boxfullofzeroes | there's so many things that you'll never understand

there's so many things that you'll never understand

MEMORIAL TO THE
HOLLOW KNIGHT
------------------------
In the Black Vault far above.
Through its sacrifice Hallownest lasts eternal.

There's a figure at the base of the fountain, bent double, yet still taller than most bugs that once wandered these streets.

The Hollow Knight was sealed before it was raised in the center of the City. In all their glimpses of the world through Infected eyes, they had never seen this--this figure of themselves, towering high above the Dreamers that protected them, sacrificed everything for them, only differentiated by the carving of each mask.

This should not matter.

The emotion that is their flaw screams it does. Why--?

--This figure of them should not have ever been here. The Pale King prioritized their image above the living. A memorial to a thing. A memorial to a failure, still standing tall, lie inscribed for the straggling remains to see.

They should not wonder why. They should not feel the wound in their chest throbbing with new pain. Do not think, do not feel, do not do not do not--

Gendered Child, sister, told them they may go, and they have gone.

And they are here, beneath the shadow of a false Purity, beneath pounding rain in an empty City.

Nothing about this spurs them to move. Their mask presses flat against fountain's base, hard enough to ache.

They empty their mind, and wait.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Their claws, just barely, flex. If they held their nail, they likely would have begun a block.

They are not supposed to do this. Empty things cannot communicate. They have never done so outside of indicating injuries to sister, and tearing into a scream when She had burned through enough that they finally, utterly, broke.

They've failed. They know they have failed, the kingdom is littered with corpses their error had cost. Nothing should matter about their flaws further coming to light. Particularly not while following a command.

Exposing flaws while attempting to cling to false flawlessness.

This struggle of thought is stretched long as they look vaguely toward the paper on his desk. But, eventually, they release their cloak and point a claw to their own chest. They are the Hollow Knight, not their twin. (Anything like a twin they may have had is buried at the bottom of the world.)

Edited 2020-08-25 14:43 (UTC)

Lemm doesn't know what's going on inside that mind, and he has no reason to think of asking. He's just thrilled to get a response. His heart skips a beat and he bats a hand lightly on his desk, about the most animated he's been.

"Ah-ha!" Easy, there. He clears his throat and quickly folds his hands together again. "Ah, what I meant to say is, I knew it. It's never a good thing to jump to conclusions as a Relic Seeker, but I was right."

He's giddy. Lemm has been wondering about that statue for... it feels like forever. In his excitement he's not picking up on the Hollow Knight's discomfort, not that he was ever very good at noticing subtleties.

"I've been puzzling together Hallownest's history as best I could, but there was always a very large piece missing. And here you are in the shell! Ah, but first things first." He leans forwards a little. "I'm loath to admit - aside from the memorial out there, I barely know a thing. Why don't we start with what you did to earn that plaque?"

Lemm slides a piece of parchment across, and then the ink and quill.

Some dubious part of him warns against getting too excited. This could be a misunderstanding, or they could be lying or delusional. Ugh, he hopes he'll be able to tell.

"Why does Hallownest still stand, Hollow Knight?"

They weren't sure what to expect from their response--were not allowing it, have no previous context for it--and his burst of excitement is startling, though they show nothing.

They stare at the parchment. Words. He wants words. They struggle, again, for a time, over the mere concept of giving them, that they shouldn't have them--they were never truly taught written word besides, beyond the most basic if something had to be ordered by text, which never happened.

They do. They have fragments of it, some learned from standing by the Pale King's side, more from the memories of bugs and mosskin and spiders and the mushroom folk, dragged through their mind with burning hooks.

To the question: Why does Hallownest still stand? The Hollow Knight...doesn't understand this question. The population is decimated. The King and Queen are gone. It is ruins and rare pockets of life that She loathed--half the Mantis Tribe was all they knew of, and they were not truly under Hallownest's rule--were nearly nothing.

They pluck the quill up with trembling fingers. As they were not made for words, it was not made for hands of their size. But they have been asked, so they must try.

Hallownest is long
fallen. Infection spread, Nothing l

This is all they write in a mix of archaic Hallownest text and a dash of Mosskin grammar rules, and then their hand spasms and slides off the parchment, leaving an ugly ink line trailing onto the desk.

