"I know it seems like the world is so hopeless.
(It's like Wonderland~)"


Hey, Chance? Maybe we should take a breather before we keep going.

...Yeah, that's not a bad idea. Never hurts to take stock.


Name: Chance

Items: Smartphone, Mantis Claw, Iselda's nail, old messenger bag, pink crystals, four glass jars, Colt Python (2/6 rounds)

Abilities: Advanced restoration magic (Focus), Mantis claws

Outfit: Deep-green bomber jacket, red scarf, dark-grey t-shirt, tan cargo pants, black ankle-high Converse shoes

Bio: A human who lost his memories crossing over into Hallownest and was subsequently Infected, putting his mental state into question. An underwhelming fighter, his only real strength is in his unique healing magic, able to heal others as well as himself. The full extent of his restoration magic's capabilities is currently unknown.

Name: Tusk

Items: Sharpened nail, Mothwing cloak, Mantis claw, map and quill

Abilities: Nail proficiency, Focus, Vengeful Spirit, dash, Mantis claws

Outfit: An old cloak made of Mothwing, and nothing else.

Bio: A mute little knight, Tusk is as adorable as they are frighteningly powerful. They are frequently referred to as a "Vessel," and their past is completely unknown. Their main drive seems to be the eradication of the Infection. As the only competent fighter in the group, they seem to have taken Chance under their wing.

Name: Jeremy

Items: Seemingly nothing but the clothes on his back.

Abilities: Extensive, but fractured knowledge about both Earth and Hallownest; best damn cook you've ever met.

Outfit: Oak green cloak and hood, striped blue t-shirt; well-used, off-white cargo pants, black rain boots

Bio: A half-human, half-moth hybrid. Seems to be about Chance's age. Having lost his memories to Hallownest's border as well, almost everything about him is a mystery. Although his personal life is unknown, he remembers specific and almost trivia-like information from both worlds that proves surprisingly useful. He relates to Chance's situation and has grown attached to him, joining the group in hopes of finding his past as well.

Current Charms: Wayward Compass, Gathering Swarm, Soul Catcher, Dashmaster, Mark of Pride, Thorns of Agony.

Geo: 243


Chance rushed down the shaft as fast as he could, risking some kind of injury, jumping and climbing down after Jeremy, who seemed far too excited about whatever was down here.

"J-Jay, where're you-"

"C'mon!" Jeremy only laughed. "Trust me, you're gonna wanna see this!" Still refusing to explain what 'this' actually was, Jeremy jumped down another hole.

Chance could only sigh; next to him, Tusk slid down the wall, walking up and patting his leg.

"Sorry for dragging you around like this."

Tusk tilted their head, looking somehow confused. They shrugged, however, and continued their descent. Chance followed suit, until the path reached an end at a glowing crack in the brick wall.

Shuffling through the crack that he could only barely fit through, he popped out on the other side, and his eyes widened in awe. Beneath the City of Tears was another massive cavern, not with skyscrapers and empty cities, not with shambling husks and zombies, but filled from end to end all the way to the brim with…

"...Junk." He turned to Jeremy, noting his excited grin. "What is this place?" (He wanted to ask, "Why'd you bring me here?", but he'd feel terrible if he ruined Jeremy's mood.)

"The Junk Pit," Jeremy explained. "It's where most of Hallownest's trash winds up. But not 'trash' as in half-eaten junk food and useless smelly stuff, but trinkets unfortunately left to the elements. There's history waiting to be found here!"

Jeremy's eyes sparkled as he gazed down into the cavern below; crystal-blue water snaked between islands of discarded metal and plastic, the strange light reflecting up at them and illuminating their faces in a wavy sky-blue pattern from their vantage point high above. Far in the distance, Chance could almost spy the mushrooms of the Fungal Wastes, and some large Fungoons floating around.

Chance peered over the ledge, his breath catching in his throat from the steep drop. Stepping back, he turned to Jeremy again. "Do we have time for history?"

"Not just Hallownestian history. Human history."

That made Chance freeze, and do a double-take at Jeremy. "...What?"

Instead of explaining, Jeremy threw off his cloak, letting his large, colorful moth-wings stretch outward freely with a tense smile. Running to the ledge, Chance couldn't even react before Jeremy leaped off into the wasteland below.

Chance wasn't a good judge of distances, but they were at least a good fifty feet into the air.

He jumped after Jeremy with a panicked scream, his arms latching around Jeremy's waist as they fell together. Jeremy shouted in confusion, but his wings extended outward, keeping both of them steady as they soared over the sea of rainwater and refuse.

At least, until they crash-landed into the trash.

With the metallic sound of clutter smashing into each other, Jeremy and Chance hit the ground running, trying to keep their balance but finding no stable ground to walk on in the piles of trash, and collapsed into the junk like children falling into a leaf pile.

Jeremy's head popped out of the pile, some torn-off scrap metal sitting atop his head like a hat. "Chaaaance! What was that for?! I can glide just fine!"

Chance struggled to pull himself to the surface, but managed to rest the upper half of his body somewhere stable. "I… holyfuck, I didn't… know you could… fly…" Chance heaved through deep, gasping breaths.

Jeremy stared at Chance, before a nervous laugh escaped him. The kind of laugh that happens after a heart-stopping moment, when you realize everything is actually fine. "Well… I'm glad you're looking out for me, I guess!" Jeremy gave a warm smile.

Tusk walked up to them, unfazed by the heaping piles of trash, cliff-faced as ever. Chance couldn't help but give them a look. "And how'd you get down, huh?"

Tusk only shrugged. Chance sighed; knowing them, they probably just jumped down without a thought.

"Help us up?"


