#quirrel the scholar

[dooblebugss]

Briefly thought about Tiso and Cloth actually getting titles as Knights under Hornet. I personally like "Tiso the Reckless" and "Cloth the Careful" or "Cloth the Cautious". I think they'd partially come up with these, but at the same time, you can't exactly give yourself a title

[oneangrykneegremlin]

Some very inconsistent doodles of Pale Court Quirrel. I’m still trying to nail his design 😭

These aren’t all of the sketches I have, but they’re in order of being drawn. Plus a bonus Lemm/Quirrel doodle on one of them. The most recent was from today before my shift started.

[meat-pvppet]

update: Tarro and Ridge are now Maro and Myno as suggested by my friends

will have a new design for them soon

in the mean time uh gets exploded by school

[courtjesterrr]

*SLAMS FISTS ON TABLE*

HOLLOW KNIGHT HISTORY TIME

Hollow knight spoilers

For context, hollow knight is a metroidvania style game thats available on Nintendo switch, pc, and ps4. It is a game full of fun characters, challenging boss fights, and visual lore. Today. Im rambling about lore.

First things first

In the past, primarily before Hallownest, the now named kingdom, there was a higher being who most everyone worshipped, the Radiance. The main higher beings at this time was The Radiance, The Nightmare Heart, Unn, and Shade Lord (i believe). The Radiance is the higher being of light and dreams, being represented by the literal sun. The Nightmare Heart is the higher being of, wouldnt you guess it, Nightmares. Unn is the higher being of nature and growth. Shade Lord is the higher being of the Void. At this time, most bug were mindless, uncapable of higher thought. Until, the last Wyrm came along.

The Wyrm is folklore is a type of dragon. There used to be a whole species, but some sort of rapid decline happened to where there was only one left. The Wyrm, being too overgrown to fit the kingdom, shed its skin and age to become smaller, more buglike. It was this very reason that the Wrym was able to convince the bugs of the kingdom to worship him instead of the Radiance, and to crown him as the Pale King, bless the bugs of the kingdom of higher thought, to have their "base instincts redeemed", and to rename the kingdom to Hallownest. (He also married the White Lady in the process).

The Radiance became furious with this decision, as most all her followers left her. So, she started a plague, spreading across the kingdom through dreams. It gave off a sickly sweet smell as it twisted the minds of those infected, causing them to revert back to primitive ways and destroy Hallownest from the inside out. The King had had enough, so, he came up with a plan to seal the Radiance, and by extension the plague. He experimented with the substance Void, trying to create a perfect, hollow vessel to contain her with. After many. Many failed attempts of creating a perfectly hollow vessel. He finally found one suitable.

"No cost too great. No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry suffering. Born of God and Void. You shall seal the light that plagues their dreams. You are the Hollow Knight." -The Pale King

He trained that vessel with the help of the Five Great Knights (which only 1 survived in the end), the most elite and skilled warriors in the kingdom. With the training continuing, the small vessel grew to an adult. The Pure Vessel. Unfortunately, whilst it was a child, the Pale King unknowingly infected the vessel with the idea instilled. The Pale King showed the slightest amout of love to it, and it filled with expectations and a mission. (More in tags)

this has been in my drafts for a bit

hi . Free post where you can reblog/comment and talk about whatever you want. I am bored and I want to hear people

/not forcing

[little-demy]

Triplets of Hallownest

An AU for my AE OCs Johanna (MQ; green one), Joanne (DF; blue one), ans Jeannette (AQW, purple one) as a character from Hollow Knight instead because I love mixing up my characters in different fandoms. Also a bonus of Arc as a vessel✨

I have a whole setting, lore, and in game gameplay stuff like quest below, please bear my crazy self indulging idea

Updated version of bugified michel trio + arc but with some rambles because I can't just stop at just one design somehow and I cannot not share the idea I have in my mind

**Johanna**

- was once one of the scholar from Fog Canyon, studied under Monomon alongside Quirrel. She's far more interested with the existence of void and received an approval to study it (in hope her research can help with the infection and the vessel project).

- bad news, since long exposure of void is bad for them. Soon enough Johanna started to be poisoned.

- As for in game timeline, she lives in a small hut in Greenpath area, known as "Swallowtail Laboratory". This place is Johanna's reclused home to continue studying the void so she won't expose anyone else and especially her sisters with void.

- Will have mini quest for Knight/Ghost to send letters to her sisters if the player have met her before she died (she will die after forgotten crossroad become infected crossroad).

**Joanne**

- travelling mercenary kind of character. A wanderer, so she can be found in several location. Her location is hinted by sound of a flute, the closer player to her place the louder the flute is.

- travel with her adopted son, a vessel known as Arc.

- first seen in Greenpath, after that player can meet her on other map (except ancient basin and abyss). She won't play her flute in deepnest or resting ground

- after receiving Johanna's letter, she disappeared from any other map and can only be found by Johanna's hut, sitting and playing solemn music by Johanna's grave with Arc asleep om her lap

**Arc**

- a living vessel. His pronouns are he/him

- older than he seems. He's growing in a slow pace.

- very protective of his mother. When seen from afar, he's asleep while leaning on his mother. Once approached he will woke up and stand with his nail ready. He won't fight you though

**Jeannette**

- Can be found in Kingdom's Edge. Attacked player once they arrived and start a boss fight immediately. After winning, player can finally talk to her. If you have met Joanne, she will talked about her and Arc.

- after receiving Johanna's letter, she will disappear from her area in the edge and appeared by Johanna's grave, taking care of her weapon silently.

**Additional Setting**

If player/Ghost didn't do the letter quest, Joanne and Jeannette will spawn by their own in Johanna's hut. Entering the hut will turn them hostile and start a boss battle with the two of them. Defeating them will turn them friendly again and they're both back vibing and minding their own business in the hut.

[mostlydeadallday]

Lost Kin | Chapter XXXVII | Fear and Resolve

Fandom: Hollow Knight Rating: Mature Characters: Hornet, Pure Vessel | Hollow Knight, Quirrel Category: Gen Content Warnings: panic attacks, discussion of self-harm, intrusive thoughts, abuse, discussion of suicide AO3: Lost Kin | Chapter XXXVI | Fear and Resolve First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Chronological Notes: Quirrel smooths things over. Hornet dreads the inevitable.

○

There was nothing Quirrel could do but wait.

Hornet had placed herself between him and her sibling, spreading out her cloak to block him from their sight, and he could not dispute the wisdom of this choice. The possibility that the sight of him would make anything better was so distant as to be absent altogether.

They were terrified. Terrified of him.

This was so far outside of what he had expected that he was momentarily paralyzed by the feeling welling up within him. It was not a pleasant one, shock and hurt and heart-twisting pity all melted into one, and it was a long, turbulent moment before it drained away. This would not help—not him, or Hollow, or anyone.

Terror might not be the whole of it, but it must be contributing. Their very first reaction to him had been fear, fear that had only grown stronger when Hornet introduced him as a scholar, and they’d objected vehemently to his approach while in a vulnerable position. There was a pattern there, and an ugly one.

In hindsight, perhaps observing their pulse being taken was a little intimate for a second meeting—although they had endured his scrutiny of their wounds from a much closer distance. Hornet seemed as stunned as he was by their reaction. By her account, she had handled them much more harshly before he arrived, with very little indication that they might wish otherwise.

They had seemed so willing, stretched out across her lap, tilting their horns back and baring their soft throat, but he’d barely had time to step closer before they snatched their head out of reach.

There might be hope in the fact that they had chosen to shrink back, rather than strike out. Hope that he would be safe enough around them to attempt to convey that he was no threat. That, given enough time, they might learn that he wished only to help.

Hornet had not asked him to leave, even when Hollow spiraled into panic—although, granted, she had good reason to be distracted—so he settled in to wait.

He had nothing to go by but the sound of their breath, harsh and irregular at first but smoothing out gradually now, and the tone of Hornet’s voice as she spoke to them, stringing together more words than he had heard from her yet. She assured them they had done no wrong, that they did not need to be afraid, that no one had cause to hurt them. And when she reached the end of this list of promises, she began again, repeating them over in the same tight, level voice, until her sibling started to finally, visibly relax, the awful rattle in their throat dwindling to a breezy hiss and then dying out altogether.

It took long enough that his shell began to ache, that he unfolded and rearranged his limbs more times than he cared to recall. The fire waned and went out. Hornet’s voice grew rough, cracked and ashen. But all the while Hollow’s shaking diminished, their desperate grip on her hand loosening inch by inch.

Until, finally, Hornet went quiet and reached forward, tentative. Then—having come to some decision with what she found—she leaned down and rested her head between their horns, the taut slope of her shoulders falling slack.

Quirrel looked away, overcome by an odd sort of embarrassment. He thought Hornet might regret, later, being so unguarded in front of him—doubly so if he interrupted her now, when she almost seemed to have forgotten that he was there.

What he wanted was not important, not in the least, but he wished that he could apologize. A vague nausea settled in his stomach at the thought of causing so much distress, unavoidable though it seemed. Perhaps if he had been more careful, not so caught up in his own curiosity, more attentive to their mood, perhaps—

Ah, but that was pointless, mere wishful thinking. He knew better than most that grief, guilt, and fear were unpredictable, that memory came in shattered shards more often than a colorful pane.

This same guilt was something he had recognized in Hornet. She would sheathe her claws for her sibling, but turn them upon her own shell at a moment’s notice, tearing into herself for failing to anticipate the impossible.

“I should have known,” she had said. “I should have seen it.”

He wondered if there was anything he could say that would help. Anything that she would not reject, for implying that she deserved forgiveness.

For now, he was quiet, watching as unobtrusively as he knew how, as Hornet stroked her sibling’s face, humming low and tuneless, occasionally whispering something he could not make out. From what he could see, Hollow was all but leaning into the contact, every line of their body achingly drawn toward the point at which Hornet’s forehead rested on their own.

It hurt to see, hurt to know even the little that he did. That this was possibly one of the first times in their life they had shown their need for this, desperate as it was.

It was perhaps five minutes before Hornet raised her head, still hunched close over her sibling, still holding their face between her hands. Stiffly, she turned to glance at him. “Would you bring me some water, please?”

“Of course.”

He was careful to move slowly, to make as little noise as possible. When he returned from the kitchen, he strayed close to the Hollow Knight for only as long as it took to hand Hornet the cup, without looking down at them or paying them any attention whatsoever. He remembered too well the wretched grating of their sobs, sounds of agony forced through a throat that had never been intended to make any sound whatsoever.