Despite telling himself he'd sit back and let the Knight work, he can't help himself - he tries to read every word as it's written, upside-down, from across the desk.

Long fallen, he repeats to himself mentally. But you must have done something, you cryptic old-!

He flinches at the Hollow Knight's sudden twitch and it shakes him out of his thoughts enough to continue to the next line. He harmlessly baps the Knight's wrist up and off the desk with the tips of his fingers, then idly rubs at the ink with his wrist without looking away from the parchment. It smears into the surface and dries, but by the look of the desk already, Lemm isn't fussy as long as it's not going to stain anything he puts on it.

"Hmph. Well, no one said a knight ought to have good calligraphy..."

He slides the paper back towards himself with his other hand and twirls it around to read it the right way up. His eyes slide along the ink trail and off the page this time and he raises his wrist, examining it like he's only just noticed the smudge. He looks up.

"...That is... You're not wrong," he says before he can think himself out of it, before he can put the pieces together in a way that will give him some emotional awareness. "I suppose the City was always built to last, while the society that occupied it was not. But," he continues, withdrawing his hand and shaking it lightly to dry the ink on his wrist, "I've pried enough knowledge from husks and wanderers to know that decay didn't happen overnight. Something got stuck in the gears of fate along the way and I'd wager good Geo on it being your nai..."

He realises he's wrong even before his eyes flick to the missing arm, then the torso, then back up to the cracked mask.

Lemm studies them anew, this time watching for emotion.

"...You. I'd wager it was you."

It occurs to Lemm, very belatedly, that he may be being a tad insensitive.

Edited (whoops typo) 2020-08-25 17:06 (UTC)

Their arm retracts to hide beneath their cloak, which is too short to obscure its light trembling. It was few words, but their fine motor skills are disused and fighting against the rules of their existence is exhausting.

They follow his hand with minute shifts of their head, to be watching something that isn't his face as he speaks.

This speaking of gears is...odd, but they can just grasp the meaning. That they had stretched what happened out longer than She wanted in her blaze of fury, that they had failed in keeping Hallownest from its terrible fall.

The Relic Seeker is not asking a question. The Hollow Knight, therefore, does not answer.

The Relic Seeker, for all he knows about the finer nuances of reliquary restoration and study, has no such grasp on navigating the difficult terrain of interpersonal interaction.

Which is really just a long-winded way of saying he is socially challenged.

Lemm rests his elbows on the desk and folds his hands together first one way and then the other. Fidgets a bit with his fingers.

"Back after all this time," he grinds out eventually, "and I found you alone by your own memorial with a blunted nail. What an unpleasant little picture we've painted for you." He's Lemm. He's not going to stop being abrasive. But: "Well, that you're back at all tells me your work is done, whatever it was. Stay out of the rain."

It's killing him not to probe for more information. But that somehow feels like it would be cruel on purpose, which is not something he's interested in. So he's bungled his chance, as far as he's concerned - and as much as he'll be kicking himself for it after the Hollow Knight is gone.

Lemm stands, fetches the journal he'd been working on before he stepped outside, and returns it to his desk. He sets back to work in silence, as if the Hollow Knight isn't looming large in his shop at all.

Words that are correct. And still, he asks no question. They don't know what he wants.

Not knowing something hardly counts as a problem. They are meant to know what they are told, and only that.

He has not told them to leave; there is no rain in here; he may have use for them yet.

They shift until they're not hunched so near the desk, allowing their thoughts to be drowned by the sound and sight of the water running down the window.

He tries to work. It's difficult to go back to something so mundane, something that has been his everyday since goodness knows when, while the very Hollow Knight themself is in the room. But if there was ever anyone Lemm might not shoo for loitering, it's The Hollow Knight.

Lemm is exceptional at getting engrossed in old texts. This one is a doozy; the author was bold enough to use some borrowed vernacular and spelled it so wrong it took him a day to parse.

It's about by line three of the stone journal that the muttering starts, because by then he's a personally-compiled vocab quick-list and two other references deep in this thing.

"...So we descended," he murmurs irritably. "Now, why? Surely you knew it was a cliff-" Lemm pauses, glances at the other piece of writing on his desk, and compares. "...Fallen," he tries out. "We fell. Ah. Clumsy, not foolish."

Lemm is about to go back to his notes, but the thought does occur to him... Well. There are things they know, and surely not every question can be a disaster. He glances over his shoulder at a particularly disorganised shelf, and the cogs turn.

