Upon entering the next room, Whisper spotted a new fun thing to kill.
Down the tunnel ahead of her, it opened into another spacious chamber, with many stone alcoves leading up and down. Hovering around with a chirping burbling noise was a fat orange fly, with cold dark eyes and a large belly glowing with that same hideous light that filled Whisper with extra desire to murder it.
The bug hovered around the chamber without a care in the world, and Whisper silently creeped towards it, using the shadows of the tunnel to conceal her approach. But as she reached the edge of the tunnel, she felt a strange pressure behind her mask, followed by an echoing high chime. Behind her, a metal gate slammed closed, and the bug (aspid, her mind supplied) turned towards her curiously.
Whisper immediately prepared to fight it. But she noticed it didn't fly at her or anything, instead hovering back and staying out of her reach. Its cold eyes tracked her as she moved into the chamber, her scepter at the ready.
Whisper figured this would be easy to kill.
Then its belly glowed, and the aspid spat an orange glob of acid directly at her. It splashed against her torso, and Whisper felt a burning pain run up her body, black smoke steaming out from under her cloak. She staggered back, the pain having successfully surprised her. This bug was not like others she had fought.
The aspid hovered around cheerfully, before spitting another glob at her. This time, Whisper successfully managed to dodge, as she took a running leap towards the aspid. Her staff whacked it in the side, dealing some damage but not enough.
The aspid hovered annoyingly out of reach again, readying another acid glob. Whisper started climbing up the platforms, trying to get to it again. She dodged as more orange goo splattered the walls, and leaped forward, cleaving her scepter into its face, cracking it and bringing it to the ground with a satisfying splat.
Whisper felt pleased that it was dead…and then she heard more burbling.
Looking up, she saw two more aspids hovering in, both looking excited to attack. Whisper readied her scepter, knowing that this was not going to be enjoyable.
The two aspids spit at her simultaneously, and she ran, racing to the side of the room and leaping onto a platform near another locked door. The aspids turned and bumbled slowly towards her, ready to continue spitting their aggravating acid at her more.
Whisper barely rolled out of the way, ducking into a small crevice underneath the next platform. The aspids buzzed around it, but were too stupid to go under the platform and get her there. Whisper took the time to focus her collected soul and heal the acid burns.
But then one of the aspids remembered it could go down and under, and buzzed right for her, spitting acid right into her mask.
The mask cracked from the toxins, and orange goo dripped across her vision. Fierce pain blazed across her face, and she felt something building up behind the mask. All at once, she then released it, in a burst of shrieking power that blasted the aspid into the wall and smashed it. Whisper felt drained, smoke leaking out her mask and her soul expended.
But there was still another aspid, buzzing down from behind her. Whisper, filled with rage and agony, whirled around and threw her scepter into it, skewering it to the wall and murdering it toto. Acid dripped down from its body, sizzling the stones below it.
Smoke poured off of Whisper as she stumbled over to retrieve her scepter, venom still melting down the side of her mask. There was a faint chime again, and the gates opened back up. Whisper leaned against an unpoisoned part of the wall, struggling to recover while her scepter still hang above her.
Then up above, she saw a faint white glow from a doorway. It made her think of soul - which meant healing.
So carefully, painfully, she pulled her scepter free, dodging the leaky carcass that fell from it. Then she climbed up to the white room, stumbling her way inside.
The room was a wide chamber, with a shimmering white pool taking up much of the space. Along the back walls were a collection of startlingly white rock formations, somewhat resembling masks like the one on her face. More of the shimmering white liquid poured out from gaping mouths, with a soothing sound that made Whisper feel much calmer and less weary.
At one corner of the room, there was a single iron bench, glittering in the soft light produced by the spring. Whisper wondered what it was there for. But she was more interested in the glowing water.
It seemed to call out to her, she noted, beckoning her to come in and relax. Whisper was too exhausted to even debate questioning it. So she slid into the water and sat down.
The result was instantaneous - Whisper immediately started feeling energized again, her soul supply refilling as the cracks and gouges left in her mask and body healed back to perfect form. Her scepter also started glowing with a similar pale light, although it was very faint and barely attracted Whisper's interest.
Whisper relaxed there for a few long moments, until she felt even better than when she'd first arrived here in Hallownest. Then she pulled herself up from the spring (hmm, so that was its name), readying her scepter as she headed back into the dark tunnels.
