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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Lemm had not given much thought to the route until he began walking. But even as the elevator lowers he formulates one, picking apart the Capital in his head as they make their way out past the pouring gutters.

Fountain Square is familiar to them both, but he doesn't linger - he just casts a wistful glance up at the Memorial on the way past and cuts across the square diagonally. While he certainly isn't a tour guide... he is a Relic Seeker, and the city is itself a relic, by technicality. Being told to lead falls well under his purview.

Lemm leads them north across a decorated metal grille that serves as a bridge across the water. Then out through the slightly-ajar gate, which is so huge he has to brace his shoulder against it to ease it further open; it groans eerily on its hinges. He stands aside to let the Knight pass first, almost ceremonious in it - in some small way like accommodating a houseguest - and then settles into step at their side.

If they turned left here they'd pass the Sanctum. Lemm instead takes them down a long, straight stretch of road that runs past some other prominent towers, edged by an overfull canal. For a little while he's quiet, letting the patter of rain clear his remaining discomfort from a rather awkward conversation.

Lemm glances down at the Knight and tries to catch their attention, then gives a subtle little flick of his horns in the direction of a splash of dim, faded colour across the canal.

Painted against a wall at a street corner bricked with conveniently flatter stone, and tucked under the overhang of a balcony where the worst of the rain doesn't reach, is a piece of street art: a butterfly mid-twirl, wreathed in flowers. He'd mentioned before there was a mural of Marissa out here, hadn't he?

Moving is exactly what they needed. Having a short stride means they can let Lemm go ahead when either of them want, too.

Internally, they're a little proud it's getting easier to stay their blade, no matter how tempting the King's marks and short spitting fountains still are are. Instead, considerably-sized puddles get a slice lashed through them on occasion.

They slow when Lemm gestures toward--Marissa! They clap twice at the sight of her, rendered beautifully.

Applause doesn't come naturally to them, and they've never done it under the rain. It turns out it makes an extremely strange noise.

They stumble to a halt, staring down at their own paws.

The puddle-slashing is. Kind of amusing, if he's honest. Lemm is reminded of the universal instinct shared by boisterous types, which is to splash through them, and eyes a couple that look particularly promising. He doesn't move to do it.

As much as he pretends otherwise, Lemm watches intently for a reaction out of the corner of his eye. He is immediately rewarded with their enthusiasm - it was a good idea, taking them this way - and gives a quiet huff that sounds like it might border on amusement. Small victories.

...They've stopped, so Lemm belatedly stops as well a few steps ahead. Turning to look at them properly, he thinks they might be surprised?

"What's your fuss?" he asks, a little confused. He doesn't really expect much of an answer, out in the wet where paper would be ruined nigh-instantly, but he can engage a bit. Lemm holds out a hand palm-up and lets the rain wet it, then loudly snaps his fingers.

It doesn't sound as strange from solid shell.

They do it again to verify. It's significantly squishier, though the noise isn't quite the same.

And then they turn around and slap the edge of the road, listening to it, and dislodging a few tiny pebbles to drop into the running water below.

Lemm is left standing there squinting.

He can't help a bit of curiosity. He glances at his hand; after some thought he claps, once, experimentally.

...Different to theirs. Interesting, he supposes.

Whatever has them so fixated on this, he's perfectly content to zone out until they're ready to move on. Lemm comes to stand beside them and stares down at the murky, rain-blotched reflection of them both in the water, and wonders idly what Marissa would have sounded like.

Their head jerks, but then they nod quickly. See? It's different all the time, but particularly so in the damp.

A few more pebbles get flicked intentionally, scattering across their faces. A few of them make muffled tinks. They shuffle closer and examine--oh, there's a Nail-lance in the water, impaled in the stone beneath. (Fortunately, there doesn't seem to be any body, of a victim or the one who must've thrown it.)

--Lemm is waiting for them. They stand and tip apologetically.

Lemm seems vaguely aware of what they're doing, if his absent glances down at the sounds and movement are anything to go on. But it takes him a moment to come out of his thoughts, mildly blinking alert again when he catches their muddled reflection and the little motion it seems to be addressing his with.

