"in your head, in your head, they are dying."
CW: Excessive gore, mild references to suicide
His throat was bitter with honey and blood. Chance swirled his goblet around, or at least tried to; the amber within was so thick, he wasn't sure if he was drinking or eating it. Scallon had prepared it for him; supposedly, it was meant to rejuvenate him, keep him awake for a few more precious hours. He wasn't sure what was in it, but he figured he didn't have the time to ask questions.
Chance looked over his shoulder. Tusk was playing with some of the few bees that were still uninfected, flying around on their backs and gently caressing their fuzz. He cracked a smile; maybe if they survived this and the Hive managed to overcome the Infection, they could come back here.
"To rail against nature is folly. All things must accept an end."
The words of Queen Vespa's ghost flashed back to him, and he took a quick sip of the energizing honey to hide his frown. Yeah. If we survive.
The Hive Knight himself was standing off to the side, staring up at the titanic corpse of Queen Vespa, his expression forlorn. They'd seen Vespa's body get blown apart into a mountain of gore not even thirty minutes ago, but that had turned out to be an illusion of the Infection, maybe to anger or frighten them into irrationality. He didn't know what the fuck Layla wanted anymore.
What the hell even is a Seraphim…
Pursing his lips, he decided to walk over. "Hey–"
Scallon's rapier was at his throat in an instant, again. He'd barely seen him move; the guy was fast, if not much else. "Human. I have… chosen to forgive you, for the time being. But as long as the Infection blinds you, I will not forget your transgressions here today."
"L-Look, I'm sorry, okay? We wound up here by accident, I just wanna get out of your hair."
Scallon pressed closer, practically hissing at him. "Do not think I will become complacent in your crimes simply because you have seduced our Queen out of reason."
What?! Dude, you're Queen's DEAD! Chance considered changing the subject to what he'd do now without his Queen, but that felt like rubbing salt in a fresh wound. "I– Okay, I get that, cool, but–"
Scallon suddenly coughed, collapsing to the ground. Chance quickly set his goblet down on the floor, patting Scallon's back. Was he choking? Was it the Infection?
Just as he was about to call for help, Scallon belched out a small, Infection-coated bee, which shook drops of orange vomit off of its wings before casually buzzing away.
Scallon coughed again, wiping the pus from his chin. "F-Forgive me, that happens," he said, not at all fazed by Chance's horrified expression.
He didn't feel like finishing that honey drink anymore.
It was always hugs with Jeremy.
"Chance!" he whispered, as if uncertain of his own voice. He had been waiting at the entrance of the cave that led into the Hive, sitting on the ground with his hood up, staring at his hands. His antennae jolted up when he heard Chance and Tusk walking back up the hallway they came from, yellow eyes going wide. He was quick to jump up and embrace him, nearly knocking Chance over with the sudden warmth.
That was just how Jeremy liked to communicate, with touch. Actions spoke louder than words, and it wasn't like he minded Jeremy's touch anyway.
Wait. Shit. Does that sound weird?
"I wanted to wait for you, but as soon as the doors sealed shut, a giant swarm of bees came down and chased me all the way out of the Hive…" Jeremy whispered, his head resting in the crook of his neck. "What happened in there? Are you okay?"
Chance reached up, gently tugging down his oak-green hood, letting his fluffy antennae flop free. "I'm sorry, Jay," he said. "But, yeah, we had an issue with the Queen's old knight–" And a massive swarm masquerading as my worst nightmare– "–But it's all settled now. You're not hurt, right?"
"No, I'm okay. But…"
Jeremy pulled back, eyes squinting as he looked Chance up and down. He'd run out of Soul before he could heal all of his injuries, but he'd gotten the worst of them patched up, only a few scrapes left over. …Why was Jay staring at him?
Jeremy reached up with a chitinous hand and poked Chance's cheek, pulling away with a glob of honey stuck to his finger. "I think you missed a spot."
Then he leaned in, and licked the honey off of his cheek in one sweep.
"Gah!" Chance stumbled back in surprise, waving his arms in the air. "Dude, what?!" He reached up to his face to wipe the saliva away(Firmly ignoring how Jeremy's tongue was not human shaped – or human sized), only to come away with more honey on his sleeve.
"The fuck? Did… Didn't you just lick this all off?"
Jeremy was staring at him again, wide-eyed. "Wow! Chance, that honey… it grew out of your face, like you popped a pimple! Kinda gross, honestly…"
…WHAT.
Chance wiped the honey off of his sleeve, then used his other sleeve to wipe at his cheek. There was less honey, but it was still definitely there. He kept frantically wiping at his face until it was nearly red with rugburn, until Jeremy stopped him.
"Look! It's coming out of a cut on your face!"
After a moment, he whipped out his phone, using the dark screen as a mirror. A long gash was on his cheek that he'd never managed to heal, and sure enough, the honey was oozing out of it. Suddenly, the honey seemed to recede back into his body, and the cut it was covering shrunk until it had completely sealed up on its own.
Chance pawed at his face where the injury once was. Completely seamless healing, just like his own Focus.
…
"So you found this Hiveblood charm hidden in the Queen's chamber, and it… accelerates the body's natural healing factor? With honey?"
Chance had plucked off the charm when he noticed honey dribbling out of every other wound on his body, like he was some walking pastry. Sure enough, the sweet golden amber had vanished, replaced by neon orange pus. "I… guess? I couldn't feel it using up any of my Soul, so if it can heal me without it, then it's useful."
Jeremy tilted his head in consideration, pursing his lips as his antennae flopped to the side. "I dunno… it seems too slow to be helpful in a combat situation. Maybe it's useful for passive healing, but I doubt it'll save your life.
Chance looked down at it. He was probably right, as always. "You want this?" he asked, handing it off to Tusk. The little Vessel grabbed at the golden charm, and their eyes would've been sparkling if they had any.
Honey magically appearing on his body. He suddenly remembered.
"Jay, during the fight – with the Hive Knight, I mean – a bunch of honey suddenly appeared on both of my hands. I mean, they were slathered in the stuff. I couldn't use my gun, 'cause I thought it'd get jammed."
Jeremy grimaced. "Ooh, good thinking. Even your Pure Focus couldn't have fixed that. We'd probably need to disassemble it completely and wash every part off…"
"No, but that's the thing," Chance said. "I don't know how it even got on my hands in the first place. I wasn't eating any honey or touching any of the walls. They were clean a second before, and then they were coated in it. How's that possible?"
Silence. Jeremy kept averting his gaze.
"...Are you telling the truth?" Jeremy giggled. "You sure you didn't have a bite or two? Hive honey isn't like the mass-produced stuff in America, it's liquid gold. You can tell me; I won't judge!"
Chance wanted to rebuke, but he knew it'd get nowhere. His apathy shut him up, and he looked away with a sigh.
I hadn't touched a single thing made of honey, but you–
"Just… forget it. C'mon," he waved. "We've wasted enough time here already. We need to get to the Grave in Ash, and fast."
Jeremy frowned, but he and Tusk followed along, stalking off deeper into the inky-black caverns, illuminated only by the hissing green acid that lined their path.
The Kingdom's Edge was a temple desecrated.
Pale ash fell from above, the entire area almost like a vertical tunnel that stretched up so high, Chance couldn't see the top without falling onto his back. One of the walls was artificial, brick with flimsy wooden scaffolding, lined with rusted and bent pipes leaking green acid into a fizzing lake down below. Large blue bugs floated through the ashen air, passive like cows, sometimes feeding off of the glowing white roots that broke through the earth and walls, alluding at the presence of some greater being having tread this ground before. The ash piled along the edges like snow, white banks of invisible corpses suffocating them like fog.
The Grave in Ash…
After all these sleepless, timeless days of descending into the darkest pits of Hallownest, he'd finally reached the bottom. And here he was now, having to climb up a pit instead of down. He hated climbing.
A few paces away, Jeremy stuck his tongue out, wide lemon eyes staring at a single 'snowflake' adrift on an impossible underground wind. The pale fleck spiraled down, floating like a leaf, and gently landed on his tongue.
He immediately gagged, frantically wiping it off. "Bleck! This isn't snow at all!"
