourself, I am simply used to fighting alone. Shall we continue?”
Ha. You’re leagues above me, pale spider. I would have fallen to the first one without you here to save me again.
“Apology accepted, and yes, we shall. You know whatever route remains.”
Their trek continued, through the shattered remains of the elevator room that made Lace’s silkheart ache with regret, before Hornet stopped just before a large rock that nearly blocked their path.
“It’s up there. You will need to hold onto me.”
Lace looked up, seeing a crack through the ceiling that seemed to curve out of sight. She grabbed onto Hornet’s cloak, wrapping her arms around her as tightly as she could. Hornet let some of her own silk out, and wrapped it around the both of them, almost like the straps of a bag held on her back. As soon as Lace finished securing herself Hornet threw her needle upward, and pulled the both of them up rapidly.
Once they landed, Lace tried to free herself, but Hornet’s voice stopped her.
“Do not unlatch yourself yet, Lace. We have more verticality of that sort to go through. It would be simpler for you to remain on my back.”
She simply scoffed and continued to hold tight as Hornet maneuvered the cryptlike piping and half-crushed tunnels. She threw her needle upward again, just barely far enough from the edges to avoid a few still-spinning fan blades.
Several winding corridors later, Hornet severed the silk strapping lace to her back. “We’ve arrived, though I should warn you that it is far from the state you left it in.”
Lace detached from Hornet and walked toward her cradle, and her silkheart dropped when she saw the state of the room.
As the probable epicenter of the destruction, it made perfect sense that it would be ruined, but that didn’t make it easy to look at. Half of the silkflower garden was submerged by a towering pile of rubble, and it was no longer level, tilted somewhere around 20 or 25 degrees.
Despite it all, it was still the only thing she’d ever been able to call home.
She reached the ledge, and leapt over onto the silkflower platform, clearing the rubble away before laying down. Hornet followed her, and sat beside her.
The pair simply lay there in silence for a while, Hornet occasionally looking over at her.
After some time, Lace is the first to break the silence.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Hornet looked over at her. “To tell you the truth, neither do I. I simply live.”
“I don’t think I can, not on my own.”
Hornet cocked her head to the side. “You need not be alone, Lace.”
“Not loneliness. I think...” Lace sighed. “I should tell you. My body would have unravelled itself even without that water.”
Hornet’s eyes remained locked on her, a feeling of concern radiating from her as she continued.
“I was designed to require Her constant maintenance. It won’t happen immediately, but, I am made of silk. That silk cannot be generated internally. With her dead, I don’t have much of an option. It won’t be today, or tomorrow, but even if your repairs reset the timer, someday soon my time will run out.”
Hornet placed a hand on her, and pulled her closer. “Should that time come, I will mend you again.”
Lace scoffed. “It wont solve everything. You got most of it out, but there’s still a void inside me. You shouldn’t be burdened with me, pale spider. You should go back to your home, reconnect with those siblings of yours, and forget.”
“No.” Hornet retorted, her flat cadence feeling harsher than usual. “I am not one who forgets, and I am not one who leaves. I will only leave this place once I finish purging that blue infection, and only if your survival can be ensured.”
“Ha. What a solemn fate you have, then.”
Hornet retracted her hand, and looked down. “Maybe so, but there are many fates worse than that of a dutiful warrior.”
“And yet you insist on worsening it, condemning yourself to keeping a broken doll wound.”
“I hardly see it as worsening my fate. I would have a companion, should you wish to remain with me, and a proper routine would be nice. You would be the first who—” Hornet stopped speaking.
“Who, what?”
“Nothing of note.”
Lace laughed a little. “What, have you had lovers?”
Hornet almost glared at her, which sent shivers through her strings.
“Yes. They are all gone, and have been for some time.”
“A-Ah, I... sorry.”
“You lacked the knowledge. That period of my life is not one I tend to discuss.”
Lace’s curiosity was piqued. “Well, you’ve seen all there is to me. I can listen, should you desire to share.”
Hornet sighed, laying on her back. “I would hardly burden you with my history.”
“Yet you insist on burdening yourself with mine, hypocritical little spider!”
Hornet was silent for some time. “There is little to discuss. When I was younger, and Hallownest was in its prime, I engaged in a tryst with another bug. She was kind, never calling too much attention to my neotenous form and regal status. With her, I could just be Hornet, not the daughter of our pale king.” She sighed before continuing. “She grew old, and died. I mourned her, and in time, found another bug who I could connect with. Again, they died of old age, and I looked no older. I have not engaged in such frivolities since.”
“Ah. Sorry if that was uncomfortable to share.”
Lace watched her expression, seeing her relax, but her hands shook ever so slightly. “Worry not. It is only fair, I suppose, to warn you that I may grow too attached.”
“It seems we have more in common than I thought.”
Their eyes met.
“You say she never worried about the way you look. I look the same way. I was spun to be a child, and you called me as much, but we are both far too old for that to apply.”
“I apologize. I knew not, at the time. It does seem a common thread among immortals, in my experience.” Hornet’s chelicerae clicked together and she almost appeared to laugh. “If you were to look at my father, you could mistake him for a hatchling, after all. I looked older than him before I was even adult. He never cared about this, but that was simply the mind of someone pale as he was, rarely able to understand the part of me that came from my mother and felt desires.”
“I have looked like this since my creation. Never changing, even as time passed. She wanted me to be Her small dependant child, and I was. I am. I will be until my time is up. It feels hard to conceive that anyone would consider liking something like me, and yet,”
“I am glad my tales of woe gave you that much, at least.” Hornet reached toward her, but pulled her hand back and looked away yet again.
Lace grabbed it, and stared up at Hornet’s mask. “Wait. Don’t.”
“Lace?”
“I like your touch, Hornet. Please, just... for a little bit? I’m beginning to enjoy contact with another, especially one who can understand me.”
Her breathing grew heavy, and her chelicerae clicked several times in quick succession, but she steadied herself. She pulled Lace close, and the two lay together, arms wrapping around eachother.
“Of course.”