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

[focusedvoid]

The Knight is still skeptical. That's good to know, though.

You act annoyed as though you're about to go over without notice. I thought I should make sure. The ruins

--are why he's in Hallownest in the first place. He had to have gotten down here somehow.

Lemm should be fine. They don't need to be...concerned.

They awkwardly waver, considering crossing out the start of the sentence. It's too late. The words are already there. Irritation and embarrassment spikes their writing into something a little more messy.

--are particularly dangerous where Cornifer couldn't reach.

[capitalcurator]

"I'm not stupid." Hackles are up, a bit! Lemm folds his arms. "And I told you I don't go in for idol worship. It's good advice, but I'll go where I like. Not you nor that stuffy stick-in-the-mud up in Dirtmouth can do a thing about it."

...He knows he's being petulant, and missing the point. Too late now. Just like the Knight, the words are already out. Old habits have him cranky even when there's serious business afoot.

"You act like you think I've never left my shop."

[focusedvoid]

They could, and they barely refrain from pointing that out, because he knows they probably wouldn't. They don't want to ramp up old anxieties about the Lord of Shades.

Elderbug worries. I think that's somewhat sensible of someone in his place. Was Dirtmouth just him when you arrived as well? While they're trying to move away from their own concern, the curiosity behind the question isn't false. They don't know how long Lemm's been here. With the strange stasis keeping the likes of Hornet and Nailsmith alive (setting aside Quirrel), it could be far longer than they've previously thought.

begrudging respect!

[capitalcurator]

...No answer-back? Lemm is almost too surprised to stay peeved. He stiffly nods.

"Just him. I've never been back, but the mapmaker stopped by a little while before you did and let me know he'd be about. Bought a journal off him. I think he'd rather have sold me his work."

Well, he has now, technically, with the Knight as go-between. Cornifer might wonder who it was for unless they told him - and that suits Lemm well enough.

He's not quite done being salty, though. "Ordinary bugs like C- the cartographer and I are capable enough."

[focusedvoid]

Irritation rises above their own unexamined feelings. If Lemm insists on not moving on, the Knight will oblige. Cornifer had gotten through plenty of Hallownest--and he'd been hiding and terrified of being eaten in one of the places Lemm wants to get more information from.

I found the corpses of other bugs who must've thought the same. A lot of them made it far. I sold some of their journals to you.

[capitalcurator]

He narrows his eyes. "And? Why do you think I read them so carefully? You learn what killed the first nine bugs to walk in somewhere and you're probably not about to be the tenth!"

Deep down he wants to remind himself they're well-meaning, but he can't just let it go, not when he can feel his pride sizzling at the idea they might think he's fragile. (And he is when compared to a grand shadowy Lord. What must he look like to them, really?)

"If you're the type to go looking for relics, you don't last long if you don't have common sense. But you don't go looking at all unless you're prepared to take the risk. Understand?" He makes an irritated sound and flickers a hand dismissively. "You obviously want the story told, and I want to tell it properly. I'll do what I have to. But I won't stick my foot in an Aspid's nest."

[focusedvoid]

The air is crushing.

The Knight is looking at Lemm. After the utterly dismissive gesture, the Knight is not seeing Lemm. They're seeing--seeing a cicada warrior who boldly, brightly greeted them as soon as they crossed paths and who they rescued from her own mistake and desperate terror by complete accident. They're seeing the first being in Hallownest who fought beside them gored through. It's really everything I could have ever hoped for--

It's not the same. She wished for that. Lemm does not. But Cloth is another body among bodies among bodies.

Apologies for not wishing you like everybody ELSE in this fucking kingdom

They were going to keep going. The quill drags off the paper in a sharp, ugly line. They need to leave. They need to leave.

They need to LEAVE.

The world explodes in black.

The Shade Lord crashes to the ground no great distance from the smithy.

[capitalcurator]

"Well, there's no need for that-" Lemm begins, already thinking yes there is, you know there is

and - the sudden cry of shock is silent, because it happens at the same time as a Void explosion that knocks things off shelves and Lemm off his seat and makes his hearing ring very strange. It is like the world ended very briefly and came back.

Lemm dimly registers their last note when it flutters down and lands on his face.

He is thinking about everything they've told him all at once.

"C-cruel," he mutters, and shakily tries to pull himself up by the edge of his desk. A final journal rolls off the edge of a shelf and thuds noisily against his horn on the way down. "Ouch! Cruel, that's what you are. You knew everything and you still couldn't... couldn't help yourself."

A beat. He's upright, more or less. Unsteady is fine. Some papers float to the floor.

If he doesn't go now he's deathly afraid he never will, so Lemm staggers to the door and looks for dark.

[focusedvoid]

It wasn't only Cloth. Cloth was...happy. She was, missing her Nola, proud of her end. That was a kind of peace. They disagreed she should have found it, but that peace was hers. They Knight could grasp their composure if it was her alone.