He doesn't seem concerned with hurrying things along, simply turning to the Knight and giving a nod in response. It's not like they need to be anywhere urgently, at least as far as he knows. His total distraction just now is an easy signal he's in no rush himself.

Ah, right. As they start moving again he remembers he should probably offer some indication of where he's taking them. Lemm clears his throat.

"There used to be an artisan's forum along here - you see that walkway overhead?" He points. It's an open-sided one, bridging from one spire to another. "We'll go through the forum and up a level, then come out on the eastern side and head down again. S'the one with the glass front."

Artisan's forum. It sounds like a place full of historical significance. Doubtless Lemm's already grabbed what he wanted, unless prior looters already got whatever it had left.

...They can tease. About more than the Lord of Shades. They have, and the twisting anxiety is mostly walked out across the stones, running off with the rain.

The Knight dramatically flutters their wings and makes as if they're going to leap up. See, they can skip it all; isn't that an idea?

He catches on quick. His expression shifts gears into annoyed.

"Aye!" A hand snaps out to place itself on the top of their head, insinuating he'll push them down like a wind-up toy if they really do spring up. "Don't you dare! You're getting the scenic route!"

His hand comes away again just as soon as it landed, and Lemm's tone betrays him a bit.

"Menace," he jabs, with not-so-hinted amusement. Different again, then, to their teasing him about his strange slip-up.

Caught! (And pleased about it.)

The Knight's wings settle down, tips swatting lightly at his side and leg before going properly flat.

...If they tried, they could maybe fly the both of them. They're strong enough to carry Lemm alone. The Shade Wings still have limits, but it's fully possible they haven't tried to remove those limits enough. They're Void; they control Void. They can ignore normal rules to fly as the Lord of Shades.

Experimentation best left for when the point isn't a walk.

Lemm's hand - rather his fingertips, it's subtle - snags lightly at the ends of their wings as it tracks back to his side. Hard to tell if it's deliberate, and he doesn't acknowledge it.

The glass on the front of the building's ground floor is reinforced with rather more decorative ironwork, curling and twisting into the shapes of Hallownest seals and motifs similar to wing-patterns. There's no door, just an ornate archway (topped with a crown, of course) that Lemm passes under with the confidence of someone who has been here more than once before.

The room inside is actually two floors high - there's a mezzanine where the next floor would be, and stairs leading up. Booths are built into the walls, much like what might have once been a ticket office in the Pleasure House, though the Knight was right to guess that whatever valuables were once here have mostly been looted or... rescued.

Lemm comes to the largest, right by the door, and turns to lean back against the counter and folds his arms over his very rain-sodden beard to let them assess the room themselves.

"I'd have had to register here," he tells them, with no small amount of cheery gravitas, "if I'd come back then."

The ironwork is ignored; they've seen enough of it to not give it any note.

The appearance was once significantly less dull here, they can somewhat tell. The many hanging banners aren't all dull blue and covered in the Pale King's mark, as the ones still outside are, though much of the color's faded.

Not the red ones, though. Even their inexpert eye can recognize something Deepnest-dyed.

There are symbols they vaguely recognize from signs they'd passed by and beneath (one including something obviously Soul Sanctum related, which they move away from quickly).

Some of it reads about food. They're oddly surprised by this.

The floor has a shape built of its flagstones--something spiky. Probably more of the Pale King's nonsense, and so this ignoring is more intentional, steps echoing loudly across it.

They flutter up and mothwing-dash to land on the counter next to Lemm, familiar and not. They can pull out a paper now, but opt to gesture around the room instead; go on.

Patient as anything, Lemm waits where he is as the Knight takes a look around.

By their reaction they don't seem like they've been here before, which is encouraging (why?) and they're turning their head to look at things, which is gratifying to see (...why?) and they make their way to him and urge him to continue - the gesture is easy enough to read.

At their encouragement, he does, steady and matter-of-fact.

"If one crafted, or worked a skill, or specialised, this would be where you'd be committed to the Capital's records. Few places like this out there," he adds, and tilts his head up to look pointedly at the ceiling high above.