Looking at her map, she identified that the next path she needed to take was under the spring. It appeared to lead through a long set of chambers, before leading into an escalating series of rooms that should get her to whatever that powerful enemy was. Seemed simple enough, but after the trap room she was a lot more suspicious of those seemingly empty rooms.
She clambered her way down from the spring, landing in front of the tunnel before her. Now that she was right next to it, she could hear strange noises from ahead - fearsome grinding noises and rumbling earth. Whisper was interested in finding out what they were - and if she could murder them too.
So she slipped into the tunnel, passing under an opening from above that dimly shone with the light from the fountain above.
In the next room, there were many tunnels winding everywhere, although most had collapsed. Grinding noises echoed through the room, with dark earth and stones flying everywhere. Whisper swatted away some, a strange feeling in her shell that was somewhat like anger but wasn't.
A little bit of looking quickly revealed where it was coming from.
Every few seconds, a massive worm covered in spikes would burst from the walls or floor, chewing up stones in its massive teeth. After disintegrating whatever kind of earth was in its mouth, it would dive back into the dirt and chew it up some more, only to come right back up again a few seconds later. And there were loads of these things everywhere, slowly grinding away through the chamber.
While Whisper couldn't tell if they were filled with the burning light, seeing as they didn't even have eyes, she still was interested in knowing how to make them die. They looked rather powerful, and it looked like it could be exciting.
Whisper eagerly raced towards the nearest one, which was digging out of the floor, and immediately swung her scepter at it.
…which promptly bounced off with a loud chink sound, proving about as effective as hitting that Baldur back in the green room.
Whisper felt the void inside her boiling. Now she really, really, really wanted to murder something. Stupid unbreakable armor!
The worm, meanwhile, didn't even seem to register that she had hit it. It just kept digging and digging, completely oblivious to everything else.
Whisper furiously whacked it several more times, to about equal success. Which was to say nothing at all.
Finally Whisper gave up, knowing that she'd need to go around it rather than murder it. As it dove into the ground, she leaped across its hole, grabbing onto a ledge on the other side and pulling herself up. As she looked down the chamber, a puff of void went out from her cloak as she realized how many more worms she needed to dodge.
What followed was a fast dash through twisting tunnels, nearly getting hit by the worms multiple times and getting her cloak all dirty. By the time she reached the end of the tunnels, black smoke was boiling out of every opening and Whisper was just about ready to find a bug and rip them to pieces with just her hands.
The next room she entered, she noticed, was very spacious and strangely shaped, as if it had partially collapsed at some point. Down below, there was a smooth straight path carved out of the earth, leading deeper into Hallownest, while directly above Whisper was an opening into another large room - which according to her map was where she needed to go to fight that big enemy Cornifer had marked on the map.
But as Whisper looked up, she realized there was something staring right back at her.
Standing in the light shining down from above, staring at her with eyes as black and empty as her own, was another bug. A bug, Whisper realized, looked much like the dead she had left behind in that pit.
But this one wasn't dead. It stood just like her, its cloak rustling softly, its pearly white mask gazing down at hers. It held a worn old blade in its hand, scratched and cracked along its edge. Whisper sensed, however, that it would still be dangerous if it touched her.
As the two stated at each other, she realized this one was quite small. Smaller than her, in fact. She wondered if it was somehow younger than her - perhaps among the last cast into the pit before it became buried. It seemed sad and empty - emptier even than her.
Whisper wasn't sure what she was supposed to do.
The bug looked up, then. It seemed to sense something, and leaped away, climbing higher up and disappearing from Whisper's sight. She felt a strange sense of urgency. She didn't want it to leave yet!
She immediately leaped up and started scrambling after it, climbing up into the upper chamber. But it was gone already, as if it had never been there.
'Like a ghost.', Whisper's mind supplied. But she didn't know what that word actually meant.
Her shell felt heavy. The first of her kind she'd seen living, and it was gone before she could even get close. It made her feel bad for some reason. Which was odd, since what was she even supposed to do if she did? She couldn't even sing.
Whisper absent-mindedly kicked a rock…and froze as something thin and cold grabbed her foot. She struggled to pull it free, falling back and suddenly getting caught up in a lot more like it. They were thin strands woven everywhere, nearly invisible…and refusing to let go of her.
She had fallen into a trap.
Whisper wriggled and squirmed, her scepter trapped behind her back. As she did so, she heard something triumphantly yell, "Aha! Finally, a strange bug has been caught in my web! This battle should be truly exciting!" *