Quirrel looked out over the City of Tears, listening to the whispering rainfall.

What strange turns his life had taken since returning to Hallownest. He'd explored a ruined kingdom that seemed strangely familiar, battling corrupted bugs and beasts alike, and in time he had regained his memories. He'd helped the little Knight kill his old mentor. And then he'd sat down on the shores of the Blue Lake, intent on that being the last thing he saw in this life.

But fate had had different plans for him.

Quirrel was drawn out of his introspection by a bumping sensation at his claws, and he idly began to scratch behind the Grimmchild's wings.

Yes, fate was a funny thing. There he had been, prepared to end his own life, when the little Knight had shown up and peacefully sat beside him for a time, before leaving him a charm and walking away.

The charm had turned out to be of the summoning type, and what it summoned was...well. A child.

His child, now, he supposed.

The little Knight's motives were inscrutable at the best of times, but...perhaps they had wanted to give Quirrel a reason to live on? Or perhaps they simply trusted Quirrel with their child, if it was indeed their child.

So many questions. Such as, what had happened to the infection, and what was that earthquake that had rocked the foundation of Hallownest some time earlier?

It had been quite dramatic. There had come a low groan that echoed throughout the infected Forgotten Crossroads that Quirrel and the Grimmchild were wandering at the time. Then came a pulse of force, knocking Quirrel off of his hindclaws and sending the Grimmchild plummeting to the ground.

Upon springing upright, Quirrel had seen the infection fade from everything around them. The beasts, once hostile, had settled down, the vicious orange glow in their eyes fading. The putrescent pustules of orange goop had shrivelled up, and the infected moss had settled to its more natural slate blue coloration.

It was over. Somehow the little Knight had won.

So now, here Quirrel was, sitting by a window overlook the Capitol, with a new child and hope that he hadn't felt since...well, since as long as he could remember.

"Kwurl, scratchies!"
Quirrel laughed and resumed scratching between the Grimmchild's wing joints, and he felt them purr with contentment on his lap.

"Ah, I am sorry little one. I have many thoughts on my mind."

The Grimmchild didn't respond. He was young, and not concerned with much more than food, comfort, and casual arson.

With the child satisfied for the moment, Quirrel returned to his thoughts. What would happen now? With the Infection gone, all of the shambling husks had dropped dead. Some lucky few still had bodies that were in good enough condition to live on, but Quirrel doubted that any more than one in a hundred were so lucky. Hallownest was less dangerous now, but it was even more of a mass grave than before.

Was it even possible to reconstruct the kingdom? Should they even rebuild in this cursed place? Perhaps it would be better to let Hallownest fade away until nothing was left but dust and empty shells.

Quirrel's thoughts were interrupted for a third time by some outside influence, and he gave a long suffering sigh.

"What now?"

Someone was laughing in the distance. Despite how far away they must be, Quirrel could hear the boisterous laughter even over the whispering rain, and it was only growing louder.

Soon, Quirrel began to hear words.

"...a...and then...why the beast was no match...And then Fierce Dryya struck with her nail, leaving an opening for the Mighty Hegemol and I to rush in. We bashed at the fiendish Blackwyrm until it bled, and with a shriek, it fled from our kingdom, never to be seen again!"

Quirrel stood up, and the Grimmchild took to the air with only a slight amount of protest. The noisy bug came into view not long after as they trudged up the stairs, and they weren't alone.

Behind the large Dung Beetle in red armour was a sizeable crowd of other bugs. Beetles, ants, stickbugs, dragonflies, pillbugs, and weevils. Quirrel even spotted a few bees, spiders, and mantises.

"And that, my friends, is the tale of the Battle of the Blackwyrm! Ah, and look here, two more wayward bugs that survived! Greetings!" said the Dung Beetle. Quirrel nearly took a step back from the sheer force of personality on display...and from the tremendous stink that the bug exuded.

"Ah. Greetings. I am Quirrel, a wandering, penitent scholar. And this is the Grimmchild."

The Grimmchild giggled and blew out a tongue of flame into the air.

The Dung Beetle guffawed and slammed his claws into his chest several times before striking a pose.

"And I! Am the Dung Defender, also known as Ogrim! Member of the-"

"The Five Great Knights!?" exclaimed Quirrel. His memory was spotty, but he still knew enough to know the name of one of the most famous figures of Hallownest from before the ravages of the Infection.

"Ahaha, my fame has preceded me!" Ogrim laughed. Quirrel saw the spider and mantis share a long suffering look. "You see, sir Scholar, the Infection is gone! I am leading this merry band of bugs across the kingdom in search of all its survivors! Do you wish to tag along with us?"

Quirrel considered this before turning to the Grimmchild. In response, the little firefly (or whatever he was, Quirrel wasn't quite sure) flew over and landed on the head of Ogrim.

"Aha! It seems the small one is on board!"

Quirrel chittered in amusement.

"Indeed. Well then, I suppose I will join this travelling band. Perhaps my knowledge will be of use."

Ogrim laughed again (he seemed to do that a lot) and pointed with one claw.

"Very well! We move onwards and upwards, to the Fungal Wastes!"

. . .

Iselda grumbled to herself as she sorted through the crowded drawers in her home.

"I can't believe Corny wandered off on me while the damned Heir apparent of Hallownest is here with some gangly, creepy, wounded bug! He can't wait until everything has settled down to go exploring? There's black hemolyph all over the ground outside and the Princess is in this podunk town with us and I can't find the godsdamned medical kit!"

Iselda's antenna vibrated in anger before she forcibly calmed herself. Shuffling through another drawer in silence, she huffed as she finally found the medikit.