Chance watched. The whole place felt surreal; it looked like snow was falling from the sky, but the only chill in the air was from the occasional breeze. If anything, it was warm in the Kingdom's Edge. Not warm like a fireplace, but like the embers of a fire long faded, suffocating as it held onto whatever heat it had left.
Another body hit the floor.
Jeremy yelped, jumping behind Chance, who couldn't help but startle, too. The first body had scared the shit out of him; some large, armored, slug-like bug had smashed into the ashen earth only a few feet from them, and Chance had to spend the next two minutes looking for some hidden enemy that was taunting them. Then the second armored bug thudded against a ledge, which knocked themselves backwards before they fell on their back somewhere below them.
Judging by their wounds and armor, Chance could only guess at one possibility.
"Maybe there's some kind of fighting arena up above us," he reasoned. "Or maybe just an actual war. They have fresh stab wounds, not the type you'd see on a body that just fell. It looks like when fighters die, they either fall down this giant pit…"
"...or someone else tosses them down," Jeremy finished. "Oh, Chance… Who would do this?"
While Tusk was making ash-angels on a ledge just ahead, Chance turned to look at Jeremy. "What do you mean?"
"I mean… who wants to fight like this, only to meet this kind of end? What are they fighting for, what's the point of it all? What makes being tossed down this pit worth it?"
Chance pursed his lips, turning away. He looked up the towering pit, his scarf whipping in the wind as ash swirled around them.
"Why are they all struggling to the top, if they're just gonna fall back down in the end, anyway?"
He said nothing.
Humans spend about a third of their life sleeping.
It resets the brain, cleans out the junk of the day and helps preserve memories for the long-term. This way, with a fresh mind, new memories are also easier to form the next morning. It helps give the rest of the body a reset, too; lack of sleep can severely weaken just about every aspect of human physiology.
The occasional night of bad sleep is just a part of life. But regularly getting less than five hours of sleep at night can damage the immune system, result in negative mood swings, weaken one's balance and motor control, weaken one's sex drive, and it increases the risk of obesity, heart disease, car accidents, cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure. One school in Wyoming that started an hour later saw a seventy percent decrease in car accidents, whereas ABS safety technology, which was hailed as 'revolutionary', saw about a twenty percent decrease in crashes.
Lack of sleep is also intimately linked with numerous mental health issues, resulting in an increased risk of dementia, depression, anxiety, forgetfulness, paranoia, PTSD, schizophrenia, and suicidal thoughts. In fact, recent research has yet to find a single psychiatric condition in which sleep is normal.
"...What I'm trying to say is, are you sure you're okay, Chance?" Jeremy urged him, finally quitting with the random trivia. "I don't think you've gotten a good night's sleep since before Deepnest, and I don't even think you slept decently then."
"I'll be fine," Chance hissed. Out of sight, he used the Claws to leave a thin gash along the back of his hand, before quickly healing it back up. Anything to stay awake just a little bit longer.
Just a few more hours. I just need a few more hours.
They were maybe around halfway up the chasm now, and they'd found a peaceful enough ledge to take a break on, since Chance was getting sick of climbing. They'd been taking detours through side tunnels to progress up the sheer cliff face a bit more gradually. They set up camp – not that they had much to set up – in a small clearing, where the ash dusted the ground like bitter sugar, and thin, glowing roots grew and withered between the shell-shaped rocks that made up the walls. Maybe they were ancient bodies. Their corpses were their own mausoleum.
Even with that myth that Cloth had told them about the Wyrm King, he still didn't understand how these underground tunnels could still be so bright. No light source; just an ambient, visual understanding.
The impossible wind whipped around them in deafening silence. Chance pulled out his phone and punched the 'play' button on a random song. "Satisfy My Soul" hummed out.
Jeremy blinked. "Bob Marley?" Chance didn't know why he was surprised to hear someone recognize Marley, as if not everybody on Planet Fucking Earth had heard of the guy. On one hand, he was in some alien medieval alternate universe where playing Van Halen was probably enough to kill a commoner, but on the other hand, Jeremy was in this weird superposition of being from both Earth and Hallownest, and neither at the same time, so he had no idea what to expect from him.
"Oh, please… don't you rock… my boat…
Because I don't… want my boat… to be rockin'..."
"Sorry," Chance reflexively apologized. "I just need something to… focus, I guess. Music helps calm me down."
"Oh, please… don't you rock… my boat…
Because I don't… want my boat… to be rockin'..."
Jeremy paused for a minute, humming as he pressed his chitinous finger to his lips. Chance stood up just to stretch, only for Jeremy to jump up right next to him, snapping his fingers to the music. Chance found himself pulled effortlessly along the stream, dancing in some lazy sway with Jeremy.
Jeremy's feet kicked at the white ash beneath them. "...Did you know Bob Marley has eleven kids?"
"Wh-What the fuck?"
"I'm telling you that, oh… oh-wo-woh-oh-wo!"
"Eleven at least!" Jeremy exclaimed. Outside, the distant thud of another body echoed up the pit. "Isn't it weird? Pretty much all of his children grew up to be successful, too. Even some of his wives and grandchildren are still well off. Names like Ziggy Marley, Stephen Marley, Damien Marley, Rita Marley…"
Chance briefly stopped dancing, processing this information for several seconds before realizing that it was completely useless, and then wondering for a few seconds more why Jeremy even knew this at all. "...I mean… What for, even? Wouldn't he just go broke with, uh, child support?" He had no idea why he was entertaining this weird conversation.
"I-I guess he could afford it? He was successful, so–"
"I like it, like it, like this~
(I like it like this, I like it like this~)"
Another thud, just outside. Jeremy jumped, terror flashing in his eyes for a split second, Chance's body jumping forward reflexively–
Oh. He was holding him against his chest now. He could feel Jeremy's heart hammering out of his chest in panic – or was that just him? He figured he should pull away and apologize, but he was too tense to move an inch.
"Satisfy my soul, satisfy my soul…
You satisfy my soul, satisfy my soul…"
As if swaying to the music, Chance turned Jeremy around and looked out of the ledge they were on from over his shoulder. Just nearby, some armored warrior had smashed into an opposite ledge, hemo pooling into the ash around them, before their body slipped off on their own fluids and dropped into the pit below.
Jeremy didn't need to see that.
"Every little action… There's a reaction…"
"So, uh, what were y'sayin' about him bein' successful?" Chance mumbled. It must've been the warrior corpses that made him add, "Like, some kinda Survival of the Fittest type thing?"
Somehow, Chance's stupidity was probably more effective at pulling Jeremy out of his panic than any sweet nothings whispered in his ear might've been. It made him pause, reset, and forced him to consider Chance's words to distract him from the thudding of corpses. "I… I guess? I mean, he was better off than most. Of course that would lead to him having several children, because of natural selection."
Natural selection? Oh, no…
"It's a misconception that natural selection favors those who just survive, when it actually favors those who live long enough to reproduce."
As soon as the word 'reproduce' left Jeremy's mouth, Chance's embracing arms fell to his sides, and he pulled away, pursing his lips to fight a dumb expression. Jeremy blinked when Chance groaned. "W-What? That's true, isn't it?"
"Jay, what? I don't– I don't care about how horny Bob Marley was."
"W-What?!" Jeremy was completely appalled. "W-When'd I say that?!"
"When you started talking about, fuckin', natural selection or whatever the hell–!"
"You started it–!"
Tusk, sitting idly on a nearby rock, watched this entire dumbass exchange in silence. Neither of them noticed how they stared at Chance, but occasionally glanced over in Jeremy's general direction for a moment, tilting their head in confusion.
"Oh, can't you see! …What you've done… for me!"
It was as if eating, sleeping, killing, and fucking was all Hallownest knew. Jay was starting to fall apart under the implications of this conversation, but he still wanted to defend himself. "I-It's only natural, right? I-I mean, don't you wanna have kids someday?"
Chance realized this was the opportunity he'd been waiting for to disengage from their weird little debate and shift topics. He sat back down, working out the kinks in his neck with a sigh. "Not really… I don't think I'm gonna be having kids."
Jeremy blinked, staring at him. Chance wondered how much of this conversation was his weird hybrid cryptid instincts talking. "Huh? Why not?"