"...Y'know, it's more like gliding than actual flying," Jeremy spoke up suddenly. He and Chance were exploring the Junk Pit in comfortable silence before he spoke up. Chance was sifting through the piles of scrap metal that were strewn about everywhere; most of them warped and torn, and the ones that weren't he still couldn't identify.

Chance paused, tossing the junk he was holding into the pile with a crash. "Gliding?"

"Yeah. My wings aren't strong enough to create lift, but they can help slow down a fall." He laughed, "I didn't know they could support two people, though!"

Chance gave a single chuckle, before he frowned, crossing his arms. "I dunno if I'd call it 'support'. We weren't really flying, we were just…"

"Falling with style?" Jeremy suggested, making Chance turn to him, surprise on his face. The moth hybrid shrugged, "We were both panicking. If we tried it again, we could probably handle it a lot better."

Kicking some piles of trash around by the riverbed(there was no real "solid ground" in the Junk Pit, only water and piles of trash everywhere, some more stable than others), Jeremy froze. He dove into the scrap, shoving bits around as he dug.

"Aha!"

Jeremy grabbed his treasure, and lifted it high into the air, scrap slipping off of him as he presented it. Chance looked once, then twice, then had to do a triple-take at what he was seeing in Jeremy's hands. A black, rectangular box, with a layered vent on all sides and a familiar blue etching on the front. Made not of metal or wood, but of plastic.

"This… looks familiar! Somehow! I don't know exactly what it is. It's important, though, I can tell!"

Chance walked up wordlessly, his expression unreadable. Jeremy handed the black box to him, and Chance weighed it in his hands, feeling around it, almost like he was less trying to inspect it and more trying to ensure it was real. He looked back up at Jeremy.

"This is a Playstation 2."

Jeremy blinked. "A… what? Play… sta-"

"Jay, this is a FUCKING PLAYSTATION OH MY GOD!" Chance reared his arms up and shoved the box into Jeremy's arms before he could accidentally break it. He darted away, screaming like a madman and laughing all the while. Tusk wandered up and tilted their head in confusion, but seemed almost used to this behavior.

"W-What is it, though?"

A good distance away, Chance trudged through a shallow river, splashing water everywhere before leaping into a pile of trash and laughing like a child.

"IT'S HUMAN!" he hollered at the top of his lungs in ecstasy.

Jay blinked. "...Human?"

Chance scrambled up to look at Jeremy. "That's HUMAN! S-So that means there's stuff coming INTO Hallownest from the outside! And I doubt anyone just brought it here, it probably wound up here on accident, just like me- Jay, somewhere in Hallownest, there's a- some kind of path or portal or whatever the fuck, that's passively active, all the time! And that means it can get me home!"

Jeremy's brows furrowed, not quite following the jump in logic, already thinking about the many holes in that idea. He gave a weak, preformative smile for Chance's sake, but it fell.

Chance gave a final heaving breath, his excitement leaving him. Hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath, he looked up at Jeremy's sullen expression. "Whu… What's wrong?"

Jeremy gave a sigh. "Chance… Don't forget, something surrounding this kingdom wiped our memories."

Both Chance's ecstatic smile and his heart fell like a stone.

"If we try to leave before getting rid of that thing," Jeremy continued, his voice solemn, "It'll erase us all over again. We'll have done all of this for nothing."

Chance fell back, sitting down in the trash pile, his mood dampened. "...Oh."

Jermey looked upset, his face downcast, but he forced a smile for Chance's sake. "Well, hey! If we can cure the Infection, we can destroy a mind-wipe barrier, too! As long as we're together, right?"

Tusk grabbed Chance's pant leg and tugged. He laughed, picking the small warrior-bug up and embracing them and Jeremy at the same time.

"Together."


Jeremy and Chance had spent the last hour scouring through the Junk Pit, collecting anything human-looking they could find and making one big pile of it in the middle. They found all sorts of things, none of which seemed to fit in any category other than "from Earth".

They found dirty Rubix cubes, a guitar that was missing two strings, a clock that was missing the minute hand, a shattered wristwatch, a dulled switchblade, a VHS player, a waterlogged Guess Who? game, a weathered dress shoe(they couldn't find its brother), and a muddy copy of some illegible novel.

Tusk had also contributed; they had no voice and no expression, but solely through body language, Chance could tell they were extremely confused. Chance had no good way of explaining what a "human" artifact looked like, so they ended up guessing what was of interest and what wasn't.

(Chance let them add a few not-so-useful items to the pile as well, just because they looked so proud to have found them on their own.)

Jeremy tossed a couple of filthy and tattered t-shirts onto the pile that anyone else would want to have stay in the garbage. Wiping his hands, their fluff now tainted with junkyard water, Jeremy paused when he noticed Chance sitting alone, sitting on the top of a trash hill, facing out over the expanse that was the Junk Pit.

"What's wrong?", he asked. Chance was holding the Colt Python, opening and closing the cylinder, spinning it in his hands, fidgeting with the loaded firearm with a thoughtful look in his eyes.

"'s nothin," Chance mumbled. He hit the release rod on the cylinder, dropping all of the bullets into his hand. He eyed them, studying the two live rounds and the four empty cartridges. "Just… thinking about this thing."

"What about it?" Jeremy pried a bit further.

Chance shrugged. "I mean… it's probably the strongest weapon in Hallownest, a gun in a world of swo- er, nails. But I've only got two shots. What are they for? I keep thinking about it, but can't come up with any good uses for them."

Jeremy thought about this for a moment. He sat down beside Chance, taking care not to slip down a landslide of junk. "Well… you can't predict the future. No use trying to plan that far ahead."

"It still feels important, though."

The moth-human hummed as he pondered the mystery of the gun. "Well… if you want something to think about… instead of asking 'Where will these two bullets go?' , think about 'What happened to the other four bullets?'."

Chance blinked out of his stupor. "That's… a good question. It could be nothing, but…"

"If the gun's in Hallownest, who's to say those shots weren't fired here, too?"