The Journals were meant as a point. It was a good point. It tears open jagged wound that pours memory. There were so many bodies they'd passed by with only distant pity. With the bugs encamped at Kingdom's Edge, smothered in ash, final miserable thoughts about how they were trapped--someone yet bowing to an Idol in Crystal Peak, still only thinking of their King--down the well just beneath Dirtmouth, one who must've been a former resident, only thinking about how they were almost home, never to make it up the final length of chain--

Here, now, on the platforms they traversed to get to the Nailsmith. Many corpses were curled up there before they ever passed through, ones somehow dead in ways the Dream Nail couldn't pull a last memory from.

Their emotions fragment and echo, the Knight at the forefront and their Siblings reflecting it back, the whole of the Void roiling and overwhelmed.

The Lord of Shades is an agitated mass where the landscape of the City began shifting to the Fungal Wastes'.

[capitalcurator]

At the bottom of the lift, Lemm has to pick a direction, so he picks the one that's colder. The air still feels oppressive along that way, in some barely-conscious gut feeling that probably comes from some innate primal sense rather than from any logical thought.

He mutters to himself the whole way, his balance still unsteady with his head pounding like that. Mostly it's poisonous little jabs aimed inward, prodding at himself and demanding to know - first of all - why he thought he was getting away with it? Then why he would want to! To them. Of all people, to the little - to the Knight, to the Lord of Shades, to - to the little wanderer and (his insides turn sick) to the others, wasn't it, too, really?

What a piece of work he is.

His mind is hazy and his thoughts are turned so hard inward he almost stumbles straight into a curling pool of black. Lemm just barely staggers to a halt at its edge.

He'd meant to say something when he found them, but Void in the throes of grief is not a sight even Lemm is numb to, he needs a second, he can't see this and think, he needs to run actually, he needs-

-it's not about him.

"Knight?"

[focusedvoid]

Those were small faces they hadn't known, dying alone and left without the natural dignity of rot. There was Cloth, still, who they can't forget. There was Tiso, arrogant, oriented perfectly to his goal. He made it where he wanted, and it still killed him before success. It likely would have killed him after.

So many dead where they couldn't reach without shattering themselves. The wilder passages lined with spikes and their victims. Empty shells of who fell great heights and lacked the wings or bodies that could take the landing. Camps and trails and tiny groups walking to the same fate.

The muddled shape of Lord of Shades is surrounded by Nails, jutting up from the ground like grave markers. Imperfect tries. Possibly true monuments, when there was anyone left to bother.

Lemm. Lemm is here, again, again.

A mess of a head tears its way from the center of the mass. They are close, too close, building-size face looming above a common bug, claws sinking into the path on either side.

He's taking a risk, isn't he. Face this monster, face a so-called god, face a terrible thing that devoured Higher Beings and ate realms and killed their way through the ruins long before they could do any of that, all for the sake of collecting relics and history for himself.

[capitalcurator]

He's thought about taking one up before. A Nail, that is. He thought about it when he moved in, and again when the Nailsmith... moved out. I'm mean enough without one, he's always maintained, half-joking, never meaning quite that. Well.

"Knight," he tries, again. His head is pounding.

There was a pile of written attestations on his desk, most of which now lie strewn about his empty shop. He found them perfectly trustworthy back then, because a little wanderer wrote them. He is looking at the Lord of Shades.

Lemm holds the two tightly in his head and, finally, forces himself to see both.

As the vast dark volume of the Lord of Shades presses in, Lemm's hand reaches blindly for the nearest Nail handle.

...And he leans on it, heavily, and presses a hand to his forehead as he stares up at the vast darkness and at those eyes daring him to say something.

"Grubby little wanderer," he dares. "I haven't been very responsible."

[focusedvoid]

They loom. Look at him, risking. Look at him, holding a blade they don't know if he could even lift if he tried, could hardly bite into their shadowy not-shell. Look at someone who could go and fall and die, under their claws, anywhere, and nobody would go looking.

...Nobody but the Knight. Now. If they weren't aware, or the cause. Lemm would have been nothing not so long ago. Another body, another loss, another soft regret lost in a kingdom mired in them.

Dirt and stone creak beneath giant claws. Their form shudders.

No movement beyond that. They're listening.

[capitalcurator]

Nobody would look for him. Lemm has never expected anything different. That's the trouble.

"You as good as warned me." His hand tightens on the handle of the discarded Nail. "No one's ever been responsible."

His posture wilts just a notch. He's not holding the Nail because he thinks to take it up. The thought has not crossed his mind today. It is a very real worry that he might buckle in the middle of this and he has important things to say.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm not very good at it. Come back."

[focusedvoid]

Come back.

An impassioned speech wouldn't have struck such a blow.

A simple apology, and something the corpses left would never be capable of. Never returning, never requesting. Not the empty shells, nor the spirits even if they lingered as best they could. Come back.

He's afraid.

He's said something they haven't heard from him before. He's saying something they haven't heard in this cursed kingdom at all, given to them for something that matters.

They're still--it's too much. This isn't their Siblings' grief alone. Not anywhere near it.

...They're afraid.

Lemm's alive now. They want him to stay that way.

The Lord of Shades draws away, all their wild darkness pulling into itself until it's nearly the Knight in shape and size among the Nails and mushrooms along the path.