'Cause we're both guys?
When Chance only shrugged in response, Jeremy kept talking. He propped up his chin on his hand, staring out into the pit before them. "I guess there's more significance to it than just that."
Ash whipped past them like a lukewarm blizzard. Chance said nothing, listening closely for Jeremy to continue.
"I've always thought that children are… what we choose to pass on. Bloodlines don't really matter. It's about what values, what meanings, what memories we want to preserve. …And so that which is better off being forgotten, can die with us."
Another body hit the ground nearby. It echoed up the tunnel, hard carapace thudding against the rock. For the first time since Chance had known him, Jeremy's expression was subdued; wistful, even. His lemon-yellow eyes landed on the body as he silently huffed.
"So this place… This dead whirlwind of ash and corpses. It's a place where discarded memories go, a graveyard for empty meanings and lost children. It's like the land itself is dead. Maybe that's true for Hallownest as a whole, but the Edge is like… It's like it exists to be forgotten, blotting itself out. Like it wants to be forgotten."
Lost memories. Lost children.
"Chance" looked away in silence.
Chance was taking wild potshots at the swarm of Primal Aspids, Tusk was jumping around to swipe them out of the air with their nail, and Jeremy was screaming.
Infection blobs rained down on them like artillery fire. Tusk jumped into the air to slash at an Aspid, only to take a blast of orange straight to the face, their mask cracking from the point-blank impact.
"TUSK!"
Suddenly, just as soon as they were hit, Tusk's body erupted into sharp thorns of black, impaling Primal Aspids in every direction, an instant counter. Several of them had been swarming around Tusk when the thorns had shot out, hoping to get a piece of them, and they were now paying the price as they all dropped like rocks with holes in them.
Tusk fell down too, their mask still leaking inky hemo from the crack, but otherwise looking awfully proud of themselves. They pulled on their Mothwing cloak, pointing to a thorny bramble of a charm they had pinned on the underside.
Chance's breath caught on his throat, his expression conflicted, before he shot them a shaky double thumbs-up.
It wasn't like it was the first corpse he'd seen today.
They'd climbed up through the tunnels until they'd managed upon a poor excuse of a tent in the middle of an ashen wasteland, where glowing pale roots encroached on shell-shaped boulders in the distance. They were still underground, so it must've just been a large cave, but when the hurricane of ash swirled around them like thick raging fog, they had no sense of depth. All the atmosphere of a blizzard, all the dehydration of a desert storm. The cave walls could've been miles away.
The tent was made of some ripped-up and frayed leather-like cloth, maybe burlap. The ash weighed heavy on its roof like snow, some of it drooping through a hole in the center into a small heap in the middle of the enclosed space. In its weathered age, it was completely useless as shelter, offering no helpful protection against the bitter winds, no warmth. Its only purpose now was as a monument, proof that someone had once raged against nature here, some nameless survivor's assertion on the dead land. Shelter from the storm.
Whoever they were, they were dead now. So much for all that whining.
Jeremy cautiously stepped around the curled-up corpse of the explorer, like might jump out at him. The thing about bug corpses was that they didn't really decompose in the same way humans did; no rapid decaying, no skin being eaten by maggots into a pitiful skeleton. They almost looked like they were sleeping, except… dried up.
He reached down, picking up a heavy tablet that was lying next to the body. "Oh… A Journal. Didn't Lemm say he'd pay us for these things?"
Chance blinked as he sat down on a creaky old bench, testing it to make sure it wouldn't collapse under him. "Uh… Yeah. What's it say?"
"I dunno."
At Chance's confusion, Jeremy explained, "It's in another language. I know Hallownestian Common, and English, and a little bit of the Mantis script, but it's a wide world. There's just so many diverse cultures and languages in Hallownest, that it's hard to know all of them."
Chance sighed, spitting into the ash. His saliva was glowing tangerine. "Or there were, anyway."
The wind howled in funeral silence. Tusk took the heavy slab and stashed it into whatever bottomless magic pocket their body apparently was.
The whole world was a sigh. Jeremy sat back down, just beside Chance, propping his face up between his chitinous palms. Tusk wasted no time in climbing up on the opposite side, just far away enough that the three of them weren't quite huddling for warmth in a bleak paper whirlwind that couldn't even be bothered to freeze them to death.
"...So, once you cure yourself, what're you gonna do then?"
You, Chance did not immediately blurt out. "Well… I gotta bring the cure to the others. Rio, Lightfoot, Quirrel, and uh, Iselda and Lemm. And I guess if I'm doing that, I might as well try to cure everyone. Bring the whole fuckin' kingdom back from the brink."
He sharpened his Claws, picking at the gaps between the metal chitin, gliding his finger along the gradient where skin turned to steel. "And… Once I find the time, I wanna keep looking for my memories. I wanna know my real name, wanna know why I was stupid enough to wander into this place."
Jeremy leaned forward, arms resting on his knees as he met Chance's eyes with a frown. "You have your work cut out for you."
"No shit," Chance groaned, leaning back. He bumped the back of his head against a hammock, looking over his shoulder to find another bug's corpse lying in it. He shook his head and ignored it.
"Chance, you're pushing yourself too far. You're already dying, and if you only keep it up…"
Chance tried to wave him off with a tired grin, but Jeremy only grabbed his hand in his paws, holding it close. "I'm serious! As soon as your Infection is cured, promise me you'll take some time to rest before setting back out again. There's a warm, clean bed in Dirtmouth waiting for you when you're done. And then…" He gulped, "When you're ready, we'll share the burden."
Chance blinked. "Jay…?"
"I can't keep cowering like this while you keep fighting. I wanna help, too. You and Tusk. And… And maybe then, I can–"
Riiing, riiing!
Chance's whole body seized up. Jeremy jumped, and even Tusk turned to look at the phone ringing in Chance's pocket. The lukewarm blizzard around them suddenly chilled him to his bones as he slowly, slowly pulled it out of his pocket, leaning forward so Jeremy wouldn't hear, and pressed the button with a stiff thumb.
"H-Hello?" he whispered as softly as he could manage.
"Chance… W-When are you coming to find me?"
Some apparition of Jeremy's voice rasped over the speaker, crawling across Chance's skin. He wiped his eyes with his free hand, disbelief creeping over his shoulders with the real Jeremy's concerned stare. He coughed, "W-Whaddya mean, w-where are you?"
"...Hell."
Chance nearly crushed his phone in his shaking hands.
"I-I think I'm starting to u-understand things,"he sounded permanently on the verge of sobbing. "Lies, f-falling away into chaos, m-molding into sense. Life, death, a h-half-rebirth… My metamorphosis… B-Bombs in the city… Condemned, endless sleep… Bitter hands cradle b-broken glass… The world beneath an ocean."
Chance wanted to break down and cry. "J-Jay, what the fuck are you talking about?"
"P-Please, c-come find me, Chance. Hell isn't fire and brimstone. It's c-cold. Empty. Black."
"C-Can't you see anything in the dark?"
"Not dark. Black."
With that, the static grew deafening, and the line went dead. The wind seemed to stand still around him, all the energy and pressure in the atmosphere dropping like a stone and letting him melt into a puddle.
His orange eyes glossed over. Distantly, he thought about putting his phone back in his pocket, but the best his limp hands could manage was pulling it from his face and letting it hang on his lap, threatening to fall to the ash underfoot.
Chance looked over his shoulder at Jeremy, whose expression was completely unreadable, staring unblinkingly at him.
"Uh… Wrong number."
…
Jeremy stared at him for a long moment. His face curled into a soft, mournful smile, one that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Chance, that was… me, wasn't it? I could hear."
He could feel his mouth gaping, but his mind had hit a wall that kept him from fixing it. Managing to blink, Chance leaned back again, eyes glancing from the phone in his hands to Jeremy's eyes, which were trying to comfort him while hiding his own terror. In his mind, he kept running through a whirlwind of excuses, of explanations, but nothing came up. He kept staring in silence, no matter how his brain kept raging at him to say something.
"I don't understand it either," Jeremy offered for him. "But… Maybe we don't have to, right now. Once you get cured, we'll have plenty of time to figure things out together, won't we?"
Chance's brow furrowed. You're awfully certain that I'm going to get cured at all… "Uh… Yeah. There's no rush."
