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tozetteFor an endless moment, everything is dark and silent and still.
Then: light, golden like sunshine through honey. It breaks through in a slow drip, and then a drizzle, and then a cascade. Light, like drowning in sweetness.
There's a towering, horned silhouette, floating. The deafening clink of a chain.
And then screaming.
Somewhere far away from the source of that distant cry, a nameless little knight looks up. They turn their own horned head like a weathervane following the breeze. That way.
They can't feel it on the air, the way a bug should. No vibrations. No scents. It's not like talking. But beneath their grey cloak and worn carapace, the inky stain of their body responds. The stuff that makes them is curiously tuned, sensitive to that single note of torment.
It's not really like making a decision. They just get up, lift their worn nail, and begin walking back across the wastes, one small step at a time.
...They'll know what they're looking for, when they find it.
Probably. Possibly. Eventually.
Hopefully.
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The Howling Cliffs seem familiar, but they can't put their stubby abyssal finger on precisely why. They get lost there anyway, and then a vengefly takes a chunk out of their cloak, so maybe it's a false sense of familiarity.
King's Pass, when they stumble down into it, is pretty, in a haunted sort of way. There are pale, luminescent grasses, and little motes of dust and wayward spores drift uncertainly in their light. Their pallid glow leeches all the colour away, casting the world in shades of white and dull blue and soft grey.
Five doors fall to their old nail. Tiny crawlids—usually shy scavengers—seem emboldened to conduct their business right out in the open, and don't run from their light steps. The spines on their backs are sharp. The crawlids don't even seem to notice them. Isn't that odd, for a prey animal?
Lumaflies drift past with their lights on, little halos in the dimness of the cave system in King's Pass.
The cave tunnels open into a tall cavern, and then only way to go is right back up, which requires significantly more effort than jumping down.
A geo deposit gives them seventeen of the fossilised shells that are the currency here. This does not make up for the stalactite that almost brains them as they leap up.
At a break in this long and tiring climb, a mural is painted right onto the wall:
'Higher beings, these words are for you alone. Your great strength marks you amongst us. Focus your soul and you shall achieve feats of which others can only dream.'
The word "dream" is vandalised, something smeared right across it. It might be ink. But it might be dried haemolymph. It looks like dried haemolymph. But... maybe it's just ink!
They pass it. They move onwards through the dim caves.
There's another angry vengefly. This one is carrying three geo of its own, despite roughly zero evidence that it has any brain with which to spend it. Confusing. (They still take the geo, though. Waste not.)
Dodging a second one almost sends them careening into the spikes on the floor. Above, another loose stalactite is shaken free by their lightest steps and comes hurtling towards them so fast they almost get skewered.
There's another geo deposit—they get sixteen, and then lose the rest to the unnecessarily spiky floor. It's too sharp to risk their limbs for grabbing them.
At the top, at long last, there's a blue glowing sack that drips lifeblood onto them when pierced. It's a weird sort of lifeblood: in most bugs, fluids are green; in some, a glossy purple or a dark, dark blue. In them, personally, fluids are a foggy blackness so complete it sucks the daylight from a room.
Ha. Haha.
Nevertheless, the feeling of slurping this strange blue lifeblood into their inky body is... indescribable.
Another crawlid. Another sealed door into a tunnel long since abandoned. With a great trembling and rumbling, the floor gives way—they fall and fall, but the landing is flat ground, and they are very light.
A perilous arrangement of old stone platforms marks a bridge over needle-sharp stalagmites, and every landing provokes more stalactites above to come free—but after, at last, they're back on the path in King's Pass proper again.
This trip is already more trouble than they expected. The world here is... crumbling. Badly. It's very dangerous, and there are no signs or anything.
But somewhere out there is the source of that great big voiceless cry. And they have to find it.
A huge door, ominously cracked, is the last thing that bars the way. The Hallownest crest is worn in places but still clear on the door. Before it, an equally worn sign reads:
'Beyond this point you enter the land of King and Creator. Step across this threshold and obey our laws. Bear witness to the last and only civilisation, the eternal Kingdom.
Hallownest.'
They peer at the words for a long moment.
Whatever laws might once have been enforced here in Hallownest... they don't seem to have much authority anymore.
The call certainly comes from beyond the crumbling seal of this huge door.
Their eyeless stare is fixed beyond it.
They draw their battered nail. The door does not stand long.
