Monomon, the Weavers and the sentries were cleaning up what remained of the previously massive Drowned hordes. The teacher in particular was dragging up fallen sentries and bringing them onto the shore—their bodies soaked and bone chillingly cold.
Meanwhile, on the center of the island, four rulers argued under the still dark sky.
"We could not handle another such attack. This battle has been won. However, we could not stand against another." The White Lady contended.
"We do not possess evidence to think such another attack would occur; It appears that all of the risen dead in the area have been truly put to rest. That is not to account for the experience we have now, nor the strength of Hallownest's might, even in such damaged circumstances." The King argued. Even in his love for his wife, he couldn't help but feel some rage bubble up at the idea of waltzing further into this tomb of a kingdom without knowledge nor undeniable reason.
"We'll wait another two dozen hours and see, if we can protect ourselves we go with the Wyrms plan, otherwise your damn idea of pushing further in." The Beast Queen interjected.
"Simply fortify our defenses, it is not difficult, it is a simple and elegant solution." Vespa screeched, her spirit hovered above the charm her subjects used to move their queens spirit.
"We have neither the time nor the resources for full defensive fortifications!" Hallownest's queen responded.
And so the rulers continued to argue…
Wander listened nervously. They didn't want to hear all the adults—especially their parents—being so mean to each other.
But they caught a few words in the midst of the yelling, something about a scouting group being sent to explore. They loved exploring! They loved when they saw the tears of the city, the machinery of Crystal Peak, the strange and exotic flowers within their mothers garden, they loved the weird bridges they found too, even if they were a little scary.
At first, they thought of asking their father for permission to come along, but when they remembered he was still angry right now, and they didn't want him to be bothered further.
Nooooo, what could they do?
Well… if father was so caught up in the adults yelling at each other thing right now, he probably wouldn't notice if they were gone for a little while. Yes, they would just sneak along like how their little sister always sneaked into the palace kitchen!
It felt… wrong to do something like that without asking him—so many years of only following his will slowly rising to the surface of their mind.
But they would only be gone a little bit. They knew that he might get angry or maybe smother them with concern if he found out, but they were a strong knight that wouldn't get hurt!
They crept through the foreign vegetation that covered the island—slipping through bushes and crawling in the grass.
They kept up their adventure until they saw what they presumed to be the scouting group—their sign language teacher Quirrel, the Watcher, the drawing man who made funny noises with his voice, and what they believed to be the aforementioned man's wife, wielding a extremely long nail in her hand.
The whole situation reminded Wander of how Hornet described hunting, stalking through the undergrowth, growing close and watching without getting too close. But they wouldn't be hurting anything, just being mischievous!
Not far ahead, they saw the crumbling remains of a once grand bridge that connected the island to what they presumed to be the main land, or at least a much larger land mass.
The Watcher carried each of the others over to the opposite side one after another, floating through some unknown method.
Wander lowered their tiny body into the water and began to paddle along the surface—perhaps twenty or thirty meters behind the scouts.
Quirrel had never seen trees before. He had of course seen wooden supports and flooring all across Hallownest, but the material had always been a import from some distant lands. He now wondered if perhaps this land is the only one that has the foliage, and if so whether Hallownest and Minecraftia had interacted some time in the past, perhaps even in the recent past.
Here the trees grew tall and winding, branches and roots mirroring each other, twisting and blocking out the sky and ground respectively. Strange red bulbs hung from many of the branches, dangling down, shining in the rising Sun.
A groan reverberated through the forest. Iselda quickly snapped her eyes to its direction, spying a shambling corpse walking to somewhere deeper into the forest, seemingly unaware of them.
She checked her target. It appeared to be one of those that had attacked the island, although noticeably drier and more rotted.
She hadn't participated much in the fight at the island, opting to stay back and protect Corny, and as such she hadn't noticed at the time how strangely soft the risen dead seemed. They didn't possess an obvious shell, although she saw flashes of something hard and bright yellow underneath the sagging, dirtied fabrics that covered the being's torso.
Looking further between the trees—through the dark and the light fog—she saw rather corpses limping in the same direction with speed unfitting for their decay. Among the others, three seemed as the one she had first seen, although one appeared to have decayed to nothing but the strange yellowish white pieces that poked through the clothing of it's comrades.
She wasn't the only one to notice those around her though. The corpse she had first seen, the one closest to the group wheeled around—the framework snapping in and out of place in it's body as it did so.
Before it could damage anyone, Iselda impaled the undead without much difficulty. Some fluid—a odd mix between light red and dark blue—poured from the wound.