"Hollow Knight," he starts, casual as you like. "What do you make of those ornaments? Beside the glassware. There." He points. "The medals. Would you award those to guards or nobles?"

His words bring them sharply back to themselves, though they hardly show it. But he isn't speaking to them, and they nearly lose focus, part of his murmurs fading to white noise--a Vessel has no need to retain information not given to it, though it isn't entirely avoidable--until he again addresses them directly.

Once more, a question. They angle their head to look, and...it's another somewhat difficult query, but not in the same way that leaves their chest disgustingly full and horribly empty at once.

The Pale King was not one to give awards in person, and they were often with the Pale King or the quieter wings of the Palace, but they can almost recognize the shape of them, and the words. Fairly simple medals, but engraved with personalized symbols of Valor and the City, by the Watcher himself. A noble would not settle for less than something ornate and boasting how much of Geo donated from the troves they coveted so.

They do not wa--

--lifting the quill will likely end in another mess. A different solution must be presented.

Their hand raises, slow and careful to avoid bumping anything, and then lashes downward in a mimic of a Nail-strike.

Edited 2020-08-25 20:59 (UTC)

He watches the knight like a hawk, his quill poised over the paper like he's forgotten he's holding it.

He's had his theories, of course, but considering the material and the craftsmanship - well, that's his problem, he's too well-versed in the details by now and he knows things about these artifacts that probably didn't matter to their owners one jot, things that warp his understanding post-Hallownest.

Lemm realises this now, as the answer comes simply and without err. He doesn't reply at first, just pushes his chair back and stands up to go and investigate the shelf more closely. A hand runs through his beard.

"Well, of course. S'only right, now that I'm thinking about it. ...I'd have got it eventually."

Possibly not true, but who can say? He turns to look over his shoulder at the Hollow Knight and looks like he's considering something.

"I don't normally encourage this," he says, "but you couldn't sort those by rank or achievement, could you? I'd like to see how much you know, if you really are who you say you are." He holds up his hand very quickly to signal to wait, and the quill drips a single spat of ink that he doesn't notice because he is intently focused on Hollow. "With clean hands," he adds, and then, "-hand." Lemm takes a square of cloth from a drawer that might normally be reserved for cleaning lenses and sets it on the corner of the table, then sits back down and watches expectantly.

Does he not--?

--he isn't certain they are what they are, and this stymies their movement. They...there is nothing else they could be. Few bugs are as tall as they, none have a mask such as theirs, or a carapace that reflects only muted light.

This...they don't understand.

But understanding is not their place, and they have finally been given a task, not a question, made into order by offering a tool.

The Relic Seeker said previous not to touch the artifacts, and so they will not with their hand. They pluck up the cloth, wiggling it until it covers most of the tips of their claws.

They barely need to shift to be halfway across the shop in front of the correct shelf.

They cannot be...entirely certain, though the fact he believes a Hollow Knight would be is--is mistake.

With delicate touches, they get to work still.

...And finds they know somewhat more than they thought.

Lurien--they know the Watcher's works to some extent. They know the ranks of the guard that still tried to keep the City safe after She claimed them. (The Great and Heavy Sentries had many, but the Sentries capable of flight had more, despite increased fragility, as they could see from the heights to keep watch...)

It won't all be correct, but it will be close, by achievement.

No one can re-live history. Once everyone is dead and gone, so is their understanding of Things As They Are. Digging up the past later only gives you so much context, and it's the bane of every Relic Seeker's life to be reminded there will never be true context for this thing again.

Lemm puts down his pen and folds his arms, leaning back a little in his chair as he watches the Knight work.

Whether or not it's exactly correct, it certainly isn't random guesswork, which means the Hollow Knight knows what they're doing to some extent. Which means it's as correct as it's likely to ever be from now on. This thought is being turned over and over very carefully in Lemm's mind.

Eventually when the Knight seems satisfied with the order of artifacts, he speaks up.

"Remarkable, really - the wing insignias really were rank relevant. Thought it was just monarch flair, myself." Hard to know what to say. The Hollow Knight isn't acting at all like he imagined a gallant historical figure to act. He opts for using some rusty positivity. "I've never been happier to be wrong." And...? "...Good work."