Chance ran his fingers over the bullets, before his head snapped up to look Jeremy in the eyes. "Are you saying other humans could've been here?"

"Well… Yeah? I thought we established that." Jeremy crossed his arms, thinking. "I'm saying that one of those humans brought that gun, fired four shots, and then left it here."

"But… how's that help us?"

"Honestly? I don't think it does. But if you really wanna know more about human history in Hallownest, then that's a start to work off of."

Chance looked down at the gun, unsure what to think. Sliding the bullets back into the cylinder, he snapped the gun shut with a resounding click!. With a groan, he stood up to keep searching, turning around to see Tusk holding a-

Click.

"UWAAH-!"

Chance stumbled backwards, rolling down the junk hill, trash falling all over him until he landed in the water at the bottom with a Splash! Pulling his again-soaked head out of the probably unsanitary water, his panicked gaze shot up to see Jeremy was rolling over laughing, struggling not to fall down the hill and join him.

Next to him stood Tusk, holding a weathered AK-47 that was about their size. They pulled on the trigger, only getting empty clicks, showing the gun was (sadly) either empty or somehow broken.

Stuck on his ass halfway in the waste water, Chance crossed his arms and pouted with as much anger as he could. "You're gonna give me a heart attack one of these days, Tusk."

Jeremy was still laughing.


Relooking over the rifle once he had dried off, Chance and Jeremy couldn't find any obvious issues with it mechanically(aside from being a bit wet, if that mattered), but the magazine was empty.

"What're our odds of finding a full magazine somewhere else down here?" Chance asked.

Jeremy only shrugged. "Slim to nil. We're just trying to collect anything human-looking; trying to find anything that specific is futile." Chance nodded; about what he expected. Besides, he doubted he would know how to handle such a weapon safely, if he could barely be comfortable around a revolver. (And the idea of Tusk using it instead was… bone-chilling.)

But Jeremy smiled, swishing his cloak from side to side. "But that's okay! We'll be fine on our own." He gave a comfortable smile, and Chance couldn't help but smile back.

Jeremy hugged himself, saying, "As the great warrior poet Ice Cube once said, 'If the day does not require an AK, then it is good.'"

Chance's smile fell into exasperation, staring at Jeremy. His mouth agape, but not saying a word.

"...Just throw it in the pile. Whatever. Let's move on."


While old human junk did exist down here, it wasn't quite as prevalent as the regular, unrecognizable Hallownestian junk. It was a matter of poking about to unearth the more interesting trinkets, and even then, most of them proved useless and not worth holding onto. Their little pile slowly grew as they continued their search, Chance and Jeremy fanning out farther and farther to find more.

Maybe they could be sold to Lemm? Otherwise, it was all just weighing them down as, well, junk. Useless in function if not form, and sadly, useless to helping Chance's memory.

A small portion of him had been hoping the artifacts could spark something in his mind, but the hope had withered into a dull pessimism after the first dozen or so finds.

He could recognize them all easily, like the back of his hand. Rubix cubes and the Playstation were things that could while away endless hours, the guitar was an instrument, so on and so forth. He knew exactly what each could do, and was for, but that was all. No real emotional connection, no specific memories, nothing.

It was sapping to consider, not to mention infuriating. Not a sharp pang, but dull, like a plastic knife. Uncomfortable, but not painful. A scabbed wound itching, nothing more.

Still, it was nice to see something from Earth, even if he couldn't remember a damn thing about himself.

Hallownest's relics, on the other hand, were anything but. A stark contrast to his preserved knowledge of humanity's relics. There were common parallels, such as discarded lamps and fences, not to mention warped, imperfect nails, but others were entirely foreign or unexplainable. An odd, spiraled piece of wood. An intricate sculpture made out of silvery, rustless rods of metal. A cage that could, in theory, barely hold him, twisted beyond belief, its metal off-color and the opposite of uniform. (A surprising amount of metal. Hallownest could probably benefit from a recycling program.)

Strangely, he found plenty of old human clocks, both mechanical and digital, but none of Hallownest design.

...Now that he thought about it, the only timekeeping device he had seen since arriving in Hallownest had been his phone. There had been no clocks, nor sundials, not even an hourglass. It wasn't as if they would be difficult to make; he knew some human clocks were marveled for their intricacy, but there were so many easier ways to do it, too. Hallownest had created engineering marvels, creations of intricacy and magnitude to be comparable, and in some cases, surpassed human design by leaps and bounds. Yet clocks were too difficult?

That really was Hallownest's style, wasn't it? All macro, but nothing micro. All external, impossible to internalize. Only ever seeing the bigger picture, without a thought for the smaller details. A concept he could barely conceptualize.

Even now, it was such a strange shock when he checked the time, like he was violating some irrevocable rule.

In these caves, time may as well stand still.

And yet, the Manti had their festival coming up soon. An anchored anniversary in a sea of non-temporal space. It felt strange, foreign. As if it shouldn't exist. Not normally, at least.

If humanity's influence had been seeping in, could it be responsible? Time was an intrinsically human concept, after all. Was the same not true for the bugs? Time flowed, but went unobserved. Rowing down a river they didn't measure.

"And do you truly believe you have the strength to bear the harsher truth of this kingdom's stasis, as well as the sacrifice that keeps it standing?"

...Stasis, huh? Was this what she meant? A world forever frozen and dead; a corpse that would never decay. It was death, but it was not granted the mercy of having an end. Stuck forever on the knife's edge, forever teetering closer and closer, but never being put to rest.

The Sunset Festival, a timed event in a world without time. An anomaly that shouldn't be possible, that shouldn't exist.

Like him. Like Jeremy.

