voicetest the voiceless

[focusedvoid]

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.

Comments

[capitalcurator]

"No." ... Ah, right, and then, as the Knight did: "Thank you." Lemm then keeps his eyes locked on the floor. Oh, Hallownest had seemed like such a straightforward idea a little while ago. How quickly his life became difficult and complicated and personally involved. (Alright. Maybe he's feeling dramatic.)

"Hmm." With no takers, Seer abandons the idea of getting up and instead gestures that Lemm should continue.

With a sigh that means nothing except to calm him down, he finally dips into his bag and pulls out the Arcane Egg, delicately peeling the cloth wrappings away until it sits in his hand on a nest of fabric.

"...First, then. How'd you come to have one of these?"

Her antennae twitch. Seer looks to the Knight. She gives a contemplative, wavering hum and scrutinises them oddly.

"Of shadow you are..." A pause. This is strange territory. She is not to refer to them as a god of Shades, but a god of Shades they are. "What do you know of your nature, Wielder?"

[focusedvoid]

More than I did before I returned here.
(-I left for a long time and lost memory of Hallownest in the wastes.)
I know I'm Void. I know I'm a Vessel. I know whoever made those Arcane Eggs worshipped the Void in ancient times, and that it's constructed of Void as well, but not how those people did that.

Straightforward.

(Refuse and regret.)

They wonder what she knows of those things.

[capitalcurator]

More for Seer to mull over, careful and slow.

"So much is forgotten..." She re-states, framing it simply. "There are details lost to me, as they were lost to the Tribe, and as it seems they've been lost to Shade. This we have in common."

She is quiet for a time. This must be said with care.

"Enemy of the Light. Long we had kept something of yours." Her tone shifts, subtly, as it sometimes does: the first part was ceremonial. This is entirely lighthearted. "It seems you don't remember! ...Well, neither do I. Still it felt right to give a piece back, since the opportunity was there."

[focusedvoid]

They nod lightly. I appreciate it, though not as much as Lemm has.

Lemm speaks so freely, they're primed to expect response without asking much. Seer hasn't asked much first, either. Reluctance? They consider whether or not to interrupt his questions with their own.

...Not yet. They want to see where this goes first.

[capitalcurator]

He's reading their notes by instinct, even if they're addressed more to Seer. He pretends he didn't read this one - rather unsuccessfully by the quick, sheepish averted look it draws out of him.

"Hm." Eloquent!

Seer isn't deterred. She has committed, so: she settles more loosely in place, her wings opening slightly at the front like curtains to allow her forearms to poke through and settle against her knees, and her hands fold in the front. More comfortable, perhaps. Storytellers sit that way.

"The Light took pieces of the dark She opposed. These fragments were given to us to safekeep..." She is still paying more attention to the Knight than to Lemm - it is for his interest, but it is about them. "Such things have been handed down, guarded through our generations. The meaning is sadly lost, but the gravity remains." Perhaps there may be some to be reclaimed? "What do you feel when you take that artifact, Wielder?"

[focusedvoid]

Taking Seer's words literally, the Knight shifts closer to Lemm, lifting the Egg between both paws. They tilt it as if weighing it before it's settled back into its makeshift nest.

Most Void is liquid, but this was somehow hardened into layers of shell. There's space more than there should be between those layers, making it larger inside. There's information encoded on each layer that I currently don't understand as I don't know the language written. (Lemm knows some and has been translating.)
It has a a pause. The word is 'resonance', and they don't want to use it. This isn't related to Godseekers or their tunings. presence that hums inside itself. I believe the Arcane Eggs 'know' when they are held.

Lemm's allowed to read their notes. This is a conversation, and he'd hear their words in such an enclosed space if the Knight was allowed them; this one is half for his benefit, since they can't recall whether they explained much of it. There was a lot going on after they opened the first layers of the Egg.

[capitalcurator]

Despite his nerves, Lemm is immediately brightened by the promise of more information.

Seer nods slowly along as she reads. "Aahh... You can feel it! Yes. You and the artifact are borne of the same shadow. It has rested with me for a long time, but it was never mine to examine..."

"S'it true, then?" Lemm peers curiously at the Egg as it's returned to his hand. "There's a will to them?"

"If there is, it does not will a thing from you or I. But shadow knows shadow..." She gestures vaguely to the Knight, and Lemm nods. "I have no need to know what you've found inside it. It was never for us to study, only to hold as Her prize."

Lemm looks like he's about to say something and immediately thinks better of it. "...Aye. Nothing I've read is very flattering to your god," he says instead.

Seer looks strangely amused. "I would expect not, from Her Ancient Enemy. The primordial Light and Dark have grudges older than any bug... Most details are lost to time."