"Finally."
With her quarry acquired, Iselda exited her home and marched to the location of their two unusual visitors. They were still in the same spot that they had been before, leaning against the bench in the middle of town. The Princess was alternating between worrying over the tall black bug and taking long looks at the sky, which was now orange for some reason (and wasn't that intensely uncomfortable?) while the burning orb had sunk nearly to the horizon. The strange bug who still oozed unusual hemolyph was just staring at the sky.

As she drew closer, she began to hear their conversation...or rather, she heard the Princess talking. She had yet to hear the other bug say a single word.

"...I don't think it's her. She's dead. We know that. It was blue when we came up, does that mean the sky was full of lifeblood? It's alright Hollow. Calm down. You're safe."

Iselda felt a rush of awkwardness, and chittered loudly to catch their attention. The Princess turned and saw Iselda standing there, medikit in claw, and nodded to her.

"Ah...thank you. Iselda, was it?"

"Yes...uh. Your Highness. Here."

She didn't know how to act around royalty, so she just handed the Princess the medikit and stood to the side as the Heir of Hallownest's throne tended to her companion's (Hollow's?) wounds.

"Hornet."

Iselda made an interrogative scent and sound.

"You can call me Hornet. Now is not the time to stand on ceremony."

Iselda mulled that over, and mentally shrugged. This day was weird enough already, adding on a humble princess didn't change that. She could only hope that this was as strange as it got, she was already at her limit for today.

Several minutes passed in relative silence. Iselda stood, Hornet tended to the wounds of the tall bug, and Hollow continued to watch the sky, which had darkened from bright orange to more of a dull orange (was that good? Iselda didn't know).

"The infection is gone."

At that Iselda's head snapped to Hornet.

"What?!"

Hornet chittered in amusement as she tied a silk bandage around Hollow's thorax.

"Hard to believe, I know, but it is true. The Infection is gone for good. It's faded from the Forgotten Crossroads like it never existed at all. Unfortunately, we didn't meet any...intact survivors on the way up. Everything in the Crossroads was too corrupted to endure the change."

Iselda felt light headed. She and Corny may have only moved to Hallownest recently, but in that time the worry over the infection (and the possibility of Cornifer becoming infected in his long trips down into the cavernous depths) had consumed her. And now it was just gone?

Today was truly too much. Was there no end to the absurdities?

"Hullo Izzy, look what I found!"

At the sound of her husband's voice, Iselda turned, already forming wrathful words of reprimand on her labrum. Those words died when she saw who...what….trailed after her dear, idiot husband.

Behind Cornifer walked five...beings. She didn't know how else to describe them, they didn't look like any bugs Iselda had ever seen. One was tall and broad, and looked more like a living rock than a bug. One was covered in fluff, moreso than even a moth! And the remaining three were fleshy, like the Flukes that Cornifer had told her about, except that they had fluff on the tops of their heads.

All of them were armed, and were looking around Dirtmouth with undisguised curiosity (or at least, Iselda thought so. The strange geometry of their faces rendered their thoughts unreadable to her. Maybe they were disgusted or awed).

Cornifer stopped a few paces away, and in far too cheerful a voice, gestured to the...to the beings following him. Iselda felt the world begin to spin around her.

"I found these delightfully strange individuals just outside of the village. Would you believe it, but they live in that village up there on that short mountain! Tcharee Twoon, I think it was called. Oh, let me introduce them. The tall one is Kreysun, and they're a Go'ron. The fluffy one is Flysun, and they're a Ree-toh. The dark fleshy one is…"

Iselda fainted.

Edit Note: Sorry about that, no idea what the hell happened with the formatting. It should be fixed now.

Author's Note:

Alright, thanks for reading the chapter, now let's talk population calcs for Hyrule.

Unfortunately, population is a significantly more complex problem than land area. I can't just slap a x60 modifier on every village in Hyrule and call it a day, it's not that easy. A conservative estimate for the population of Hyrule before the Calamity is 1 million citizens. It was quite a large country which was entering a technology revolution, it has ample fertile land, and lots of space in general. All the medieval calculators I used were giving me numbers from 1-3 million. After the Calamity, I think there wouldn't be much more than 60,000 people left in Hyrule (given how desolate everything is), and that's split between all of the towns. So, I made some estimations.

Hateno is the largest single population of Hylians, at around 5,000 residents. That one's easy, it's in a prime area for farming, it's moderately densely populated, and was largely shielded from the Calamity. Kakariko has around 1,000 residents. There's less farming area, but they can make terrace farms. Lurelin Village only has around 300 residents, it's a medium sized fishing village. The remainder of the Hylians and Sheikah are either nomadic, like the Stable Owners, or they live in small villages of 10-100 people that just never made it into the game because of software limitations. All told, Hylians in Hyrule number about 18,000 and the Sheikah number about 2,000.

The Zora, Goron, Rito, and Gerudo all suffered significantly less losses to the Calamity than Hylians did, though they had less population to begin with, and thus each have around 10,000 citizens. The Rito don't farm, but they do forage, hunt, and fish, and their ability to fly means they can gather food in a huge range. Gorons eat rocks. Zora have access to the bounties of the rivers and sea. Really, the only problem is the Gerudo, who SOMEHOW get enough food despite being in the middle of the desert. I decided to make Gerudo town more of a cultural gathering site rather than a population hub. It only hosts more than 1,000 residents on important times in the Gerudo calender, and half of those 1,000 are traveling merchants and traders. The rest of the Gerudo travel in caravans to and from Gerudo Town, and are either totally nomadic or have villages in the tropical Faron region, where there's plenty of food.