The peeling paint depicts exactly that - a scene of a thriving place of business, crowded, alive. Lemm draws away from the registry counter, though he walks slow and turns to go backwards so that he can observe the Knight while he talks. His voice echoes a little.

"Every artisan of Hallownest would've passed under this roof! Shame it's been picked apart, now, but - ah. Never expect a perfect snapshot. Upstairs," he instructs, and as he climbs the steps he takes his hand to the stair rail - even this is intricately designed, and the metal coated in a strange and deliberate-looking patina. "Come and see the floor from up there."

Just after lumping back down, the Knight freezes. They hadn't looked straight up until Lemm's indication.

It's people. It's art.

--There's sound.

Not unlike ringing of the bells in the Stag Nest; that and the endless chatter in the Queen's Station. One of those moments they entertained they'd lost their mind, if Quirrel hadn't been there, too; noise that wasn't real, yet still there.

An echo of presences long-gone. Trade more than travel. Laughter, shouts, bargaining.

Before moving to follow, they look at Lemm's face to see if he has any response.

Lemm is halfway up the stairs, hand smoothing almost reverently along the rail, with its patina worn off or prevented from so much crowd contact and returning slowly to green as the City decays - he is distracted, lost in the details of it, when something ripples and he misses a step.

It is abrupt, he hits his foot on the next one, and doubles over a little before snapping upright and looking around at the room, jerky and... harrowed, over the rail.

The fear is masked, very quickly, and he ducks his head and climbs the stairs with far less wonder and far more pragmaticism. Less joy, more task.

He doesn't seem to hear, but he does seem to have--tripped?

Anxiety spikes and is immediately slapped down. The city is a mess of ruin. They've tripped on things. It's fine.

The Knight is already a bit behind from their moment of upward admiration. It's only natural they'll move quickly to catch up.

He's steady enough as he heads to the mezzanine, and steps out behind the upper balcony to run his fingertips along the handrail and look down. The... moment passes, at least the intensity of it, and he steps firmly back into the present.

Mostly. He fidgets at the railing, waiting for the Knight to join him, and then as soon as they're on the same level he rushes out:

"The Watcher signed off on this place, even if he rarely visited. No wonder, then. Can you see through the banister?" Lemm invites them to look, patting the vertical struts supporting the handrail and watching to see if they need a boost.

(The floor below is designed that when viewed from above, it fragments together to form the image of an array of shapes: spiky compass-points, and the cardinal directions depicted as nails, circling a Hallownest Seal in the middle, and all the points aimed perfectly out at the different booths.)

They try and get a horn clinking against the metal for their effort. They put a paw on their Nail, faux-threatening. (Mostly faux. If Lemm wasn't in range, well...)

They use their Wings properly this time to land on the banister.

Looking down feels nearly the same as looking up. It isn't the people, but it's symbols of the people; the compass, the Nails, the Seal.

They Knight is careful in balance, and they're staring down very, very hard.

Lemm watches them rise - it's fascinating, the way their Wings move. And a rail is a tiny surface to land on (he is bigger, it perhaps seems that way to him more than it does to them) and so Lemm's arm drifts out, automatic, to hold in front of the Knight like their own miniature guardrail. So that if they lost their balance they'd fall backwards, not forwards. He is barely aware.

He looks down, thoughts coming easily.

"Wasn't the centre of the city," Lemm tells them, and this is something he seems to have decided through research. He may never have the full truth, but he believes this to be, so he is relaying what he's found. "That'd be the Watcher's Spire, where all the papers went. But the pulse was here. At least for bugs like - for the bugs who came with a profession."

Hanging forward over the balcony with his arm out, Lemm eyes the nail-compass a while, then relaxes back a bit. Starting to become aware of himself, the arm drops back to his side.

"Anything taking your interest?"

Not long ago, they would've found this insulting. They don't care for that realization.

Acknowledging his instinctive worry, their claws drift over his arm for a moment.

What he says makes sense. Their head dips in a small nod; they're listening. And they can...tell. Somehow.

They take in the floor's art in another sweeping glance and hop back down to the steady steps. Better to take out paper here than write perched up there.

