14

Note: Fear is an ill counselor. It convinces us that we are insufficient. It portrays our obstacles as insurmountable. It argues that surrender is preferable to the long, winding road of failure. If one is to accomplish anything in this life, then fear is not to be heeded.

(Btw, for those of you that are current with the story, you might want to reread the previous chapter, given it's... been a while.)


Ogrim screamed. I had not heard such a sound from him before. It was not a battle cry. It was not a roar of defiance. It was not a railing against injustice. It was too raw for that, too unformed. It was like breaking.

Isma's body struck the ground with such force that it bounced, grotesque and doll-like. She did not move. She did not breathe. She lay so very still.

Hegemol stepped back, once, twice, a shiver running through his body. The mace—speckled with chitin and slick with blood—slipped from his claws. He made no effort to catch it.

"Isma, I did—I did not—" Hegemol steadied himself against a wall as though the whole world were shaking.

Ogrim crouched and lifted Isma's head. "No, no. You mustn't go. Not now, please, not now."

She nuzzled the crook of his arm. It looked like so much effort, a final flare before the dark. With a dreamy voice, she whispered, "Ogrim, there's no time."

"Don't say that. This is no different from the mustering ground. The wound is no worse than—" He looked at her mangled chest and the words caught. "Little Knight!" His head snapped up. "Little Knight, she needs Soul. Grant her some, all that you can. You've taken it in the past, you can give it now!"

I padded forward. The agony in Ogrim's plea formed within me. It was like a fault line on the brink of rupture. I lifted my arms, extended them toward Isma.

"Please, do this for me!" Ogrim said. "If nothing else in this world, grant me but one thing."

I searched for the power. I did. I longed for it as I had never longed. I felt the Soul within me, trapped and churning, but it could not emerge that way, no healing stream, only a smashing flood. I could not give, not as Isma needed it. I was not that manner of thing, only—

Void… nemesis to life… embodiment of hunger.

"Little Knight!" Ogrim shrieked. "Little Knight!"

My arms shook—thrashed—as though force alone would free the Soul inside. I fell to my knees and placed my claws against her chest, but it did not flow out, only in. The pale motes that escaped her wound settled on my shell and were absorbed. They were sweet, deeply, warmly sweet. And yet why did they hurt so? I hovered there, sipping at the last of her, for I knew not what else to do.

I could not cry out.

"What are you doing?" Ogrim asked. "Stop that. If you can't heal her, then get away!" He pushed me with the back of a claw. I fell to my side and did not rise. "Her grove, we'll take her there. Just as with Lurien's garden. Hegemol, help me carry her!"

As though reminded of himself, Hegemol took a rattling breath. "She is dead."

"No, you are mistaken. She is too grand a knight for that, too hale, too goodly. She is not dead. She cannot—"

"Look at her!" Hegemol's voice sent shockwaves through the crowding of black clouds. "She is dead!" He clenched his claws, strangled them together into one armored mass. "And it is your doing! Your conceit has brought us here! Had you kept to your name, had you held loyalty above all, then a Great Knight would not be dead upon the ground. You did this! You!"

Ogrim choked. A piteous sound escaped him. In that moment, he was as one of the King's baubles, a metal shell of clockwork held in the palm. His key wound and wound, each turn another whimper, each turn a swallowed scream.

"I had not meant for this." He drew Isma closer, pressing her crumpled chest to his own. "I had meant to help them, to help you. But it all went so wrong." He gasped, letting out something like a laugh. "Can we not go back? I will be whatever I must, believe whatever I must, just please—please return to me."

Hegemol averted his gaze. "Stop, Ogrim. Words cannot change this. She is beyond—"

"SHE WILL LIVE!" Ogrim lurched upright, bundling Isma in his arms. "She is a master of Soul! This is nothing! I will ferry her to her garden. She will mend her wounds, and I will safekeep her, no matter how long!" He staggered, fighting the dead weight. "It will be well! It will all be well! As before the plague, before the war, we will be whole—The Five Greats—together! Laughter will fill our hearts again!" And he did laugh, full and loud, but then Isma's blood began to stream down his arms, and the laugh became a wail.