"The others seem to all moving towards one point, we may have some innocents to save." The Watcher stated as the zombie fell to the ground.
Creeping closer through the forest, the warrior saw 4 more of the undead, along with one that seemed to have rotted away to nothing but the strange yellowish white framework.
Looking further between the trees and the fog, she could make out another two figures, slightly taller than the corpses, though with similar proportions.
One was carrying what looked to be a small crate or barrel, while the other wielded two long-handled blades.
As the undead crept closer, one of the figures—seemingly nervous and unused to combat—slammed one of their axes down into a zombie.
The rotting body tumbled to the ground, a iron axe—glinting in the early morning Sun—stuck in it's torso.
As it hit the forest floor, some cold, emotionless realization seemed to make it's way into the corpses eyes, and it lay still, dead form finally put to rest.
Just as one undead was fell, however, another aimed it's weapon. An arrow pierced the air, grazing one of the fog-figures heads.
Both were backing away now. Their eyes rushed from one of their attackers to another, and to the unfamiliar creatures that they now shared the forest with. A slight bit of hope wormed its way into their minds, that if one of those unfamiliar creatures had struck down of the undead… No, they could still be dangerous, and they still needed to make their way back to their village, to Tres Silvae.
Iselda now ran faster, hurrying to destroy the atrophied archer before it noticed her and turned its foreign projectiles upon her. Range was nearly always an advantage. She learned that the hard way throughout her life.
The skeleton finally realized her presence, but before it could even fully turn, it's back was sliced. What looked to be an unnatural deep blue poured from the bones, although in truth it was a writhing dark speckled with searing cyan spots.
Shifting her gaze across the forest-turned-battlefield, Iselda spotted one zombie still intent upon chasing the villagers. The other two, however, had turned her and now drew uncomfortably close.
She darted forward, plunging her nail into one of them. She lifted and swung her weapon, flinging one zombie towards the other.
They fell to the ground in a tangled heap. There was still two problems, however.
The first was that the second zombie was still very much alive, and it's clawing arm stretched far too close to her exposed abdomen.
The other was her nail was still in the first, whose weight now jammed it into the dirt
As hard as she tried, she couldn't get her nail out from under the corpse, she couldn't take the risk to herself or others of running away without it, and trying to punch the clawing, biting corpse would end in disaster.
If it did bite her, would she turn too…?
She had become so focused on the battle that she didn't notice the little shadow that ran from in-between the trees until they slashed through the zombies that troubled her.
She spotted the last zombie put to rest where the strange… child had come from?
What she was looking at was a child, the one that seemed to always be trailing the king, out in the middle of the forest.
The two villagers—lumberjacks both—were now sprinting further down the trail. The sight of an warrior covered in shell—like the spiders that that tormented civilization for as long as anyone could remember—cutting down undead with the strength of a Vindicator cut a terrifying image.
That wasn't even to mention the tiny shadow that had assisted her. The way that it seemed to suck up and destroy the light around it… no, it must have been a trick of the light. The alternative, that there was at least one similar to that horrible god, was too terrifying of an idea to regard as anything but paranoia.
In their haste fueled by panic, however, one of them felt the small crate they held slip from their hand. It wasn't worth to go back for it. It only had some apples, a few lumberjacks tools, and… what was that other thing? They doubted it was anything important.
Quirrel sat upon a log, mulling over all that had just happened.
For a first encounter between civilizations, it didn't go too well. Between the fact that they seemed to believe Iselda would attack them next, and the total lack of actually speaking to one another, he imagined they had made a bad impression.
Now that he thought about it, could they have spoken to each other? There was no reassurance that they spoke the same language, although oddly many travelers that came to Hallownest from other lands spoke a similar enough language to communicate. It was one of the greatest academic mysteries, that so many tongues seemed to have derived from one singular ancient one, even though trying to find the answer yielded few clues.
Before the group had decided to rest here, Quirrel had noticed a small crate that one of the foreigners had dropped in their hurry. Inside he had found some of the red bulbs that hung from the trees nearby, some of what looked to be cutting tools, and a map.
The map in particular caught his interest, especially considering the illustration of dozens of buildings near its center, surrounded by four distinct green regions. One of the regions looked to represent the forest they were currently in, another seemed to be forest of a somewhat different shade, the third yet another forest—this one colored far darker—and the final region was wide and clear of any features other than moss and lakes.