They sat there for a few moments longer, wordless, the three of them watching the storm ease and rage, like the ebb and flow of a tide. Chance wasn't sure if this silence was comfortable or not, especially with how Jeremy kept fidgeting in his seat, always averting his gaze.
"Chance… I'm… here, right?"
He paused, turning to look at Jeremy in confusion. "Jay, what…?"
Jeremy grabbed at his arm, holding it close to his chest like a teddy bear. "You can feel me, right? You can see and hear and touch me, so I…" He looked on the verge of a breakdown. "T-There's three of us here, right, Tusk?" He tried to give a weary, nervous smile to Tusk, who only kept looking back and forth between his general direction, and Chance. Mute as always.
"Jay." Chance grabbed at Jeremy's shoulders, grounding him before he spiraled. "Does this have to do with what She told you?"
Jeremy seized up. Blind, existential terror flashed in his eyes.
"What did She do to you–"
"Nothing," Jeremy cut him off. "It was… It was just a bunch of lies. It had to be. I'll… tell you about it later, once you've cured yourself."
Chance's breath paused. He reached down, taking Jeremy's hands in his. "How about this– Once I'm cured, I'll promise to take a break if you promise to tell me everything."
Jeremy's lemon eyes stared into his tangerine ones. He gulped, but the tension in his body began to fade into exhaustion. It must get tiring, being terrified all the time. "Yeah… I promise. I'll… explain everything…"
He yawned, leaning into Chance's side, still holding onto his arm. Chance pursed his lips and looked away, maybe to hide a blush, but he couldn't help but glance out the corner of his eye at Jeremy, slowly falling asleep in the crook off his neck.
"We'll tell each other everything... We'll… find our past together… won't we?"
Jeremy's sleeping expression looked so peaceful.
…
He'd hate to disturb it.
A few minutes of silence had passed, only the whipping wind against the tent being Jeremy's lullaby. (And Chance's swan song, if he messed up in the next hour.)
His expression was dark, refusing to look at Tusk as he slowly, gingerly pried his arm out of Jeremy's hold, before sliding just enough away that he could still hold onto him. Chance rose from the bench, and gently lowered Jeremy down to lay horizontally across the weathered shellwood like a bed.
He rose to his feet, standing over Jeremy's sleeping form. The whole journey must've been exhausting for him; he doubted he would wake up anytime soon. Especially since he still had the privilege of sleep.
The bitter wind was colder up here. After a moment, Chance slowly peeled off his red scarf, wrapping it loosely around Jeremy's neck with a pained smile.
He turned to Tusk, who had already hopped up from the bench and was waiting for him by the hole into the tunnel below. "C'mon," he mumbled, trying not to wake Jeremy up when he'd gotten this far already. "I think I know where Hornet is. She's guarding something, just down the tunnel below us."
Tusk stopped, looking up to stare at him, tilting their head. Chance shrugged.
"Don't ask me how I know. It doesn't make sense to me, either. It sounds stupid, but I can just…"
He took a deep breath of the corpse kingdom's wind. Striding ahead of the confused Tusk, he walked on down the hall.
"I can sense it. I can feel its presence in my bones; her, and whatever it is she's protecting. It's like… Like it's been waiting for me my whole life."
"Uh... Yeah. What's it say?"
...
"Or there were, anyway."
Nobody in the tent had noticed a single shimmering thread, nearly invisible against the sheet-white ash, as it floated up and wound itself around a leg of the bench.
Through its vibrations, Hornet wasn't sure what she was hearing while she was hiding on the underside of the cavern below.
"Well… I gotta bring the cure to the others. Rio, Lightfoot, Quirrel, and uh, Iselda and Lemm. And I guess if I'm doing that, I might as well try to cure everyone. Bring the whole fuckin' kingdom back from the brink."
A part of her wanted to jump up and charge him then and there, her claws shaking as she held her needle in a deathgrip. Of course that idiot had only spread the Infection in his efforts to cure it, the revolting irony. And then he had the audacity to act like it was a simple mistake that he could just go back and fix. If it were that simple, she wouldn't have sacrificed so much just to survive, she wouldn't have had to grow up alone in a wilderness of ash–
"And… Once I find the time, I wanna keep looking for my memories. I wanna know my real name, wanna know why I was stupid enough to wander into this place."
She stilled her thoughts, forced herself into a fragile ease. How did the human make it into Hallownest, unnoticed by her watchful eye? She'd mastered the borders of the dead kingdom, cursed to patrol the wastes into her adulthood, and the clumsy fool had slipped in unseen. Her best estimate was that she had been distracted by that follower of Monomon shortly before she found the human in Greenpath, so perhaps she had gotten unlucky.
Focusing on the moment, though, it was bizarre. She wasn't sure what he was talking about, or to whom; she could only hear one side of the conversation, as if he were talking to himself.
"No shit."
…It was time to leave. Unwinding her eavesdropping string and making her way down the tunnel, Hornet left with more questions than she started with.
They followed the winding tunnel down into the depths, fighting against the resentful, ash wind, like an endless billowing smoke from a fire long extinguished. Massive spine-like remains stretched down alongside them into the pit below, suggesting a creature the size of a building. Running his hand along it, it didn't feel like rock; it felt like bone. He felt like they were descending into their own mausoleum, swallowed alive by the corpse of the snake king.
It wasn't long before the claustrophobic caverns widened out into a larger room, the gut of the beast. Spine-like bramble stretched along the walls, stalagmites shaped like mandibles. In the center, waiting for them, was a familiar spider in red.
"...Took you long enough."
The wind was howling.
From a wreath of crimson, a flash of silver glinted between the ash. Hornet didn't even turn to glare at them as they approached, but he could hear the venom in her voice.
She glanced down at Tusk, "Did I not specifically advise against bringing your human friend, little ghost?"
Chance scoffed, daring a step closer. "Could've asked me yourself. Besides," he cracked his knuckles, trying to prepare himself however possible, "I'm not just gonna sit back and die."
Hornet whirled around. "Some fates are worse than death. Can you even fathom the deeper truth you've fought so hard to pursue, the pain of the Vessel's conception?"
Tusk's… Birth?
He shrugged. "I dunno. …Let's find out."
With a swing of her needle, Hornet crouched into a battle stance. He could just faintly make out the wisps of near-invisible strings flying around her. "Prove yourself ready to face it, then! I'll not hold back. My needle is lethal, and I'd feel no sadness in a weakling's demise."
Tusk whipped their own nail out.
Chance's hands sharpened into deadly metal Claws.
The wind howled into a crescendo, the ash almost blinding, blotting out the whole wasteland outside of their arena.
"Show me you can accept this Kingdom's past… and claim responsibility for its future."
…
Hornet rocketed into the air, the ash around her billowing from the shockwave. Impossibly, she froze in mid-air, before redirecting herself to launch needle-first straight at Chance.
Acting on reflexes, Chance's Claws reached up to catch Hornet's needle between his metal hands, sparks flying from the grinding blades. Straining under the force, Hornet crouched on top of her needle's grip, glaring down at him.
"You've gotten faster."
Her foot shot out and slammed into Chance's cheek, and he shouted as his grip on her blade loosened. With ninja-like agility, Hornet backflipped away from him, grabbing her needle and ripping it from his metal hands, an arc of sparks and ash following her.
Tusk ran out after her, jumping to strike. After deflecting the first blow, Hornet jumped back, releasing her needle and wielding it on the end of a string and flinging it around like a flail.
Under the barrage of wild ranged attacks, Tusk was forced to take a defensive stance and focus on blocking.
I've been watching them this whole time, Hornet reflected. I've studied their fighting styles, how they've grown, even guessed at how they might continue to grow. I've predicted and planned every path. I can't allow them to pull any surprises on me.
Even with the Vessel's Soul spells and the human's gun, they still have a tendency as close-range fighters, with an aptitude for quick-witted adaptive lunacy. If I give them long enough, they'll find some new trick to use; the safer I play, the deeper I sink. Aggressivenessis the key. My best bet is to end this quickly.
…Perhaps they are not so unlike youafter all…
Chance had already recovered from her surprise attack, and was already sprinting up to her. She needed to be faster.
Just as Tusk deflected another of Hornet's attacks, she spun around, and flung the needle in Chance's direction.
He jumped to dodge. The blade missed him completely, but scraping along his hip, the needle cut a deep gash into Chance's…
M-My Geo pouch?!
Shimmering, silver Geo was scattered all over the arena, falling into the ash. When he scrambled up to his feet, Hornet had seemingly vanished into the shadows, only leaving Chance and Tusk alone in a pile of Geo.
Under his jacket sleeves, something was creeping, glowing bright under the cloth.
"...Oh, no."
An explosion of Lumaflies burst forth from him, swirling around in a hurricane of blinding light, collecting all of the Geo he'd scattered. Chance shouted as he tried to cover his eyes, the cyclone of ash and Lumaflies disorienting him. Tusk had just been a few feet away, and he couldn't see them at all now!
A flash of red. Instinct rising, Chance's Claws reached up just in time to barely block a blow from Hornet, who quickly retreated back into the pale.
Red against white, he could barely see her for a split second before she struck. Over and over, using the Lumaflies as cover, she leapt around, flanking him and only glancing off of him once, sparks flying before she jumped back to reposition herself.
She's so fast, i-it's like she's teleporting!
Chance could barely keep up with the rhythmic barrage. Several deep gashes ran along his back, his sides, his arms and face before he finally managed to catch Hornet's blade between his Claws again.
The Lumaflies, having collected all the lost Geo, retreated to his shredded pouch.
"Tch! Revenge for Greenpath, huh?!"
Hornet struggled as their blades drew sparks, pushing the needle's weight down against him, forcing his knees to buckle.
"I learn from the best."
Chance drew on the power of the Crystal Heart, gnashing his teeth as pink lightning flew from his fingertips and along Hornet's needle, electrocuting her. She jerked back with a cry, yanking her needle away from his grip.
Groaning from his wounds, Chance reared back and tried to punch her, only to get blocked by her needle. He kept pushing her back, throwing punches and chops and even clawing at her, but Hornet's needlework deflected most of his attacks.
While they were trading blows, Chance suddenly jumped back. Hornet didn't notice what was happening until Tusk leapt over Chance from behind, their body glowing white.
They careened into the earth, the shockwave of Desolate Dive blowing Hornet back, staggering her.
The three of them all stood there for a moment, a brief pause in their battle, catching their breaths. Kneeling in the ashen dirt, Chance managed to heal some of the wounds he'd already gotten, never letting his eyes stray from Hornet.
"You truly have grown," Hornet huffed. "But will it be enough?"
With a heave, Chance pushed himself to his feet. "Ready when you are!"
Rising, Hornet swung her needle in the air, a tapestry of invisible strings shimmering into existence and weaving around her. With a snap, a web had strung itself all throughout the arena, strings hoisting up large clumps of silk with razors jutting out of them.
Hornet leapt around, dancing between the strings she'd made, flashing in the air at lightning speed. Chance could barely track her, but he could tell she was getting closer.
He reached down to his hip, drawing his gun. Wherever he tried to aim, she vanished just a moment later, until she landed right in front of him, just a few yards away.
BANG!
The gun went off, but Hornet had already crouched into a parrying stance. With expert precision, she swung her blade forward…
…And cut the bullet in two.
Chance's breath hitched in his throat, his stance faltering in awe. "Holy…"
Hornet didn't stop to revel, not missing a beat as she jumped back into action and threw her needle like a javelin at Chance again, hurtling through the air with such velocity that the ash on the ground arced up around it in the wind.
Chance didn't have a second to put his gun away, but sharpening his metal Claws with his gun still in hand, he leaned to the side and just barely dodged it by knocking the blade away with his fist.
A string shimmered, trailing behind her needle. In a split second, with his free hand, he reached over and cut the string keeping her hold on the blade.
Hornet jolted.
The needle, with Hornet's control broken, crashed into the earth, sliding freely across the ash, the frayed silk settling beside it.
She lunged forward, launching herself across the arena to reclaim her needle. Before she could even get close, Chance snapped open the cylinder to his gun, and Focused.
Ah, Hornet thought. The so-called "Reversion" trick that he used to defeat Great Knight Ze'mer.
The two halves of the split bullet, having embedded into a wall, dislodged themselves and were flying straight towards Hornet, imbued with Soul energy.
She turned; with a flick of her wrist, more silk flew out behind her, weaving into a tight net to catch the bullets and trap them. She didn't even break her stride as she kept sprinting towards an appalled Chance.
It's a neat tactic, but the returning bullets lack the velocity and force that they have when firing out of the gun. Catch and restrain them, and they're powerless.
Before Chance could try firing another round, she reached out with her strings, finally within range of her needle. The silk tightened around the loop of the needle and yanked back towards her, the blade slicing against Chance's gun arm as it flew from behind him.
Anything you can do, I can do better.
As the needle flew back towards her, she angled it to slice off a string keeping one of the spike-traps suspended. The tight elastic silk launched the spike ball forward, smashing it straight into Chance's face, knocking him off of his feet and on his back in a pile of ash.
He was down. Needle back in her hand, Hornet leapt up into the air again, lunging down at him like a comet–
A flare of moonlight rocketed into her, sending her flying back. As soon as she got her bearings again, she could see almost all of her spike traps frayed and drooping to the ground, and with Tusk standing between her and Chance.
Hornet tsk'd, launching herself forward through the ash to strike. The little Vessel parried her, sparks flying between their blades as she and Tusk kept fighting for every inch of ground.
Further back, she could barely spy Chance managing to pull himself from the ground, his hand glowing white as he healed his caved-in face. She didn't see the damage she inflicted, but she could've sworn she saw a bloody tooth rise from the ash and re-insert itself into his mouth.
She tried to swing her blade from below, arcing it around in a spray of sparks and ash. Tusk's blade caught hers, and she leaned over them, holding her blade with both hands while trying to press her body weight down to force them back.
In a burst of light, Tusk's cloak whipped into blinding, iridescent wings. The flash was enough to startle Hornet off of them, and they took a slash at her thigh, sending her kneeling to the ground.
Chance had finally gotten up. He drew his gun once more, aiming it at Hornet–
Only for his hand to swivel around, pointing the gun between his own two eyes.
"What–" Chance's voice strained, staring straight down the barrel of a revolver. He tried to turn his hand, and it refused to budge. Even as he shook his whole body, the gun stayed in its position, pointing at his face.
Looking closer, he could just barely see a weave of thin silk wrapped around his hand and the gun, stretching up to the cavern ceiling like the strings of a marionette.
Aggressiveness is the key, Hornet thought. But for when they run out of options and pull their ace, I needed a plan to deal with that gun. I know better than most how dangerous it is.
I also know better than most how to handle it.
"Chance…" she huffed, still reeling from the intense clash with Tusk, "Don't cheat. That gun does not even belong to you."
He tried to raise his Claws to cut at the strings, but another one caught around his finger and forced it inside the trigger guard, pressing tighter and tighter.
He was staring Death right in the eye.
"SHIT–!"
BANG!
The gun went off, and Chance fell. For a heartstopping moment, nothing else moved, and nothing could be heard except for the gun clattering to the ground.
Chance was still breathing, without a hole in his head. He laid there for a moment, catching his breath, feeling all the memories of his journey so far flash before his eyes like a near-death experience.
The gun, still wrapped in silk, clattered on the ground as the puppetmaster pulled on its strings, and the gun flew right into Hornet's waiting hand.
She leapt away from Tusk's desperate lashes, landing just a safe enough distance away where neither of them could fight back as Hornet leveled the gun with Chance's head, and fired.
BANG!
Chance had just barely pulled his Claws up to try and deflect the bullet at the last second. Sparks flew from his palm as the bullet connected, but even his metal hands couldn't completely resist gunfire. He cried out, his whole arm screaming in agony from the overwhelming force of the bullet.
BANG!
Another shot. Chance blocked with his other palm, screaming as sparks flew across his face and holes were dug into his metal hands. He couldn't even stand up under the gunfire, falling over on his knees as he tried to defend himself from Hornet's onslaught.
