11

Awareness came in a languid current of sensations: a warmth upon my shell, hard stone at my back, a chiming in my head.

I idled in this state, letting the wash of feelings erode time and meaning. There was no foreign will to bind me here, no threads to puppet my limbs, no reason to push on.

Yet, something faint and furtive pressed against me, beseeching my attention. It was no command but gave me strength all the same.

Rise, Vessel, so that I might see you.

I awoke to an amber sky.

Woven hoops of light drifted in and out of my vision. They peeked through churning banks of clouds as though playing at some game. There was a chiming music that filled the air, originating from nowhere and everywhere at once.

I pushed off the ground, though the act was a challenge with only one arm. I wobbled upright and labored for balance. From this new vantage, I spied islands of stone that dotted the sky, extending off into the blurred horizon. They were topped with cobbled footpaths, iron fences, and clusters of copper grass. Between them were constellations of small platforms, spaced just closely enough to be traversed.

Go.

Where I was bound, I did not know, but my legs faltered into motion.

Due to fatigue or injury, my wings would not manifest. I was forced to leap from platform to platform with all the dignity of a hurled brick. More than once, I slipped and plummeted into the yawning immensity of sky, but every time another platform assembled itself beneath me and broke my fall.

Eventually, I ascended—scuffed and panting—onto a broad tract of cobbles that resembled one of The City's causeways. It extended only a short distance, but as I approached its end, more cobbles rose up to extend it, continuing with every step I took. Behind me, the path I had already tread tumbled away, so that the causeway's length never changed. It was like an astral grub inching across the sky.

From time to time, other objects flew out of the ghostly depths to flank my passage. There were glittering lampposts, crumbling statues, and archways decorated with hanging bells.

But no matter how long I walked, the journey went on interminably. My feet caught on every bump and crack. Cold liquid dripped from the stump of my arm. Inevitably, I fell—mask-first to the ground. Barbs of black pulsed in the fringes of my vision. As I trembled back to my feet, there was a grinding sound of shifting cobbles, and I looked up to behold a bench that had not been there an instant before.

It was wrought iron and backed with leaf-shaped filigree, with arm rests that curved inwardly like coiling roots. From its size, the bench seemed as though it had been made just for me.

My body ached. I glanced about, but there was nothing else in sight, just an endless, sunset realm.

Your stalwart conduct is admirable, little one, but do not push yourself to such a breaking point. By the King's own words, you are a treasure of Hallownest. Always rest when you feel a need for it.

I settled onto the bench, letting the pressure of the journey ease off my back. Slowly, my panting subsided, and with it the pain. I remained perfectly still as my wounds knitted and the cracks evaporated from my shell.

My head drooped.

It was… nice.

I jerked, startling awake.

Time had passed, though how much I could not know. Though the world suffused with golden light and half-formed song, something was different. It was no longer empty. In the distance a round, limping figure approached.

Ogrim.

He did not see me. His horned head was bowed, focus set on the self-assembling causeway. His progress was slow, and more than once he staggered beneath the load of his own exhaustion, but he did not fall. The causeway he traveled ran perpendicular to mine, eventually merging into a crossroad at the very bench on which I sat. With the appearance of this obstacle, Ogrim stopped and looked up.

He seemed not to register me at first, as though I were just another object in a meaningless multitude. But something dawned on him, and he fought for words, coughing low in his throat. "Even in dreams we find one another. It is good to lay eyes upon you, Little Knight."

Ogrim took a few sleepwalker's steps and sank down beside me. The bench whined in protest but did not break. Ogrim's bulk took much of the seat, but I was slight, and there was enough space for both of us. He let out a long, pained sigh and stared off into a pinwheeling mass of clouds.

"Never in a dream have I been quite this sore," Ogrim observed. "Nor quite this weary. It feels as though I have slumbered a lifetime and yet found no rest."

Ogrim's broken claws lay on his lap. He absently tilted them to and fro, reflecting gilded light onto his scarred carapace. "Of late, it has become difficult to distinguish reality from illusion. This dream… it is so vivid. When did it even begin?"

I had no answer for him. I could only listen.

Ogrim seemed to take assurance from my attentiveness. "I recall a… debate between the Fierce Knight and myself." He shook his head. "No, 'debate' is too gentle a word. It was a battle. A mortal duel. And you were there, Little Knight, standing beside me even as it raged. Now that I consider it, you were the subject of that conflict. By whatever dream-mad reasoning, Dryya had deemed you unfit, a danger to the kingdom, and that you were to be…" his voice shrank, "destroyed."