He turned his back and shuffled away. He did not call for me to follow. He had forgotten. Again.

"Wait," Hegemol said, but there was no strength in it.

The clash at the mustering ground came to me: Isma's wounding, Ogrim's fixation. He had left me there, just as he was leaving me now. Were we no longer meant to travel together? Were we no longer to be free of duty? Were we to remain Knights forever?

If this was Knighthood, I did not wish it.

I moved. I stuttered after him. I reached for his diminishing back, but a silvered claw enclosed my arm and held it fast.

"Stop, Vessel," Hegemol said. "Just stop."

The chains settled over me, and I watched Ogrim go. Had I failed somehow? If I had possessed the power to mend a shell, would he not have gone? If I had found the will to stand before that killing blow, would I still have meaning in his eyes?

I did not know.

I looked to Hegemol, but he had no answers for me. Instead, a jolt seemed to run through him, and he turned away. Pain bloomed in my shoulder as he tugged. I tried to plant my feet, tried to gain purchase. I did not want to leave. But his strength won out. He snatched his mace by the hilt and let it drag after us. It skipped and sparked over the uneven stones, playing an anguished song. We disappeared down the tunnel from which he'd emerged.

I would not see Ogrim again.

At first, Hegemol did not speak. He only stomped, head down, body swelling with every breath. The basin threw the sound back at him like a jeering audience. He lumbered over a rough patch and let out one watery sob.

"Ruin," he said between gasps. "I've brought us to ruin—hadn't the words to counsel Ogrim—hadn't the sense to stay my arm. Two Greats in one fell moment! King, would that I had your sight. Would that I—"

He slowed, fighting his own momentum, and came to a stop. With the faintest fraction of strength, he threw me forward. I tumbled, landing in a heap amid a spiral of dust.

"Go, Vessel," Hegemol said. "Return to the King. He will know what has transpired. I—I cannot follow. I have failed. I am false."

Like the other commands before it, this one burrowed into my shell, but unlike them, it could not find my core. There was a vastness separating us, a dark liquid depth into which I was sinking.

Through the curtain of dust, Hegemol clutched some object. It was egg-shaped and intricately carved. He pressed it to his heart and murmured something. Then he walked away.

I was left alone for a time. I lay as Isma had, lost to the world. There was a reason to rise. I felt it, somewhere far above. I could reach it if I willed. But was that any better? The depths demanded nothing of me but to keep sinking. My shell was not damaged, my Soul was not drained, yet I had never been so tired. There was peace in the sinking. There was rest.

Peace is not the claim of a Knight. Our claim is duty and strife. What has caused that to slip your mind?

Anchor-like, the purpose plunged. It was blind in its seeking but steady.

You husk. You flawed shell! You damnable VOID!

It drew close, but I turned away.

To whom is a Knight sworn…? To what?

King and Kingdom…

The purpose shadowed me, always in reach, spurring me with its presence.

You are the Vessel. None other shall rival your merit.

Tentatively, I reached.

You are the Hollow Knight… You are my child…

And I took it to my core.

The King stood at the platform's edge. It overlooked a deep pit of brambles. Beyond, cast in the unrelenting light of the White Palace, was a sequence of similar platforms. Some were elevated, angled, or inverted, and they all sported contraptions of death—spinning blades, thrusting spears, crushing pistons. They moved with mechanical regularity, animated by a force I did not understand. More brambles hung from the walls, they were chalky white and covered in thorns the length of shortnails.

At the wall behind us, on a wide, low bench sat the White Lady. Her roots were curled beneath her, and her tendril arms rested modestly in her lap. Beside her stood Dryya, vigilant as always. She did not have her longnail, only a shortnail at the hip. Her right arm—the one I had savaged—hung from a sling and was bandaged up to the shoulder. It had been that way for some weeks now. She had made a habit of snarling at me whenever she caught me staring.

"You are certain?" the Lady asked. She nudged the question into the quiet gulf born from the King's most recent introspection.

He startled, as though having forgotten her. "Long has the Path of Pain gone unchallenged, and never before by a Vessel. But yes, of what certitude I can glean, it shall survive this."