He could say something scholarly here, about how he expects to pick some of those details out of these things. Except that's not who he's supposed to be right now. Lemm is rather lost without a Relic Seeker's ego.

"S'that sound right?" he asks instead, directing this at the Knight. "Only nothing you've said makes it sound like what you did was about some old grudge. Struck me as more of a pragmatic necessity and... your own grievance."

[focusedvoid]

The air has more weight to it, if not darkness--perhaps a little darkness, a pall, when the Lumaflies above are so closer above their heads, beating their wings more slowly, a few even landing.

I don't know. Before I gained the Voidheart, it

--the Knight consults the Void, asks their siblings, did you hate her before we were together? Did you know anything of her, Oldlight, Radiance at all?

disliked light, but it mainly disliked the Pale Light. It hurt the ones that then comprised it most.

There are multiple webs strung in this. Not fair of them, but this time they're letting it. They want to know if Seer will ever ask first.

[capitalcurator]

Lemm, attentive as he is to the ways of Void now, is drawn to peer up at the way the lumaflies wane. His expression is a carefully-maintained neutral.

Seer is quiet.

While the Radiance ultimately disproved to her that Higher Beings could be infallible, she has a respect for them that Lemm does not. Questioning one is done with propriety if at all. Otherwise what a god chooses to share is where a mundane bug's knowledge of them begins and ends - this is the simplest way to approach it, not counting unique exceptions...

Like the Knight, who is the Wielder, who is the Lord of Shades. They and their... and Lemm have confirmed they do not care for the etiquette that comes with the position. They are strikingly ordinary in the way they act, in the way they are an unassuming shape sitting on her floor using paper and ink to communicate.

...Seer has always been the curious type deep down, and this feels something like an invitation. (Or a trap.) If nothing else, the Knight will be able to see from the way she's looking at them now that she is considering it.

She is cautious and quiet: "To remember nothing of that enmity strikes me as strange. That it would be directed at Pale light instead..." She trails off, expertly vague. And nothing was a direct question. This she thinks she may get away with - but it is unmistakeably a prompt, of a sort.

[focusedvoid]

Close enough.

Whatever happened in ancient times, I have no memory of. If there was lingering hatred, it would have transferred to the Pale King, as the one who caused the most pain recently.
I don't know what the Void once was, but it's now the will of the Vessels he tried to make. The majority of them us them feel nothing but contempt and fear.

I do hold contempt for him as well, but I escaped the Abyss. The rest that comprise the Void as it is now didn't.

Their writing gets a little sharper near the end. It's easy to write about, easier than they expected, but that doesn't keep back their own disgust.

[capitalcurator]

In Vessels he tried to make she finds her answer.

Vessels, plural. She is looking at one of many.

What else falls into place: the presences she sensed when she examined the Wielder, vast, uncountable, fringing on the edge of her senses and cloaked in the safe, obscuring inkiness of shade.

In the Void-charged atmosphere, the filaments of Seer's antennae have been slowly raising, and by now they are held large and strange and tense over her back. Involuntary.

"Lord of Shades," she addresses them, this time in a small voice devoid of ceremony. And a small acknowledgement: "Of regrets."

Yes, she understands now. It did not take much.

(Lemm, brusque as he is, wisely holds his silence.)

[focusedvoid]

Not anymore. This is written quickly. We've had its weight upon us and we have our own of lives previously left unlived, but we are not regrets anymore. We exist. I exist. They're not trapped in the lonely dark any longer, though it's what we were meant to be. We were the Pale King's refuse and regret for long enough. He doesn't deserve to have his thoughts honored.

That's one thing the Lord of Shades is now; eyes to see a world they were locked away from, at the very least. The Knight finds this more appealing than the nothingness Lemm once said it was worshipped as.

[capitalcurator]

(Lemm is scanning their words with a fierce intensity, when they're afforded to him. This is not about him. But they get a nod - silent and from the sidelines, but emphatic.)

Seer thinks of the gravity of the shadows she brushed up against. Of the uniform, and the not. They had not all felt the same, but they had been as one. Some things came easily, even as the nature of Void clouded her.

Vessels, plural. Old Light, Pale Light. Crimes of her tribe; crimes of the King.

Slowly, Seer rises to her feet. She trudges forward to close the small distance between them, and a hand emerges from beneath her wings, held out palm-up.

[focusedvoid]

Seer comes closer. The Knight leans back, barely at all.

This conversation isn't precisely painful, but it is, put mildly, an unhappy subject. They're not stressed enough to jump up or dodge, but drawn in with cold anger that it takes several moments before they think to do anything other than stare.