Aside from the battle, first contact, and the map, the Hollow Knight had shown up, having apparently been following them. He had been informed of them and even seen them a few times thanks to his position of being second only to Monomon in assisting with the creation of the vessels, although many of Hallownests citizens didn't even know of their existence, much less having seen them.
Iselda and Cornifier were talking to them now, dumbstruck as the child informed them of their heritage. They had heard whispers of the little shadow, but none had received answers when they asked about them.
"Shouldn't we be bringing you back? Regardless of your parentage, you are still only a child." Cornifier asked.
"I can fight the monsters! You don't have to worry." They wrote back
"Do either of your parents know you're here?" He questioned further.
He took the fact that Wander didn't respond as a no.
Dozens of villagers crowded around the bell that lay at the heart of Tres Silvae, Theo and Isaaclooming over the gathering.
"Is everyone accounted for?" Isaac called out, worry present in each word.
"All but two of the lumberjacks who had went to the cabin in the woods." One of the other villagers responded.
"Call it morbid, but I doubt they'll be returning, we can start the discussion now." Theo stated, the worry in his tone hidden.
"We have much to discuss and prepare for, there are the rumors of Incursoian Patrols nearby, a massive storm of lightning that occurred in the direction of the open ocean, and a shriek emanating from approximately the same direction." The mayor reminded.
"The most worrying is the shriek, the sheer volume combined with the sound itself… it reminds far too much of that noise that the dark god let out when it was unleashed upon this kingdom." Theo stated, his facade of calmness starting to falter.
Then the fact that the sound came from the direction of the sea was truly processed by the crowd.
The Wither was largely thought to be at the old capital, as the dark fog was extremely thick and the undead swarmed even thicker.
The ocean and the capital were in opposite directions from Tres Silvae.
That meant one of two things: Either that the Wither had gone around them without them noticing what-so-ever, or that there was something else—something similar to that dark god—in the direction of the sea.
"Will we prepare to defend, or to flee, Theo?" One of the villagers called out.
"Well, Isaac is the mayor, so the decision is up to him. However, I would suggest fleeing, perhaps trying to find one of the other villages that remain of the kingdom." Theo answered.
"We do not know if the noise was from the Wither itself or not, nor whether the entity responsible intends to attack us directly. For now, fortify the walls, make sure the golems are in the best shape they can be, and send out a pair of scouts everyday. Perhaps consider becoming familiar with defending yourselves." Isaac instructed.
"I will go out to the walls and make certain that they will be able to hold as I am quite familiar with how the walls of the kingdom were made before the fall. If undead arrive, I will hold them off." Theo informed.
Just as the meeting as being dismissed, two figures bolted into the village, exhausted from their long sprint.
One of the two lumberjacks rushed to Theo.
"We've made it back unharmed sir. Although there were potentially dangerous… creatures in the woods. We haven't seen anything like them before, although they appear sapient and insect like in body." The wood worker told.
Theo considered his memories for a moment before replying,
"I have never heard of such sapient bugs, not in my own time or the bestiaries of old. Are you certain your eyes weren't playing tricks on you?"
"I'm sure of what I saw, he can back me up." He pointed to his fellow worker, "Most wielded weapons, and all… five I believe seemed distinct species."
"The authors of those bestiaries searched the world far and wide, I doubt that they would have missed such unique species." Theo retorted.
"Are saying he's lying? Like he said, I saw them too!" The other lumberjack yelled.
"That doesn't… hey, I thought you were carrying some supplies from the cabin back here?" Theo asked, mind wandering.
"Oh, I dropped them on the way near the bug people. Wasn't worth carrying." They answered.
"Wasn't one of the objects in there a map back to here?" The elder asked.
"Yes…" the lumberjack responded.
"You left the bug people, or whatever they are, a map to this village?" Theo asked, rage and worry warring within him.
"Where is Wander?" The White Lady asked, suddenly cutting herself off mid-argument.
"Has anyone seen them since around the time we started arguing?" She continued, yelling across the island.
The argument between the rulers suddenly dropped, anger being overtaken by concern.
The king and his queen searched over the island, finding no Wander.
"Did you just let your child sneak off to gods-knows-where?!" Herrah asked, a mix of concern and anger permeating her tone.
"There's no need to yell. Although it's not for pleasant reasons, Wander doesn't usually go off on their own without asking or telling someone." The King stated.
"The only possibilities are either that they're asleep somewhere on this island and the yelling hasn't roused them, or that they went to the main land. If the latter is true, then the scouting group would have the best chance of finding them." The White Lady deduced.