Chapter Text
“So there’s the little godling who caused such a fuss on the bridge. I’ve been looking all over for you. Such a pleasure to meet you at last! You can call me Lace.”
Dia kept an arm up to block Luna’s path, cursing silently. The girl at the end of the cavern did not seem physically threatening, but alarm bells from instincts Dia hadn’t even known she’d possessed were clanging in her ears.
The girl was short, with a high, childish voice, but her tone suggested the confidence of a seasoned adult. She held a golden pin, the finest Dia had seen, but her grip was loose—elbow bent, wrist open, pin pointing to the ground. Her sloppy stance stood in sharp contrast to Luna’s immaculate nail discipline. It could mean that she was a noncombatant, an overconfident novice…or a master who was certain in her ability to snap the pin to attention at a moment’s notice. Dia, unfortunately, suspected the latter.
But the most troubling thing about her by far was the fact that she was, unmistakably, a Vessel.
Not a Vessel as Hallownest knew, a Void construct meant to contain the living Light. No, Dia suspected this was a Pharloom special: a construct of silk. How such a thing could exist, how it could speak and have a personality, was a question for another day. Dia was certain she was right: though the silk had been woven tightly, the harsh light of the lava behind Lace transluminated her whole body. There was no fooling Dia’s sight. Under the silk, Lace was completely hollow inside.
(Child. That girl is a silk construct,) she said quickly, feeling Luna’s jolt of surprise through their link. (She may be similar to you…perhaps created by a similar being. We would be wise to escape the confrontation.)
She did not add ‘for a similar purpose.’ Lace’s gaze was eerily intense on her, but there was no way this kingdom had created a Vessel specially to imprison her.
If nothing else, there was no way a silken prison could ever contain a goddess of Light. The material was simply far too flammable.
She began walking backward slowly, keeping her eyes on Lace, when the girl suddenly raised her weapon and shouted.
“Oh, old woman! What do you think you’re doing, stealing my prey? Scuttle out of here if you must, but the godling is mine.”
Both Luna and Dia froze and that, and Dia had to restrain the sudden and inappropriate urge to laugh. She felt a little insulted, frankly—did this girl not know she was in the presence of the scourge of Hallownest? There were places in the world where Dia’s name was both the blackest of oaths and the cruelest of curses. But it seemed that Dia’s reputation had, for once, not preceded her.
Shaking off those ridiculous thoughts, Dia tried to assess the situation. It was in fact an exceptionally good thing that Lace, and the god she served, had not realized that Dia was a higher being. It seemed, however, that they had guessed that Luna was. In response, Dia pushed the child all the way behind her as her staff dimmed to an ominous fiery orange.
No magic, she could use no magic to win this fight, but she had other tricks. The hot breath of the molten rock around them felt gentle against her skin, like the blazing light she had once created for the skies of the dream, like the burning heat she had been born in. She could draw far closer to it than that flammable little silk beast—she may even be able to touch it safely, though she couldn't be certain of the limitations of her mortal form. If she could egg the girl on, trick her into approaching the edge, Dia could plunge the staff into the molten lake and shower the silken construct with bits of blazing rock. A solid plan, as long as she was quick enough. She could keep Luna out of the silk goddess’s sight.
But black claws were closing on her wrist, pulling her arm down. Luna stepped up beside her, then in front, drawing its nail and snapping into the perfect, needle-straight posture of a knight of the Pale Court.
(Little one, let me fight her. You mustn’t let her master see the extent of your power.)
(Grimm was worried about your power, not mine,) Luna replied. (The guards on the bridge already saw my magic, and probably the Void inside me, too. You shouldn’t be fighting her without magic. You don’t know what she’s capable of.)
Dia ground her mandibles in annoyance. It went against everything in her to let Luna fight alone—she was the elder, she was the goddess—even if she wasn’t really, not anymore. The silken god had tried to possess Luna once already, without even knowing what a prize the former Hollow Knight was. Dia’s limitations mattered less than her duty.
(You’ve protected me for a long time. I can protect you, too.) Luna’s voice was small and light, but as it stepped forward, it broke the perfect posture of its training to give a slight flourish of its nail. Confidently loose, like Lace’s stance had been, though the affectation looked a little forced on Luna. (Let me protect you too. Please.)
She could not argue with that, so she stepped back and allowed Luna to face the silk Vessel. Lace let out a peal of laughter as it approached.
“I heard you slaughtered an entire welcoming party! Incredible to think that you did it dressed like that!”
Dia scowled at that. She could use a scarf to go with her shawl, perhaps in white; this creature, if unspooled, would make for a suitable material.