Tusk ran up to Hornet, nail in hand, slashing at her to protect Chance. With one hand still on her needle, she twisted the blade to parry them.
As they staggered from the deflection, Hornet turned the gun on Tusk, and fired.
BANG!
Chance screamed as tar-black hemo sprayed from Tusk and splattered over the pale ash, ink on a page. The bullet went straight through their side, causing them to stumble over and drop their nail, tears of liquid night pouring from their eyes.
Hornet only stared on, her whole body shaking.
Then something exploded from Tusk.
Dozens of razor-sharp black thorns erupted from their body, shooting out like shrapnel and shredding everything in their path. One of the vines lurched across Hornet's body, and she jolted, her eyes going wide as her breath caught in her throat.
Tusk's Thorns of Agony had impaled Hornet straight through her abdomen.
Hornet and Tusk both stood there for a silent moment, bleeding into the ash, the wind around them dying. The image had burned itself into Chance's mind before the Thorns retracted and Hornet collapsed to the earth with a cry, the gun falling out of her hand and into the ash before a horrified Chance.
He only glanced up at her for a moment, before he lunged for the gun. His fingers had curled around the grip just moments before he felt invisible strings wedge under his hands and fingers, digging into his skin like wires to try and marionette him again.
Hornet said nothing, her voice only straining under the pain of her impalement and the exertion of trying to force the gun out of Chance's hands. All three of them had holes in their bodies; it was just a matter of who died last.
Chance's Claws sharpened as he pressed back against the wires as hard as he could. They dug into the metal, into his soft joints, into the blood-oozing wound in his palm. The silk snaked up his arm, along his Claw tips, all pulling him apart. It felt like he'd stuck his arm into a wire meat grinder.
He grit his teeth, refusing to let go again. Blood ran down the grip of the gun. Chance screamed, and his finger slipped into the trigger guard–
Snap.
Chance and Hornet both recoiled as all the strings broke apart. Chance's Clawed deathgrip on the gun was so unyielding, the strain so great, that the plastic grip of the revolver ripped clean off, the shredded black plastic landing in the ash.
And from it, a single slip of film floated through the gentle winds, landing on an ash pile like a flower pedal.
None of them moved.
The ash settled. The winds were still.
With bleeding, weary hands, Chance reached out, delicate to get as little blood on the polaroid as possible as he plucked it up by the corner. He was heaving, lying prone in the ash and dirt as he took another glimpse at its contents.
A woman, a human woman in a dark leather jacket and raven-black hair, grinning as she hoisted a small bug in a red dress onto her shoulders.
A glimpse of a past life preserved, while everything else fell away to rot.
He huffed a bitter laugh. He smiled up at Hornet, blood between his teeth, holding up the old photograph for her to see. Despite his amusement, Hornet only went very, very still upon seeing it.
"This… This is you in the photo, isn't it? I thought I… recognized you."
He coughed, orange blood spraying on the ash. However many hours he had left, it all suddenly fell away into this moment, this picture frozen in time. It was like the world around them froze along with it.
"This woman… Valleri. Who was she?"
Hornet said nothing. Straining under her wound, pale hemo oozing into her dress and dripping to the ground, her fingers found the grip to her needle. She propped it into the ground and heaved herself up, using it as a crutch to stand up and look down onto Chance.
"...Hornet–"
With a flash of adrenaline, Hornet swung her needle down onto Chance's arm. He moved just out of the way, narrowly avoiding having it cut clean off.
"...She… Was a traitor,"Hornet hissed with strained breath. "She ran away from EVERYTHING that she built and destroyed! She left this land to WITHER into ASH, like NONE OF IT EVER MATTERED!"
Silk shimmered around her, vibrating with her screams. Chance held the photo close to his chest, tucking down into a fetal position like a turtle just before lashes of string belted across his back like whips. Dozens of lashes ran up and down and along his back, red and orange blood splattering everywhere.
Even as he grit his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut against the torture, he kept the photo close to his chest, keeping it safe from Hornet's rage.
"She ABANDONED US TO THE GODS!" Hornet cried. Her facade of stern indifference fell into a raging cyclone of emotion, shredding apart everything in its path. "She abandoned ME! After EVERYTHING! That picture, her words, all our memories are all a LIE!"
She raised her needle into the air, ready to plunge it down into Chance's shredded back.
"I'D KILL HER IF I COULD!"
–Something plopped into the ash before her feet. She paused; Still bleeding from their side, nail drawn, Tusk was crying before her. They struggled to hold their nail up high in a defensive guard, pawing at her hemo-soaked dress in desperation.
Like a child begging for attention.
Or for mercy.
The Vessel, four stubby little horns just barely growing out of its mask, watched her from behind the shrub. It was a surprise that Greenpath hadn't already swallowed the pitiful thing whole, but it seemed intent on stalking her, the shadows shrouding it like a mother guarding its young as it watched her.
Maybe it noticed how her mask was similar to its own, that distant kinship? No, that was ridiculous. She doubted the thing could even register its own reflection as itself.
She crouched low. The Vessel, maybe sensing an invitation to approach, was coaxed from the safety of its shadows, and with the trepidation of a wild animal, stepped closer.
Her compressed legs sprung forward, and her needle flashed for a moment before its blade lurched straight through the Vessel's small chest.
It lurched for a moment, mimicking the terror of a dying child in an effort to preserve itself, but Hornet wasn't fooled. Her heart stayed steady as the tears and the struggling came to a slow, and the shadowy corpse on her blade was stilled.
Vessels were not "people". They could not "want", they could not "think", they could not "live". They were objects. At best, they were constructs like wild animals, mindless beyond their instinctual needs for self-preservation. An invasive species.
Because how would anything without a mouth, without a voice, be able to live? How could anything with no expression, no will, be alive?
What else could explain what happened to the Hollow Knight?
But she couldn't deny her own eyes. Before her was the Vessel that the human had so naïvely named Tusk, using the last of their strength to protect him from her wrath. Their hands, so small and so coated in blood, pawed at her dress, a desperate plea to spare them.
No… The Vessel didn't want her to spare them. They wanted her to spare the human.
They were already out of the way just a moment before. If self-preservation was their only drive, they could've crawled away while she was distracted, and healed themselves up later with their own magic. But this one was going out of its way to help the human.
It was undeniable. They… wanted her to spare him.
The Vessel wanted.
Hornet jumped away, stumbling against the ash and falling onto her back with a pained cry. She wiped the blood on her hands on her dress, hissing at the two walking lies in front of her who lay bleeding in the pale.
With a wave of her hand, her silk strings weaved around the discarded gun, bare metal without its grip, and willed it to fly into her hand.
"I… will NOT… be LIED TO… ANY LONGER!"
She cocked the hammer with her shaking thumb, leveling the barrel at Tusk's head.
Chance's eyes widened, and with the last of his strength, he jumped over Tusk, pushing them to the ground. "NO!"
He was staring Death right in the eye.
BANG!
…
Chance didn't even get to shield himself as the bullet shot straight through his left eye.
The echoing gunshot was so silent, so deafening.
Tusk lay still on the ground, still bleeding from their side. Half of their mask was pressed into the ash, and the other half had the steady dripping of orange blood trailing down it.
They couldn't move, not with Chance's blood-soaked body slumped on top of them.
Hornet's brief rush of adrenaline finally collapsed, and she fell over on her side, the gun still barely held in her slack grip. She was heaving; the wounds from the Thorns of Agony were starting to really settle in. No more shock, no more ignoring the pain. Just a searing fire where her gut should be.
Chance wasn't moving at all. Deep, tangerine lashes on his back and arm, slicing straight through his jacket, and the hole where his left eye was supposed to be. Hornet had no idea if the bullet went all the way through his head, or if it had gotten stuck in his skull, bouncing around and smashing apart any brain matter that got in its way…
A twitch. He groaned.
With shaking, bloodied hands, he reached out to Hornet, still holding the crumpled and aged film of her and Valleri.
Hornet stared. She no longer had the strength to be enraged, only a quiet huff escaping her. "...Why? For a flimsy scrap… Do you value your life so little? You do not even know her. You do not even know me."
The ashen wind still whipped around them. Somewhere, corpses were still falling. Chance coughed, tangerine blood dribbling out his lips and running down his chin.