Climbing the top of a strangely steep hill, his foot stepped on a piece of metal. Something thin and soft, bending from the pressure. Un-Hallownest. For all their strange faults, their metal was robust and sturdy. But more importantly, it was flat; an actual surface, and not just a pile of trash for him to sink into if he wasn't careful.

Sweeping his leg to get the trash away, his eyes fell upon a solid white surface; dirty and dented, but it was one object, and much, much larger than anything they'd seen yet.

Pushing more junk aside with his feet, he panicked when he stepped off the ledge of the large, white surface and sunk into the trash up to his calves. His startled yelp echoed through the massive landfill cavern, and Jeremy, a ways away on another trash island, turned to look at him.

"Are you alright?!" he shouted over.

"Y-Yeah, I'm fine. Come take a look at this! I think I found something." While Jeremy made his way over, wading through trash and disturbingly blue water, Chance kept pushing trash out of the way, eventually getting down a good few inches on the side of the white box. Near the top of the side panel, he found two long, brown-orange stripes that seemed almost familiar.

Jeremy clambered up the hill, reaching behind Chance and looking around at the uncovered parts of the object. His eyes laying on the two orange stripes, his eyes widened.

"...There's no way."

Jeremy started kicking trash out of the way with a renewed fervor, metallic clutter banging and smashing as he shoved it down the hill and out of the way. Chance, confused, helped as well, managing to dig low enough to grab heaping armfuls of trash to hurl away and into the water below with a splash.

As they worked, whittling down the side of the trash mountain, the glint of recognition and excitement in Jeremy's eyes only grew, and even Chance started to realize what exactly awaited them below. They just had to dig low enough to reach the door.

Tusk settled themselves higher up, their stubby legs dangling off the edge of the large, white object as they watched him and Jeremy work. Glancing up at them, Chance tilted his head in confusion when he saw the grey, muddy thing they were grasping with both arms.

"...Whatcha got there, Tusk?" They held it up; surprisingly, it was a small plushie of a Tiktik, about the size of Tusk's own body. It may have once been soft and cute, but its exposure to the elements had weathered it down, leaving it filthy and torn in some places. Judging from how they held it close to their body, they'd already grown quite attached to it.

"Uh… That's… pretty cute, Tusk!" Chance smiled, giving a thumbs up. He wasn't sure what exactly to say. "What'dya say we clean and patch 'em up later, when we find the time?" Tusk nodded with more energy than they usually did; that might be a fun thing to do with them later.

Shoving a massive heap of trash down the hill, Jeremy wiped his hands and looked at the product of all their hard work. He put his hands on his hips, sighing with awe as he took it all in. "...It's real. I can't believe it."

Chance crossed his arms, getting a nice eyeful of what they'd found. "I have no idea how or why, but… I'm not complaining."

Tusk looked down at the object they were sitting on; below them, still half-buried under a mountain of junk; was an entire goddamn RV.

Its white surface was splotched and dented, yet being covered in all that metal probably helped preserve it better than if it were left exposed. A large crack or two ran through the side window, the colorful vinyl decor was peeling, and there was heavy rusting everywhere with exposed metal. At least one of the tires had completely blown out, though it wasn't like they'd be taking this thing anywhere with it stuck so deep.

Jeremy walked up to it, running his paws over the side, where a large W symbol was painted on. "I don't know much about cars, especially RVs, but… this looks like it might be from the 60's or 70's. The name on the side says 'Minnie Winnie.'" He snorted. "Pfft. 'Minnie Winnie.' That's a dumb name."

Chance approached the side door, and pulled on the door handle - it didn't give at first, but with a bit more force, the door popped open, revealing an eerie darkness inside. Patting around near the inside wall, Chance's hands ran over what felt like a light switch, and he turned them on.

It was a miracle that the inside lit up at all; Jeremy stood behind him in the narrow doorway, his eyes full of stars and "ooo"ing at the inside. It seemed like an older interior, but unlike the outside, it was surprisingly well-kept. The walls and cabinets all had a rustic wood design to them, uncolored and unvarnished, only with a slight smooth film over it. The floor had a plush, grey carpet that Chance felt absolutely awful about walking all over with muddy shoes. The chairs and couches all had a retro brown and orange plaid to them, reinforcing Jeremy's assessment of it being 70's era.

It featured a sink, stove, oven, refrigerator, and even a bathroom, although Chance doubted that any of these worked. Those, and many of the smaller electronics seemed very dated, yet didn't show any obvious signs of use nor abuse. Above the driver's seat was a small crawlspace with mattress cushions, seemingly large enough to hold two people.

Jeremy walked through, taking everything in. "Wow. Just… wow. I've never seen one of these before…"

He stumbled away as Tusk darted under his legs and deeper into the RV, running up to the front. They held their plushie to their chest, looking around curiously, before jumping up into the driver's seat, settling themselves into the soft chair that looked way too big for them. They turned to look at Chance, who laughed.

"You don't happen to have a license, do you?" he joked. Tusk tilted their head in confusion, and Chance's heart melted just a little bit more.

Jeremy sat himself down in a booth seat of a small table, drumming his fingers on the wood surface. "This is… this is good. This is really good," Jeremy said, enthusiastic as always. "We should rest here for a while. It's in a landfill, but the inside seems clean enough. ...Very well kept, actually." He ran a paw along the cushions of the chair; not quite immaculate condition but remarkably well-preserved for being in a dump for however many years.

Chance walked around, looking over the appliances. The refrigerator in particular caught his eye; maybe he was imagining it, but there seemed to be a pale, ethereal glow about it, almost imperceptible in the old cream-colored light of the RV. Raising a hand to its surface, a thin sheet of plywood designed to blend in with the rest of the interior, he felt some kind of wall. Some invisible thing that he didn't quite feel on a physical level.

He took a nervous breath. ...Why was he nervous? It was just a fridge. He could almost feel Jeremy's eyes on his back as he grabbed the fridge's door handle, and pulled it open.