Ogrim loosed a broad, dismissive laugh. "Preposterous, yes? Dreams are puzzling things indeed, where the most bizarre events can seem perfectly sane. Why, in that very dream, an errant moth rescued you from peril, and then you went on to defeat Dryya in single combat. Ha! What a sight that would be!" He pressed a claw to the side of his head. "As I think of it, that was a troubling turn in the dream. You had been sorely wounded, disarmed in the literal sense, and from that wound poured a gruesome mass of living darkness that choked the life from—"

But he stopped. And looked at the stump of my arm. Even now it bled droplets of black onto the bench's metal slats.

He did not speak for a time. He did not move his gaze.

"In honesty," he began, speaking softly as though to himself, "'troubling' is also too gentle a word. 'Terrifying' holds closer to the truth. To witness such hideous might, to glimpse what lurks beneath your shell…"

He paused.

"It was no dream. Was it? This is no dream."

Again, I had no answer.

"But I do not understand…" Ogrim murmured. "Her life was in your grasp. She sought to destroy you and would have succeeded had that power of yours not manifested. Tell me, Little Knight, if you are so damnable as Dryya believes, then why did you spare her?"

There was a pain in my chest, not the keening sharpness of a nail blow, not the burn of exertion, not the roil of Void. It was a dull pang that longed for a release which would never be.

I did not explain to him. I could not.

Ogrim returned to his cloud watching. The ubiquitous music of the place played a sort of interlude.

Eventually, Ogrim leaned forward and braced his arms on his knees. "There was a time not so long ago, that all I did was in confidence—in faith that the path I walked was righteous. But now it is as if that path takes me down the tangled slopes of a great canyon, and with every step the light recedes. There is an abyss somewhere before me. It is a place from which no Great Knight can escape. But I do not know how to avoid it. I no longer know the way."

Ogrim stood, and his tired body became rigid. "Dryya believes you a force of evil. The King believes you a tool. Even Kindly Isma thinks of you as an unliving facsimile. But I do not know what I believe. These forces vie within me so violently that I may tear apart. My fear calls you a threat. My code calls you an ally. My heart calls you a—." Ogrim paused, and that rigidity drained from his body.

He let out a single chuckle. "No. That is enough of that. Forgive my qualms, I should not have voiced them." He held out a helping claw. "Come along. Friend. The path before us has far from ended. There is yet time."

And I reached out to accept his claw. Without hesitation.

The journey resumed, and with it the ceaseless cycling of cobbles beneath our feet. But our destination was still unknown. No grand spire loomed over the horizon, and the only means of discerning progress was to track the passage of the clouds.

The brief rest at the bench had done much to alleviate my hurts, but that was not so for Ogrim. Though he made no complaints, tiny, pained noises escaped him like the sputters of a dying torch.

"When I was young," he grunted, "hardly more than a hatchling, my father regaled me with tales of the distant kingdom of Hallownest, of its resplendent King and his court, of its noble Knights and their grand adventures. I often wonder if my father's intent was to plant the dream of Knighthood within me. Maybe so, for he seemed unsurprised when I abandoned the nest and set off for that fabled kingdom."

Ogrim lurched, catching himself on my shoulder. He was heavy but my strength held. With a murmur of thanks, he resumed walking, relying on me as a crutch.

I had no objections.

"I entertained such wild hopes," Ogrim said. "To brave the endless wastes, to discover the King's court, and to prove myself a worthy Knight. Fool's fortune saw me safely to the King's throne, but had I truly known what was required of me, would I have continued?"

Ogrim's gaze drifted away from his feet and toward the horizon—to some invisible point beyond. "The Champion's Call… It was so unlike what I had envisioned. There were no gallant warriors with honorable hearts, just sellnails hoping to claim the King's Geo. Our battles were not glorious tests of skill and merit, just desperate flailings in the face of death. Yet somehow, through the King's crucible, we persevered. Together, side by side, the other contenders and I slew beasts and wild bugs. Though many amongst us fell, even more endured. Eventually, the royal pens were depleted, and when nothing remained to fight, the King rose from his dais, declaring that only one challenger could claim the prize." Ogrim swallowed as though forcing down a shard of glass. "How quickly it changed. Like some perilous spell, that scattering of words twisted allies into mortal foes. The other contenders pounced on one another with all the savagery of the very beasts they'd defeated. And through it all, I simply… watched. I could not move, I could not raise my claws, even if that inaction doomed my hopes of Knighthood. Looking back through the lens of years, I should have stopped that madness, saved them from themselves. But now it is far too late for such thoughts." He let out a shivering breath. "By luck alone, I was ignored as all the others fought to the death. The strife was so vicious that not one survived. The moment that the last body fell, the King proclaimed the Champion's Call at an end. I had achieved victory—whatever that might have been—and was Knighted on the spot. As I knelt in that corpse-strewn pit and recited my oath, the King regarded me in such a way that I have never come to fathom. Was it pride in his eyes? Contempt? …Pity?"