"...It's about… what we choose… to pass on," Chance choked out. "This memory… should be preserved. It doesn't deserve… to die here. And neither… do we."
His hands glowed in pale, ethereal light, Soul dancing between his shredded fingers. The torn flesh sealed itself up, lost blood receding like a tide. He guided his magic downwards, into Tusk's dying form, the wound in their side rising up to heal into nothing.
Tusk, how healed, turned their blood-stained mask up to look at him. Silent.
"Not all memories are worth being remembered," Hornet urged. She clutched at her own wound, inching closer, eyeing the bloodied polaroid and Chance's glowing hands. "Some memories… have nothing for us to learn from them. No growth… No deeper meaning. Some memories… can only hurt you. Should those be passed on?"
Chance fought to glance up at her, his blasted eye squeezed shut as orange blood oozed out of the socket. He looked so worn. Glancing down, he could see the gun was still in Hornet's hand, missing its rubber grip and smoking from the barrel.
He looked at her with his one remaining eye. "Why don't… you decide?"
Hornet stopped, glancing down at the gun in her hands. Pale-yellow hemo on her hands squished against the metal as she raised it, slowly leveling the barrel with Chance's forehead.
Chance reached out, and held the barrel of the gun against his own head. His breathing was steady.
"Some things… are better off being forgotten," Chance huffed, knowing any breath might be his last. "Forgetting… can be how… we grow. So should I die here? …Can I still be saved?"
Hornet looked at Chance's last, orange eye. She pressed her thumb down on the hammer with a soft click.
With a bleeding, one-eyed grin, Chance added, "Have you been keeping count?"
…
…
…
Hornet's finger found the trigger.
…
…
…
…
… Click.
The cylinder snapped into position, the firing pin popping into a spent casing. Chance still had only one hole in his face; they'd used all six rounds with no reloads.
So that was it, then.
Hornet's shaking hands dropped the empty gun, succumbing to her wounds and exhaustion. She slumped into the ash, hemo pouring into a puddle around her, thickened by the ash and bitter wind.
"I… I can no longer fight," Hornet admitted. "I forfeit. It is over, now."
Just as her hand fell, Chance's still-injured hand caught it. She glanced at him, tensing in alarm, before she felt the cool breaths of Soul magic flow up and across her arm from Chance's fingers. It circled through her, branching out through her stressed veins and torn muscles like a tree, soaking up the hemo around her back into her body.
Her wound from Tusk's Thorns of Agony slowly sealed itself back up into nothing, fatal wounds rendered null. Even the blood in her dress had faded away, its tears stitched back together seamlessly.
Even while bleeding tangerine from his eye socket, Chance still gave her a smile.
"I don't know… if it'll ever be over."
He had enough Soul for the three of them, thankfully.
He healed his eye as quickly as he could, of course. God, he couldn't even put it into words, the pain and horror. The feeling of something flying towards him and destroying his vision, the feeling of getting fucking shot at all. Even when it was healed, it still didn't feel right, adjusting and blurring all wrong. He could only hope it would fade with time.
Chance couldn't ignore how ridiculous the whole thing was. They'd all but killed each other, impaled and shot and stabbed and ripped themselves apart, and now they were picking up the pieces they'd just scattered like nothing had happened. Here he was, sealing up the same Claw wounds on Hornet's arm that he himself had inflicted. It was honor, it was right, but it didn't make any real sense.
Hornet was probably thinking the same thing; she looked ready to bolt out of sight as soon as she was healed. He could only guess she wasn't used to making conversation, especially with someone she'd just fought to the death with.
She'd been kept distracted with that old polaroid, though. Holding it in her free hand, she stared at it as they crouched in the ash, silent. She was so still, he wasn't even sure if she was breathing.
Chance's magic faded, and he leaned back in the ashbank next to her, looking at Valleri's face in the film over her shoulder. Dead silent.
"...Who was she, really?"
Hornet's dark eyes gave him a sideways glance. Maybe she wasn't used to opening up about herself to people she'd just fought, either. Maybe because they were all dead. "...I was still very small," Hornet spoke slowly, but with a practiced certainty in her words. "So many of the details… elude me. However, I lied not before; Valleri was a traitor."
She spat the name, but reached under the turtleneck collar of her dress, pulling out a small, silver pendant that hung around her neck.
"...For a time, she was something of a hero to me," Hornet confessed. "It seemed as though the whole world was her enemy, always reveling me in tall tales of the heinous criminals she'd taken down and the catastrophes she'd helped avert. Even I do not know what was true or not. But to me, the moments I remember most vividly are the peaceful ones, when the world still seemed whole and right in my cotton mind of infancy. The warmth of her hands, her embrace, her laughter… Looking back, it doesn't feel real anymore. Like it was all just…"
"...A dream," Chance finished for her. His pain felt so distant, subdued in tangerine.
Hornet snapped the locket open. Inside was another picture of Valleri, forever smiling for the camera.
"A dream that she shook me awake from when she left." Her hands were shaking. "And she took the Hallownest I knew with her. She betrayed the dream. When I watched my home fall to ruin, I was alone."
She fell silent, running her thumb against the locket frame. Chance lay in the ashen silence alongside her, pouring over her every word, trying to process it all. Tusk was seated in the ash next to him, opposite of Hornet, resting their head in his side as he patted between their horns, seemingly taking a nap after the hard battle. The bitter wind still swirled in ashen spirals around them, like nothing else but them existed in the dead world.
Chance blinked. He ventured, "Were… Were you around before Hallownest fell?"
Hornet tensed, then nodded. "It seems as though the kingdom met its ruin centuries ago, does it not? Ever since the plague took hold and the barrier was raised, time has been strange in Hallownest; incalculable, and thus meaningless. I do not even know my own age anymore."
Chance frowned, sympathy in his orange eyes. "I… I'm sorry," he mumbled, at a complete loss for words otherwise. What the hell do you say to that? How the hell do you try to relate? "It must be hard."
Snapping the locket shut, Hornet scowled. "What it is, is a load of fucking bullshit."
Chance sputtered, doubling over as he struggled to contain his laughter, trying not to disturb Tusk with his shaking. Hornet glared at him; he was suppressing it so much, tears were threatening to leak out of his newly-fixed eyes. "What are you finding so funny?!"
"I-I'm sorry, I'm–" He heaved another laugh, blinking away the tears. He thought about the black leather jacket and punk look in the polaroid. "Y-You uh, you didn't happen to learn those words from Valleri, did you?"
Hornet's glare softened. Her gaze seemed distant as she relaxed, her grip on her needle relaxing. She looked away, flustered. "I… suppose I did," she confessed. Chance's laughter died down, and he looked back at her, the bitter air turning sober again. "She taught me many things. How to live. How to care. How to… want."
She turned to him. "What do you want, human?"
He didn't know what to think of the 'human' comment; he'd told her his name, hadn't he? It was too awkward to bring it up, especially with the way Hornet was staring at him, silently demanding an answer. "I…" He swallowed, his throat dry. "I want to find my memories. I want to know who I was."
Hornet scoffed, her voice filled with venom. "You believe your memories will make you whole. Some memories can only hurt you, leave you empty; even pleasant moments can sting with time and decay. Forgetting can be a blessing."
Chance glared at her. "Bad memories exist, yeah, but I've lost everything. I… I couldn't live without knowing."
"Perhaps you couldn't live with knowing, either," Hornet shot back. "How pitiful; you cannot know the truth for certain without confronting what pain may lie within. Abandon your wish, or risk the curse of knowledge. You cannot win."
He huffed, looking away. "You make it sound like I wanted to forget everything."
The conversation lulled, the implication hanging in silence. The dead wind howled around them.
Hornet held up her restored hand, catching some flakes of ash on her palm as she studied the underground weather. "...You understand, of course, the nature of the hidden barrier that entombs this kingdom?"
Chance blinked. He remembered the Soul Master, Credence, having mentioned it back in the Sanctum.
"When it was clear his original plan to halt the Infection had failed, he constructed a magical barrier around the kingdom that wipes the minds of all who pass through, in hope that it would forcibly sanitize any presence of the Infection. It was intended to prevent the blight from spreading beyond this kingdom's borders."