The barrier he felt before didn't break exactly, but felt more like he just… Well, like he opened a door. It wasn't a barrier to keep him locked out; only to keep what was inside and outside separated. Inside the fridge - impossibly still cold - the first thing Chance's eyes fell on was a single notebook, tucked into the shelf on the door of the fridge.

Ignoring everything else inside, he grabbed the notebook and held it in his hands. Cold to the touch, having been in a fridge (even though that fridge shouldn't have been cold, either), he flipped it open to a random page.

Still need to talk to Sylv about her old man. Z should take care of her til then. Meds doin good but get tired easy; ask about that

This… he could read this, he realized with a growing shock. It was English, not the Hallownestian he had grown to resent. Well… if it was inside of a human RV, it probably shouldn't be surprising. Whoever owned this thing left this notebook behind as well before it got dumped here. But this truck had been here for a long time…

He flipped to another page.

L gettin antsy; he hiding something? ask about that later. or bully him into spilling. whatever works. ask Sylv whats going on at the Sanctum. Whered Biggie go? promised to take bubs to see momma

Chance furrowed his brow; none of these notes made any sense to him. Who wrote this, and when? It didn't seem like a proper journal or diary so much as it seemed like a place to put reminders. Everything was short and abbreviated, nothing made sense without context he didn't have.

Thisll prob be my last entry in this stupid book. basically getting kicked out of this kingdom. "for my own good" or some bullshit like that. its true that things have gotten a little somewhat a lot worse lately, but im. scared. I dont know whats left for me back on the other side. i dunno if i can even go back.

its true that if i went back now, maybe i can finally catch the fuckr with the gun, put all of this to rest for good. but is it even worth it at this point? throwing everything away just for some petty truth?

im scared. for hallownest. for the future. most of all, i'm scared for bubs. but i have to trust that itll all be okay in the end. i have to stay strong, if not for myself then for her.

...The rest was illegible. Whatever else was written had been smudged by drops of water on the notebook. Looking over the document again, he tried to look for anything out of place, any kind of patterns. He…

...Had he seen this handwriting before?

...did I ever tell you…?

"Chance?" he was startled out of his thoughts by Jeremy placing a paw on his shoulder. Chance only could look into his dark and yellow eyes for a moment before a resounding headache throbbed through him, and he hissed in pain. He leaned his shoulder on the fridge as he held a hand to his temple, massaging it to try and make it fade.

Tusk turned around from the driver's seat to look at him. Jeremy squeezed his shoulder, concern written across his face. "H-Hey, maybe we should rest here for a little while? All that dirty water couldn't've been good for you, and you've got bags under your eyes…"

If Chance could see himself in a mirror right now, he doubted he'd recognize his own face. His hair was frayed and filthy with his last proper bath being several days ago, and his face was scratched and dirty like he'd just been in an explosion. His eyes were still stained with that ugly, terrifying orange, with dark bags curling underneath from his lack of proper sleep.

Jeremy gave a comforting smile, like he could read his thoughts. "I bet it'd be nice to fall asleep without getting knocked out for once, right? C'mon!"

With some help, Chance managed to crawl his way up into the loft area above the driver's seat, groaning all the while as Jeremy turned the lights off. He rolled onto the plush bed, his headache lightening up but still pounding in his head, making him squeeze his eyes in pain as he rolled to the furthest back corner of the loft…

...and Jeremy hopped right on up with him.

"D'ya mind if we share? There's nowhere else." The moth hybrid rolled up into the bed next to Chance, who blinked in surprise, but didn't protest. Jeremy hummed as he tried to curl up in a way that was comfortable without getting into Chance's space too much.

An almost inaudible patter of footsteps hopped up into their loft, and Tusk curled up between the two of them effortlessly. Still holding their dirty plushie tight, they pressed up against Chance's warm body, seeming to hunker down for sleep. Jeremy gave a soft laugh, petting their porcelain head with his paw.

"It's not much. Not even a blanket or pillow, but…" He looked up, through a window on the side of the RV. A dirty, fractured window, looking over a dirty, fractured world. Chance didn't know why the water down here had a blue glow to it, but the soft light trickled through the grime and cast a mysterious aura over Jeremy's expression.

With the lights out, the RV was dark, and every other window was blocked up by junk on all sides. It was just him, Jeremy, Tusk, and this tiny window.

A long silence fell between them. Jay's eyes were forced closed as he tried to sleep. Chance just lay there, waiting for his exhaustion to whisk him away somewhere better for a while. Eyes half open, he cast his gaze over Jeremy's half-asleep form; his oak-green cloak draped over most of his body, but his fluffed-up paws still stuck out from his oversized sleeves, and Chance couldn't tear his eyes away from the large wings on his back, softly fluttering with Jeremy's breaths.

The antennae dangling out from his mop of blonde hair twitched, and Jeremy's eyes fluttered open, his dark yellow eyes looking up into Chance's bright orange ones. Chance tensed up; was he staring?

"C-Can't sleep either?" he whispered, hoping not to wake Tusk up. Chance shook his head; he was tired, but not the kind of tired you could sleep away. It was the kind of tired that seeped into your bones like lead and drowned out all your thoughts with static.

Jeremy seemed to pick up on this from his dull eyes and his high, escaping his lips with a funny vibrating noise. He reached around him, grabbing the edge of his green cloak, and throwing it over both of their shoulders for warmth.

"S-Sorry. It's still a bit damp…" he apologized with a warm smile on his face. He averted his gaze from Chance's, inching closer to him. Tusk, who was still sandwiched between them, started to slump forward, their porcelain mask sunk into Jeremy's shirt and into the fluff on his chest underneath.