With a tortured rasp, Ogrim pushed off my shoulder and righted himself. He gave his head a shake as though casting off a dream. "Apologies, Little Knight. These mawkish displays are unlike me. It seems that I lose my sense of discretion when overly tired. Ignore my prattle, please." His quavering laugh stretched out into nothingness.

Though he was no less wounded than before, Ogrim did not rely on my support a second time. He marched on with a straight back and even step. Between heaving breaths, he hummed the shreds of a tuneless song.

With time, the scattered islands and tumbling clouds gave way to a distorted approximation of The City. Swaths of cobbled ground and fragmented buildings swirled overhead in a patchwork so dense that it eclipsed the sky. It was as if everything had frozen at the very moment of some great, world-sundering cataclysm.

We passed through fissured plazas and down spiraling alleys. Droplets of rain hung motionless in the air and chilled my shell. But with turn after turn, crossroads after crossroads, all sense of direction vanished, and the dream became a labyrinth.

At first, Ogrim seemed not to be bothered, but as the path grew more convoluted, agitation bled through. He kept glancing about, in motions that grew more rapid with every familiar object that we passed—the same warped curio shop, the same tilted statue. Just as Ogrim seemed on the fringe of an outburst, a minuscule sound warbled into being. It was a voice from somewhere far, far away.

"Did you hear that, Little Knight?" Ogrim asked. "Surely you did. I am not so lost to delirium, am I?"

As if in reply, the voice murmured something, loudly enough to hint at its direction.

"Again," Ogrim hissed. "I heard it, I am certain! This way!" With all the haste that his injuries would allow, Ogrim hobbled down a slanted street. "Follow me."

The voice grew more distinct with every turned corner, and as we escaped the crush of leaning buildings, it separated into two—one the soft brush of wings, the other the cold burn of iron.

"Then this substance, this Void, will stop the affliction?"

"Indeed."

"And the larva—the V-Vessel—is composed of it? That is how its arm changed as it did?"

"Yes, unbound Void is protean. And supremely dangerous."

"But is the Vessel alive in that state? Is it a living thing like you or I?"

"No, it only masquerades as such. The Vessel is an inversion of life, a walking husk that entraps the Soul of those it touches."

Ogrim paused in a courtyard, intricately tiled and decorated with free-standing pillars. Beyond it, pressing out of the tumult of buildings, was Lurien's Spire. Yet it was wrong, bent at a strange angle. The enormous sheet of glass that rose to its summit was shattered, but the shards had not fallen. They merely scintillated in the air, revolving like suspended ornaments.

From within, through a wide-flung doorway, echoed the voices.

Ogrim's panting was shallow and pain-barbed, but he resumed the pursuit.

"Why tell me all this? Why only now?"

"For lack of any recourse. My injuries are too severe, if I am to fulfill my duty, then I require your aid. The Vessel must be destroyed, or this world will surely come to ruin."

"I was the one that you nearly destroyed when we last met, and yet here you are, asking my help."

"If I desired you dead, then you would be. Believe what you like, but my only intent was to frighten you away. I made no real attempt on your life."

"My broken wings might beg to differ."

The interior of the Spire contained an atrium, just as its material counterpart did. But this one paid no heed to scale or dimension. Its mirrored ceiling was impossibly high and hurled down spears of reflected light. Its floor was sinuous and flanked on either side by floating library shelves and deep, cloud-filled trenches. Chandeliers dangled overhead, but their chains were tethered to nothing.

The voices carried on, originating from a gaping archway on the atrium's far side.

"Even if I were to agree… I am still a mere commoner. What aid could you expect from me?"

"Do not play the fool, I have come to realize what you are. The Lady told me of a weapon amongst the moth tribe that could pierce the realm of dreams and drain the Essence of the dead. It was no coincidence that you were lingering like a starving carrion-eater beside the den of that dying ancient. You intended to gather its Essence, as you have surely done to many other creatures of Kingdom's Edge. You possess power, if nowhere else, then at least here in this fictitious place."

"'Carrion-eater'? I am no such thing! The Essence I have claimed was at the King's command, it has never been for me. But that aside, you seem to know of my tribe's traditions. We are no war-bringers, violence is not our way."