"If so, what then?" Dryya asked. "Will this display of acrobatics gouge the will from its shell? Will it render the thing any less broken? I have driven myself hoarse tallying the Vessel's defects, and yet here it stands. Am I the lone, sane voice in this sea of madness? You cannot—"

The Lady lifted a tendril and enclosed Dryya's claw, bringing her to silence.

"Those defects against which you rage are mere echoes," the King said, "reiterations of the many wills inflicted upon the Vessel. They bear no more significance to its composition than a dark drink does to a crystal glass."

Dryya said nothing, but even that seemed like a form of defiance.

Laboriously, the Lady rose. Her roots rippled over one another as she crossed the platform to stand beside the King. "Shall you demonstrate to it?" she asked quietly.

"Is that not my lot? To lead?"

The Lady surveyed the obstacles. "It is a harrowing trial. Have you the strength?"

"I shall yet endure."

The King stepped away from the Lady. He rolled his shoulders, eliciting a crackle, and then cast his cloak wide. Just as they had in the place of my birth, the King's wings erupted into being, luminous and ethereal. They vibrated there, an inch from his back, part of him, and yet not. He turned, pinning me with intent. "Observe and follow."

Then, with a flap, the King hurled himself into that whirring metal maw. He moved with the grace I had come to know, a leaf set loose upon the wind. The blades and spears struck at him, but he remained ever just out of reach. He would alight seldomly, and then only long enough to adjust his stance. But as he progressed from one platform to the next, I began to see. This was not the same, not entirely. Where once had been absolute control, now there was toil.

The King began to falter.

"Must He always endeavor to make a spectacle of Himself?" Dryya asked. She marched over to the Lady and blocked my view of the King. I sidled around her, and she stiffened at my proximity.

The Lady craned her neck, tracking the King's progress. "A beacon must make itself seen to be of use, would you not agree?"

"I would not liken Him to a beacon, more a performer upon a stage, a braggart seeking the ardor of a crowd."

The King came upon a passage barely wide enough to accommodate his wings. From gaps in the wall emerged a sequence of spears. They followed a pattern that allowed a momentary gap. To my eyes, the margin of error seemed miniscule. The King paused—hesitated—then shot forward. He landed upon a platform on the other side.

A banner of phantom feathers hung from a spearpoint. It quivered briefly then crumbled away.

Dryya chuckled. "And the braggart stumbles."

"He is dying, Dryya. You will forgive him for the lapse, I trust."

Dryya flinched, as though shocked by an Ooma. "Forgive me, my Lady, I did not—" She looked away. "I did not know."

The King stood, body swaying, mismatched wings fully extended. He seemed at war with his own breath, barely able to suppress the gasps in his chest. After a moment, he straightened and disappeared through a hole in the ceiling of the chamber.

The Lady turned and crossed the observation platform. She ascended a staircase with torturous grace. Dryya and I fell into step.

"When did you learn?" Dryya asked.

"A sickness of that sort is not a trifle to conceal. During our courtship, I was not without suspicion. Had I acted upon it, perhaps time enough would have remained to staunch the wound." Her chuckle was little more than a cough. "Not that He would have acquiesced."

The staircase spiraled upward. The close, curving walls were like the bowels of an enormous creature.

"What will become of the Kingdom?" Dryya's question echoed, as though all of Hallowest had broached it.

The Lady did not respond. She passed through a doorway flooded with light. We followed, and on the other side beheld another chamber like the first, though even more treacherous. Sawblades raced up dizzying cliffs, platforms rose and fell over spiked chasms. The King waited on the far side. Once he spied me, he resumed the challenge.

"What will become of you?" Dryya persisted. "Of us? Will you claim the throne?"

For the first time, the Lady tore her attention from the King. Gently, she ran a tendril down Dryya's bandaged arm. "Does it yet pain you?"

"My Lady, no deflections. You must consider what need be done."

"The Vessel is an exceptional thing, possessed of a power tantamount to the eldest Knight. I had not considered—not truly—that my spawn might inflict such injury."

Dryya's claw twitched within the bandage. "Had Ogrim not already taxed me so, my duel with this thing would have concluded quite differently. But that is not the matter before us. Lady, please, will you seize the Kingdom? You may yet amend its course. If infirmity clouds the King's mind, then by right, you—"

"No, Dryya. This land shall not fall to my care."