The Relic Seeker says the oddest things. Happy to be wrong. Good work.

For a moment, they angle a stare his way, unknowingly blatant about it with their head tilted to do so with their good eye.

The awards they've placed stand out among the rest, sorted and set perfectly straight, organized, unlike the entire rest of the room. This...was what they were told to do. Praise is unnecessary, why--

They put the cloth back on the desk and attempts to sit at attention for whatever comes next. Attempts, as they're still too tall to quite do so without knocking their horns against things.

Lemm was very privately hoping they might continue of their own accord, though most of him is also relieved when they stop touching the merchandise. Just because they've occupied his thoughts every time he's visited the plaza doesn't mean they get a complete free pass on fiddling with the relics.

He lifts the pen again and scribbles down some notes on the new version of accolade hierarchy. When he glances up, it looks like the Knight is waiting for something, and he goes still.

"I'm not looking for an assistant," he says, somewhat clipped. "But if you want something to do before you head off..." A glance around. He jabs the feathered quill in the direction of the stone-carved memoirs. "Organising those would help. I know you know what Mosskin looks like, for one."

He deliberately doesn't state how they should be organised, and maybe that's a little mean of him, but he really just wants to know how the Hollow Knight will do it if left to their own devices.

These are not awards, but tales of lives. Certainly some that moved into the City, becoming important parts of its function, but not all. Cursory examination tell of Moss Knights that traveled through Hallownest when it was almost new, a City guard that became a Menderbug, a failed warrior that attempted to challenge the Mantis Tribe and barely survived even making it to the outskirts of their village, a Nailsmith from a long line of Nailsmiths who uprooted his family across the kingdom for the sake of wealth...

Again, they pick up the cloth.

They cannot default to previous terms of achievement or rank. They attempt it at first--they set a Moss Knight near the start, as Knights are high-ranking, but the rest are mainly civilians. The Mosskin should be lower. Lower than the former Menderbug. No, as Menderbugs were nearly a secret, the nobles of the City did not want their existence to be known or celebrated, while Mosskin were each equally a part of Unn's dream of leaf and life--

They do not look back to the Relic Seeker for instruction.

Each would have been important to themselves and their own people, but they know not by which class or judgement these are meant to be graded.

And so they simply...stop. A Kingsmould deactivated, a figure still as their own false effigy outside, staring down at the words until they blur into incomprehensibility.

This time, Lemm doesn't watch. He knows he'd be too engrossed and there's other work for him to do in the meantime, so he goes back to his translation of the single journal on his desk, and they both sit in silence for a time.

The pile of notes grows; every word translated might crop up again in a different tense or form, and he likes to be prepared. Idioms in particular tend to toss everything into the air until he can work out their meaning, and he's just about cracked one when he realises it's been quite a while and the Hollow Knight is... still here, firstly, and just generally still.

Too still. He doesn't know what to make of that.

"Are you stuck?"

They stay frozen, thoughts bubbling, until they realize what they're doing, that they are being spoken to, and snap their mind flat. Too much. Too much of what they should not have been doing, and too many memories just below that of bugs long sick and dead. Wondering who and what and why, failing to complete a simple task.

Almost nothing has been done at all.

They twist their head, an automaton jerking with one sharp movement, to face him.

Yes. Stuck.

"Hm." Maybe it was rude of him to ask more of this great knight, especially after they seemed to react so strangely to being asked what their knighthood was for. Finding other things to ask them is just... cheating, probably. "You don't have to do the rest," he says flatly. "You're not my employee."

Normally he'd be telling anyone else to get their sorry selves out of his shop by now. But Lemm has to admit it to himself, if not to the Hollow Knight - he doesn't want them to leave. Not before he knows just a little more. Just a bit. Anything! But he can't ask because he thinks it might be upsetting, so then what's the point? Is he being selfish and wasting their time?

...He continues to do so.

"Where will you go, I wonder?" He shuffles some notes around and pretends to still be working, not making eye contact or looking up, just breaking the silence for the sake of it. "There's a town up above here somewhere. Haven't heard word for a while, but I know someone's mapping the area. If you're looking for fame and fortune, you might start there. There's nothing here but what's left of other people's."

There--they do not have to. They have not been condemned for not finishing, they do not have to, and still, a churning of emotion rises in the guts they don't truly have. It cannot be called burning, they know what burning from the inside out feels like in vivid detail, but it is warm and sickening.