Slowly, they set their paw in her palm. (Which is much, much smaller than hers.) It seems like that's what she wants?

[capitalcurator]

She kneels.

Not subserviently, but to draw closer to their level. Her hand closes over theirs - it is gentle, a little shaky with age, but unassuming.

Caretaker of the dead, Seer and interpreter of realms invisible to most, final keeper of her Tribe's crimes - there are many responsibilities she has shouldered, and willingly. It is a long time since she did the part of her job that came most naturally.

"You exist," she repeats back to them, affirming. "This is no regret of mine." Her other hand comes to rest over the top of theirs, her other gripping it gently from underneath. "May you always be seen as you are."

[focusedvoid]

Their paw spasms when she kneels, nearly yanking back when they do interpret it as to the Lord of Shades--but they give it a moment, instinctively.

The Knight is struck by her words. It's agreement. Even as she doesn't seem to fully see them as they are, it's nearer than the start. It's something similar to what Lemm's said, and yet--and yet.

Their head sinks forward above their held hands, touched and grateful, while remembering that they hold exhaustion along with their new chance of lives. Siblings swim and swarm behind their mask, invisible and listening, not understanding the gravity but understanding how their Strongest Knight feels.

Their claws gently press into shell, and they bring their other one up to pat her, pat the both of them. Thank you.

[capitalcurator]

A Seer's work is to look, to untangle, to solve, and to channel. Sometimes it is to see to the grieving, the dying, the mad, the lost.

Sometimes it is to see. To do nothing but witness, so that someone might know they are witnessed. The Wielder-- the Knight - wrote to her, and though their situation is strange, not a word of it was unfamiliar.

Seer squeezes their paw lightly from beneath. The other slips out of the sandwich of hands and instead comes to touch lightly at their face, acknowledging.

She withdraws after a moment, practiced in not letting a moment sit long enough that it loses meaning. She stands before them, dips her head, and returns - creakily as ever - to her seat.

Lemm has witnessed this at first with a fierce protectiveness, and then with a respectful retreat. He stares down at his lap.

[focusedvoid]

They sit for a few moments, mind quiet as it is busy.

It's odd, to have this sort of moment with...anyone, really. Lemm is new. Their siblings' are new. Seer is just...even newer.

The Knight flexes their claws again as their arm slowly returns to their side.

Thank you, Seer. Being seen as I am has been rare. Although it's been happening slightly more often recently.

Not for the first time, they wish they could sigh. It's an effective tool to indicate moving on.

Still, apologies for interrupting. They wave their paw in Lemm's direction and start poking at their map again. Don't mind them, they're busy poking at Dirtmouth's pins for some reason.

[capitalcurator]

"You know where to find me, Wielder." Again it asks nothing of them, but it says a lot: she doesn't understand everything of them, and she isn't foolish enough to think so. That door remains open.

(While the Knight's head is down, and their attention on their map: Lemm gives the smallest nod across to Seer.)

...Lemm does sigh, because doing so comprises about a solid half of his personality. "Feels a bit much now, asking about old gods."

Seer just smiles.

"What can you tell me of yours? As she was, first," he clarifies, with a handwave. "She must've been something else before all this."

"Ahh, it was before my time... Still, I know what I've been told." Seer suspected this would feel strange. All of this was to be forgotten; she had firmly resigned to taking it all with her. Still, he is asking, and it is not so that it can be remembered, it is just... for curiosity. She reminds herself of this. "She was the Light; the dawn that breaks. She was illumination..."

"Esoteric," Lemm points out, rather flatly. "These are synonyms. Anything more solid to go on?"

Seer's tone shifts subtly, taking on the strangely playful note it sometimes does when she seems to know she's being cryptic. "Illumination," she repeats, this time with a look.

He stares at her. Then, with all the irony of the phrase helping to hammer home the point, it dawns on him. "Understanding."

Ah, he got there. "That's the way I've thought of it! Very vague, my lot, especially after the shift. I suspect a Seer's work is closest to it all... Understanding oneself, accepting fate and mortality, understanding the nature of things..." And the rest. She flags a hand. "Through Dream, sometimes."

[focusedvoid]

The Knight doesn't look up.

Understanding. She certainly had none, when it came to accepting death, or at least not destroying those who weren't involved in her attempts to escape it. That they weren't that Ancient Enemy, and perhaps wouldn't have been an enemy at all if there was a way to solve things without her endless attempts to kill them and their sibling, outside and in.

This is one of those times it's good they lack easy access to noise. The irony in Seer's voice would only spur them to agree with deep disgust. It's clear she didn't agree with the Radiance at all, but it'd still be fairly rude to cut in with.