Task finished, he returned to the still-warm hearth, affording the pale siblings some semblance of privacy.

Hornet nursed the cup for a long time, staring into the empty shadows in the corners of the room. One hand still lay between Hollow’s horns, idly tracing the deep crack where their mask split unevenly in two. The rain filled the silence, a silence gone so long that it had ceased to be awkward and become merely unavoidable.

Quirrel stared down at his own handwriting. Those words and shapes really ought to make sense. Too many thoughts crowded in between, too much fog on the lens. He had plenty to pass the time, but instead he found himself picking up a sheet of smudged paper and writing out a single sentence across the top.

Is it always this bad?

He passed the paper and pencil to Hornet, who stared at him for longer than she really needed to, looking for something he could not fathom, before glancing down to read what he had written.

She stared at him again when she finished. He met her gaze levelly. She could refuse to reply, but he had a feeling that she would not. With the way she had poured out the entire story the night before, albeit not without prompting, he suspected that she needed to speak of this, however much she might wish otherwise.

Sure enough, she set down the empty cup and scratched out one short sentence before she slid the paper back to him.

Her handwriting was a scrawl. Perhaps it should surprise him that his own was still so neat, after having gone so long neglecting it. But those revelations were distant, out of focus behind the sharp, cutting lines of Hornet’s script.

Sometimes it’s worse.

Worse. Worse than cowering before their own sister, worse than near-silent sobbing that shook their whole body? Worse than mutely crying out in pain greater than they had ever been built to express?

He would be hard-pressed to imagine a terror more complete than what he had already witnessed. But he recalled the fraught conversation in lantern-light the night before, remembered Hornet’s claws clamping down on her own arms, her voice catching as she told him that Hollow was inclined to harm themselves if she was not quick enough to stop them.

Had anyone tried to stop them when they carved their own chest open?

Hornet did not look at him as he lowered the paper, but the hand on her sibling’s face fell still for a moment before she returned to petting them, shakily, her breathing gone harsh and tight in the meantime.

Quirrel unclenched his jaws, deliberately. Her insistent grip on their hand made a dreadful sort of sense, now.

As did her exhaustion, and her ragged appearance. If she had been fighting this battle for a week, alone, uncertain each night if her sibling would even be alive come morning, waiting for every action to be the one that sprung a hidden tripline… well. It was no wonder she had come to him looking like she’d been caught in one of her own traps.

 He knew reassurance would not likely be taken well, but he could not help offering.

You’re doing well with them, he wrote. They trust you.

As much as they could, he thought. For a sapient creature used as a tool, for a living being denied even the dignity of a name. Hollow, she still said, having nothing else to call them by.

Some missteps are inevitable, he began, and then stopped. The attempt seemed weak already, against the opposition he expected.

All he could do was try. As with Hollow, she deserved that much, at least.

Their mind is likely as scarred as their body. You cannot hope to heal either without causing further pain.

Hornet was already staring balefully at the paper before he even handed it over, which did not help his attempt at eloquence in the slightest. He tried not to fidget with his pencil while she read, or after she finished, when she laid the paper on the floor and did not move to reply. The silence was almost worse than the argument that he’d expected, especially when the back of her collar began to prickle.

Stymied, he went back to the assorted sheets in front of him, deciding to copy Hornet’s sketched signs rather than sort out his notes. His mind was full of further attempts to reach her, encouragement that she would not accept and one-sided debates that they would never have. He knew better than to try to think through all that noise.

It was the better part of an hour before—

“Would you pass me those vengeflies?”

He muffled a surprised grunt, dropping his pencil and then scrambling to snatch it up before it rolled into the hot ashes.

Her voice dragged him out of the reverie he had sunk into—which, when he stared at the page, came into focus as a list of vocabulary for further communication of intangible concepts, alongside a new set of hand-signs to match.

Hornet did not comment on his obvious lapse in attention, nor did she say anything besides a mumbled thanks as he handed her what she’d asked for, as well as a fresh cup of water.

She reached up to touch his wrist as he turned away, and, startled again, he couldn’t quite swallow the noise in his throat. It was perhaps forgivable to be on edge, given earlier events, but he still expected a biting comment, a stern glance—something.

Instead, she stiffly lowered her hand, as if she couldn’t quite believe she had reached out. Her fangs worked, chewing over a concept that evidently vexed her.

In the end, she said nothing, only grasped one of the vengeflies between her fists and wrenched it in two, then held out a cracked abdomen that sluggishly dripped hemolymph from its severed segments.

Quirrel blanked. He’d eaten that morning: stunted fruit from the greenhouse he’d found, belfly eggs scooped out of a nest he’d baited the parent from. Freshly dismembered vengefly would not be his first choice of meal, even if he was hungry. He had caught them for Hornet.

And that was what gave him pause, what stopped him from politely, but immediately, refusing. She must know he had foraged for himself earlier; it had been one of the principal reasons to send him out into the City. There was another reason behind this, and an important one.

Deepnest tradition? Reciprocating his gesture of goodwill in bringing her prey the day before? Offer dinner to the hunter, he had heard, but nothing in his piecemeal memory suggested what he should do if the hunter offered it back.

Or this could be something simpler. An invitation. An apology. An attempt at bridging the gap they both sensed between them. And—he realized, as he reached to accept it—a visible gesture of friendship. Not merely for his benefit, but for the vessel who lay, exhausted and silent, but watchful, ever watchful, beside them.

“Thank you,” he said, quietly.

Hornet was already eating the other half of the vengefly, thin shell and all. She tapped the stone with one claw, sending a meaningful glance at the floor beneath his feet, so with a slow nod, he sat, keeping a decent distance from Hollow, but angling himself so that he faced both siblings.

Hollow did not move, eyes half-lidded, the restless void beneath their mask partly sheathed by an opaque scale of opalescent black.

Should he speak to them? Attempt to reassure them in his own words? He could hardly improve on what Hornet had accomplished, yet he felt it might be helpful if they heard it from him, too.

He met their gaze, flicking his antennae downward in a pacifying gesture that likely meant nothing to them. “I do apologize for having startled you, my friend. It was not my intent.”

Nothing in their aspect changed, not a single claw stirring, except that the scale across their eye slid back, retracting beneath the mask and widening their gaze to survey him fully.

Unsettling, but intriguing nonetheless. Eyelids of any sort were rare enough in Hallownest’s species; for both siblings to share them, the trait had likely been present in their sire. Practical knowledge of wyrms was so scant as to be useless, though legends of their might ran through the kingdom’s history like a gleaming vein of ore. Some were likely fabricated, as a tool to garner worship and obedience, but the common themes were easy enough to trace, if one had the experience to chip away the excess.

None of them, however, lingered on the details, the small discrepancies of form and habit that he might begin to piece together now. A thrill of discovery raced through him, interrupted only by Hornet coughing sharply.

His gaze snapped to her face. She shook her head, once, before she laid her hand atop her sibling’s mask and returned to her meal.

“These are well cleaned,” she said, and he was briefly baffled at the compliment before he realized it was an attempt to redirect not only his attention, but Hollow’s. “You must have… hunted many strange things in your travels.”

 Ah, she already knew him too well. “I have indeed,” he said, rocking back a little and staring upward in recollection, willing to let her lead him astray. “I remember one particular creature—a delicious one, mind you, or I would not have taken the trouble—that was in the habit of arranging canes of briars to defend its burrow…”

○

As Quirrel launched into a hunting tale, Hornet listened with half her attention, devoting the remainder to her meal—and to her sibling, who had not so much as stirred since she invited Quirrel to join them. She was not fool enough to assume this was disinterest. They were watching him, as intently as they had when he first arrived. Whether for signs that he would turn upon her, or clues as to his true motives, or merely out of self-preservation, she could not say.

She couldn’t deny that she wished she knew his motives, too, but staring would not wring them out of him. Unfortunately.

The guilt of having frightened them so badly gnawed at her. She knew it was pointless to regret it, that she was only tearing her own shell by struggling, but instincts were unforgiving things.

She could no more forgive herself than she could change her black shell to white or stifle her hunger at the taste of fresh meat. She was not built for it.

Hollow, at least, did not panic again at his presence. That had been a risk, and she knew it, but it was one she couldn’t afford not to take. She needed to know if they would refuse to let Quirrel help her, preferably before something bad happened.

Something in her had felt relief when Hollow finally panicked. Something in her had known this was too good to be true.

The thought of trusting in this coincidence, of coming to rely on someone she had nearly never met, sent a pang of fear through her gut. The world was not kind enough to send her blessings unlooked for. Life did not give without taking, and taking, and taking.

But hadn’t she had her share already? After everything, could she not steal a moment to breathe? Did she not deserve it?

Deserved or undeserved had never changed her circumstances before.

Perhaps that was why this moment, this uncanny peace after the storm, felt so much like a dream.

Quirrel’s hunting tale had devolved into an academic lecture by the time she returned to herself. She hadn’t stopped stroking Hollow’s mask, even far away as she’d been: skirting round the crack above their eye, brushing down over their brow and back up again, circling her fingertips in the shallow well between their horns. They were calm, or at least too tired to panic, and the motion in their gaze had taken on the slow, languid quality she associated with drowsiness. Despite that, their eyes refused to close, their wide stare fixed on the cricket as if he might suddenly disappear.

Something eased inside her, unexpectedly soft. The thought of her sibling staring blankly out at the room like a tired grub too stubborn to sleep roused an uncanny fondness, an aching warmth she had never thought to feel again.

And another thought, just as quickly, smothered it.

The heft of that scalpel in her hand. Gleaming point and silver edges, small and sharp and bright, too bright, set against black velvet, against her sibling’s skin, against the already-tattered ruin of their shell.

Tomorrow, she had said, and she had rarely wished so hard for a day to never dawn.

They were in so much pain, had endured more than she could imagine, and to be the one to perpetuate it, to make them suffer more, even for the sake of healing them—

Quirrel could not do it, though she knew that he would have volunteered. It seemed there was very little he would not do if she asked, but they would never let him; if they had objected to him merely being nearby while she took their pulse, she shuddered to think what they would do if he tried to take a knife to their shell. It had to be her, they trusted her, and the very notion made her sick.

It had to be her.

And it had to be done.

When had she ever shied away from her duty, ugly as it was? How could she be squeamish now, when she was only adding yet another entry to the list of things she could never atone for?

She needed a plan.

Fragile as it was, this tired, wary submission was likely the best that she would get from Hollow. So far, they did not object to Quirrel’s presence alone, only the particular action of approaching them with their throat bared.