Jeremy giggled to himself, trying not to wake the small knight up. But with a low sigh, his smile fell, and Chance witnessed a strange exhaustion in Jeremy's yellow eyes that he felt didn't belong there. As his eyelids closed, he heard him mumble something under his breath just before he fell into the uncertain lull of sleep,

"...What's left for us here, Chance?"

Chance blinked, thinking about how to respond, before he noticed that Jeremy was already asleep, his breaths low and soft. He looked over his face again, noticing details he didn't see before; light shadows under his eyes from stress, cuts along his lips, a very slight crease in his brow.

He reached an arm out to wrap around Jeremy's shoulder, pulling him closer. "I don't know," he said more to himself than anyone else, as the shadows around his vision rose up to consume him into a much-needed sleep.


He jolted awake, and the first thing he noticed was the color.

Purples and blues and yellows and reds and greens flashed across his blurred vision, somehow distorted into an almost familiar shape in his blurry eyes. He also noticed he was sitting upright all of a sudden, instead of laying on his side like he was just a moment before.

He rubbed his eyes to clear them, blinking some of the sleep away, and his jaw dropped in awe. He was sitting on the cold bench of a ferris wheel, raised high into the air over a brilliant city, awash in neon lights in the dark of night.

His warm breath fogged on the cool glass as he looked over the cityscape, eyes wide as he drank all the details in. In the distance, he saw a massive fountain with jets of water that changed into intricate patterns, he saw buildings that towered over the streets, he saw the silhouettes of palm trees on the streets…

A gasp. "My, this is… quite the remarkable dream." Chance blinked at the voice, turning to face the bench opposite of him. A few paces away, lounging in the red chair on the other side of the large cabin, was-

His orange eyes met her orange eyes.

She wiggled her eyebrows at him with a smirk.

Chance reared his head back and gave the loudest, most frustrated groan he could muster.

"Why won't you leave me alooooooooone~!" he half-sobbed, running his hands down his face. The Radiance only laughed.

"Why, with dreams as bright as these, can you blame me?" Her laughter, although mocking, was also somehow warm and comfortable in a way he didn't fully understand. "Besides, after that last stunt, I'd worried you had gotten bored of me."

"...Last stunt? What… OH." The memory of leaping off the side of a pirate ship came to mind, and Chance shivered - from the cool night atmosphere or from the memory of rain soaking his figure, he wasn't sure.

The Radiance chuckled. "Right. You remember now, don't you? It's unsafe to leap off of boats in a storm; you'd be much better off staying on deck."

Her smile fell into something a bit more somber. "Please don't try to be selfish, Chance. I mean only the best for you, do you know that?"

Her words were scolding, but her tone and expression seemed saddened. But he could never be sure around her - that was part of the reason she terrified him so much, she was only ever readable on the surface. He could only sigh in response, averting his gaze from hers as the side of his head rested on the glass window, staring into his reflection over the blinding city lights.

The Radiance frowned, but straightened up. "So!" she tried to be peppy, "As a show of good faith, I brought along a friend this time. I trust you two are acquainted?"

Chance, needing to muster more effort than he'd have liked, rolled his head over to look to his side, where beside him on the same bench sat…

"...Rio?" The Mantis woman was just blinking her own tiredness away, stretching out with a yawn as she looked between the two of them, her eyes glowing orange as well. (Like they all had their own little Radiance fan club or some shit, he thought bitterly.)

"Aaahh~! ...M-My Light? Is that you? And…" She squinted at him, "Chance? How are you in my dreams, too?"

"You are in his dreams, in fact. With both of you carrying my blessing-" (Chance barely resisted the urge to fly at her when she called her vomit a "blessing") "-I could connect us all together as one dream. Simple."

"Oh, that makes sense," Rio shrugged. "And… where exactly...?" She looked at Chance, only for something behind him to catch her attention, and he could see her orange eyes light up with stars. She moved forward suddenly, leaning over him as she was glued to the sight of the neon city below her, sky-high rainbows rolling over into a grid of warm, cream-colored lights that stretched from horizon to horizon.

"I do believe this is Las Vegas," the Radiance answered. "There's not much of your memories left to work with, but I managed to piece this scene together from what scraps I could find." She growled, sounding bitter about Chance's memory wipe, before she looked out the window with an affectionate sigh. "And what a scene it is indeed…"

She rested her face in her hand, smiling as she gazed over the hypnotic streams of white and red traffic rushing to and fro under the star-sprinkled sky. In the distance, her eyes crossed over the shape of an airplane taking off into the dark clouds, and Rio looked like she was about to cry.

"I-Is… Is this really what your world looks like, Chance?" Her voice was filled with a quaking awe, her face awash in the kaleidoscopic lights of the city below and the pale rays of the stars above.

It occurred to him that Rio likely had never seen the surface before; or at the very least, rarely did. Not only was she seeing the full expanse of a natural midnight sky, but she was probably the only Mantis ever to see the blinding rainbows of a city. The fact that it was Vegas of all places didn't help ease her reaction. Chance couldn't even begin to put himself in her shoes; it must've been so…

"...Overwhelming?" The Radiance hummed. "I can't blame you. Your people are an impressive one, Chance." She gazed out the window, her orange eyes glowing against the glass, her expression unreadable as always. "Why, in all my aeons of existence, I can scarcely remember a sight with such grandeur."

She sighed, and a twisted smile curled up her lips.

"But I think I could do even better."

Chance's lips went dry; he realized how Her mere presence always seemed to keep him silent. Forcing himself to speak, he pushed Rio off of him, who turned to stare out the opposite window, her face pressed to the glass like an overeager child at an amusement park. "W-What do you mean?"

"This is such a beautiful place, isn't it? Perfect in its wonder and beauty. Wouldn't you like to share this experience?" She leaned forward, staring him directly in the eyes, her glare making the back of his skull pound. "Perhaps with that small Vessel friend of yours? Or the good folk up in Dirtmouth? Ooh, I know the rest of the Mantis Tribe would enjoy this place!"