“Such incredible abilities! One might think you a Weaver,” sang the silk girl. While her voice was bright and jovial, her gaze on Luna was piercing. “But I heard such a strange story, little godling, of your shell pierced and living darkness coming out.“
Neither Luna or Dia spoke. Ahead of them, Lace toyed with her pin, bending the thin blade as she glared at them. “It makes me wonder just what you are.” There was venom in her voice, but Dia wasn’t sure which of them it was directed towards.
For a second, there was silence. When it finally spoke, Luna’s voice was gentle. “I think…I think I’m something like you are,” Luna began. “A Vessel. I’ve never—it’s been a long time since I met anyone else like me, and maybe…the two of us could be friends?”
There was so much hope contained in Luna’s voice that Dia couldn’t help but be hopeful for it. Lace stood stock-still, her head cocked to the side, and Dia knew better but damn if it didn’t look like the girl was actually considering it. When Lace spoke, her voice had lost some of its mocking glee. But underneath the veneer, the girl’s voice was eerily cold.
“Vessel? What is it that I’m meant to hold? What is it that I’m meant to do? No, no, you know nothing of me, you little freak. We’re nothing alike.” She raised her pin, and her stance was no longer loose and sloppy but sharp and threatening. “For one thing, she actually wants you! So tell me, godling, shall I bring you to her? Or spite her by spilling your black blood into the lava?”
Dia shouted a warning, but Luna was already moving as Lace darted forward. Her pin skewered the air where Luna had been standing only a millisecond ago, and she gave a shriek of rage when she looked up to see Luna’s long black moth wings extending. From above, Luna cast a spell, and Dia felt her own magic rush past her as a forest of glittering golden spikes appeared on the ground, undulating in a vast shimmering wave. Lace leapt backwards, but her feet caught the spikes with dreadful, wet-sounding rip.
Limping now, Lace stumbled backwards. Dia found herself hopeful that the silken girl might turn and flee, but it seemed she wasn’t done yet. Lace cast magic of her own, and a tiny white glow appeared in the air just beside where Luna was hovering.
“Child! She means to telep—“ was all Dia got out before the white glow exploded into a glistening sphere. Lace appeared in the air right behind Luna, slashing forward with her pin and drawing horrible ropes of Void that splashed to the ground below. Lace’s quick slashes had placed her above Luna, and she raised her pin, ready to skewer the child through its thorax between the two moth wings. Dia had time to scream, raising her staff to train a beam of magical light on the fencer.
But before her spell had time to finish charging, Luna had moved, and Lace was falling through empty air. The child’s shape had…fluctuated, somehow, its chitinous limbs suddenly becoming loose and fluid, its form blurring and sliding away from Lace. A few feet away, Luna reformed, skidding across the stone on its tarsi and whirling around to cast a spell over its shoulder. Three soul daggers shot off towards Lace, and while the construct dodged them easily, she shrieked with rage when she realized that her dodge had put her right in the path of a wall of light that tore across the floor burning everything in its path.
Dia saw the girl look around in a panic, caught between the rapidly approaching wall of light on one side, and Luna’s nail on the other. And then…her gaze settled on Dia, who had dutifully remained out of the fight.
Her pin was at Dia’s throat before Dia could think to run–not that she would have made it far. Lace kicked her staff away, grabbing her arm and pulling her downwards with surprising force. The wall of light halted instantly, dissolving into essence as Luna froze.
“Child, do not let this little beast’s antics stop you. You know my own magic is no threat to me,” Dia said, rolling her eyes. Her knees smarted from where Lace had forced her to the ground, but she was otherwise quite unharmed. She suspected that Lace’s pin, fine-edged though it was, would have a hard time slicing through the thick ruff of fur around her throat–Hornet’s double-bladed needle had been a much better tool for that. As far as hostage crises went, this one hardly warranted much concern.
Still, Luna remained frozen, stock-still in the same unnerving way it did sometimes, when some unknown action or sight seemed to trigger something within it. Memories, perhaps? In such a state, it almost resembled the Pure Vessel of old, standing still and silent with neither mind nor voice. She could only guess what had made the child freeze up this time…it had been acting odd for a few weeks, since it had started going out to the Marrow alone, and it had been so adamant about protecting her before. Was it the sight of her in danger?
“That’s right,” Lace snapped. It was odd, to be so close to her and hear her obvious lack of breathing. Even Luna's body simulated lungs with Void. “Stop the spellwork and drop your nail. I said drop it!”
Luna did not appear to be listening. (Child. My magic will not harm me if you use it against her,) Dia said gently, but the only response from Luna’s mind was a wave of numb panic centered around the pin at Dia’s throat. Oh, it was very touching, and perhaps once they were free of this situation Dia might shed a tear. But Luna’s stiff fingers were beginning to loosen on the hilt of its nail–whether from compliance or dissociation Dia couldn’t tell–and one of them needed to act before Lace realized how helpless her former opponent now was.