"Scruple if you must, but I do not require that you assault the Vessel yourself, only incapacitate it."

"You misunderstand. When this tool was bestowed upon me, I was made to vow I would never unleash its power against those that did not welcome it. I cannot betray the trust of my tribe and my teacher."

"You imprisoned us in this dreamscape with that very power. To your eyes, was I welcoming it?"

"That was not the same. I was saving a life, not ending one!"

"You know that is false."

We emerged from the Spire, not to more confined City streets, but to a stony plain beneath the naked sky. The broken buildings and twisted lampposts had been supplanted by a boundless graveyard wreathed in golden fog. As we walked, Ogrim stared fixedly at his feet and the rough-hewn path ahead. Grave after grave passed us by, each one more lavish than the last: pedestals, statues, gilded emblems. Yet, not one among them bore a name.

The voices rebounded off the gravestones, striking us from all sides.

"But what purpose is there in that pacifist's vow? Why cling to it? Your kind was quick to abandon other, far greater traditions when the King first appeared."

"What? The King has always presided over these lands."

"Do you not know? In only a few generations have the moths forgotten? I thought that they prized memory above all else. The King is thorough indeed."

"If you seek my help, then mocking me is a poor way to go about it. Explain yourself, Knight."

"Very well, perhaps the truth will spur you to action. At the least, you will come to know your place in all this. And the sins of your ancestors."

The farther we traveled, the more aberrant the graveyard became. The ground was made treacherous by crags and precipices, yet the graves still paraded on without interruption, rising and falling with the terrain, protruding at odd angles from bluffs and sheer cliff faces. The footpath was soon impassable, and we were forced to weave between the headstones. Ogrim looked up only once to survey our progress, but when he did, something caught his gaze.

On a small rise ahead rested another grave. It was not so different from the others, but for some reason, Ogrim was transfixed by it. The grave was tall and narrow, carved of a glistening, silver-black stone. A thin, upward-facing crescent adorned its summit in a way that mimicked a pair of horns.

Ogrim shuddered. With all the effort of a bug removing its own limb, Ogrim tore away from the grave and pressed on, toward the hiss of conspiring voices.

"Though He makes no effort to quell these rumors, it is believed amongst the King's most zealous disciples that He originated all things, that the world was but an empty expanse before the King saw fit to change that. This is a lie. The King never possessed such a power. No matter His influence, the King is not the first god, nor the mightiest. The territory and loyal minds that he now controls were stolen from another, far older deity. Your deity."

"What do you mean?"

"Before even my Lady sunk her roots into the earth, your goddess, the Radiance, molded your ancestors from the very Essence of this realm. For arrogance, for love, or for need of a slave, I know not, but She translocated those dream moths onto the material plane and bid them to worship Her. With the passage of ages, the King rose to threaten the Radiance's rule. He sought to undermine the source of Her power—remembrance itself—and stole away her worshipers with honeyed words. Your ancestors betrayed their goddess, their creator, and now She has returned to seek Her vengeance."

"In what manner of vengeance…?"

"You have already surmised that. Feigning ignorance will not soften the blow."

"The affliction, then? That is Her doing?"

"Correct."

"But that is absurd! That cannot be the reason that my tribe teeters on the brink of extinction! My teacher cannot have died from the petty reprisal of a slighted goddess!"

"I have offered you the truth and nothing more. What would you have me say? All beings—even the gods—lash out at their enemies. You should expect no less."

The graveyard diminished behind the oppressive, golden fog, which grew so dense that I could no longer spy Ogrim's shape, even though he walked only a few paces ahead.

Like a veil being swept aside, the fog gave way to yet another environment, retreating behind wild foliage and contorted towers of stone. All about floated flakes of ash, frozen mid-descent.

Ogrim was beside me, holding still and silent, waiting for the next reverberation of a voice.

"Before you clutch at futile hope, know that the Radiance will not take you back. If She ever possessed the capacity for mercy, then Her time in exile has stripped it away. Only a deranged monstrosity remains now. You and your tribe, just as I and my Lady, are bound to the King's gambit. Should He fail, then your tribe will perish."

"And you suspect that the larva will bring about this failure?"

"I am far beyond suspecting. If the Vessel takes part in the King's ritual, then it will mean the end of Hallownest. No matter how you, or Ogrim, or the King may wish it, the Vessel must be destroyed so that another may take its place."

"But must we k-kill it?"

"Of course! Have you not heeded me? Void can never again be allowed focus! I will not see this land follow in the doomed footsteps of that ancient empire! Do you understand me? Are you willing to do what must be done?"

"…I am."

Although there was no road or footpath, the rampant foliage parted before us whenever we drew close, forming backlit tunnels of gray and green. Ogrim's huffing was loud in the confined space. From time to time he would reach out to the tunnel wall for support, but it shrank from him like a furtive creature.

"Little Knight…" Ogrim rumbled, addressing me for the first time since our pursuit began. "These things that Dryya has said of you… the things that she believes you will do… They are not true. Dryya is wise, I cannot deny that, but she is quick to leap at conclusions. Her verdict is flawed. Perhaps it is indeed possible that you are not suited for this ritual of the King's, but that hardly means that you are a threat to Hallownest. You are too noble a Knight for that."

He stopped and knelt next to me. "Dryya put aside her nail for the moth. She will do the same for me. I can convince her that you mean no harm, and that there is no need for you to be—" He swallowed, letting the words trail and die.

Using my shoulder as a brace, Ogrim stood. "Just wait," he said, "you will see! The moth is a good-hearted bug, I can sense it, she and Dryya will accept reason. Soon, we will all be free of this strange dream. Trust in me."

The voices did not resume, but this gave Ogrim no pause. He seemed to have discerned the way, as though he had traveled this ever-extending tunnel once before.

Without any hint, any shift of light, the tunnel opened in an emerald burst of leaves. They suspended in the air, just as the ash did, but Ogrim pushed through, taking me with him. Beyond was a stretch of stone that led to the lip of a crater. Ogrim made a noise of triumph, for it resembled the place that Dryya and I had crossed nails, even though the crater and foliage were titanic caricatures.

Dryya was at the edge, looking out to the cloudbanks that whorled in the crater's center. She turned to us, revealing her ravaged right arm. Pale, yellow blood trickled through the fissures and dripped from the end of her limp claw. She held the longnail with her other arm, tip planted into the ground like a walking stick. A multitude of other injuries marked her shell, each one my doing…

"You have come. Good. These wounds have left me in no state for hunting. Many years have passed since I was last bested in combat, the Vessel is indeed a brutal foe. If it were to attain its terminal form, then it would be a terror."

Ogrim held up his claws. "Dryya, listen to me! I overheard your words with the moth. I know what you intend to do. Stop and consider, for only a moment. The Little Knight does not need to perish!"

Dryya let out a low sigh and waved her arm, sprinkling the ground with blood. "No more, Ogrim. I will not indulge you any longer."

A light coalesced high above her head. It began as a point, but expanded upward and outward, becoming something more. Pink wings, antennae, and a slender body solidified in a moth-like shape. It fluttered in place, shedding shining discs with each flap.

"Moth?" Ogrim asked. "Is that you?"

The same soft voice that we had heard throughout our trek greeted us. "Yes, Loyal Ogrim. Now please, step away from the Vessel. I would rather not wield my powers against you."

Ogrim did not obey, instead planting himself before me, again becoming my shield. "Wait! Wait, I say!"

"No." Dryya hobbled closer with her nail-crutch. "You have had your time. You have said your piece. Do it, moth. Now!"

There was a sound—a wailing note—as though the wind were voicing some anguish. With that came an overpowering light, much like the first flash that had drawn me into the dream. But this light did not rush forth. It hung from Seer's spectral form like a cloak, bristling with greater intensity each second.

"Hold!" Ogrim shouted. "You need not do this!"

"I am sorry." Seer said. "I see no other way to save my tribe."

Ogrim hunched against the growing light. "But if Dryya is mistaken, what then? Will you have ended the Kingdom's last, best hope? Will you have brought doom and not salvation?"

Dryya clenched her wounded claw, sending fresh rivulets down her arm. "I am not mistaken!"

"Do you think yourself wiser than the King?" Ogrim asked. "Is he so beyond reason that you must commit this murder behind his back?"

Dryya labored to look up. "Moth, fulfill your promise! Aid me!"

"This is wrong!" Ogrim screamed. "You will doom an innocent!"

Seer wavered in the wind of her own power. "I must do what I believe is right!"

I must do what I believe is right.

I touched Ogrim's arm.

He flinched and whipped about to face me. "Little Knight?"

Slowly, so as not to startle him, I guided Ogrim out of the way and stepped forward, presenting myself to Seer's rampart of light.

"No." Ogrim's said, barely audible in the howl. "Not this way…"

Seer's energy stalled for an instant. The brilliance faltered, and the winds lulled.

"Do not hesitate, moth!" Dryya bellowed. "DO IT!"

And with a sweep of Seer's wings, the light claimed me.