Dryya bristled, her rebuttal poised like a nail, but there came a deafening shriek.

The King had grazed a sawblade. Shreds of steel-gray cloth tumbled through the air. They caught on the many serrated edges and dangled like the freshly dead. The King retreated to a safe platform and studied his chest. A scratch ran from collar to abdomen. It glittered, as though it might shed diamonds instead of blood.

Dryya did not look up. She barely registered the sound. With effort, she compressed a shout into a whisper. "Why will you not take what is yours?"

"Such was his plea."

"The foulest curse upon his plea," Dryya said. "This realm must change if it is to survive. My Lady, you must be the bringer of that change. This weakness that the King has fostered in his subjects is the very reason they skirt the abyss. I beheld the Mantis. They did not fear the Radiance. Her light could not claim them without consent. It was their strength of body—of will—that shielded them. Were we to heed their example, we would have no need to tinker with these evils!" She leveled a claw at me with such force that it rippled my cloak.

The Lady's voice grew wistful. Her crown of branches bent under its own weight. "Never has a Knight possessed a truer namesake. No matter the onerous ages, your heat finds my heart time and again. It reminds this old Root that she can yet shape the world in beautiful and terrible ways. But though it grieves me to fail you so, I shall not act. Senescence is my fate."

"Enough!" Dryya choked, "Enough of this forbearance! Are you not the White Lady, prime among the gods? Was it not you that laid Unn low? Was it not you that claimed her lands and threatened dominion over all? Did the King's perfidious words steal that away?" Dryya pressed a bandaged claw over her eyes. Blooms of blood darkened the wrappings around her arm. "To possess such power and not to wield it. My Lady, I do not understand. I have never understood."

The Lady drew close to Dryya. She draped a tendril behind the Knight's neck and bent low, bringing their foreheads together. "My Dryya, ever has strength been the vanguard of your thoughts. Ever has weakness been abjured. When a doleful mood finds me, I am sometimes made to wonder if you would still have borne me such love had I sprouted as a frailer thing."

Dryya took a long, wet breath, but did not speak.

"Beyond the ken of any but Himself," the Lady said, "the King has sacrificed for this Kingdom. For all its frailty, its decadence, its conceit, the King has made his love for this land clear. No right of mine is it to deface something so cherished. I shall not tarnish his memory by rendering it unrecognizable."

The Lady straightened and returned her attention to the King.

"Grant me this much," Dryya whispered. "Why aid Him? Why deny a potential so vast just to placate a dying fool? In all the ages of your union, He has not once offered you anything."

"If to Fierce eyes love is nothing, then perhaps that is so. But of you and I, how does that liken? Tell me, of what aid have I granted you? Of your ennoblement, your empowerment, how have I accorded? At my side, on what have you supped? Pain and worry, indignity and peril. Yet here you remain. Why?"

"…I vowed to follow. Is that not sufficient?"

"And to a wretched end that vow might yet ferry you. Mayhap the time arrives that your vow be annulled. Before you are lost as all the other Greats."

Dryya shook her head as though every movement were an agony. "Do not ask that of me. Please."

The Lady hummed, a sad, slow rumble. "To give without expectation is the truest love, the maddest love. It is a fever not unlike that mothered by Light. In every bug it festers, waiting to spill forth, to change us utterly. Had I not ensorcelled you, what wonders might you have achieved? Had He not ensorcelled me, what horrors would I have unleashed?"

The King's pace diminished to a crawl. Though he had initially taken several obstacles at a time, now he lingered before each one, panting and hunched. Eventually, the final hurdle of the chamber came before him. It was a tunnel lined with spikes. But for a pair of sawblades that ran down its length, the tunnel was otherwise featureless. There wasn't a single place to rest, just a long, barbed throat to swallow you.

"Come," the Lady said. "This tormenting play nears resolution. We shall not dishonor the cast by failing to witness it." She ushered us down a hall festooned with silk. The Lady bent low to avoid snagging her branches.