As Lace jolted them both forward, her eyes fixed on Luna, Dia eyed the lava. Her staff had been kicked away, but the nearest pool was within reach…the heat on her skin felt no different, really, than the light that had once blazed across the skies of her realm. The light she had lived in, the light that pulsed in her veins and fed the dream heart.
So, theoretically, it should probably be fine. She dipped her hand in.
It was warm, lusciously warm like the Moth Tribe’s hot springs, and it swirled and eddied around her fingers in thick currents. Glassy-smooth, it felt gentle and comforting against her claws. As Lace pushed her forward, Dia closed her fingers around the bright liquid, whipped it across her chest, and threw.
Glowing droplets of pure gold flew through the air in a gorgeous arc, and Dia watched with satisfaction as Lace turned towards her, the girl’s eyes widening in horror as she realized for the first time that Dia, too, had been a threat. She realized it too late, however, as the drops of magma hit her squarely in her chest and her oversized hat not a half a second later. Silk was as flammable a substance as Dia had remembered.
With an awful sizzling noise, the lava began to chew through the girl’s silk–through her flesh? Was it all, from her clothes to her silly hat, flesh? Could she feel it? Questions for another day–leaving quickly widening holes with glowing orange edges. As Dia had suspected, the holes led to nothing; no shell lay beneath the silk, not even Void. Lace screamed, and Dia revised her opinion: the silken construct absolutely could feel pain. A question Dia had not particularly needed answered.
“Witch! I’ll pay you back for this, I swear–” Lace was patting herself down, frantically trying to put out the smoldering fires, but she spared a glance towards Dia that was so filled with hatred it might have impressed the Pale King. A second later, she tore off, darting past the still-frozen Luna.
Dia followed, stopping before Luna and reaching out a tentative hand. “Little one? Luna?”
Luna remained frozen in place. (Child?) No response.
“Hollow Knight?” Dia’s voice was soft, the words bitter on her tongue. But Luna responded to that, hands tightening on its nail and posture snapping into the Knight’s parade rest. Dia took its hand gently, but the claws were stiff as wax, bending only when she moved them.
(Little one, show me what’s wrong,) she said. She had seen this before, in the White Palace— she’d been focused on navigating through that mad obstacle course, and had only realized something was wrong when the child had accidentally—
—she’d wanted to believe it was an accident at the time—
—torn open its hand on a saw blade. It had seemed frozen then, too; but it was worse now. Luna’s eyes didn’t even seem to see her anymore. Rather, its attention focused inwards at a terror she could only guess at.
(Luna. Little one. I need to see inside your mind.) Luna offered neither acceptance nor resistance, so with a squirm of guilt in her chest, she placed a claw upon the broad white expanse of its mask and pushed the dream into its waking mind.
The spell barely stung her—her heart gave a slight stutter, nothing more. Entering the dream was the simplest thing in the world, coming more naturally to her than fire and violence once had. Though she was no longer a part of her realm, she still commanded it with ease—and Luna’s mind was so easy to slip inside. The child had had no walls or defenses mounted against her, something that made her feel even more guilty for invading its waking thoughts. It has to be done, she thought.
The source of the child’s distress wasn’t hard to find. The scene repeated itself in front of her in unstable jerks and skips: the Pure Vessel, elegant and stately in unstained white; the Infected beetle; the King, in danger, though his form would morph and split into Dia’s own. And Luna, drenched in orange blood, holding not the beetle’s corpse but that of the Radiance.
This was more than a memory—though the underlying memory was horrifying, it had morphed into something else. Dia would call it a nightmare, but she could see no sign of her brother’s hand at work, and she doubted that even Grimm would stoop so low. No, it seemed to be something that Luna’s own mind had created, a self-referring fiction caused by traumatic stress.
Dia had, rarely, seen such things in moths—milder, of course. No child of the Moth Tribe had ever suffered like the Pure Vessel. But it happened, after illnesses or deaths. The afflicted moth would pray to the Radiance, and she would cast dreams over their memories, layers upon layers, until the memory was obliterated. She had not lost the talent for that, at least, and she could easily help Luna this way. The corridor began to glow rosy gold as she raised her staff, preparing to strike out the errant memory. Golden clouds seeped into the prison through the seams and joints of the walls, beginning to obscure the faces of the guards…
And then Dia’s eyes fell on the beetle, still lunging against the prison bars, and she paused. She…she should probably not be doing this.
Luna had not asked for this, like the moths had. And Luna was very different from a moth child in ways that broke her heart and filled her with rage. If she was to erase this traumatic memory, would there not be another, right behind it? She would have to erase nearly all of Luna’s life at the White Palace to be certain it was cured. What would be left of the child’s memories, after that? To do such a thing would go beyond breaking Luna’s trust; it would be akin to murder.