[capitalcurator]

"Hard to think of her that way," remarks Lemm. "My experience of her's the bugs she had shuffling around dead on their feet."

Seer gives a meaningful little hum. She is almost as removed from that Radiance as he is. When she speaks again, there is something softer and more grave to her voice.

"We were her children, born of Her Light. My ancestors abandoned Her for another. Could you or I truly think we know the whole of it?"

She dips her head in something like - remorse, perhaps.

"Unfulfilled grief will twist the common bug out of shape, and many things turn to rage in the end. What might that do to a god?" Seer pokes her hand out of her wings and delicately turns it the other way up. "...The dawn that breaks," she says again, and it means something very different this time.

Seer gathers herself again quickly, shuffling her wings a bit. (Even as a fragment of her attention stays on the Wielder, privately.) "Ahh, but it's all in the past now, and all things end, and time is a cycle of mistakes and mercies! Some of us grow tired of it, and some of us become nosy historians."

The tonal whiplash draws a surprised, awkward little laugh out of Lemm. What.

[focusedvoid]

They're almost in the middle of things, so they're obviously listening. Their map-poking is largely for show that this part doesn't involve them. (Although they do take the opportunity clean a little bit under their oldest pins, where little bits of dust and dirt and leaf managed to wriggle under there, well before Lemm's map protector.)

So they just barely tip their head at the Seer's words, first. Hers was a piteous situation. One the Knight won't be dwelling on. They have no desire to, any more than they do the Pale King.

At the end, though, their head pops up to Lemm, to Seer, back to Lemm.

Exaggeratedly, they shrug one arm at him. She's right!

[capitalcurator]

Alright, alright, they get a flat look. He isn't annoyed, just... bewildered. He's not used to light teasing - ugh, they know that quite well. And Seer looks like she has figured it out, which may prove inconvenient.

"I'd read your kind were custodians of the Resting Grounds," he tries, hoping very much she'll take the topic change.

Seer nods. This one is easier than the rest. "We took to the task of tidying graves and minding their visitors quite well, and so our role under the Pale Light was decided. Work I still carry out to this day," she adds. "Though for me it is penance more than pride..."

"The metalwork outside - the railings. Symbology's the wrong shape," he points out. He holds out a hand, crooking his thumb to make a four-pronged vertical shape with his fingers, more for his own thought process than anyone else's reminder. "How'd you get away with that, then?"

"I don't suppose you get into much bother for your questions, do you?" Nosy historian indeed. "Ahh, but that's no crown at all, you see. It is the glow of the moon, or the stars. It is just spikes, same as everywhere in Hallownest, or... What did my grandfather say...? Moth feathers," she explains, and bobs her antennae slightly.

"Aye, right. Well just so we're clear," he replies, "I came in through King's Pass. There's quite a view up there."

Seer, more amused than she was, tilts her head. "I'm sure there is."

"You can see right across the dustbowl, if you're keen to look."

"It sounds very scenic..."

He gives up. "Moth feathers, then," he agrees to disagree.

Seer smiles again. "My tribe has lived in Hallownest a very long time... and we were very good caretakers." She dips her head resolutely. "That's enough for the moment, I think. I'm starting to think you might actually retain some of this! My, but for someone who isn't a historian you ask some striking questions, Lemm."

Lemm does not quite manage to look apologetic. He does flip his bag closed over the top of the re-wrapped Arcane Egg.

[focusedvoid]

Isn't acting as historian, they're tempted to write. Being a historian is as much of Lemm as being a Knight is to the Knight.

But that's not needed. Lemm agreed enough. Instead it's mulled over for their own curiosity. Seer is oddly adamant about not wanting anything about the Radiance recorded.

...Or not so oddly, if they understood the implications of the Peak's statue correctly. The Knight glances up towards the fluttering lumaflies, as if they'll see through, all the way up.

If you worry she might return, to spread the Infection again, I can say that won't happen, they offer, in case that's her fear.

[capitalcurator]

"It is kind of you to keep an old groundskeeper informed."

This is true, and it is appreciated; there's a tinge of gratitude to her voice, and relief at having it confirmed. But her placid bearing doesn't change; it is clear this alters very little for her.

"It is better that She is gone from this world, now, Wielder. I thank you for it... But as long as our shared past lingers, Hallownest rests uneasily..." A nod at Lemm, as well. "When you hold relics in your hands again, I trust you'll keep us out of your business."

She is staring at him, expectant. He breaks - because the alternative is anger, and he is trying to be some kind of diplomatic. His shoulders sag and he averts his eyes.

"...Aye."

"Thank you both for humouring me."