#i think quirrel made it and hornet corrected it

[ganymedesclock]

Also re: that previous hollow knight anon, I do not have a FAVORITE silly headcanon but I will list off a few I think are funny, which I may or may not have mentioned before!

The Pale King is usually fairly composed (at least superficially) but he’s a perfectionist obsessed with being correct and for this very specific reason, he is one of the members of the cast least immune to Zote. The former god-king of Hallownest could and WOULD get absolutely deadlocked in a completely meaningless argument with Zote, that Zote would then win, because Zote has the advantage of not ever actually accepting new information as correct.

Hornet is capable of sleeping standing up without an obvious slack in her body language. She prefers not to / it will give her a sore back afterwards but she has done it before, will do it again, and probably could be mistaken for awake in the process.

Hollow is excessively polite and often very nervous about offending people or doing anything wrong but they were literally born to kill god and they are not universally tolerant or submissive and this means that depending on context they can go from a thousand sheepish head-bobs because they hit their horns on a doorway and made an uncomfortably loud noise and oh gosh, oh no, they are so sorry, directly to laying someone out with one hit from their good arm and that was a friendly warning, because if it wasn’t they would’ve used their nail. Basically they’re lawful good to a fault and if you’re someone they disapprove of morally you are going to run into a very different side of them.

Ghost on occasions will do the ‘I totally meant to do that’ walk right after tripping or failing at something trivial/not serious.

The number of people whose last act alive was underestimating Quirrel is not high but it is definitely not zero. He is at least the third most dangerous older man you know, assuming you also know Sly.

Ogrim is probably capable of throwing you, even if you’re larger than him. He will generally not do this because that’s quite rude, unless you ask, in which case he will absolutely be a friend and shot put you at least twelve feet straight up.

[storytellersys]

Operation Alarm Clock

Hornet here. Upon realizing that, in theory, we could access any location and time within Hallownest’s history—so long as we didn’t visibly fuck up the timeline so events that needed to happen—I immediately pushed for saving my mom. Long post, the rest is under the cut.

(One of my moms, anyway, Spidermom. Although saving Beemom might also be very possible with some well-placed illusion magic... and she might not be the only one. This needs more thought later but if I’m right, we might be making Ze’mer very, very happy.) 

Of course, we still had to get a portal working. Our current ones are bright pink and can only be maintained by someone currently within the headspace, and we’ve got a room above our “control room” (think a basement room with a big couch, a TV screen showing whatever the current fronter is looking at, and a tiny lightbulb with a chain up top to complete the aesthetic) that we’ve designated our “portal room” just to keep things out of the way.

(We’ll actually try to make up a floor plan/description of what our headspace is like at some point. But if I do that now, I’m never going to write this out.)

...hold that thought, kitten just got up onto a shelf I didn’t think she could get to. Really should have known better. I’m, collectively, about 1/5 of her mom. She learned from the best.

Okay, kitten has been somewhat dissuaded for now, where was I?

Right. Portals. By the time we got one properly working to Hallownest, Pyrrha had already showed up in the middle of the night and had somewhat adjusted to Life in the System. I think our first attempts were directed to Tamriel, and Ayrenn’ll give more details on her shenanigans there at some point.

Eventually, though? We got to Hallownest. Specifically, we wanted to portal to Monomon, some time before the Dreamers were sealed away, because I knew she had been instrumental in crafting the sealing spell, and if anyone could A) make it so that the Dreamers didn’t just instantly die when their seal was broken and B) slip it past a certain bastard bug of a king, it would be Monomon.

Contacting Monomon, however, had its own problems. Specifically, that we couldn’t let her know too much about the future (though we knew better than to think she wouldn’t figure some shit out on her own) and that we’d need something to offer her.

Figuring out what to offer Monomon was easy. Simply by virtue of being a system in this world, where metric fucktons of other worlds are seen as fictional, we could offer her information on absolutely anything this world has to offer. Also, preventing her own death is always a good incentive.

The other issue was how much she could know. I’m still our only bug (barring Holly, and they started visiting after this operation’s conclusion) so unless we really wanted to try disguising someone else, I was the one who had to reach out. I knew better than to think she wouldn’t figure out who I was sooner or later, and given some of the things she got up to in her Archives without anyone knowing until after she was gone, she could clearly lie well.