Chance pressed a hand to his temple, seething. "Y-You leave them alone," he stammered under his breath. If the Radiance heard him, she ignored him.

"Oh, or what about Hornet? She'd love a world as gorgeous as this, I'm certain!" She tapped her chin in thought. "Oh, but she's trying to kill you, isn't she? Wouldn't it be so much better if she wasn't? If you two could just get along? I could make it happen, you know. All you need to do... is spread my influence."

Rio suddenly turned around, nearly smacking Chance with her bladed arms. "Jeremy would want to see it, too!" she exclaimed, still grinning from antenna to antenna.

The Radiance's smile… fell. She seemed caught off-guard for once, as she tried to think of what to say. "J...Jeremy. Yes, I'm sure he'd appreciate it all, too." She looked to the side, trying not to make eye contact with Chance. He squinted at her, but didn't press it.

"What does spreading your…" He felt bile rise in his throat. "...Influence, have to do with all of this?"

The Radiance made a rebound from her awkward attitude, and gave a toothy grin. "Everything. The realm of dreams is my domain; the realm of fantasy and joy. A world where all suffering is erased, and there is only light."

She folded her hands across her lap. "But it's a tragedy that such a gift must be temporary, no? As the morning catches up, and the sun rises upon our sleeping figure, we are so cruelly robbed of that wonder." Something in her smile made shivers run up Chance's spine.

"But what if," she mused, "We never had to wake up again?"

Chance pressed his back up against the seat, trying to put as much space between himself and the Radiance as possible. His throat felt dry and his hands wouldn't stop shaking.

"Just think of it, Chance!" she exclaimed in hushed tones. "Think of all the suffering Hallownest has been dragged through, and think of the relief my Light would be to those that struggle to survive! This kingdom - nay, this world could become a utopia with your help. And you-"

she reached out to him, her hand curling in on itself; Chance realized how strangely big this ferris wheel's cabin was, putting her at several paces away, and he thanked the engineers who designed this place.

"-You would be a King of Kings, Chance. You would be a god. One whose power, whose Soul is righteous enough to stand by my side, caring to our subjects as though they are our own children, forevermore." Forever. The way she said it, it felt like Lumaflies were crawling all over his skin. He couldn't tear his eyes away from her if he tried.

Something quaked in front of his eyes, and the Radiance snapped out of her spiel, looking around the area thoughtfully.

"...Hmph. It seems our time here is running short. Again, wouldn't it be nice if you could stay here for so much longer?" She laughed. "Take care, my love. We'll meet again soon."

And like that, he vanished in a flash of light and Essence, his mind returning to the real world.

Rio laughed, wild and unabated.

"Ah-ha-ha, I see your game, you sly thing! Don't think I haven't noticed your form resembling a human!" It was true; for the duration of the conversation, the Radiance had opted into a half-human, half-moth body, not unlike another certain somebody Chance was familiar with. Besides, her true form wouldn't have fit in this glass ball, anyway.

Rio pointed an arm-blade at her, accusing, yet still with a playful mirth about her. "You're trying to seduce the human into joining your cause, aren't you?"

The Radiance crossed her legs, giving an aloof, yet knowing smile. "What can I say? He has… potential."

Rio's laughter echoes through the empty cabin as she, too, faded into the waking world, leaving the Radiance behind on a dark, empty ferris wheel. The silence was maddening, but she rested her face in her hand as she stared out the window, the light of the city below dancing across her face.

"Perhaps I'll file away this dream for safekeeping," she mused, sighing. She felt… drained, gazing out to the world below, longing. "...It's a nice place, your head. Chance…"


Chance felt himself stir awake, and the first thing on his mind was how he'd completely neglected to tell Rio about how they'd gotten Tusk's nail sharpened. Dammit.

As the wisps of his dream faded into mist, he reached around himself to find Tusk and Jeremy already gone, only the latter's cloak covering him like a blanket. He made some animalistic groan; he knew he was roughing it, but not having a pillow did not do his poor neck any favors.

As he sat up, he tried cracking his neck to work out all the kinks. Still feeling off, he tried sitting up straighter, banging his head on the roof of the RV with a hiss of pain.

Jeremy and Tusk, sitting by the breakfast table, turned to look at him. "Morning, sleepyhead!" Jeremy said with a grin. As much as he appreciated it, Chance did not share the sentiment; wrapping Jeremy's cloak around himself for comfort as he tried getting up more slowly, scowling at nothing in particular. "Did you have any good dreams?"

Chance rubbed at his orange eyes, trying to think straight. "...I dunno. Can't remember."

The moth hybrid was still smiling as Chance managed to drag himself down, still keeping the cloak draped over his shoulders. Chance looked over Jeremy again, realizing he'd never gotten a good look at him without his cloak before.

His long-sleeve striped blue shirt was cut open at the back, allowing his colorful wings to spread out openly. The shirt was also cut off at the wrists, presumably so it wasn't tight around all the plush fluff he had there. He wore a dirty pair of off-white cargo pants, which were tucked into his black rain boots. Instead of a normal leather belt, he'd found some abstract colored canvas belt, which without a buckle, he tied off around his hip. His dirty blond mop of hair and the two antennae on it were open to the air.

Jeremy stood as Chance approached him, and he opened the refrigerator door. "I found a bunch of food in here earlier, aside from that book thing. Turns out that pale glow on the fridge was actually a Seal of Stasis - simple magic, but it's kept all the food here preserved enough for us to eat."

He grabbed some plastic wrapped food, before making a face. "Who'd be using a human RV that'd know how to make a Seal of Stasis…? Eh, whatever. I'll take it."