The art on the ~~top~~ ceiling and floor are beautiful, and are a good look into the past even to me.
~~There i~~ ~~I am not~~ something is strange. I can nearly hear what it was once like. I could in Queen's Station before, the bells and the travelling crowds. It's strange.

...They've written 'strange' twice. That's annoying, but it's too late to fix.

The Knight looks up at Lemm to see what he thinks of all this, and finds their stare sliding past, fixing back on the ceiling.

Edited 2023-03-01 00:47 (UTC)

Lemm is a bit distracted, barely registering what he's doing with his arm in the first place, though there is some vacant acknowledgement of their motion in response to it.

More consciously he looks quietly pleased when they write of their appreciation for the art of the place, and seems about to take this and quietly move on when he reads the rest.

Lemm goes still. There is an internal grapple, his eyes flicking from one patch of floor to another as he decides how much to say, and tentative relief creeps in at the edges.

"Thought I... heard something, as well. Distant." It sounds like a confession. He turns his gaze to the ceiling, as well, with all its clamouring bugs and little details of conversation and commerce. He finds himself listening keenly. "Not just me then."

Not for the first time, there's a gentle grief. It would've been something, standing in the center of Hallownest's artisans. There must have been a great number, if the art and the size of this place indicate. The Knight's experienced such crowds before, striding through and watching others shift nervously or irritably out of their path, but here...

Here, it's surrounding them, for all that it's from some distance. A quiet thing. A present thing.

They nod seriously and lightly tap his shell. No, it isn't him alone. No, he isn't mad.

Edited 2023-03-01 08:25 (UTC)

Therein lies the point of a Relic Seeker's profession. As ever Lemm does not have it in him to be reverent about much, but nonetheless reverence sneaks in sometimes when he's particularly wrapped up in what Hallownest was. There is a little of it here, staring up at the flaking paint.

He flinches when they touch him and he glances down, studying them intently as another internal debate is worked through. Then he gives a stiff nod in response and looks away quickly. Yes. Well. Good of them to clear that up.

Lemm's hand trails along the railing again as he turns to follow it around the room in a half-circle, heading for an elevator platform tucked in its own shaft that will take them to a proper next floor. He waits at its edge for the Knight, by some decorative (and typically spiky) Hallownest urns.

"The architect for this place was insistent it showed off what it held," he tells them. "Commissioned the best she could find and had them all decorate some aspect of the place. Bugs talked, said it was fanciful, but she saw the work done. Still looking for a name."

Even the floor of the pressure lift is a metalworked thing covered in swirling designs, which Lemm will quietly point out as they approach.

They observe what he points out. It's possible they can try to search for this bug's name, but they haven't any idea where to start. If Lemm hasn't, they aren't likely to find anything any easier--

If any doors need to be broken down for your access, point the way. The Lord of Shades won't be defeated by something so small, they offer at the edge of the elevator.

That the Knight alone certainly had been goes unsaid.

The designs are traced beneath their steps. Pretty, pretty things. Another wild urge of take rises, quashed with wry amusement. They're not going to take an entire elevator because it looks nice.

A Relic Seeker ought to bristle at the prospect of wanton destruction of ancient Kingdom architecture.

Lemm, for better or worse, has spent a little too much time in Hallownest, then, because he wags a finger at them like he's about to scold them and then - just lets it drop, and tilts a horn in a concessional, eh kind of way. The Knight is not the only one to take a locked door personally now and then.

"Might take you up on that," he admits, and steps onto the lift with them.

The next floor up is what looks a bit like a library - three of the walls are lined with elegant little drawer-alcoves, and there are a few seating areas that look like they were intended for quiet study. A high reception desk in the far corner has a tall, thin vase on it and what used to be dried flowers (not so dry or flowery any more).

"Artisanal registry," he informs them as he crosses the room. "I've checked every drawer in the place, and only one had stone records. Learned a few things about the bureaucracy of it, though."

There's an obvious door out to the walkway across the street, but he passes it for now and delicately coaxes a mouldering curtain along its rail to reveal a smaller door to an outside balcony, similar to the one Marissa's picture had been under.

"View's okay," he mutters.

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