Rubble flies off the edge of what must once have been a tremendous bridge. It is now broken, cast iron rails worn sharp and rusted, jutting angrily into the empty air. With this much space out here, the wind sounds fierce, a furious howl. Their cloak whips around them. The sound of their little steps is lost to the shriek of the wind.
The fossilised shells of enormous ancestors dot the landscape. These are many, many times taller than their own tiny form. Far across the empty stretch and a long way down, there shine the lights of a tiny town.
It's in the right direction. Perhaps there they'll get some answers. They sheathe their nail.
It's a long way down.
They leap.
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Journal entry 1. Hallownest. King's Pass. 68 geo, mostly from suicidal vengeflies.
Heading east still. Have six or seven complaints to make about the traversability of the so-called "King's Pass". Roads in terrible repair. Bad king? Dead king? Bad, dead king? Unclear.
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Boarded up doors and lonely street lamps dot the town. For a long moment they think they will not only get no answers—they'll leave this forgotten place with only more questions!
But there is one bug there remaining. He might once have been tall, but age has hunched him over, an unbreaking carapace bowing to the weight of years. There's a pensive and sorrowful cast about his mask, but he turns at the sound of their light steps. Deep in the eyeholes of his mask, ancient eyes peer out, curious.
"Oho," he says, and raises a hand in greeting.
They hop forward with somewhat more enthusiasm. Mostly because the old bug is standing next to a bench, and they are absolutely exhausted from all this walking and climbing and tricky stalactites. They want to sit, update their journal, and rest. (Resting quietly is one of their favourite activities.)
The old bug introduces himself as Elderbug, a name that must at one point have been quite awkward for him, as few bugs are born old.
"It's only me left to offer you welcome," he laments, coming stiffly closer until both of them are huddled within the pool of light from a single street lamp: them on the bench, him standing bent just next to it. "The other residents, they've all disappeared. Headed down that well, one by one, into the caverns below."
They look where the Elderbug's mask points. The well is old and elaborate, and its complex iron decorations are rusted like all the rest. The mechanism and chain are still there, though, and seem better cared for.
"Used to be there was a great kingdom beneath our town. It's long fell to ruin, yet it still draws folks into its depths. Wealth, glory, enlightenment, that darkness seems to promise all things. I'm sure you too seek your dreams down there."
Hmm. They tilt their head to show they're listening, but it's hardly necessary. Elderbug now has the opportunity to express a feeling he has long kept to himself in his lonely topside existence, it seems, and his complaints run long.
Well, far be it for them to suspend such a long anticipated pleasure. At least they're not still on their own tired feet. They kick them in the air a little—for they are not quite tall enough to sit on the bench and touch the ground at the same time.
"Well, watch out! It's a sickly air that fills the place."
Oh. Is it? They tip their head.
"Creatures turn mad and travellers are robbed of their memories."
Do they? Are they?
They have a few holes in their own memory (their memory is, it might be said, mostly holes) and this whole place feels more and more incongruously familiar the further in they step.
"Perhaps dreams aren't such great things after all," says Elderbug, portentously.
The sign up in King's Pass had the word 'dreams' vandalised, too. Do people here have something against them? Was Elderbug a vandal in his long-ago, misspent youth?
They can't say. They don't dream. They don't sleep at all, actually.
...They don't do a lot of things.
"Many used to come, hoping the kingdom would fulfil their desires. Hallownest, it was once called. Supposedly the greatest kingdom there ever was, full of treasures and secrets. Hm. Now it's nothing more than a poisonous tomb filled with monsters and madness. Everything fades eventually, I suppose."
They peer up at Elderbug, but it seems this is all he has to say on the matter. His thoughts have come over all sour. His cloak rustles in the wind but he stands under the sickly lumafly glow of the street lamp, planted there like a tree.
A poisonous tomb filled with monsters and madness, they think. That seems like exactly the kind of place that despairing call would emerge from.
They've seen a lot in their travels across the wasteland.
They'll be fine. Probably.
Elderbug seems to gather himself. "Feeling tired? That bench might be iron, but I assure you it's quite comfortable! There's no better place to collect your thoughts before heading below."
The idea of collecting their thoughts seems, unpleasantly, like work. But the walk has been longer and much more troublesome than they expected, and Elderbug certainly seems lonely up here.
They incline their head and wiggle themselves into a better position on the surprisingly comfortable decorative iron bench. It's the only thing that seems not to be falling apart. (Including Elderbug.)
They're in no rush to go down the well. Perhaps they'll rest here for a while...