"Y-Yeah," he said, surprised that Hornet knew about it too, before wondering why he would be surprised by her of all people knowing about the kingdom's secrets. "It's what wiped my memories when I came here."
Hornet refused to look at him. "...I am honor-bound to protect this corpse of a land," she spoke slowly, her voice strained. "I stand forever as a sentinel, watching these borders that could wash all these agonizing memories away in an instant, setting me free to live a life that I want."
Chance leaned in, eyes wide. "Hornet…"
"It is nothing; these thoughts, they are merely the products of a wandering mind. The ages have weathered away at my spite, and I am not so impulsive as a child. But were my duty to be put to rest, then standing on the cliffsides of Hallownest, leading out to an eternal wasteland… I would make that decision."
She clasped her locket in a tight, shaking grip. Chance couldn't see her eyes.
"...Were I to ever meet her again, despite how she abandoned us to ruin… Then with my needle in hand… I would make that decision."
A tug on her dress, snapping her out of it. Hornet glanced down; Tusk had woken from their slumber, probably disturbed by Chance's earlier laughter. Their dark paws clutched her red silk dress, empty eye sockets staring up into hers.
–The bullet went straight through their side, causing them to stumble over and drop their nail, tears of liquid night pouring from their eyes–
–It lurched for a moment, mimicking the terror of a dying child in an effort to preserve itself–
Hornet had jumped up from the ash, though she wasn't sure when, blinking the confusion out of her eyes. All she had felt were Tusk's paws, not slick with ink-black hemo, trying to hold onto her as she pulled away. She was suddenly tense, feeling a knot snake into her stomach and throat, not knowing where to direct her eyes. All she knew was that she'd said far, far too much. "I… must not stay here any longer," she tried to excuse herself, stepping away. "I must go."
"W-Wait!" Chance hopped up, before holding out the old polaroid of Valleri to Hornet. Oh– Had she dropped it at some point? "...Do you want this? It's got you in it."
Hornet stared at the photo of her child self, riding on Valleri's shoulders. She burned the old smiles into her mind one last time; she thought this had been lost to her forever.
"To prolong a stasis or lay this world to rest; we will clash again, and the fate of Hallownest is in our hands."
He had won. Perhaps things already were changing. "Keep it," she asserted. "In wielding that weapon, you have chosen to carry her legacy. This is what you have chosen to pass on."
Chance stared at her for a moment, debating asking if she was certain, before nodding. His expression was solemn as he picked up the discarded gun from the ash, laying the folded polaroid in the grip before Focusing the black plastic together around it, sealing the memory away once more.
He gave her one last look. "Will I see you again?"
"...You asked that last time."
Chance blinked, the memory of their last meeting in Dirtmouth's hot springs flooding back to him. "O-Oh, ah–" He averted his gaze, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to figure out what else to say.
Hornet answered for him. "Why don't you decide?"
He looked up at her, uncomprehending. She continued, "The Grave in Ash, the truth of the Vessel's conception… It lies open to you, just beyond this cavern. Perhaps it is the truth you have been seeking. …Or perhaps it is not." She turned away, moving to leave. "Aside from this, I have nothing else to show you."
Chance stared, his mouth agape, wanting to speak before he just sighed. She was right; the Grave in Ash was his last big gamble for a cure, the culmination of this whole hellhole journey. There were no other leads to follow, no time left. If this wasn't the key to stopping his Infection, then that was it. Game over.
(He'd always have a spare bullet in his gun for that scenario. If he couldn't live, then he wouldn't let Layla make him into her puppet.)
"...You could do it, if you had the will," Hornet suddenly spoke up. "The both of you. But could you continue to fight, knowing the truth of its tragic conception? And you, Vessel" she turned to Tusk, "Could you raise your nail, knowing yourself?..."
Chance and Tusk stared. Hornet whipped out her needle and pointed it at Tusk, glaring a challenge down her blade.
"Then do it, Ghost of Hallownest!" She raised her voice. "Head onward. Burn that mark upon your shell… and claim yourself as King."
Silk swirled in the air around her as Hornet threw her needle above, launching herself out of the tunnel. She flew off, weaving between the stone pillars, unabated by the fierce, ashen winds, until neither of them could see her anymore.
…
Chance knelt down beside Tusk, looking them straight in the eye socket.
"Alright, look," he stared, himself unsure what he was saying. "I don't know what she means by being 'King' or whatever, but I wanted to say, uh… You did good out there. You saved me; several times, actually. Hell, I can't even count how many times you've saved me this whole journey."
He took a deep breath, squinting his eyes and swallowing to dry his throat. "So, I just wanted to say… Thank you. Really. You didn't need to put up with me. There's still a lot of loose ends I want answered, and I'm sure you feel the same, but everything we've been fighting for up to this point is just up ahead. I don't know what we're gonna find, or if it'll cure me at all or not, but even if it doesn't… I'm glad you were there with me, by my side, the whole time."
He gave them a warm grin, holding out his fist. Tusk stared at it, tilting their head curiously, when after a moment, they tentatively raised their own fist and pressed it against his.
Chance pulled away, opening his hand and making a soft explosion sound with his mouth, before laughing. "C'mon, Tusk…"
They both stood. Just beyond their arena was a dark, winding cavern, bending and stretching down to unknown depths, likely untouched for as long as Hornet had been here to protect it. The howling wind of a corpse's immortal final breath sourced from the cave beyond, ash billowing out as a warning to any trespassers who would dare tread sacred ground. It reminded him of the gate to Deepnest in the Mantis Village, except instead of simple fears like carnivorous spiders and darkness, he was terrified of whatever secret Hornet thought was worth dedicating her life to protecting, and of what the future would bring – if there was a future for him at all.
"...It's a Grave, right? …Let's go pay our respects."
Chapter name and summary are a reference to Zombie by The Cranberries.
Other musical references in this chapter include:
Satisfy My Soul by Bob Marley
I think I can say that this chapter contains some of my best writing yet. Seriously, I feel like I can be genuinely proud of this, after two whole years of working on this fic. This chapter's a culmination of everything that's happened so far, with callbacks to as many little details as I could fit in. I've been teasing the Hornet Sentinel fight for months now; it's the last big fight scene in Ethno until we complete Act 1 in about 3 more (short) chapters, so I hope I did it justice.
For the conversation with Hornet at the end, I tried to sum up everything that the chapter had been alluding to thus far, while also trying to characterize Hornet based on how Valleri might have left an impact on her as a child. I'm worried I may have revealed too much, but there *is* a purpose in having Hornet open up at this specific point, trust me. My main difficulty going forward is gonna be how to expand on these points
I hope the scenes with Jeremy weren't too slow or overbearing, I just figured this chapter would be a great one to give the spotlight to him and Chance's relationship a bit more. Plus, I needed to build up those themes of "what we pass on" that are discussed more during and after the Hornet fight.
As for those sleep facts... I'm citing my source as "Why We Sleep: Science of Sleep Dreams" by Matthew Walker on Talks At Google. It's a video I watched in my psychology class, and it was made in 2017 so I don't know how it holds up now, but I think there's little reason to doubt any of it. It's a super interesting video, and I recommend watching the hour long version in full. If you're regularly getting less than 7 hours of sleep every night, PLEASE work on fixing that, you have NO IDEA how much it's fucking you up. I'm gonna become one of those people on the internet who constantly tells you to "drink water" except instead of that I'm gonna be telling people to sleep better lol
Also, the trick Chance does with his Pure Focus in his gun that I previously referred to as "Un-Fire", I changed the name of to "Reversion". It just sounds nicer
The three chapters after this... I have to be honest, I'm scared of them. They should be significantly shorter than the 10k+ word mammoths I've been dropping monthly, but I have very few specific plans, and given their nature, it might honestly be better to completely wing them. They may be shorter, but for reasons that will become apparent, I'll need to basically release them in rapid succession. I of course can't go too much into it, but I'll work things out with Piston and figure out what we want to do, because some of the subjects in these coming chapters may or may not be... delicate, depending on if we go certain routes or not. I don't know. Again, very little plan, aside from the bare necessities for the structure.
PLEASE leave a comment, very few do, and thank you so much for reading and sticking with us for the last two years of this story!
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