He set a random pile of food down on the table. Granola bars, sodas, instant ramen (how the hell did you cook that?), yogurt, and some Hallownestian food as well, including some dried TikTik meat and some strange type of fruit Chance didn't recognize.

He slid into the table booth with Tusk, poking away at the food before them. Taking a bite into a bar, he blinked - it was really well kept, even after however long it'd been sitting back there, in this tiny corner of a dead world.

"Oh, hold onto some of those granola bars," Jeremy instructed. "Even without a Seal, they still keep remarkably well. Great survival food, we'll need it." Chance nodded shoving a few into his bag.

Jeremy took a bite into a cup of yogurt with a spoon he found(mostly clean, he insisted), making a face. "It's still good, but… Human food is weird. All prepackaged and manufactured. Or maybe I'm just too used to cooking for myself." He shrugged, digging in.

Chance pulled out the notebook they found again. "I wanted to talk about this," he said, flipping it open to the pages he was on. Jeremy took it from his hands and read over it, his brow furrowing as he flipped the pages.

"'Sylv'? 'Z'? What are all these code names for? Secrecy, or just laziness?" He blinked. "'Sanctum'? Oh, they probably mean the Soul Sanctum with this one."

Chance looked up. "...Soul Sanctum?"

Jeremy nodded. "Yeah. It's this old college slash hospital place for scholars studying Soul magic. Since people can't heal others with Soul - 'cept you - and some don't even know how to heal themselves, the Sanctum was a place for mages to study methods of artificially channeling Soul into other people for medical purposes."

His smile turned to a grimace. "...Or at least, that's what it was for, before… y'know."

Chance took a minute to let all this information set in, staring down at his hands while Jeremy kept eating. "...Where is it? Is it… here, in the City?"

Jeremy nodded. "Yeah, I think it's nearby. Why? Did you want to check it out?"

"Y-Yeah, I did, actually." He flexed his fingers as he let cool wisps of Soul flow between them. "I dunno if you noticed, but my magic-" (It felt so weird to talk about "his" magic. Two weeks ago, magic was justy a dumb fantasy element, and here he was now.) "-my magic's been... acting up, lately. Strange things keep happening around me that I can't really explain. If we took a detour to this Sanctum place, maybe I could get some answers?"

Jeremy crossed his arms as he put his empty yogurt cup aside, closing his eyes as he thought. "I dunno… I'm no expert on Soul, but I doubt it'd be easy to decipher whatever kind of notes they have. Plus, isn't the Sunset Festival coming up soon? We gotta get back to the Mantis Village."

"I know, but… I wanna do this. I think we have time." He didn't know that at all. "Please? While we're here."

The moth hybrid laughed. "Ask Tusk, not me! I'm not the one in charge of this journey."

Chance turned to face Tusk, seated next to him. The small knight grabbed a package of ramen from off the table, examining it, trying to pull it open. Chance said, "M-Maybe we shouldn't eat that without cook-"

Tusk shoved the entire package into their eye.

Chance could only watch in horror as the package vanished into the darkness, remembering that Tusk's existence defied even this world's natural laws, for no damn reason. Tusk sat still for a minute, staring off into space, before a crumpled-up wrapper shot out of their eye and onto the table, dripping black.

Jeremy and Chance both eyed the wrapper warily, moving some of their food away from it. "D...Did you like it?"

Tusk's eye coughed up a torn-open flavor packet, too. They gave a thumbs up.


"Where do I toss this?"

Stepping back outside into the Junk Pit, leaving the mysterious RV behind, Jeremy held up an empty plastic cup of yogurt. Chance shrugged.

"I dunno. We're in a junkyard anyway, just throw it somewhere."

Jeremy looked down at the cup in his hands, before rearing back and throwing it as hard as he could with a huff. Being made of light plastic, the cup went only a few feet before falling back to the ground, residual yogurt splattering on the wet metal.

Jeremy frowned. "I feel kinda bad about littering."

Chance shrugged, trying not to hide his smile as he kept walking. As he turned around, something in the distance caught his eye.

"Yo, Jay, what's that thing?"

Jeremy turned to look at where he was pointing. An island of trash or two away, what looked like a massive golden sarcophagus sat half-stuck in the pile of trash. The metal on its surface was severely weathered and slick with mud, looking almost like poor-grade copper more than gold. Wrapped around it were heavy chains, seeming somehow ancient in their wear, with a single large padlock in the center.

He gave the mysterious object a good, long look, squinting to try to see it better from the distance. After a minute, he just shrugged.

"You have a key for it?"

Chance ruffled through his messenger bag. "...No?"

"Well, forget it, then. It's probably nothing."


Chapter name and summary are a reference to Plastic Beach by Gorillaz.

9k word filler/fluff chapter time. including the Hollow Point reference that i've been waiting almost 20 chapters to make lmao

Speaking of guns, a lot of reviewers seem to be wondering what the last two bullets would be for, when I was more thinking along the lines of what Jeremy mentioned (the mystery of where the other four bullets went). I get why you'd think that though, and tbh that was probably bad planning on my part. but maybe those two live rounds will still have a part to play?

i wonder if you can guess who the owner of that notebook is...? i mean, you probably can. but none of whats written will make much sense until we expand on our other story more, which we plan to do soon :)

also if it's not obvious, i'm *slowly* trying to characterize the Radiance, moreso than just "horny goddess". when i wrote *that* scene wayy back in chapter 2(you should know the one), i honestly had no idea what the fuck i was doing, but now it's too late to go back so i'm trying to work with what i have. it'd only make it all worse if i suddenly changed her character for no reason so i have to take the time to transition into something more defined

obvious Godseeker is obvious, but tbh it'll probably be about a billion years before any of that comes into play. one day, though...

please leave a comment, anything and everything from a paragraph to a simple ":D" is my lifeblood