This was just another way that she had failed them, another way she had stripped their agency away: assuming that their compliance was consent, that their willingness to go where she led was borne of anything but fear.

But—

They trust you, Quirrel had written.

They spoke when she asked them to. They were still when she ordered it. They crawled to her side to protect her from the rain. They pushed against her hands, begged for her touch like they would for nothing else, melted into her arms when she held them…

No. That was something more than trust. That was devotion, devotion she had done nothing to earn.

Their loyalty to the Pale King had been absolute. She had never seen them so much as hesitate when acting upon his orders. He had loved them, she thought. But that love had been a cold and barren thing, without a single kind touch or tender word, at least as far as she had seen.

Had they shifted that allegiance to her? Had she somehow earned the same pure, unquestioning fealty they’d given their father, simply by the act of saving their life?

She did not want it. She wanted nothing to do with it. That they would regard her with the same reverence that they regarded the god who’d bound their shade to their shell, who’d failed to see that they were anything but a well-forged tool—

She wanted to believe better of herself. She wanted to believe better of them.

How could they find it in themselves to trust her? To surrender to her so utterly, when she had been nothing more than the latest weapon used to hurt them?

She could not ask. She could only continue to use it, ruthless as it was to leverage something they seemed so desperate for.

Quirrel had fallen silent, somewhere in the space between her thoughts, and was now picking at the vengefly she’d offered him, neatly removing the shell bands from the exterior until he could tip his mask back and consume it in several neat, precise bites.

Hornet watched him blankly, shuffling possibilities like playing cards. The surgical tools would need to be tested, sharpened, heated in the hearth, and she had to brief Quirrel on what to do if Hollow began to panic—she might not always be in time to push him out of the way.

Having a mortal under her protection changed things. She could not expect Hollow not to react to the pain, and she had no way to diminish it, no numbing herbs or tinctures, and no assurances that they would even be effective on a vessel. Likewise, she could not count on Hollow to tell her if it became too much to bear—they had told her plainly that they did not know if they could.

She would have to tie them down.

Though she had not intended to visibly flinch at the thought, she was not entirely successful in stifling it. Quirrel shot her a questioning look.

“Nothing,” she muttered, ignoring the fact that she knew she could not fool him. Hopefully, he would take it as a warning not to pry.

Whether Hollow made use of it or not, she would offer them a way to signal to her, even after she had secured them. A way to communicate without compromising her safety, or Quirrel’s. If that was the only difference from the pain they had endured until now—the ability to ask for it to stop—then so be it. She would be as cruel as she needed to be, and not a bit more.

Whatever must be done to save them. Whatever she must do to earn them this chance at a life.

She owed it to all of the siblings who, thanks to her, would never have one.

○

Hornet sat in silence for long enough that Quirrel began to worry.

He took scant comfort in the restless motion of her hand, caressing Hollow’s mask with the same distant distraction that she might pick at her cloak seams or chew her own claws. Still, it had its intended effect, as Hollow drifted further and further from their tense vigil, like a leaf atop a lake, floating away so slowly that they never seemed to notice it at all.

It was one more indication of their poor condition, he guessed, that they nodded off so often and so easily. An attempt to conserve and rebuild energy when there was little to be had. He’d seen it most often in those recovering from serious illness, or those who would never recover at all.

And it gave him pause to contemplate how tense they must be, that they began to doze the very moment they relaxed. They likely needed more sleep than they were getting, but were wound too tightly to allow themselves to rest.

Both he and Hornet noticed the moment their eyelids dropped. Their head sagged slightly to the side to rest against her thigh, claws going lax where their hand lay upturned in her lap. Quirrel, wrestling down a sudden lump in his throat, had not been about to move, but Hornet shot him a dagger-edged glance anyway.

He nodded, still, to reassure her. Far be it from him to interrupt what little peace they’d managed to steal. Between Hornet’s questions, his poking and prodding, and the panic both had provoked, it was no wonder they were exhausted.

Privately, he acknowledged that they had cause to be far more than that. He had tried to be hopeful about their chances of recovery, though. Judging from the scars of what they had already survived, they were nearly impossible to kill.

He doubted they would be grateful for that.

When a quarter hour had passed with no sign of the vessel stirring, Hornet sighed silently and nodded back at him. He rose, intending to go back to the hearth and continue his work, when his gaze landed on the blanket at the end of the bed, where he had pulled it down to examine the injuries to Hollow’s legs.

He caught Hornet’s eye, leaned down, and touched it. When she did not object, he pulled it up over them, hiding the splits and notches in their chitin, the cracked claws and broken spurs and stamped imprints of soul-spells. They looked almost peaceful, with their face tucked against their sister’s side, all the tension and mistrust dissolved away into slumber. With some of their scars out of sight beneath the blanket, its forgiving lines smoothing out their edges.

If, the night before, he had been enthralled by the mystery of them, that was only the half of it now. Glimpsing the truth behind that imperfect mask, the depth of both their fear and resolve, their wariness of him and the blind devotion they placed in their sister, had only snared him further.

He wanted to help. He wanted to do whatever he could, for someone who’d been wronged so badly, someone who had no reason to expect anything from the world but pain.

Although the world, it seemed, still had more pain to give.

○

He hunched over his work for another hour or two before Hornet shifted. He turned his head to watch as she slowly, carefully extricated herself, lifting Hollow’s hand and laying it beside them on the mattress, supporting their head to be sure it did not fall when she edged aside. They looked nearly doll-like, offering no response or resistance whatsoever, not even stirring when Hornet gingerly removed her weight from the bed. Whether that was their natural state or a result of pure exhaustion, Quirrel could not deny that it worked in everyone’s favor.

Hornet didn’t speak, merely grabbed the lantern and jerked her head toward the kitchen. Stuffing down a gathering dread, he picked up his work and followed her.

He'd have to reveal, soon, what he suspected.

She dropped into the same chair she had taken the night before, leaving him to occupy the other end of the table. It was passing strange to even have this much of a routine, when he had so rarely stayed more than one night in a place for most of his memory.

“Tell me,” Hornet demanded. “You’re thinking something, I can hear it.”

“I wasn’t aware my thoughts were so loud,” he said, and winced. She was not in the mood for teasing, even less so than was usual, and he moved on quickly, hoping she would overlook it. “I would prefer to have more time to observe them, but…” He paused a moment, tapping his fingers on the counter, as he collected thoughts scattered by that afternoon’s upset. “I can be fairly sure that some of their physical symptoms—the dizziness, exhaustion, shortness of breath—are due in part to a severe lack of blood volume.”

Hornet half-laughed: a brittle, ugly sound. She still had not stopped moving, even now that she no longer had Hollow’s mask to touch; one knee was bouncing, and she kept flicking the end of her clawed thumb with her forefinger, an endless tick-tick-tick that seemed to bounce like hailstones off the windows. “That’s no surprise.”

“I suspected it would not be.” Quirrel halted again, unsure if he could convey this next revelation with anything like the delicacy it deserved. He waited long enough that she turned her head to glare at him, and he gave up on the effort, reasoning that if she had lived this long in what amounted to a kingdom-wide catastrophe, she could handle a little bluntness. “You said that, after leaving the temple, you found their nail and brought it back with you?”

A curt nod.

“Can you recall its shape?”

The look she was giving him sharpened into suspicion. “It was a one-handed longnail. Sloped guard, no pommel. Diamond grind. Why?”

There was no easy way to say this. He let out a hoarse sigh, halfway to a groan of frustration, of dread. “Hornet, I… suspect…” No, it was stronger than suspicion, he knew, somehow, in a way that defied reason, a way that could only be his own experience whispering in the back of his mind.

He knew what it was to outlive one’s purpose. He knew what it was to wish for a fitting end.

So he met her eyes, steady, and let her see his certainty. “At least some of their wounds are self-inflicted.”

The information took a moment to sink in, staining her expression with a slow-spreading horror like blood seeping into bandages.

She hadn’t known, then. He hadn’t been sure. He watched her wrestle with the knowledge, her hand clenching tight on the counter’s edge.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I… could not think of another way to tell you.”

Hornet’s eyes were open wide beneath her mask. Her whole body had gone frightfully still. Quirrel felt a chill on his shell, climbing higher, like a snowbank closing over his head.

It should not matter to him what she said next. Not as much as it did. She was adrift, overwhelmed, burdened with more grief and misery than he could imagine, and he would not blame her for refusing to shoulder more.

 But something in him hoped to hear—

“What do I do?” she whispered. “What am I—” One hand lifted, then fell back to the counter. She looked away, chelicerae clenched tight enough to tremble. “What should I say to them?”

His fingers were digging into his empty palms, he realized. He let go, tried to lean back, tried to relax. “I wish there was an easy answer to that,” he said, as softly as he could. “I wish that I could tell you.”

She scoffed, but it sounded small, broken. “The answers are never easy.”

“Perhaps not.” He hesitated, scraping his mandibles together, watching her. He risked causing her to withdraw if he continued. He risked losing what little ground he’d gained, but—

He thought of Hollow’s claws, the wicked-sharp scythes of them. He thought of the terror in their eyes.

They were capable of it. Whether they could truly die made little difference if they damaged themselves badly enough that magic could not heal them.

“Be mindful of what you say to them. And what you don’t say,” he said finally. “They rely on you. Your word matters to them, likely more than you know. You may need to prepare for this to be… more difficult than you thought.”

Hornet had started to fidget again while he spoke. Pulling away again, away from the shock, away from the numbing dread of it. And there was nothing he could do but watch her go. He could not give her the bravery to confront it, even had he had an excess of it himself.

She would need to face it, but it was not his place to dictate when. Hollow did not seem to actively be a danger to themselves; he had very little else to suggest besides what she was already trying to do.

“We should plan for tomorrow,” he offered.

She nodded, once, and he watched her pull herself together, grasping at what threads she could reach. It was almost amusing—darkly so—that the concept of planning for surgery was more bearable than what they’d just been discussing.

But only just. She seemed off-balance, her voice choked back, her hands tightening back into fists on the counter as she began to speak.

“I… I will need to tie them down.”

Quirrel’s stomach turned. It was the right decision, he knew at once. But—understandably—she did not seem pleased at having come to it.

“I should have them test their strength against my silk, though I believe I can spin it thick enough. I can also place anchors wherever they are needed.”