Their knees scrape across the floor as they settle back again.

(They don't notice how they cling to the cloth like a lifeline.)

Fortune and fame are not for them, and upwards is where Sister lingers. They will not go there if not directed to.

Lemm can't go much longer without admitting that there's something very off about the Hollow Knight.

When one spends so long looking up to a statue and wondering, one can't help but come up with a great deal of theories. The Hollow Knight today matches none of them, not even the stranger ones, and Lemm wonders briefly if he's got knighthood all wrong.

"Maybe you don't have any plans." This is actually what he's been thinking all along.

Because he found them at their own memorial, alone, what an unpleasant picture, but it wasn't something he was prepared to address for a while.

Lemm looks around his shop, thinks about how little space there is here, how not everyone can live like a lumafly in a jar, and sighs.

"Well, until you know where you're going, the City of Tears isn't going anywhere. There are a number of empty living spaces, you know. No one's but yours if you want it that way."

The feeling does not leave their chest, this...sense of failure, this shame. What are they but a thing that can fulfill no purpose given to it, from the mundane to the kingdom-saving purpose its entire existence was built for.

None of this is a question, and so they do not answer, do not have to answer, do not have to think about it, do not think about it, do not think.

They are not meant to want. They don't. They are not being told to stay nor leave nor anything direct, they don't know what to do, and their arm slides back beneath their cloak, blindly pressing the cloth across the cracked scars. They will do nothing. Nothing.

Lemm doesn't look at first, which is unfortunate. He is busy, pretending to work, pretending to write, pretending this is a normal encounter even though he isn't acting normally at all and neither is his guest.

When he eventually does look up, it's to the uncomfortable stillness the Hollow Knight has about them. It's to the grasped hand around the cleaning cloth, the tautness in the air. And Lemm does not know what to do but admit that The Hollow Knight isn't what he expected.

But what if they stay there forever? So he can't just sit and wait for them to go, either. He's spurred to stand up, approach, stand in front of them so that he has to draw their full attention - like an awkward child confronting another on a playground. Embarrassing and ridiculous. He's too old for this particular brand of awkward. One hand folds itself jauntily on his hip, as if that makes anything better.

"Aye." And then a repeat, slightly louder. "Aye, look! I can see something's bothering you, but it doesn't belong in my shop. I'm a Relic Seeker. Understand? A historian. My job is to give the past a proper burial." He folds his arms over his beard. "If you're not buried, you're not the past. So stop living in it."

They heard him coming, but do not look (down, still well above his height even knelt as they are) until he speaks.

They don't understand. They're not bothered, they're nothing. It's nothing.

It should be nothing.

The Hollow Knight is in the past, of the past, a tattered piece of old Hallownest tangled in something from before Hallownest until they were forcibly ripped out by the hands of Siblings.

Perhaps they should be buried somewhere, set to rest as their Sister would not allow. It is not, as ever, meant to be their choice.

...A claw's punched through the cloth.

They hold it back to him.

It's hard for him to read people at the best of times, and this one is a very closed book. But Lemm is starting to pick up little signs already, now that he's looking for them and applying that keen eye normally reserved for particularly detailed stonecarvings.

He takes the cloth and his thumb rubs at the fabric, worries at the frayed hole.

"...I'm not fond of repeating myself," he says a little less sternly this time, "but I'll make it clear: my shop is not a place for moping, if that's what you're doing. Up!" Lemm turns, and baps their shoulder harmlessly with the cloth as he steps towards the door, stands beside it, holds it open. "Up and out. Show that to the City, not my seal collection."

Edited 2020-08-28 12:34 (UTC)

They straighten to perfect attention. Their horns clank against the ceiling.

The tone, or changing thereof, is hardly noticed. Words spoken are most important. Vessels do not understand nuance, as the Pale King discovered early.

(Nor do children. But this was never allowed to cross either of their minds.)

If realizing what they are and are not (again, and again, and again, somehow freshly terrible each time) is moping, then it seems that's what they're in the process of. This action is incorrect; they have no further purpose here.

Their mind edges towards wondering where the rest of his questions are. They discard it.

Leaving is difficult, attempting to get out without knocking anything over or being too graceless, but they squirm from the shop as carefully as possible.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject