boxfullofzeroes | voicetest the voiceless

voicetest the voiceless

They're not dead.

Less dead than they'd felt, at least. Their shell doesn't normally take so long to reform.

Then again. Their shell doesn't usually break of their own violation as they ascended in a boiling rage, ate at least one realm, a god, and all the Godseekers.

(That last point is debatable, actually. There's some odd sense, deep under their...shell? Void? Wherever they once stored things like Isma's Tear, much deeper now...that the sea-mind is still there, sluggish and held in a stasis. They're already adjusting enough, and they don't seem to be dying or trying to kill them, so that problem is neatly sorted as 'for later'.)

They push their body to stand. Their horn clangs uncomfortably loudly against the grate they've apparently woken up beneath. They're somewhere in the Royal Waterways. A quick check of the map--or, not so quick, as it takes time to locate where it had been--shows they've risen about halfway through, closer to the City of Tears than the White Palace. They'll go to the Stag Station in the City Storerooms next.

So they think. Complications arise on the way.

The Infection is gone, leaving dead Flukes, Pilflips, and Hwurmps in piles enough it takes time to force their way past. Their body seems too small. No, their body is fine--there's something wrong with perception itself. That will take time to adjust to.

Then, they discover the Monarch Wings now stretch and warp when used, twisting around the nearest pipes after landing before the Knight forcibly calls them back. Shade Wings, they decide to call these.

Once they're high enough to hear the rain above, they realize a noise they'd ascribed to water running in the distance is, in fact, something swirling behind their mask. Many somethings. All the fragments of Siblings with enough self left, staring out from their eyes. It's disconcerting.

By the time they actually get out of the Waterways, they're using their Shade Wings to grip ledges and drag themselves up, with those holding onto things better than their own arms are with the Mantis Claw.

The Knight faceplants awkwardly onto the floor of the building Lemm's shop is in. If the City is the same as below, there's little left to try killing them in the area.

They'll just take a moment here, thanks.

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"Don't drop it." He manages to keep most of the edge out of his voice.

Upon finding himself scrutinised, Lemm folds his arms and tilts his head sardonically.

"I'm not much to look at, little sneak, try something else." He's not surprised. First thing he'd have done, probably, a long time ago. "Don't get so distracted you don't look where you're going, though."

Lemm tucks the other items back in his bag and, keeping half an eye on them, goes to take his own glance down over the edge. Hopefully if they keep moving the little one will find something more interesting to look at on the way than him. Like a rock for example.

Bit of an awkward way down for someone with no Mantis Claw. Lemm calmly pulls out a grappling hook, whacks it unceremoniously behind a stalagmite, and gestures for the Knight and their sibling to go on ahead.

They can keep it? For now. For now, right.

First, they examine their sibling, who is, in fact, as much a 'grubby little wanderer' as Lemm previously claimed. Lots of little speckles of dust and dirt and other things on their mask. Their wings! Their wings are even worse! When it's not all Shade-y, it's grimy and has stuff soaked into the scales they can suddenly actually see.

Wasteland stuff, the Knight informs them dryly. It's a fine color and they don't care to try fixing it. They hold out a little of it to look at closer.

Greenhorn tries to look at the grapple next, but the Knight nudges them and points down. That can be dangerous to Lemm for them to mess with.

The Knight hops down and Greenhorn drifts after them, distracted by the lift's hanging weights, and then even more quickly, Cornifer's note.

The Knight stays on the upper platform, glancing at their map and waiting for Lemm's descent. It's not the nearby western passage but a tunnel a little further down.

Lemm's descent is... slow! He really isn't the adventuring type, despite how offended he'd be if they implied it. Navigating the ruins is just a means to an end, and made much easier because he came prepared.

Sliding down a rope and occasionally abseiling a bit would be much more difficult if there were things trying to bite him while he descended. Not the case now.

When he reaches the bottom, Lemm gives a soft huff at the exertion and dusts himself down.

"I admit, I'm starting to be glad of the test run. I'm a bit rusty after so long in the shop. You, though - I can see how you filled out that map, now."

The Knight is partly distracted by their sibling bobbing around on the other side of the room, transferring the words for the Knight to translate, and then wanting to heed them. No, they already have a map of here and everywhere else. Maybe they can visit Cornifer another time for a different reason.

To Lemm, they tip their head in slight agreement, avoiding going too far to seem smug. Even if they are. Just a little. They are aware of what they're capable of, and they're not remotely expecting him to match. Even the most athletic and predatory bugs get tired before they do, a trick that's helped them more than a few times before.

Next, they gesture for him to wait a moment and dart ahead to scout. This is where the Crossroads start growing wilder, and they're proven right to do so.

They return quickly to report: Spikes ahead. Down and west to avoid the first of it. There's far more after.

Lemm is a little put out that he's being tasked with waiting, but not by much. Greenhorn is a good distraction. He'll busy himself explaining whatever they gesture to by giving a brief (for him) account of Hallownest navigation or something.

When the Knight returns, he gives a shallow nod.

"Keep your - Greenhorn close, then. I doubt I could stop them wandering." He turns to address the sibling anyway, with a stern voice normally reserved for someone he thinks might stray their hands near his collection. "Aye. You. No peering at any sharp stuff with that lens, hm?"

With that he anchors the hook and makes his careful descent.

At the bottom Lemm's attention turns briefly to the spikes, and he gives a grudging little tut. Many of the Kingdom's gates may be open and the infection gone, but there's still plenty down here to give anyone pause, and he knows it. Lemm is determined to make this trip uneventful. He will be exceedingly cautious as they proceed.

Greenhorn nods vigorously. Nothing sharp, understood! And they follow through with that by sticking close to Lemm and examining some of the surviving plants. They marvel over the fibers that they can see making it up. They pluck one and wave it in his direction, half question, mostly showing off.

Ahead, the Knight is exceedingly careful.

It's quiet. That gnaws at them. They know it isn't supposed to be so.

Lemm is still dusting off his hands and pulling down the grapple when the little sibling signals to him with plant matter. He hesitates, the metal hook clattering loudly by his feet, and even though this isn't his field of study he knows already it's nothing interesting: exceedingly common, sprouting up wherever. Everyone's seen these.

Lemm is distracted regardless, and gathers up the rope around one hand as he beckons the little one to follow, catching up to the Knight at a liesurely pace. He has not noticed their unease. Too busy right now.

"You'll find roots where there's rich ground, as I recall, but there's not much to them. The smaller parts draw things from the soil..."

The first hole is what twigs them--there were Goam here. They stop at the edge of the first one, clanging their Nail against the ground next to it. Greenhorn briefly looks over before returning their attention back to Lemm. Plants are fascinating.

The Knight tries again.

Nothing. Dead, or moved on. Likely dead.

They flutter up the platforms ahead a little more quickly. The other holes were further off the path, where the spikes weren't.

Of course, this is when the ceiling explodes into motion, a wave of jagged shell and gaping mouth teeth descending nearly too fast to react. They twist and dash backward, just barely clipped by the edge of its outer natural armor.

Far more alarming, the thing twists out of place to follow them, leading them to dash in the other direction to keep from getting too near to Lemm and Sibling. They're knocked from the air to smash fully into the bed of spikes below.

(SCREAM--)

Their shadowy form bursts into being somewhere behind the two.

They rein in the Lord of Shades, but now. Now. They are definitely, irrevocably pissed off.

Lemm is distracted and paying none of the right attention, because he is trusted to be near someone small and fragile and impressionable, and he has gotten a bit lost in the woods. Everything else fades a bit beside this. It's so new.

This is why when his self-preservation instincts kick in they kick in suddenly and with no buffer. He whirls 180 degrees and sees debris showering from above and an armoured form among it, and with not even a millisecond wasted Lemm scrambles for cover--

-- leaving Greenhorn behind, no, not like that, he can't do that -

- his feet skid beneath him and he turns back, and lunges clumsily back to grab wildly at one of Greenhorn's shadowy tendrils, not even convinced he'll make contact. This, first. This first.

The Knight twists around them both to head back to the Goam and Shriek at it, no matter it never worked before, they're seething and going to do it anyway.

Greenhorn doesn't know what's happening, suddenly the whole of everything moving too fast to even see. Lemm grabs them and they mindlessly wrap around his arm back, yanked along weightlessly, absolutely terrified.

Greenhorn is caught and clutched to his chest and held there as Lemm dodges behind an old marker. It's nothing personal at first, shameful as it is, they might as well be a relic selfishly snatched from anywhere and held in silence to wait til the threat passes.

Luckily Lemm comes to his senses quick, and when he opens his eyes he's staring down at a shade. And they are not a relic, and they are not still, and they can not wait. The Knight is out there, too. The ground is trembling.

"Ah," he says, suddenly breathless.

There is a Shade here, and a Knight preoccupied, and him...

...responsible.

His grip just barely loosens, just enough to be secure and not panickingly tight.

"You," he says. There is a lot going on behind their hiding place. "Greenhorn. Stay. Stay here."

Lemm mostly has a Shade. When he isn't holding on so tight, Greenhorn quickly stops being Greenhorn-shaped, a tangle of black wrapping fully around his arm like a rippling, numbing sleeve.

They're not going anywhere. They couldn't if they tried and they really don't want to try.

It's loud.

It's loud!

They don't know or like this loud. They don't like any loud, but most loud they've heard is something they know. They're pulled from Strongest Sibling but for a frantic thread of distress caught against a wall of irritation and they don't understand what came out from above that they're fighting.

The Knight's Shriek echoes through the tunnel. Just as the Goam moved when it wasn't meant to, the Shriek does what it shouldn't and makes it reel back and retreat.

They keep aware of Sibling and Lemm enough not to completely disappear up the tunnel it left through, but they shoot up to follow enough to send a wild burst of Soul Shade as they cling onto stalactites, straight up after its vanishing form.

Go. Stay gone.

After a second to acknowledge the darkness now cloaking his arm, he firmly quells the natural fear that wants him to try tearing it all off. Lemm tucks it behind his beard and more closely against his chest instead.

He dredges up every pithy reference he has, from those who've brought him relics or just from the records of those who left them behind... ...and it was as lengthy as this caravan, or bigger! - great biting thing with shell so thick my Nail couldn't - she never saw it coming, it hunted us blind -

The statue-marker isn't good cover, but Lemm is resisting the urge to run somewhere else - not courageously, but because the moment the Knight chased that thing back up into the earth this became the right course of action.

Lemm curls around the little mass of shadow clinging to his arm. Through the ringing in his hearing he listens for the Knight and tells himself in a mantra that the Lord of Shades can take care of themselves, and he wills himself to stay very, very still. Lemm is not much for heroics. Even less so when he's holding something so important.

As quickly as it started, it's over.

The Knight slides down, unwinds tendrils from stalactites they don't recall wrapping them around to land heavily back on the natural platform below. The urge to chase is still there. Primarily from anger, alongside a tiny edge of getting it properly for the Hunter's Journal, which somehow irritates them further. They already have that.

They quash it. They have a job to do, people to protect, and they need to make sure it's been done.

It's not hard to find them; there are only so many places for someone Lemm-sized to hide nearby, even without the mindless waves of distress Greenhorn is sending.

They're so so scared but they're not alone, so they haven't fully dissolved into nothing like they could have. For the best, because if they disappear here, they don't know if they'll be able to come back right even if Strongest Sibling would be sure to save them.

The Knight hops and walks over, pausing once on the way.

When they make it there, they look over Lemm and Greenhorn to make sure they haven't been terribly injured, and carefully don't act on their urge to shove what they're holding forward. They gently hold the magnifying glass forward, dropped in the skirmish, with the metal edge around it bent just a little.

Lemm is listening for them. And he trusts at least that they wouldn't be approaching at that pace if they didn't consider the situation solved. They're the warrior (and Shade Lord), after all.

So he uncurls a little by the time they're in front of him, though he's still sitting up against the marker, and though his guard is still all the way up he's surprisingly steady-looking. As the Knight looks him over they'll find themselves similarly scrutinised right back.

"There're few who would tackle that. I saw it clip you..."

His eyes come to settle on the magnifier. Lemm tentatively offers out his arm first, Greenhorn presumably still attached, to emphasise that there may be a problem here. His other hand plucks the magnifier from theirs, and he dips his horns in a gesture at the little shadow. What does he do. Is this normal. Are they okay.

He looks shaken - but not panicked.

They're fine. See, it's obvious they're not limping.

Or gesturing. Or much of anything, now that they've handed over the dropped item and confirmed no fatal wounds. They're preoccupied with irrational seething.

Meanwhile, Greenhorn looks up at the glass changing hands and promptly condenses from a full sleeve to something like a chunky bracelet. The Knight's barely-pulled jab of disapproval doesn't help the situation.

Neither of them are up to reading into possible questions right now.

Edited 2022-11-27 04:32 (UTC)

"...Mmgh."

Lemm gets to his feet, picking up on the tension and disliking it immensely. Did they expect him to do more? He's an ordinary bug and he doesn't do that kind of thing! What was he supposed to do, run straight towards the beast and offer himself as a distraction? That's not... ...what's happening here, maybe.

The Knight is not like other people. Lemm tries to unwind the tight coil of reproach and decides that if he can't make sense of the oppressive atmosphere, maybe he shouldn't try and risk snapping at them.

He didn't outright ask to be responsible. But he wanted it, didn't he?

Lemm catches himself staring at the dented magnifying lens for a little too long, and promptly shoves it in his bag and out of sight. This frees up his hand to come to rest timidly on the curl of Void around his wrist.

"Your Knight's very brave," he mutters haltingly. "But there's no shame in being sensible. Wise of you to stay out of it." He looks up and addresses the Knight in... much the same tone, actually. "You dealt with that well enough, but I know when this ruin has me beaten. I don't fancy meeting another of those today."

The Knight's first instinct is to disagree, because they're right there.

...This would go against everything else they've been aiming for. They don't want Lemm to push himself. They don't want unnecessary danger. And they think--think--they heard a familiar bubbling hiss of acid in the next room. Reasonable, down to Fog Canyon. It's an area of far worse dangers that only appear less dramatic than a rampaging Goam.

They dip their head. That's correct.

Meanwhile, that isn't what Greenhorn's problem is. The Knight nudges them again, and paces a few steps back and forth to calm when they're hit with more distress. That barely works, but enough, after they slice down another plant to express frustration. It isn't their fault, it's not Lemm's fault, it's not their own fault.

Greenhorn isn't listening to me well currently. Are they hurting you?

Lemm tracks the Knight's movements; now that he's given up trying to understand what's going on with them, he has to turn inwards instead. He's not sure how he ought to feel. Guilt usually isn't on his roster; he's lived for himself for a long time, which means he's gotten to skip it and jump straight to annoyance that anyone would expect better of him.

Except he wants the Knight to expect better. This is a jarring thought. Guilt it is, then, though he's careful not to let it show.

"No." It feels numb, but not like imminent pins and needles - more like there's no contact at all with anything else, including air, or his own shell. It's strange, but not a problem. Void is strange by nature. He's adjusting to that fact rather well now that he's spent some time around it already.

"Still have that coat?"

Greenhorn stays where they are. Hopefully, Lemm wouldn't be fool enough to lie about that.

Although if he needs the coat...

Well. It isn't the warmest area, with breezes still able to sweep down through the tunnels. The Knight responds by producing it, quelling yet another twinge of irritation when that action leaves half the length draped on the ground.

Lemm takes the coat and hangs it over his shoulders. He's not cold. He just paid a lot of attention, and he is a very pragmatic bug.

Lemm tucks his arm into the fabric to put Greenhorn in the dark. He's not sure. But theory is useless until it's tested, and it's not like he has any better ideas. (Nor the Knight, apparently. That is maybe the worst of this, but he'll confront that later.)

"Let's go. We've all had enough." With a sigh, Lemm starts walking. "Hallownest has a few new surprises, doesn't it?"

If it was only them, they might allow it all to stew a while. But even being hidden in the dark isn't settling Greenhorn properly, and the Knight is still burning with an urge to do something drastic. Normally, they'd go fly across a tunnel at full blast with the Crystal Heart, but this isn't an option.

They have less solid consideration of responsibility of someone new in this case. But allowing bad air to fester before another trip and another ride would be the height of idiocy.

I need a few moments, and would like to scout to the west first. to take a walk alone. Is this acceptable?
+ Greenhorn would like reassurance you don't hate them for "breaking it".

The first part ends with a question. The second intentionally does not.

Lemm stills to read, and looks sheepish.

"Oh. Yes. Go ahead, I- we'll wait for you." A pause for the cogs to turn.

...Ah, that.

The twinge of distress that runs through him at the reminder is just barely visible in the way he tenses. He'd been trying not to think about the lens. Trying very hard in fact.

What is the responsible thing to say? If this was anyone else he'd run them off with the rounded side of a journal.

"...I've no hate for the little one over an accident. I'll talk to them about it while you're gone." He'd love to not, but. Commitments. "Be careful with yourself, Knight. Today isn't the day to find out if the Lord of Shades is invincible."

The Knight dips their head graciously. There's nothing in this kingdom that could keep them down for long before they were Lord, or King, or any title, but there's no need to point that out here.

They go. It isn't an intentional move, leaving them alone together, but any particular true danger distress would be enough to call them back. It's necessary to calm. Their presence would not help.

In the meantime, Greenhorn is still a mess of black around his lower arm. They heard that. They still feel terrible. They've never, ever--done any of this before. Travelled around outside. Got an interesting thing to hold onto. And this first time they broke it.

They're just...it's awful. It's almost like scared, but not. It's not being scared about dying or getting hurt again.

(A first experience of anything difficult is, naturally, the worst experience of that thing someone has dealt with to that point. In their fragments of existence, Greenhorn has never had reason to feel genuine guilt before.)

Lemm is not an idiot, and he's not going to have this... probably rather lopsided conversation around a series of conspicuous tunnelled holes right after seeing what came out of one. He turns the opposite way and trudges slowly to where the cavern narrows, and he stops by a wall. The ground's less churned up here. Hopefully that's a good sign, because he's also not stupid enough to wander all the way out of sight with someone else's family on his arm.

Lemm takes a deep breath, steels himself for the terrible job he's sure he's about to do, and lets his free hand come to rest lightly over Greenhorn in what he hopes is reassurance.

"Is that what you're fussing about, then." His tone is gentle, though not so much more than usual. Maybe the best he can do is try to convince them it's a non-issue. "A frightening thing like that happens and you're lingering on the small things. Pah! I'm not upset about a lens." He is. But the next part is true: "I'd be upset if that thing took a bite out of you, but it didn't and we're here to say so. Thanks to your Knight, no less."

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