“Will they be able to take it?” he interrupted. “You said that they were bound in the temple—”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head, hard. “I don’t see that we have a choice. I also intend to offer them a way to ask for respite, but after today I doubt they will take it.” One hand ran up her horn, too quickly, as if brushing something away. “Perhaps if I can work slower than before, or stop at regular intervals. Or perhaps they will tell me if I ask outright. I-I do not know.”

“Hornet—”

“And you should not touch them, if at all possible. They don’t—” A break in her voice, hastily smoothed over. “They might panic. I hope that they’ll allow you to be near enough to help me. But if they do not, you must step back. I do not need two injured bugs to care for.”

“I will. Of course.” He held both hands out, alarmed at her breakneck pace. “But Hornet—”

“Perhaps you should be watching for their signs, too.” She would not look him in the eye. “I may not—last time, I—it was difficult—”

Quirrel raised his voice. “I may have been mistaken.”

Hornet’s eyes snapped to him. Wide. Hunted. “Mistaken?”

He leaned forward again, holding her gaze. “You need not do this now.” Then, when she opened her mouth to protest, he reached out toward her, heading her off. “You… perhaps you should leave.”

The room fell silent.

Hornet gaped at him. Quite literally, in fact: he could see her fangs hanging open, crooked.

“Now.” Before she could decide what to say, he continued, calmly. “While your sibling sleeps.”

“I am not leaving,” she said. Flat. Blank.

“Just for a few hours.” He sat forward, laying his hands on the table. “Pardon my forwardness, but it might help if you could—”

“I will not leave,” she repeated, her fangs flashing—more out of displeasure than open threat, he thought, but his instincts still thrilled with unease. Her voice had risen enough that he glanced nervously at the doorway, though he detected no sign that Hollow had heard.

“Very well.” He sat back, putting more distance between them, for her comfort as well as his own. “Tell me you will sleep, then. You need it as much as they do.”

He knew she wouldn’t. Not when she was practically vibrating at the other end of the table, looking as if she needed to take something apart. Hopefully not him, though he was the nearest possibility.

“I apologize.” He ducked his head. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

“Don’t.” The word was a cut stone, gritty and sharp, dragged up from deep within her. He remembered, too late, the open depths of guilt that she had plumbed the night before, the fresh scratches glaring chalk-white in the marble countertop.

“I suppose I cannot convince you to discuss this in the morning.” He did not look up as he said it.

“While they are awake? While they can hear me planning their own surgery?” Her voice was as rigid, as biting, as a nail’s edge. He could hear the dismissal in it. “Test the tools that you brought. Sharpen and oil them.” She finally broke off the disturbing stare in favor of directing it at the countertop, with roughly the same intensity. “You should go find more shellwood. We have little to spare.”

“Now?”

“I don’t know. Yes.” She grasped the key at her neck, then let her fist loosen. “Do not tarry. I’ll keep watch and leave the door unlocked.”

“You’ll—ah. So I won’t wake them with my knocking?”

A terse nod. She held a hand out, with a pointed look at the papers he had pushed aside. He slid them across the table, ignoring the part of him that wanted to bristle—if not as visibly as she could, at least in spirit. He had developed these notes for her; there was no sense in not handing them over.

She glanced them over hurriedly, then pulled out an empty sheet. The stare she directed at the blank page seemed fit to burn a hole in it. Better at it than at him, at least.

It was clear he was no longer welcome, but he lingered under the pretext of slowly emptying the rest of his satchel onto the counter. By the time he left, she had not written a single word, claws clenched gracelessly around the pencil, fangs working under her mask, a faint, scraping click, click that set his shell on edge.

He had not thought it would be a relief to step back out into the rain so soon.

○

When he returned, dripping wet, exhausted, dark had fallen in the caverns. The house was as cold and lightless as ever, and even the smoldering wick of his frustration had burned out in the deluge.

He stacked the shellwood in the entryway, quietly, building a wall of broken crates and table legs. It would need to be rearranged to dry properly, but that could wait until the morning.

After locking the door, he reentered the kitchen, steps dragging despite himself. The day had caught up with him; although he had walked further and worked harder, the turmoil had drained his energy like nothing else could.

“We should have enough fuel now to last several days,” he told Hornet, laying a few extra sticks beside the stove to start a pot of tea in the morning, if there was time. “I will sharpen tools tomorrow. That work is better done in brighter light.”

Hornet, still hunched over her paper, staring at a few scratchy sentences and even more crossed-out lines, hummed distantly in acknowledgement. Not so much upset, now, as defeated. Worn down, the same as he felt.

Quirrel resisted the urge to touch her, to lay a hand on her shoulder in attempted solace. Strange that that impulse remained after spending so much time alone.

He did pause nearby, though, and she looked up, eyes flashing dully. She knew what he wanted to ask her, he could see it—and she shook her head. “I need to think of what to tell them. I need—”

Her hand clenched. Breath hissed in her throat, strangled.

He understood. It was unthinkable to go into this unprepared, and yet there was never enough that one could possibly do to prepare for it. He understood.

Much as he wished he didn’t.

“I need to think,” she finished, lamely, in a stifled growl. Stifled for his benefit, he guessed, but he was too tired to appreciate it.

He bowed his head. “I will leave you to it, then.”

The halting scratch of lead on paper followed him out of the kitchen and up the long, dark staircase.

○

Hornet knew she was dreaming.

She knew she had left herself behind, slumped over the cold countertop, a pile of paper, and a handful of useless sentences. She knew her hand should be gripping a pencil, not empty at her side.

But more than that, she knew because this place only now existed in dreams.

If she had her choice, she would never return here, not even in her sleep. If she had a choice, she would never see her face reflected in these cold white walls again, would never battle the ache in her head from their stark, chilly glow. She would nevermore walk these halls or inhale the perfume of the Root’s flowers, trailing from the fragile, lustrous blooms that were somehow even more colorless than the marble.

 She had so many dreams about this place. More than she ever had about her home, or anywhere else in Hallownest. It was as though its disappearance from the physical world had rooted it more firmly in her mind, as though her very distaste for the place was what allowed it to plague her in her sleep.

Hornet clenched her fists and stared down the halls of the White Palace.

It was empty, this time. Not always. Often the corridors were crowded with retainers and nobles, all staring, all whispering, sometimes with a golden-white gleam in every pair of eyes, sometimes with the garbled hissing of throats scorched by welling light.

But now it was empty, truly empty of everything but her. And the only things that looked on were the walls themselves, their blank white faces turned towards her in an expanse of impossible angles, glowing so brightly that she almost expected her chitin to bleach pale under the force of it.

She took a step, her tarsals falling silent, muffled, on the stone, when she knew they should have made a sound. She did not know where to go, what she was meant to accomplish, and the familiar crawling claws of tension and shame touched the back of her neck. There must be some purpose for her here—something she had to do—

At first the sound seemed foreign. Stifled in the same way her claws had been, nearly too far away to hear, whispered back and forth by the tilted planes of the walls until it reached her. And even when she did hear it, she did not immediately know it for what it was.

It went on, and on, growing louder and more strident, until it cracked the haze around her mind and spilled over her like floodwaters.

Screaming.

Not a scream she had ever heard. Not a scream that existed in the normal reaches of the world. It should not exist. It was not a sound that could be made. It was impossible.

A horrible, rasping, aching shriek, tearing through the air like a serrated blade. There were echoes within it, voices upon voices, each one breaking and shredding apart with the violence of that cry, a cry that was destroying the thing that made it and could not be stopped all the same. It rebounded from the unforgiving walls, begging, seeking, searching for relief it would never find.

And she knew, with the same impossible logic that allowed that scream to exist, where it came from.

She began to run.

It was Hollow. It was Hollow screaming like that, like they were being torn apart body, soul, and shade, and she knew by the desperate pitch of their pain that she was already too late; whatever had been done to them was something she could never undo. It was a hopeless cry, a plea not for help, but for mercy—for a killing blow to end suffering so great that, even with reserves of strength and resolve that far surpassed her own, they could no longer bear it.

Her feet pounded on the stone, arms pumping, her cloak a garish flash of red in every compound facet of the walls. The palace was a fractured prism, a maze of mirrors, and every panting breath and skidding turn meant less than nothing, but she could not stop. Not with that scream ringing through the air; not with her sibling howling, wailing, with utter abandon, in agony so complete they had not stopped to breathe.

The sound hurt to hear—her head was throbbing, her fangs clenched together, jarring with each footfall—but it must hurt even more to make. Every instant that the cry went on, she could hear it tearing farther into them, a terrible, unnatural sound forced through a throat that had been built to hold only silence.

She nearly missed the door that had appeared, as featureless as the walls, between one turn and another. Far down the corridor, almost unreachable, but that must be where they were, it must be.

Hornet stumbled, righted herself, pelted toward it.

As she did, the scream broke. Cracked apart, into sobs, into whimpering cries so lost and so desolate that an answering sob rose in her own throat, hot and aching, pain calling to pain across the emptiness.

She was close now. Close enough for them to hear her, almost, and their name was in the shadow of every heaving exhale, stamped into every beat of her heart. She could not call out to them, could barely breathe, her limbs threatening to fold beneath her like a doll’s joints, but she was coming. She was almost—almost—

Hornet flung herself at the door. Scrabbled at the knob, with unfeeling hands and claws grown heavy, clumsy. There was silence behind it now, more dreadful even than the screaming had been, and she had to—she had to get in—

The door opened, spilling light into the room.

She turned to face it.

The knife in her hand dripped black, black, black.

“Hornet?”

Something touched her. A hand. Grabbing at her wrist. At the arm that held the knife. She squeezed, felt chitin creak.

“Hornet. It’s only—it’s me. Hornet!”

She woke up.

Quirrel’s face was inches from her own. She held his arm in one fist, her knuckles burning from the pressure of her grip, and his other hand was clamped over her own, fingers wedged into every gap he could find, in an attempt to pry her free.

And—oh, she was shaking all over, as if she really had been running, her heart pumping, her breath coming in long, quivering heaves, as effortful as dragging her whole weight higher, hand over hand.

The cricket was frozen in place, antennae pinned back, tugging at her hand with an increasingly desperate grasp.

With a shudder, she let go.

Quirrel fell back, clutching his wrist. She hunched over, in an attempt to spare her burning lungs, and stared at the space between his fingers, then at her own claws, half-expecting blood, half-expecting a void-drenched scalpel.

Neither.

“I’m sorry,” Quirrel said, catching his breath before she could. “Terribly sorry. I—you wouldn’t stir, and—”

He cut off.

She turned towards him, too rattled to even glare, but dreading, dreading, with all the clinging weight of the nightmare still pressing against her.

He swallowed, spoke again more quietly.

“Your sibling is awake.”

○

Taglist: @botslayer9000 @moss-tombstone @slimeshade Send an ask or reply to this post to be added to (or removed from) the taglist!

[faresong]

figuring out my gijinka designs ^_^

Hallownest draws from Japanese inspiration in my headcanons. With this in mind as applied to this AU, I believe (as a general rule) higher-class folks would end up with detailed, painted masks & additional accessories surrounding it (as seen with Lurien's butler contrasted against Quirrel's). Lower-class will still paint theirs, but cannot afford to buy new masks very often; this makes their mask feel much more permanent and personal—thus, most will engrave their masks instead.

Lurien's mask is an odd case in it being rather blank. While crafted specifically by the King's hand to fit him, it lacks any visible design—that is, until one attempts to use magic against him. Only then do the seals of protection glow and reveal the true pattern the King granted his dutiful Watcher, though the assailant likely won't live to share that fact. In another sense, however, Lurien's seemingly blank mask only further emphasizes his use as the King's right-hand. Only ever an extension of him, where only his king knows his true use. He is as Hallownest must see him, and nothing more.

...There are very few who know what lay beneath.

In any case, it is mentioned on the first sheet, but I will delve into more detail on masks' significance in others' cultures as well:

Deepnest occasionally uses masks, or their charms, to acknowledge the community which raised them with pride; as it contains a multitude of rich cultures within it (particularly drawn from East Asian inspiration, here) who are generally (presently) amicable with one another. It is easier to mark trade, as well as shift to other languages as a show of hospitality. Due to its winding passages, children will often get lost in exploration (an encouraged pastime), and are then escorted back to their people if need be. These charms are typically placed in their family's shrine once they've passed; carrying a charm that is not your own is seen as grave disrespect, even if the person in question is not dead. Each person is brought to the one we know as Mask Maker for their charm, drawn from their essence, and to take the charm is to act as if one claims agency over another person. Even parents rarely hold their child's charm.

As for the Uomas, granted a part of Unn's land, Monomon is the one who oversees these creatures. Recognizing the responsibility she is capable of handling, as well as her evident intelligence in her work with the Mosskin, Hallownest approached her as equals with intention to work a beneficial truce. Hesitantly, Monomon accepted their terms with the promise they would not further impose on Unn's land—still, the canyon would be safe travel for all persons, as a neutral ground. Hallownest gave her resources, and the King made her mask to show this allegiance. Though she rarely (properly) wears it, she will have it on her when working with Hallownest's scholars to show respect for them & expect respect in turn. Monomon is at peace co-existing with all surrounding areas; the only one she is wary of is Hallownest... it poses great threat, but she finds solace in knowing she has made herself a necessary pillar in the kingdom's technological development despite being a foreigner. She may use her position to open the minds of those who choose to study or collaborate with her—to see the people who surround them as societies in their own right, worth learning about despite Hallownest's imperialistic views. It is significantly easier to get through to scholars that have come from poorer backgrounds, but the environment she's cultivated does manage to steadily wear down the harsher beliefs ingrained in them.

After a few years spent with Quirrel, Monomon began incorporating some of his traditional dress for herself and encouraged him to do the same when he was to visit her (and, inevitably, when he lived in the Archive). She quite enjoys studying culture & its history, and would often ask Quirrel to indulge her questioning considering he was a first-generation immigrant to Hallownest. Once she manages to meet Herrah in-person, she does the same—with their meeting coinciding with the King's requests to pursue the Dreamer Project, she wanted to help preserve what she could of Deepnest should the plan fail. Kept not in Hallownest's texts, but her own... there was still much that Herrah preferred to keep to oral stories, but she did eventually learn to trust Monomon in this (despite her alliance with Hallownest).

The masks that are gifted by the King often have a slowing effect on the aging of their chosen person. Monomon was already given Unn's blessing (aging & enhancing magic) to help protect what remains in Her stead, but the mask still applies its effect to Quirrel once he'd 'stolen' it (and with it, a part of Monomon's own soul that'd been fused with it). The same applies with Lurien & each of the Five Knights, though no one else is really given the luxury... not even those of the Pale Court, except for one. Even she would come to see it as a curse, however, despite the cheer she presently puts forth.

A lot of poor communities in Hallownest tend to wear more earthly colors, whereas the nobles are given more variety in color/cloth. Many of them consider the land they inhabit carelessly, an idea which doesn't carry over to any other community that has existed much longer than Hallownest; most prefer warm, natural colors by contrast. Monomon specifically puts a spin on Hallownest's noble clothing in mixing it with the Mosskin's cloth (in this particular outfit, it is her skirt).

& As for the particulars of this 'human AU' (of sorts), here's a general listing: Herrah as mixed Syrian-Filipino; Monomon as Jamaican; Quirrel as Vietnamese; Lurien & his butler as Japanese; Hegemol as Korean.

Hm-hm... other than that, I don't think I have much else to talk about that is specific to this AU. It's mostly my excuse to draw the cast as humans (which is easier for me, haha). I'm open to questions, of course, but as this stands... I think I've said all I meant to say/clarify. Thank you for reading :D

[theowlgoesmoo]

The Amberhive Crew are varying degrees of morning people.

Atta got a full two hours of sleep last night, and she's ready to face the day, refreshed as she ever is.

Hornet woke up every twenty minutes to patrol around her and Atta's room, looking for threats and/or prey. It's a habit she learned in Hallownest, and not one that's going to break anytime soon, despite the biggest threat in Amberhive being a cranky Thorny wandering around, looking for someone to yell at.

Flik is annoyingly bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning, always waking up ready and raring to go. That doesn't mean he's going to turn down his third mug of coffee bean juice, however.

Dot, in true little kid fashion, wakes up a hyperactive dynamo in the morning. However, five minutes later, she's ready to call it a day and crawl back into bed. Usually after waking several other people up. Thankfully Flik's leg makes a good pillow.

Quirrel doesn't believe in sleep schedules. He'll either go to bed at six in the afternoon and wake up at two in the morning, or stay up until six in the morning and only wake up around two in the afternoon. There's no in-between. Time is an illusion to him, especially bed times. Such is the life of a scholar.

[cloudyswritings]

More rainworld fusion headcanons/characters?

this is kinda just a continuation of the last one.

Iterators:

Watches Falling Droplets: Lurien, he’s a late gen iterator and was built in an area that already had immense rainfall. His city has two layers, one on top of his can like a normal iterator and one at ground level. The ground level one is the city of tears and would make up the vast amount of areas if he was in game. He’s absolutely in love with Beyond the Pale Horizon/Under Palest Watch. He’ll never act on it, and by the time he works up the courage it’ll be too late. Puppet colors are navy blue, black, and pale white.

Optimal Data Collection: Monomon, she and Lurien are neighbors. She was built in an area that experienced intense acid rains, hence all of her systems being largely acidproof and generally more robust than other late gen iterators. The lands around her are sparsely populated and biologically limited. Oomas are almost certainly her purposed organisms. Likes storing data in unique ways, has found a way to make use of her acid for this. puppet colors are navy blue, acid green, and bronze.

Purposed Organisms:

The Scholar: Quirrel. He’s a slugcat who has been modified extensively to contain some of Optimals higher level codes and information in his nervous system. Has a built in defense system in the form of a mask her wears that was made by her. He is also naturally acidproof like all slug cats from her area. His mission is generally to gather interesting data she otherwise couldn’t, but recently he’s been sent as an envoy to Under Palest Watch. He’s a light gray color with a white underbelly and green markings down his back. He also has cute little antennas.

Lumen: Luriens Buttler: they are a scavenger Droplets has modified to act as a general repair-person for his can. They’re also his closest confidant. Has recently convinced Droplets that scavengers should be allowed in the city of tears. This has started a unified project from both of them to uplift the local scavenger population. So far it seems to be going well. Lumen only suggested this because they fear Droplets will be lonely after they die. They’re a burgundy color with a pale mask Droplets gave them.

[snowmaze1969]

some bug backstory and age h/c

Some timeline things: before the infection is obvi before the infection, after sesling is once hk gets sealed along with the dreamers and pk dissappears, height infection is when the infection gets worse, after the first wave of the infection appearing, right before the game is when things kinda settle down and the infection is still there and very deadly but everyone who's still alive knows what there doing, quarrel arrives during this time. During the game is obvi during the game and post game is post game, 8ll specify after what endings. Also just one note, I have no fucking clue the lifespan, aging, and time if the timeline so any year time span will just be the human equvilant cause I don't have the bainpower to figure that shit out lmao.

Myla: she was born during the peak of the infection. He dad was a miner and knew the ups and down of the peaks he was pretty hardy and knew what he was doing. Her mother was actually pretty weak and just happened to stumble upon mylas dad. If she hadn't found him, she would be dead. They dell in love and had a child (Myla). Mylas mother died after a year or two and Mylas father, heartbroken, raised Myla on his own. Mylas father succumbed to the infection after Mayla was around 13. Before he died, he showed Myla around the peaks so she knows them inside and out. Myla made a living for herself and died during the game (obvi) at around age 21.

Quirrel (my fave 🥺🥲💖):he was born during the prime of hallownest, right before the first wave of infection hit and the dreamers were sealed. His parents were really nondescript and lived vanilla lives I liked the idea of Quirrel training to be a knight in the cot before becoming monomons apprentice so I'm adopting that into my own personal hc (yeah the is from sbabl) I like to think he started knight training really young to bring some extra money in and then first started working at the archives at age 20. Times kipper but after the dreamers were sealed, Quirrel stayed around the archives a bit before leaving. Monomons last wishes said the Quirrel would become the head Archavist so once she was gone, Quirrel helped all the other scholars clear out before he was lonely for a while and then left hallonest right before height infection. Quirrel returns right before the game and then dies during the game. I'm just gonna say that I have no idea how much time passed between the sealing and the game so uh. Time magic and also Quirrels old lol.

Lemm: He was born right before the sealing to also nondescript parents. They ran and combine relecs and tea shop the Lemm helped run. His parents died during the first wave so he ran the shop at age 24. He would sell stuff to travelers and buy there spoils to help them out. Lemm is a grumpy man by the game. (Sorry I don't have much for him)

Hornet: Hornet was born when Herah was like yeah, in exchange for being a dreamer we get to fuck around to pk. Because of some God shit, Hornet is born like 3 months later (hatched). Both Herrah and pk raise Hornet but they live separately. The White Lady honestly doesn't care that they fucked because God's have weird ideas about monogamy/polyamoury. Hornet grew up along with hk and then when the dreamers were sealed she was holed up in deepness but eventually everyone died/got infected Hornet taught herself how to fight and headed out right after peak infection. I like to think the Herrah had the needle commissioned before she was sealed and gave it to the midwife to give to Hornet when the time was right. The Midwife gave it to Hornet eight before she died,and asked Hornet to cut down her infected husk with that very blade. She does and then leaves. Hornet then kinda meanders around getting good until the game.

Cloth: I don't have much on her cause honestly I have no idea even what kinda bug she is but she definitely migrated to hallownest after the peak of the infection and thought he'll yeah. I get to fight things! And then just stuck around

Tiso:grew up in an ant clony but longed for something more. Growing up with stories of Hallownest and the Coloseum he set out not realizing what had become of the kingdom and its glory.

Anyway, those are the ones I have rn, I'm tired and my fingers hurt cause I typed this out on my phone so sorry if there's any spelling mistakes. Let me know if there's any others you wanna see and I'll probably add on with my vessel oc that still doesn't have a name.

[kc-fics]

Unwilling Crewmates - Chapter 16 - KC_R - Hollow Knight (Video Games) [Archive of Our Own]

Tiso and Quirrel return to the S.S. Scholar following the conclusion of their expedition. Tiso notices something concering, and is determined to resolve it on his own.

[dooblebugss]

...if Quirrel is the last Scholar of the Archives does that make him The Teacher now?

[thethrillof]

8, 13, 19?

8: common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

hmmmmmm. i already talked about the white lady's "motherhood" stuff previously, and that's the biggest offender i can think of tbh...

oh, maybe that quirrel is shy/timid. i see a weird amount of that after he gets parts of his memory back. or even as a scholar. i don't think monomon would've picked a wimp to travel the wastes with what we're implied is seen as her soul-self, and he's delightfully adventurous and sometimes cheerfully morbid every encounter across hallownest. friendly and smart =/= weak!

13: worst blorboficiation

tbh all the Higher Beings in hallownest. PK, WL and Radiance most. they're all kind of douchebags and it always feels like one's douchebaggery gets erased to make the others look worse.

19: you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like…

hm. i'm way past feeling strong shames about what i enjoy, but i guess in contrast to the last question asked, i do like things where the pale king bucks up and tries to do better by the hollow knight/other vessels (even if i see very little i actually do like written tbh |V) and similar.

[alaska-ren-works]

Monomon’s top scholars and research assistants aka Monnie’s angels

(From left to right)

Quirrel - highest ranking scholar and Monomon’s right hand. Skilled warrior. Jack of all trades but has a knack for laboratory and field work.

Sarah (sona turned oc) - a butterfly from a far off kingdom. Specializes in biology, research conceptualization and analysis

Dana - a butterfly princess from a different kingdom. Specializes in botany, research dissertation and presentation

[cotillion-the-rope]

Shade Lord Ghost Drabbles: Make People Listen

Summary: ghost smacks some sense into a group of bugs who blame Hollow for the infection

~

Buddy, somewhere up in Dirtmouth or very near it, poked at Ghost’s mind. Ghost turned their attention onto them. What news did they have to share?

Some bugs thought that Hollow was at least in part to blame for the Infection. Buddy had tried to correct that misinformation but as the folk talking about it weren’t among Ghost’s followers they hadn’t been willing to listen. So Buddy figured Ghost should know since they could make people listen. Hollow had been through enough already without adding on such rumors.

Ghost’s anger at that was even stronger than Buddy’s. It was a struggle to keep it contained within their own mind but they were getting better at such things. Where were these fools?

With Buddy. They were following them, unnoticed. It was a group of three wannabe scholars. They didn’t have all the facts of the Infection and so speculated on how all the facts they did have were linked.

Ghost teleported to Buddy’s location. It was indeed up in Dirtmouth nearing the well leading to Hallownest proper. The three bugs Buddy was following gasped and flinched at Ghost’s sudden appearance. Before they could potentially try to run, Ghost snaked a couple tentacles around to block their escape route.

“Stop blaming Hollow. The Infection was the Radiance and only the Radiance.”

The wannabe scholars cowered. One of them, seemingly braver than the other two, nodded. “Uh… okay. Got it. Is there anything else you can share about the story of Hallownest’s past?”

“Ask Lemm,” even after finally getting more information about the history of Hallownest, it was still his favourite subject to study, “or Quirrel and Monomon.” The two of them had it all written down. There was no reason for anyone to speculate on anything when they could just go to the Archives instead.

Not waiting for a response, Ghost left.

[mostlydeadallday]

Lost Kin | Chapter XXXVIII | A Forbidden Warmth

Fandom: Hollow Knight Rating: Mature Characters: Hornet, Pure Vessel | Hollow Knight, Quirrel Category: Gen Content Warnings: intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, panic attacks AO3: Lost Kin | Chapter XXXVIII | A Forbidden Warmth First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Chronological Notes: Hornet and Quirrel prepare Hollow for surgery.

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Its sister was missing.

It knew this as soon as it became aware enough to feel the chill beside it. Her warmth was what it clung to as it drifted into slumber, her presence by its side an anchor against the turbulence of its own mind—

And now she was gone.

Gone from its side, where she had been when it fell asleep. And, it found when it opened its eyes, from the room entirely.

But it was not alone.

The scholar sat near the fireplace, bent over something in his own lap, in a way that looked distinctly uncomfortable. How long he had been here, seemingly waiting for it to wake, it did not know.

Had he been watching it? Gathering information? Unease swept over it like a chill wave. What could he possibly learn from it as it slept?

At the moment, however, he was occupied. He held something small and bright in one hand, applying careful strokes of a whetstone to it with the other, while occasionally turning it to meet the light of the window with a pale spark in the dimness.

For an instant, it saw another blade, in another hand. Double-edged. Glowing.

No, that was not right. That was another piece of the memory it had uncovered, another thing that had no place here and now. It blinked, and the glow cleared, and it saw what Quirrel held.

A scalpel.

It knew such tools, knew their names and uses, from long hours on the worktable, when its father had been too tired to work alone and had brought assistants with him. From the scholars who had hovered nearby in twos and threes during its molts, who had chatted to one another as they cut and pried the sloughing shell from its body. Scalpels, shears, forceps, lancets—it remembered them all. Foggy as its early experiences could be, these shone clear and vivid in its memory.

Perhaps they should not. Perhaps they should be as blurred and unimportant as its many hours on duty, as the unceasing repetitions of its training. But its mind did not obey it, and the memories stayed sharp.

Its sister had promised that she would resume her work today. Purging the infection from it, by whatever means she must.

It could not help the way its breath hitched at that, its chest already tightening. Not in fear of the pain that would come, but for what it might do in response. For the danger that it posed, the lashing claws and snapping teeth that it knew it was capable of. For who it might hurt, when it lost control.

The cricket noticed.

He looked up, seeming startled, and lowered the implement out of its sight. “Ah. Um.” He craned his head around, a useless motion, looking around for someone who was not present—its sister, perhaps. After hesitating, he placed the scalpel into a small, dark case and tipped the lid shut. “Pardon me. Good morning.”

It could not respond. Did he expect a response? He certainly spoke to it as if he did.

“I believe your sister is asleep in the kitchen.” He rose, bowing slightly, another action that seemed useless to it. But then, it was not meant to judge. “Allow me to fetch her.”

He disappeared into the next room, leaving it truly alone—as it had been outside the temple, as it had been the day the fever crept up and smothered it. Its heart beat faster.

It was in those moments of solitude that its failure weighed on it the heaviest. It was in being alone that its impurity shone most clearly. The vessel could no longer deceive itself into thinking it had been worthy of containing the goddess, but that was what it had attempted to do regardless, ignoring the pain, ignoring the growing dread that she would one day break out and be free of it. It had held, as long as it could, and then it had broken, as it always feared. But the thought of being alone—

Alone meant that she had won. That she had been right. That it was abandoned, cast aside, its body too broken to serve any longer, its mind split open and emptied of all except the fear and shame and agony it should never have felt.

Alone meant that—

That there was another suffering in its place.

It felt more memories lapping slowly at it. More images of the temple, bright and warped and glistening, distorted by the light that had inhabited it. By the infection, like a flow of molten stone, melting and obliterating everything it touched.

No.

No, it would not break again, not now. The vessel was not truly alone, not as it had been then. It would not succumb, would not weaken and fail its wielder once again. It—it was stronger than that, still, it—

Quiet words, from within the kitchen. Then louder ones: its sister’s name, repeated.

Then there was a small series of noises it did not know how to interpret. A scrape and a grunt, the rasp of claws on stone or shell. Silence. Or near-silence—someone was breathing hard, winded.

Its heartbeat pulsed harder, pushing spikes of pain through its mask. A different sort of fear rose up to take hold of it.

Quirrel had said her name, but it had not heard her reply.

Was she injured? Was she sick, or unconscious? No one had entered the house, there was no enemy to guard against, and it did not know what it should do if something had happened—

What could have happened—

It lifted its head from the pillows, craning round just as the scholar had done, staring fixedly at the darkened doorway through the dizziness that assaulted it. It had not been asked to move, to attempt to help, but—perhaps it could—

Hornet appeared in the doorway, with Quirrel just behind her.

It laid its head down, quickly, as if its actions might escape notice. That was too much to hope, of course, but she didn’t attempt to punish it, did not even speak a word of reprimand.

Instead, she trudged across the room and sank down in front of it, reaching to take its face in her hands and resting her forehead against one of its horns.

It was still. Despite the shock that trembled through it, despite the tender pressure in its throat as she knelt there and rested her head against its own, supporting her weight against it.

Gradually, it realized that the trembling was Hornet. Shaking, almost too subtly to notice beneath the heavy drape of her cloak, except that her horn knocked faintly against its mask, and her hands were unsteady on its cheeks.

It braced itself, providing as stable a surface as it could for her to lean against. She was so light, so gentle, and it would remain here forever if she asked, bear her up as long as she wished, as long as she had need of it. Bewildering, that she would want this, that she would ever desire the assistance of something so broken. But this, faulty as it had proven to be, was something it could do.

Too soon, she sat back, running her hands down toward its muzzle, but not removing them entirely. She was not shaking nearly so much, now, and it swayed beneath a weight of crooked pride at the thought that it had helped her, in some way that it did not understand.

Hornet swallowed. “I’m sorry, I—” A crack in her throat. She swallowed and began again. “It was just a-another nightmare.”

It had never had a nightmare. Or a dream, in the usual sense. True, a dream had been imposed upon it, trapping it within a realm it had no place in, but it had no frame of reference for the sleep-phantoms that a truly living being might experience.

But if they were enough to unnerve its sister, courageous as she was, they must be terrible indeed.

Nightmares were the realm of a separate god, it knew. A god its father had been aware of, a god that the Radiance had known, once. It knew nothing about him, but if he was tormenting its sister—

What could it do? Nothing, and yet an unfamiliar heat welled up within it, a reckless fervor that made it act without thinking, without suppressing its own instincts, lifting its head again to push more firmly against her.

She sat, silent and still, long enough for shame to take hold, for the vessel to be sure it had done something wrong. It drew back, only for her hands to tighten, pulling it more closely to her chest. She tapped her mask against its own again, and the heat and shame both dissolved into fragile, aching wonder, a wonder that disbelief and doubt did nothing to diminish.

Whatever else she wanted, whatever fate awaited it, it had this. This was more, more, more than enough—this impossible chance to offer solace in return for the undeserved kindness she had given it.

It was a long time before she calmed completely, before the shivering stopped, and she began to relax. Its neck was aching by then, a fact that it deliberately ignored. But she must have guessed, for she took care to release it gently, lowering its head back to rest on the pillows it had partly risen from.

Only then did it remember the scholar, hovering at the edge of the room as if unwilling to intrude, rubbing his wrist like it pained him.

Its sister looked over her shoulder, head lowered in that way she had when she was tired. It seemed she was never not tired, now. Were these nightmares the cause of that?

If it could, it would free her from them. The touch of a dream-god was, in the vessel’s experience, an excruciating thing to endure. It was no longer strong enough to pose a challenge, but oh, if it could have been—

“I’m… sorry,” Hornet mumbled. “About your arm.”

“Oh?” Quirrel started, looked down at his wrist, and dropped his hand from it. “Oh. It’s nothing. My own fault. I-I should have guessed I would need to be more careful.”

“In the future, perhaps a stick would be advisable,” she replied, without a hint of irony.

Quirrel choked on something that sounded very much like a laugh. “Noted.”

It did not have enough context to infer the meaning of that. Since the conversation did not seem relevant to it, it refocused on its sister, as she sat back and rubbed her hands over her knees, claws turned under to avoid catching at her cloak.

She returned her own attention to the vessel a moment later, considering it, tracing its form with her gaze.

Quietly, almost tentatively, she said, “I’d like to try again with what we attempted yesterday.”

It tensed.

Was she speaking to it? What exactly was she referring to?

The only thing its suddenly frantic mind could settle on was the moment she had tried to take its pulse and it had rebelled against her, pulling free from her grasp. While it would willingly suffer that much and more before it did so again, it could not be sure that its instincts would agree.

Before its thoughts could follow those lines much farther, she held one hand out to it. “Taking your pulse will mean I need to touch your throat—gently. You may still pull away if it causes you pain, or if you begin to panic. Quirrel will stay over there,” with a nod at where he stood at the window, nearly out of its line of sight, “and he will only be counting the time.”

Oh. Oh, that was kind of her, so kind, but it should not need to be protected in this way. A knot woven of both pride and shame twisted tight under its shell. She was gracious, far more so than it deserved. To see what it needed, to feel out the things it could not do and the dangers it could not warn her of, and instead of taking advantage, to accommodate it—

It would be sucked beneath the weight of its fear if it lingered here much longer, and she would have to pull it out again.

The notion of its faults being seen, measured, recorded, still caused a swell of fear within it, but it lifted its head before she could withdraw her offer, placing its chin in her hand.

It seemed that she was trembling again, until the vessel realized that was it, causing her arm to shake with the force of its fear. It tried to tense, to lock down the impulses that were betraying it. This only caused a larger shudder, making its impurity even more visible, until Hornet brought her other hand to its neck and stroked her thumb along its shell.

“Relax, please,” she pleaded. “I wish—I wish we did not need to do this, if it scares you so. But it will not hurt, I promise.”

It was not afraid of pain. It had no way to explain this to her. It was afraid—

It was afraid of the watching eyes, the scratch of pens, the brush of fingers on its throat—

It was afraid of the memories.

They would take hold of it as soon as it dropped its guard. As soon as it turned its gaze elsewhere. It had no way to stop them, and its vigilance could not be maintained forever.

And it had no way to warn its sister of this. No way to tell her what was coming. No way to know if she—or her ally—would be in danger.

It must endure. That was all that was left to it—it must hold out as long as it was able, beat the insanity back as far as it could. It would obey. It had sworn to itself that it would conquer its fear, that it would master this fault, somehow, to keep its sister safe.

That oath did not help much against the way its guts seemed to turn soft and wobbly, like one of the bizarre quivering jellies it had seen served at Palace banquets.

Long ago. Very long ago, now. The past could not reach it, and the present was not so terrible. It would lie here, lie still, waiting, until its shivering died down into nothing.

Long minutes passed, with its neck gone limp and its mask’s weight resting on Hornet’s palm, with the soft pad of her thumb brushing its throat. Until she exhaled, whispered, “There, that’s it,” and moved her hand upward.

Pressure on its jaw, above the edge where its shell ended. The callused texture of Hornet’s fingers caught on the softness of its skin while she felt beneath its mask. It did not move, did not so much as twitch, when her questing touch brought her to the pulse point there.

She settled with a sigh—of relief, it thought—and pressed more firmly, though still gentle, until it could feel its heartbeat jumping out to meet her.

The drum of void beneath its shell was everywhere, suddenly, palpable in every joint and fingertip, all the way out to the edges of it. Knowing that she could feel it too, that every skip and falter would make its way to her, brought the limits of the vessel’s body into sharp focus. It swam blindly in that new awareness, feeling exposed, transparent, as though every plate of its armor had suddenly turned into glass.

It did not know how long it lay there, trying not to tremble, sensing every beat of its heart like a hammer-blow, before Quirrel’s voice broke the stillness. “Time.”

Hornet withdrew her right hand from its throat, tucking its head back down and resting it against the pillow before she removed the other. “Seventy-four.”

“Hm.”

She looked at him. When that alone did not provoke an answer, she repeated the sound he’d made. “Hm?”

The scratch of a pencil finished before he spoke up. “Granted, we have no reference for their normal heart rate. But that seems accelerated, for someone their size.”

“I could not tell you,” she said flatly. “I’ve never been any bigger than I am.”

“That’s certainly a relief.” This comment was made with a wry sort of amusement. “I’m not sure the world could handle much more of you.”

Its sister hissed at that, but she did not seem entirely serious, and Quirrel only grinned faintly back at her. “Regardless, recording your resting pulse rate—and my own—might help somewhat. And taking your sibling’s again later. Learning of any variation there will be useful.”

“We will do that, then.” Hornet leaned forward, placing her fingers on its face, speaking only to it, low, where the cricket could not hear. “Well done. Thank you.”

It breathed out, grazing her wrist with the chilly air in its throat. How could it have done well? It had only done what it was told—what it should have done the day before, when it had clearly disobeyed. She’d given it another chance, without condemnation, and what she had learned was unfavorable: its heart was not functioning properly. Beating too quickly, either as a result of its fear, or the thinning of the void in its veins, or the ravages of infection in places it could not feel or see.

She had no reason to thank it.

But had it not sworn not to judge her? Had it not concluded that it had no place to question what she did with it? If she saw fit to thank it—no matter what forbidden warmth surfaced in response to the praise—it must let her.

There seemed to be something else she wished to say; she held its stare, tilting her head and clicking her fangs haltingly, but in the end, she remained quiet. Hunched her shoulders, and swallowed, hard, and looked away.

“Quirrel,” she said instead, “have you finished with the tools?”

“Not quite yet. Give me half an hour, perhaps.”

Its sister nodded. She stood and left it there, moving a little unsteadily, as if her legs had gone weak. Almost as its father used to do, when standing from his desk after too long sunk in his work, though his legs had been much shorter than hers.

It would not do to think of him now. To remember how carefully he’d monitored its health, through all its growth and training, the meticulous records he’d kept, the ways he’d found to keep it sound, to make it stronger. He would know how to fix it—or how to dispose of it, so that it would not hurt anyone else. Its sister must not have access to that knowledge now, as timid and incomplete as her efforts were.

She would do nothing but her best, it knew. She would give nothing but her all, though that was far more than a disgraced vessel merited.

It had not been given any further orders, so it watched the preparations made. Shellwood stacked and lit beneath a kettle filled with water. Knives and shears honed keenly, held inside the sputtering flame until they glowed. Towels laid out near where the vessel lay, and tattered rags stacked alongside, and one basin, then two, filled and placed at the ready.

Hornet was quiet, ignoring its regard as she went about her tasks, responding in single syllables to Quirrel’s intermittent questions. When she had run out of things to carry, she paced, fists clenched in the sides of her cloak, as she waited for the scholar to be ready.

The vessel’s heart was doubtless beating faster now. If she were to take its pulse again, she might find cause for worry. It did not stir, holding its breathing to its regular rhythm, though the world began to gray again at the edges.

Finally, she turned, holding herself rigid, her voice as brittle as glass. “Quirrel, would you leave us for a moment?”

Quirrel looked up and set down the implement he’d been heating. “Of course. I should fetch something from upstairs, in any case.”

As soon as he was gone, Hornet hastened toward it, crouching at its side and staring into its eyes. “Listen to me,” she said, hushed but urgent. “I know—I know that you have told me you’re unsure if you can do it. But—”

She choked, turning her head aside, not looking at it as she continued on. “I must have your agreement in this. I must know that you will tell me if I need to stop.”

That was enough to break its control immediately, its heartbeat spiking higher, driving its vision toward darkness. It was breathing fast, and it sounded horrible, torn and strained and fraying, and the only thing that could begin to bring it back was the weight in its hand, as she clasped both of hers over it, curling its fingers under her own.

“I know. I know,” she whispered. “I am sorry, Hollow—I am.”

It could not answer while she held it, and yet it would be lost if she let go. It shuddered, sending a twitch through its fingers that she felt and returned, squeezing tighter, as if in answer.

“I would not ask, except”—she sighed, her throat trembling nearly as much as the vessel’s did—“except that I must protect myself, and Quirrel. I cannot be so careless now. It is not—it was not your fault, what you did. It was mine, and I never should have pushed you so, but I have no choice except to do it again.”

The last words shuddered, her voice trembling and bowing in her throat like a bent branch, and it nearly keened in response, aching with the knowledge that she blamed herself for its weakness. This was not her mistake to take responsibility for, not her burden to bear, but she had shouldered it anyway, and now she suffered for it.

Its father had often done the same.

“I swear, I… I will make it as easy as I can. I will use my silk to bind you, and I will not do more to you than you can bear if I can help it. But I need to know. I need you to tell me. Will you?”

Her plea spilled out in a tumble of words, almost more than it could follow, scattered as it was. The thought that she should need to beg it so, for anything, woke a flutter of unease in its breast.

She was its monarch now. She was its liege, its wielder, and she should never have to plead with it. It must obey.

And if she asked something that it could not do—

It would have to find a way.

The vessel’s fingers stirred in the cage of her hands. She let go, all at once, and it felt the lack of her as the cold rushed back to replace all of her warmth.

It gasped and quaked, struggling to stay afloat, to keep its head above the water, to—gods curse it, to think.

What she asked it to do was a horror to it. A violation of its purpose, of the reason it existed.

And yet it had fallen far, and would fall farther still, to please her.

Yes, it said, its hand shaking, shaking, with the pulse of fear deep in its veins, and there was so much more within that word, things it could not say, if I can and if I must and for you, I will try.

She made a sound, half a sob, half a laugh, and it could not begin to guess what that meant, what it said that she could not, what hid within her relief and her remorse.

Reluctant, almost timid, she reached out to it, as if it would ever not want what she offered, as if it would ever not feel that hunger stirring, that strange warmth in its core that melted its resolve away. When it did not pull back, when it let itself slip and pushed against her hand, wanting, needing, she yielded. She eased down next to it, pulling its head to lie against her leg, looping an arm around its neck to keep it steady as it shuddered and heaved and weathered the storm its own mind had created.

It seemed a long time before the haze cleared, before it could feel more than the pounding of the pulse in its head and the crawling of claws over its shell. Hornet kept it steady once again. She brushed her thumb over its throat every so often, reminding it to breathe—and though shame overtook it, shame that it must be assisted with something so simple, gratitude soon followed, that she should understand that it needed this at all.

When it was calm again at last, and only the aftershocks of its panic still quaked through it, she straightened a bit and called out quietly. “You can come down now.”

Halting footsteps descended the stairs, and Quirrel came into view. “I was not intending to intrude.”

“You did not,” Hornet said, sighing. Her hands went still, curling into fists against its throat and mask, then relaxing. “Is everything ready?”

“Nearly.” He crossed the room, opening a small cloth pouch and proffering it. “This is for you; I believe it might help.”

Its sister leaned forward to look in but did not reach out. “Help with what?” she said, a trifle sharply.

“Well. I get headaches on occasion. Less often, now that—well. In any case, in the last kingdom I visited, I discovered that chewing this herb relieved some of the associated symptoms.” Quirrel hesitated. “Mainly nausea.”

Nausea?

Was its sister ill? It breathed in, slowly, attempting to observe her scent, though the information gathered told it nothing new, nothing it had not already known. It had heard that some creatures could smell sickness, but evidently that was not an ability afforded to vessels. Not one it ever should have needed, most likely.

Hornet neither confirmed nor denied Quirrel’s assumption, though she did take the bag and stow it somewhere in her cloak. “Stand aside, if you please. I need to move them.”

He did so, and as its sister untangled herself and stood up, the vessel realized it had already tensed, anticipating the pain that was sure to come when it stirred. This would not do, when she had just spent so much effort calming it. An attempt at relaxing was only partially successful; its shoulders were still twisted tight and aching when Hornet bent back down to speak to it.

“I’d like you to lie on these blankets.” She gestured to the ones she had laid out on the scrubbed floor next to the bed, along with a stack of pillows that were positioned to prop up its horns. “Move as slowly as you need to and stop to rest if you must. I will be beside you so you do not fall.”

This was an attempt to keep the bed clean, it guessed. It had seen how she struggled to remove the void-stains from the sheets after her last attempt, the frayed fabric still cloudy in places despite her best efforts.

The vessel eyed the blankets she had indicated. Undoubtedly, it would muss her neat handiwork by trying to lie on top of it, but it saw no alternative. It regarded the distance from the mattress to the floor, weighing the methods it might use to traverse the space without falling or damaging itself.

In the end, it ought not to have bothered. As soon as it rolled forward and pushed up on its remaining arm, the pain and dizziness roared back with a vengeance, and it was left fumbling to prop its legs beneath it, one knee slipping off the mattress and cracking against the floor, causing a bright spark of pain that instantly vanished in the blaze.

It must have listed to the left, unaware of it in the swirling turmoil of the room. Its bad side fetched up against an obstacle, something warm and clinging, something that wobbled dangerously, and then its sister shouted, “Quirrel? Quirrel!”

“I’m here,” his voice said, and the weight against it doubled, a second pair of hands joining Hornet’s frantic, sliding grip. “I’m here. We have you.”

After a hurried, whispered dispute, both pairs of hands shifted, guiding it down, turning it carefully before lowering it onto the floor. The flagstones were cool and hard, solid, something it could cling to while the room was spinning.

Panting, only half-aware of anything beyond the pain and the frenzied motion, it closed its eyes and latched its silk-lined claws into the first thing it felt, tearing threads in the blanket beneath it. Its back was pulled taut, shoulders pressing into the floor, horns scraping the stone until warm hands moved it once more, tilting its head to the side and slipping a cushion under its neck.

Another touch, across its legs, as its sister began to weave silk lines to bind it; suddenly it heard that the voice murmuring encouragement was not Hornet’s, and the hands adjusting the pillows had no claws.

It... did not quite feel anything about that now. Not when Quirrel tucked another cushion under its shoulder, relieving the pressure of its spine against the floor, and whispered that he was sorry, that it should breathe deeply and relax, that the pain would ease sooner if it did. It tried to follow his advice, tried to clutch the reassurance tight, tried to let the calm in his voice relieve the pressure in its chest.

He continued speaking as it lay there, his voice coming from just to its left and above, where his hand rested on one horn. Something about dizziness, and how unpleasant it could be, and the headaches he had mentioned, although he was sure what he himself had gone through was no comparison. As he was not a void creature who had been infected by dreams, it could not help but agree.

No more than a weak sense of disquiet arose at the touch, with every other sensation demanding so much of its attention. The contact on two points of its body tethered it to earth, as much as the slowly growing web of silk did, though the bands of silk were infinitely more forgiving than the bonds it had known before, just as smooth and soft as the last time she had bound it.

The pressure was… comforting, almost, though shame writhed to the surface again at the thought that comfort might be something that it needed.

Its sister worked her way up its body, stringing wide, soft skeins of silk that lay cool across its shell, pulling them snug and anchoring them to the floor on either side. She broke the silence to tell it that, although it should stop if the bindings grew tight enough to damage it, she wanted it to try to move its legs.

It could not. Not much more than a few inches.

She did not say whether that was good, or what she had expected, merely continued weaving while it slowly found the ability to relax into its new position.

If this meant that it would not have the ability to hurt her, it would be glad. If it was too weak to break her silk, if the slow failure of its body would protect her from harm, it would be nothing but grateful.

She was thorough, placing anchors every few feet, stretching silk across its hips, its waist, avoiding the large stretch of its chest where she would need space clear to work, but circling its good shoulder with a thick loop and tying it down. Two more pulled its arm to the floor and fastened it, but when she reached its hand, she stopped.

It felt the silk around its claw slip off. Just the one—its first finger.

Strange.

She spun a pad into its palm, taking precaution against its own talons stabbing in. On all its other claws, she renewed the wrappings, but she did not bind its fingers shut, leaving them open and spread upon the stone, before she laced a last band around its wrist and secured it to the floor.

“Hollow?”

Her voice was warbling. It inched its head to the side to look at her, fearful to start the room whirling again, and locked her mask into its vision.

She laid one hand over its bound one, touching its loose claw with one of her own. “This is how you will signal to me if you have need. Tap three times to attract my attention.” She demonstrated, a light pattern on the flagstones. “Two times for yes, once for no. Three taps, then two, for something else.” After each signal, she showed it what she wanted, then asked it to repeat. Still winded from the pain, it could almost do so without fear, concentrating solely on the motion and overlooking the meaning, the gravity, of what she asked.

Finished, she sat back, those ivory fangs working, twitching, in search of what to say.

“I-I will not be angry, if you ask to stop.” Her inhale broke in two, a hiccup, nearly, but when she breathed out, it was steady. “I wish for you to—to tell the truth, about how much you can bear. Do you hear me?”

The vessel trembled, the motion caught within the silk, muffling it. It did hear her. She knew that. And what was more, when the silence stretched, it became clear that she wanted the vessel to answer.

It would do as she asked, it must, but—perhaps this would not be needed. Perhaps it could be strong enough to fight off the panic, the memories of pain that stirred and snarled and seized it tightly, sinking claws into its mind. That was a desperate hope, but the vessel knew no other kind—all its hopes had always been desperate, grasping, the perversity of the action ensuring that every one it dared to cling to was all but strangled by the force of its grip.

It was plain, now, that any fleeting impression it had ever had of its own purity was false. What folly, to hide behind that shattered veneer, when every being present knew of its weakness, knew the pitiful frailty of the resolve it had once thought unbreakable. It would break, again and again. It would shudder and flinch and cry out in pain, though none would ever hear or answer.

If it really was to tell the truth, it could bear very little. Especially in comparison to how strong it once was. It had taken years for the Radiance to break it, but once it finally cracked, the illusion was undone. Now a mere mortal’s touch could ruin it, reduce it to shaking and sobbing like something beaten, abandoned, left to wither and die where no one would see or take pity on it.

Any time spent observing it would put the lie to the notion of its purity. No one could look at it now and not know that it was a pitiable thing, lingering on past any semblance of usefulness, left in the world to suffer for its mistakes in a penance it would never pay.

To admit that it was failing—to expose its falsehoods for all to see—that was the least of what it deserved.

It was trembling in earnest now, breath shuddering, shell gone nearly numb as terror took hold and swept it away. But it must answer.

Two taps. Shaky, halting. Yes.

It could barely feel Hornet’s hand close over its own, barely hear Quirrel’s soft words resume as they both attempted to quiet it. If it had a way to tell them to let it be, let it suffer—it should not accept comfort, when this pain was something it had more than earned—

It could not quite make itself say no.

The faint, fragile warmth seeping through it was so, so hard to ignore.

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