Dia stepped up to the beetle, still scratching desperately at the bars. His face was a horror, his eyes a terrifying funhouse mirror version of her own. No wonder the sight of her blood had unnerved Luna so, when it poured from the man in rivulets of tears, collecting in pustules under his chitin. Her magic—the same magic that had so comforted the moths, the same magic that had been meant to bring light and hope—had done this, her hand had wrought this.
It was easy to forget, after so long, that she was the evil Luna had been created to destroy. Luna, apparently, had not forgotten.
She looked over at the Pure Vessel. The false memory had skipped ahead again, and it stood in front of the King, holding a mass of grey fur and orange meat that turned her stomach to look at. The Vessel’s hands shook.
Her own thoughtless magic had caused this to happen in the first place. Dia could not use magic to fix it.
Swallowing her nausea, she stepped up, placing a hand on the Pure Vessel’s. Her palmpads stuck to the drying orange blood as Luna startled, whirling around to look at her as if for the first time.
“I did this,” she said softly. “I did this to myself, and you had nothing to do with it. It was my fight, my choice, my burden to take. Lay it down, child.”
Her stomach roiling, she reached down, forcing Luna’s orange-stained fingers to unclench from the horrible mass of gray fur. It slid to the ground with a sickening wet slap and a clatter of metal horns on stone.
“Don’t listen to her lies. She means to lead you astray from your purpose,” hissed a voice, and Dia looked up in horror to see that the memory of the Pale King had spoken. “This is why you must be hollow. You must be pure. Or all of this was for nothing—“
“Hush,” she snapped, and if she manipulated the dream just a tiny bit to silence the King, it was truly for the best. It couldn’t truly be him, anyway, the way it had reacted to her. She suspected it was Luna’s own voice, given a horrible mouthpiece.
How could the King have ever thought his Vessel mindless? Luna had the most overactive imagination she’d ever seen, even if the child primarily used it to torture itself.
“We were wrong to involve others in our war. You. Him,” she said, gesturing at the Infected beetle. “We were gods. We had no business using children to fight for us.”
She reached for Luna’s face, but it twisted away from her, eyes still on the grey corpse at its feet.
“You never hurt me,” she whispered. It was a lie and the truth blended together. She was not the corpse on the floor—and Luna never needed to know about the moths, or the wound on her chest. A god protected her tribe, even if her tribe had been whittled down to one person. “You could never hurt me. Please, leave this place and come back with me. There are better dreams to have.”
Luna stayed silent, and she wondered if it could not speak here—in this memory of the White Palace, a time when a voice had been denied it. So she took its hand instead, and in the wordless quiet, she began to hum the song the two of them knew so well, the song that she had sung to it in the temple and when it had been lost in the Lord of Shades.
Luna did not respond, but after a few seconds its posture sagged. She took that as permission, leading it by the hand down the long white corridor and away.
oOo
Dia woke in the light and heat, kneeling on the stone floor with Luna slumped against her. The child did not respond when she moved, and for a second she panicked–had something gone wrong? Had she left Luna behind in the false memory?
But Luna’s weight against hers was limp and relaxed, not stiff and catatonic as it had been before. Essence flickered around the edges of their shared telepathic link, and Dia sighed with relief–she had left Luna in the dream. Its mind, at least, was safe. In that world, perhaps it could find a little peace from the terror it had just left.
Its body, on the other hand, not to mention her own, was a different story. They had journeyed farther out in the Marrow than Luna’s maps reached, and Dia had no idea how long it would take for that wicked little silk creature to recover. When she did, though, the girl would be back with a vengeance.
Should she carry Luna back to the campsite? It was slightly safer there, with the improvements Luna had made to the camp’s fortifications, and she could wait there for Luna to wake up naturally.
But…she had only defeated Lace because of the good fortune of the Marrow’s lava fields. The campsite held no such protections, and Dia was not confident she could defeat the agile fencer in a contest of skill alone. And if she failed…argh, she had not cared for Flick and his bumbling inability to properly set broken chitin, but she didn’t particularly want his death on her hands if Lace came to the camp looking for vengeance.
No, Dia realized, heart sinking, it was not safe to remain in place and not safe to go backwards either. She would have to push forwards into unknown territory and hope she did not encounter a serious threat before Luna awoke; she was at loath to force the child awake and break the healing process she had begun. With a sigh of resignation, she tied Luna’s nail to her cloak and hefted the child up into her arms. She turned to leave, and froze.
Someone was coming up the path ahead. Not the silken fencer–the footfalls were much too heavy, and as they got closer Dia could hear a woman’s voice humming tunelessly. Before Dia could move to hide, or draw Luna’s nail, the woman had turned a corner. She was a squat bug, with a protuberant nose and hooded red cloak.
In a somewhat unwelcome sign, her arms were full of dozens and dozens of bones.
“Oh?” The woman’s eyes fell on Dia. “Now just who are you?”