We settled on answering her questions if she asked them, but making it abundantly clear that absolutely no one could know any of this. And so, we opened our first portal to Hallownest, and I stepped into a side room of the Teacher’s Archives. Tubes upon tubes of acid adorned the room, all undoubtedly holding valuable information. In the middle, with her back to me, was Monomon herself. Very much alive, and very much not asleep.

I admit I may have given her a bit of a scare to start off. I will not apologize for that because it was funny as hell.

Our plan was to tell her what she needed to know (specifically: what we could do, what she needed to do, and what we could offer her in return) and offer more if she asked, after we (I) made it abundantly clear that this was not to be shared with anyone, and especially not PK. 

She figured out almost immediately who I was, because I apparently act a lot like Spidermom (shocker) and Monomon knew what Spidermom had asked for in return for being a Dreamer. Seeing me all grown up made it clear that I was a time traveler as well. Technically speaking.

I only got about twenty minutes there, compared to an hour here. Time in my version of Hallownest goes one hour for every three hours in this world (which was an unwelcome surprise when compared with the three hours in Ayrenn’s Tamriel for every one hour in this world) but I did manage to get her curious enough to hear me out. We did some more experimentation to make sure Hallownest’s end of things would work out, I unintentionally gained a fourth mom (thanks Monomom), and finally we hit upon our master plan.

We would bring Monomon over first of the Dreamers, because she already knew what was going on and certainly wasn’t averse to spending some time in our headspace while we figured other shit out. Specifically, we’d aim for right after Ghost whacked them several times with their nail, but before Ghost woke up.

You see, Monomom modified the spell so that it wouldn’t just kill the Dreamers upon the Seals breaking, it would just wake them up... possibly not immediately, so we were prepared to grab and yeet bugs into headspace if necessary. (Monomom was quite certain that Lurien would be the easiest yeet. She was eventually correct.)

(Monomom also shared some rather disturbing things involving PK that even I didn’t know, such as that she attempted to rescue some of the vessels stuck in the Abyss and may have actually been responsible for Ghost’s eventual escape, and that PK had been oddly insistent on making sure that the sealing spell did not allow for any possibility of the Dreamers’ survival, should it be broken. More reasons to hate my shitty, shitty dad. More reasons to appreciate R’s.)

After some incidents including but not limited to me nearly walking right into past PK, and quite a lot of testing to make sure it would work (or be as sure as we could,) it was finally time. We opened a portal to the exact moment Ghost broke the seal. Pyrrha used her semblance to yeet a maybe half-awake Monomon through the portal, I threw a letter Monomon had previously written at Quirrel as well as a headspace-made device we’ve rather imaginatively dubbed a notification stick, and we bounced.

(In retrospect, that was why Quirrel was still around in my memories. He knew Monomon was coming back, and he knew not to let anything on to my past self. His job was one of the most important: to press the button on the notification stick about a day after past Hornet left for Silksong adventures so we’d know when to drop the Dreamers back off.)

Monomon was in here for about a day, and fronted for a little over an hour. She had a great time, I’m pretty sure, though she’s yet to return or front again. I assume because she’s pretty busy, which is understandable and also a big fucking mood.

With Monomon a resounding success, next on the list was Spidermom, Herrah the Beast. She was a bit more difficult, given that I had to actually talk to my past self.

It worked out, well enough. Barring the fact that I had no memory of that conversation from the other side, but we can attribute that to system weirdness.

We grabbed Lurien shortly after, and then opened up one final portal. Previously, we’d been using our notification sticks merely as signals that we should head over to x world as soon as possible. What we homed in on, however, was the action of Quirrel heading outside Dirtmouth, and pressing the button.

After that, it was out of our hands. But I’m told Lurien gathered some things from his spire and moved into Dirtmouth, Spidermom is working on rebuilding Deepnest now that the Infection is gone, and Monomom is, unsurprisingly, experimenting away in Fog Canyon.

This mission was a resounding success. (And this is honestly the abridged version of it, but it proved that we could in fact fix some things in any of our worlds.)

Hornet out.

[cotillion-the-rope]

Not Hollow Chapter Five: Resting Grounds

I'm still not completely happy with this chapter, specifically the latter half with the Seer, but sometimes you just gotta accept that something ain't gonna be as good as you'd like it to be and just let it be good enough and upload it so you can move on to work on other things instead of continuing to stress about it.

On the way back to the Teacher’s Archive, Hornet filled Quirrel in on the specifics of the situation and what she needed his help with. She didn’t want to share that much information about her siblings and their suffering but Quirrel knowing the specifics might be important to his search. It was best not to takes chances with that kind of thing especially since she didn’t know how much he already knew or had regained memories of. He asked a few clarifying questions but tactfully didn’t press on anything sensitive such as Hornet’s connection to it all which he didn’t need to know.

When they arrived, he wasted no time. “I’d offer to teach you Monomon’s code so you could help but it’d probably take a while so… it might just be faster for me to look by myself,” he said before heading off to get to work, not even giving her time to reply if she’d wanted to.

That left her with nothing to do but wonder the halls with Grimmchild. … Maybe she should free him from the leash and muzzle. … Had he learned his lesson though? She couldn’t say for sure and she didn’t want to risk getting caught in an explosion to test it so no, she’d keep him leashed for now. She’d made sure nothing was tight enough to hurt him or cause any real physical discomfort so he’d be fine as he was for a while longer. If nothing else it should hammer home the point that he shouldn’t attack things that explode when hit and that he should listen the first time when told to do or not do something.

***

Quirrel wanted nothing more than to leave his old life behind, start new and fresh somewhere else. He’d been in the process of trying to get Lemm to join him, mostly for the sake of a companion because he was tired of traveling alone. But it seems, he wasn’t quite done with Hallownest yet.

The vessel, Ghost as Hornet called them, was someone he’d grown to consider a friend. He’d thought they had everything handled, they certainly seemed more than capable enough, but it seems they hadn’t. They’d cracked too. Which was bad enough by itself but Monomon had died to allow them that opportunity to fix the Infection. Quirrel couldn’t let her death be in vain and he couldn’t leave his friend to suffer if he could help it.

And so, he scoured through the Archives, looking for any mention on how to enter the Dream Realm in a way that would allow one to kill a god there. Luckily, despite his spotty memories, his ability to read Monomon’s shorthand was still intact. His vague memories of his time working in these halls came in handy; he knew for sure which places not to look and had some ideas on where to begin.

He started with everything that had been archived about the Dream Realm itself. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, there wasn’t much, certainly nothing even speculating on how to access it. Next he looked into the Radiance herself because the Dream Realm was her domain. There was a lot more about her, more than even Hornet had told him on the way up here. Though he quickly found out that most of it had to do with research done on the Infection and how to contain her in a vessel. He’d have to shift through that to find anything else. It’d take a while but he didn’t have any other leads. At least it was an interesting topic.

***

“I found something!” Quirrel called as he rounded the corner into the hallway Hornet was headed down. That had taken longer than she would’ve liked but not as long as it could’ve.

She picked up her pace to quickly met up with him. “What is it?” She didn’t dare get her hopes up too high yet but hopefully he’d found something substantial.

“Well uh… it’s not a huge lead and might actually be a dead end now that I think about it,” well, wasn’t that just great? “but… there was apparently a tribe of moths that used to worship the Radiance before the Pale King arrived in Hallownest. There were rumors that they had a way of reading people’s minds and entering the Dream Realm. Alas, there’s not any information on how they did that or even if it’s true or really much about them at all. So uh… I might’ve gotten a bit excited over nothing substantial. It is rather fascinating though, so if nothing else at least we learned more of Hallownest’s past.”

Hornet had heard of the moth tribe before of course but never known that they had a way of supposedly entering the Dream Realm. If she had, her earlier connection about Ghost gaining that ability after she’d lost track of them of them in Crystal Peak would’ve lead her to a different part of Hallownest. “Actually, that might be huge,” she said. It might not be but she was tired of wondering the Archive’s halls regardless.

“Uh… really?”

Not bothering to reply, she took off towards the exit, trusting him to follow or not as he pleased. She just wanted out of here and to finally doing something again.

 -

As much as she was in a rush, she did pause outside Fog Canyon to finally free Grimmchild of the thread. He’d been tethered and muzzled more than long enough and they would hopefully not have to venture back into Fog Canyon any time soon.

As soon as he was free, he hissed at her before flying in a large circle, spitting a few fireballs at nothing. He then flew back to start hovering behind Quirrel’s shoulder as he caught up with her. She was his aunt and he had the audacity to follow someone else just because she’d rightfully disciplined him? … Let him then, she didn’t care.

“Ah, hello little Grimm,” Quirrel said with small hand wave. “Nice of you to join me. Now uh… Hornet, I’d appreciate an explanation. The moth tribe is long gone so even if they could…”

“They have graveyard,” Hornet interrupted. “And I’m almost one hundred percent positive Ghost went there during the time period they gained the ability to travel to the Dream Realm.”

“Oh uh… yeah, I guess that’s a good lead then.”

Without further word, Hornet took off again.

 -

Hornet had been to the Resting Grounds before of course – she’d had a long time to explore all of Hallownest – but she’d never really thought much of it. It was a graveyard of bugs she’d never known, what could there possibly be here that would be of interest to her? Nothing unless there was something here that could get her into the Dream Realm. She didn’t fancy the idea of graverobbing to get it but she’d do what she had to.

First, she had to wait for Quirrel and Grimmchild to catch up. Which thankfully they did fairly quickly.

“Are we going to be digging up graves?” Quirrel asked. “If so, we might want to go get some shovels first.” Well, he apparently didn’t mind the thought of doing such a thing so at least they wouldn’t be having an argument about it if it was necessary.

“I don’t know yet, let’s just explore the place some first.” Hornet resumed walking, going much slower now. She wanted to continue rushing but she didn’t know what they were looking for so slow going and careful examination along the way it was. “Tell me if you spot anything interesting, you too Grimmchild.”

Looking much more closely than she ever had before during her brief prior visits, Hornet couldn’t help but notice that the graves, though old enough for the lettering to be starting to wear away on more than a few of them, seemed to be well tended. Odd, why would anyone bother to take care the graves of a people long gone? Especially in a kingdom so devoid of life. … It also had to mean someone lived nearby that Hornet didn’t know about, right? A discomforting notion considering how long she’d watched over the land while thinking she knew of everyone who inhabited it.

Eventually after reaching and climbing most of the way up a vertical cavern, it was starting to look like they weren’t going to find anything without doing some digging. She was not looking forward to digging up a bunch of graves. She was determined though so…

“Ah, about time you should up!”

Hornet jumped, whipping out her needle to point at… a little old moth using a cane to walk as she approached out of the shadows of a smaller cave. She looked harmless but one could never know for sure so Hornet didn’t dare lower her needle yet.

“I’ve been expecting you,” the old moth continued, seemingly unphased by the needle pointed in her direction.

“Who are you?” Hornet didn’t like this. “And what do you mean you’ve been ‘expecting’ us?”

“You can just call me Seer. And what else could I mean by ���I’ve been expecting you’ than exactly that? I knew Hallownest’s princess would find her way here eventually. You’re looking for a way to access the Dream Realm, correct?”

Hornet flinched a little, she didn’t like someone knowing who she was and what her goals were when she knew next to nothing about them. Before she could reply though, Quirrel stepped forward to stand beside her.

“Yep, that’s what we’re here for,” he said, seemingly unbothered by this whole situation. “I’m Quirrel, this is Hornet, and this,” he pointed up to Grimmchild still hovering just behind him, “is Grimmchild. We’re looking for a way to enter the Dream Realm so we can kill the Radiance. She’s been causing problems for far too long and there’s a friend of ours that we wish to save from her. I assume since you know what we’re looking for, you can help, right?”

“Yes, I can. Follow me.” Seer turn and started back into her cave.

Quirrel started following her with no hesitation. With a sigh, Hornet forced herself to relax and sheathe her needle at last and follow suit. She was still not a fan of this situation but it probably wasn’t dangerous and if this did lead to a way to kill the Radiance, putting up with it would be more than worth it.

Inside the cave was obviously Seer’s home. Most of the space was taken up by a nest of pillows that the Seer had already settled on. Quirrel sat down in front of her, resting his nail down on the ground beside him, he kept a hand near its hilt though so he wasn’t quite as nonchalant about all this as he seemed on the surface. Grimmchild settled on the pillows, the furthest from the Seer though so he wasn’t completely chill either. Hornet however was far too anxious to sit down so she stayed standing for now.

“How do get into the Dream Realm?” she asked as Seer started pulling out a tea set as if she were planning on serving them tea of all things.

Unphased, Seer continued her tea preparations. “The most efficient way to get into the Dream Realm for the purposes you wish to enter is by using a Dream Nail on an unconscious or near-unconscious bug.”

“Great, where do we get one?”

“Or two,” Quirrel added. “I’ve already come this far in this quest, I’d like to continue if possible.”

“I can give you each one but only in the Dream Realm.”

“That doesn’t help much then.” Hornet didn’t bother trying to hide her displeasure.

“No need to get feisty dear, that’s what the tea is for. I said the Dream Nail is the most efficient way into the Dream Realm, not the only way.”

“So, you’re going to drug us?” Hornet interrupted before she could say more. That wasn’t a pleasant idea but… there probably wasn’t any other choice.

“Yes. It’s mostly harmless though, you should come out the other side feeling nothing but a little groggy. My people used it frequently with little consequence.”

“Your people being the old moth tribe that worshipped the Radiance?” Quirrel asked, seemingly more fascinated by that than the fact that Seer was planning on drugging them.

“Yes. I’m the last.” Suddenly Seer sounded a lot more somber.

Like with Hornet, Quirrel had the tact not to press any further, staying silent instead. Holding back a sigh, Hornet lowered herself to sit beside him.

“Watch her while I do this,” she said. “Make sure she doesn’t do anything she’s not supposed to while I sleep.”

“Hmm… I’d love to but, like I said, I’d like this Dream Nail thing too. How can I assist in killing the Radiance without one after all?”

Hornet was tempted to object; perhaps she didn’t need his help with that part after all but… even if she didn’t want to admit it, she might. Killing a god wasn’t something to be taken lightly after all. And besides, he had very good reason to want the Radiance dead too; he’d been close to Monomon – in what way Hornet wasn’t sure but definitely very close – he wouldn’t want her death to be in vain just like how Hornet didn’t want Herrah’s to be. And the questions he’d asked about Ghost while she’d explained things to him suggested he was fond of them and possibly even consider them a friend. So she couldn’t deny his help, when he was actively offering it.

“Little Grimm can watch over us though, can’t you buddy?” he continued looking over at Grimmchild on the pillows, watching the three of them. He chirped what sounded like an affirmative in reply.

“Good,” the Seer cut in. “With that settled, it’s nearly tea time.”

 -

Hornet rarely remembered her dreams and even when she did, they were never vivid. But here, if she didn’t know better she’d think she was still awake. She was standing on a platform, floating in a bright sky and surrounded by clouds.

“This place is actually quite lovely.”

She snapped around to see that Quirrel was standing beside her. Which actually made sense, they’d come here together so why wouldn’t they remain so. Grimmchild was flying just behind him though.

“Grimmchild, you’re supposed to be keeping watch,” Hornet said, giving him a stern look.

Grimmchild paused for a second before turning to look at her. He then made an apologetic sounding chirp before vanishing, leaving behind a few red symbols in the air that quickly faded too. As suspected though, he could come in and out of the Dream Realm as he pleased.

“Now let’s figure out what we’re supposed to do.” Hornet grabbed Quirrel’s wrist again and started dragging him towards the edge of the platform. Before the reached it another one appeared a short distance away. They both easily made the jump and the next one after that and so on until they reached a platform with a glowing moth on it, presumably Seer even if it didn’t look much like her.

“Here,” she said. “It’s long past time this stasis came to an end.” She lifted her arms and two bundles of light shaped like nails appeared before them.

Without hesitation, Quirrel grabbed the hilt of his. He vanished with a flash of light, presumably returning to the waking world. Not letting herself hesitate, Hornet followed suit; there weren’t any other options available.

 -

She woke feeling rather groggy and sluggish, looking up at Quirrel standing over her. Wordlessly he held out a hand, offering to help her stand up. She wouldn’t normally accept such an offer but whatever, they were allies in this so she might as well.

Back on her feet, she glanced around the cave. They were in the exact same spot they’d been in when they’d gone to sleep. Seer was there too, looking up at them.

Hornet reached for the Dream Nail, instinctively knowing there was no physical component to it, making it more a spell than anything else. She still wasn’t sure how to use it but asking Seer to explain the ins and outs of it shouldn’t take too long. Then they’d be off to kill the Radiance at long last.