"What of the heir you had hoped for? Dryya asked. "Was that not the foundation of your compact? And yet He coerced you into casting it aside."

The Lady paused. In the low light of the hall, she was but a silhouette, an unearthly frame. "You speak of that sterling seed? What a marvel it would have become. A power to eclipse all others, to stride the world, a colossus among specks." She knelt and patted my head. "In its features, I oft ponder what I might have seen. My Wyrm's slender face? My own stately horns? Perhaps the hollow eyes of my thousand, thousand dead." She stood and carried on. "I see now that I shall have no child, Dryya, only penance."

We came across a balcony that presided over an arena. Towering metal reliefs of the Hallownest seal covered the walls. In the center stood two armored creatures. I recognized them to be the same manner of thing that I had encountered while in Lurien's company. The creatures faced a portal in the ceiling from which emerged the ghostly sigh of the King's beating wings.

"Kingsmoulds?" Dryya said. "This is a combat trial?"

"Yes." The lady approached the balcony railing and wrapped it with two tendrils.

The King descended through the portal in a tempest of molting feathers. What remained of his wings fought against the descent, adjusting wildly to reverse the spiral. He landed in the arena center with a force that sent fractures through the tiles. He pushed off with trembling arms and rose, resuming a semblance of his majesty.

The balcony railing warped under the Lady's grip. Every fiber of her tensed, as though she meant to hurl herself into the arena. "Be stalwart, Wyrm, for but a moment more!"

The King managed half a nod before the creatures—the Kingsmoulds—lurched into motion.

Their attacks were plain, bordering on novice. They swept their scythes from side to side, rarely altering the trajectory. If not for their tirelessness, they would have been trivial to avoid. But they advanced without pause, never granting the King a chance to recover.

He darted out of their range time and again, but his wings were little more than stumps, and the space narrowed with every swing.

Would he survive?

I gazed through the bars. And I felt it then, the resonance of the Lady's will. It was as my own. I did not wish for him to die, to leave me… as Ogrim had. I looked for the blow, that which I had failed to prevent once already. It would not pass me again. I would not lose another. I readied.

But a claw found my shoulder. It tightened, almost to the point of fracture.

Dryya leaned down. "This is no fight of yours, Vessel," she whispered. "You haven't the right to interfere."

In clockwork tandem, the Moulds worked to corner the King. They alternated strikes, covering each other's vulnerabilities. Not once had the King countered. Was it for lack of a weapon? How was he meant to defend himself without a nail?

It was not fair. I saw no honor in this.

Like a dull bell, the King's back struck the arena wall. Hallownest's seal hung over him, bearing down like a judge. His wings, at last, flickered and failed, reverting to a shredded cloak. He went still. His shoulders slackened.

A scythe descended on him. The railing snapped in the Lady's tendrils. I strained against Dryya's hold.

There was a rending scream.

Snow-white blood puddled at the King's feet, but he did not fall. The scythe blade rattled in his claw. The Mould's body bulged as it tried to wrench the weapon free, but the King held fast. The second Mould, seeing a chance, leveled a blow at the King's brow. But it did not connect. It had no time.

Through the silvered plating of the King's claw issued a light. It began as errant prisms but widened—surged. Like a bursting dam, the plating fell away, and the light slammed against the Moulds. At first, they held. Even as their feet dug trenches into the tiles, they stood against the torrent. One reached, groping at the King's face, but the King let out a roar, and the light redoubled. A heat filled the room, as though we had been cast into the Palace forge.

The Molds burned. The walls burned. The floor burned. And yet the light continued. It bore the Moulds to their knees, shearing away at their armored bodies, reducing them to blackened heaps, and then to nothing at all.

The light winked out. The heat dispersed. The King's arm remained extended, grasping air. It was gray and withered now, as though sapped of all moisture. The lustrous plating that had once covered it lay on the ground in molten heaps.

The Lady stifled a sob.

Across the arena, one of the reliefs swung wide, revealing another pair of Kingsmoulds. They marched forward and planted their scythes, ready for the next challenger.

The King pressed his desiccated arm to his chest and limped past them. He paused below the balcony and looked up at me. With all the breath left to him, he said, "Follow."


Note: One more.