[capitalcurator]

He could say a lot. But, like he's said, he's not very good at it, and that's where the problems start. Lemm makes his stand there for a moment and lets the Lord of Shades coalesce how they please.

He has locked this thought below a thousand layers, compounded over time. The longer he's spent thinking only of himself, the more he's come to believe that's all he wants. The fact is: he wants -

He moves again, passing his hand from Nail to Nail like they're a balcony railing.

Lemm splashes unheedingly into the shadowy pool that's shrinking away from him. Void kicks up like wet dust. He lets go of the nearest hilt and stands there, inches deep in shadow, posture open and bewildered like someone very, very lost.

"Come back. You keep coming back. Do it again." Terrifying. He's going to pass out or throw up. "I'll help you do it again, this time. I'll do my part. I'm sorry it has to be me. I'll try."

[focusedvoid]

The Void pulls back a little faster. The Knight forces it. It would cling otherwise, wrap around his legs and beard and all until he was dragged in. To where the Radiance was erased, as some Siblings would not mind, or to be hidden away in a pocket next to the Godseekers, as others--as Greenhorn and they selfishly wouldn't mind.

Come back, again, again. They keep coming back. Lemm was a rare living being who wanted so little at the start. He wants to help them now, he says, deeper than asking them to fetch relics and words.

...Nobody else would have been coming back, would they? Lemm met Cornifer only once. Quirrel had his own mission. Others...everyone else would have been dead walking, even if they hadn't realized it yet. It's only now they give consideration to how few he must've seen return.

Less than Elderbug had, in the end.

The silhouette of the Knight stands there. They can't be open. They don't have the face for it, the gestures. Shade Wings wrap tight around something almost like their body.

[capitalcurator]

So small now, as the shade drags itself into shape. But still the Lord of Shades. Or rather the other way around.

There is a little shadow standing in front of him. They are the Lord of Shades, he can see that now. They can be both.

He steps closer, following the edge of the shadow as it recedes from around his feet.

Lemm does not drop to his knees, as much as they're threatening him with the prospect. Someone ought to be taller than them right now. Someone ought to be responsible.

"I'm sorry," he offers again, "that it's just me."

He'll let them run, if they must. But he won't. It isn't a risk. He has it in writing.

[focusedvoid]

The Knight's head shakes vehemently. That isn't--they don't care that it's 'just him'.

They're still upset, they're still angry. It's only easier to hold onto now. All their previous points stand; they knew he could be careful, they tried to dodge this entire thing. So many were careful, and died anyway. The world didn't care who it killed. Hallownest's ruins, even less. Lemm could easily become just another body.

Arrogance, apathy, irritation--the reasoning behind his dismissal doesn't stop it from being a dismissal of something painfully important.

Lemm wouldn't be just another body to them.

[capitalcurator]

It isn't the first time Lemm's ever apologised to anyone. He's tried before. They've never been any good, either because his pride got in the way of sincerity or they've had empty promises in them he knew at the time he wouldn't be able to keep. Eventually he stopped bothering. Not having to try is so much easier. This is bewildering and hard.

"I'm sorry. I don't..." know how to do this. I don't know what I'm supposed to say. I don't know what you want I just want you to keep coming back -

- unlike everybody else in this - how did they put it? - this fucking kingdom.

If he wants to do this right he is going to have to stop pushing down the hope that someone might actually want him to stick around, as well.

"...I need your notes," he offers quietly. "I'm capable, but you're right to... Come and cross some things off my map for me, will you?" Lemm dares himself to extend a hand down to their level, palm up. "Just that, if you like. We don't have to talk. But you shouldn't stay out here in the rot. You'll get sick."

[focusedvoid]

The Knight isn't settled enough to understand the nuances Lemm is trying for. Still, they don't get sick--not like this. They're not completely blind to a peace offering. They don't want either of them to leave when their mind is hissing with memories of a multitude of abandoned corpses.

Their hands snap from beneath their wings to wrap around his one.

Their grip is tight. Not enough to be crushing. But tight.

[capitalcurator]

Reality set in for Lemm a little while ago. He is careful not to flinch at the quick grab, and his fingers curl around their paw - another first on the long list of things Lemm has not done before.

He thought his problem was saying too much, and it was, but maybe right now he should keep talking.

"Alright. Come, then. Let's go." He takes a careful step back, trying to lead them into moving, not entirely convinced they will. "We'll talk, you and I. Unless you're sick of it. But you'll cross some things out for me, and then I won't go. You know Hallownest better, you see."

[focusedvoid]

They sat to rest against Quirrel and Bretta. They'd exchanged Geo and product, brushing shell. Lemm stood over their shoulder. They used their paws to concentrate on their tallest sibling's shell, to Focus for someone else.

The Siblings are there. The Siblings are always there. But there's something to be said about a solid touch.

They hold Lemm's fingers, shivering too imperceptibly to see while impossible not to feel. He starts to walk with words that sound distantly reasonable, and they come along.

[capitalcurator]

Lemm keeps leading. He keeps his pace slow; their legs are shorter than his. Their grip is so tight.

Keep talking. Don't think about it.

"It's not every day a Relic Seeker admits someone else is more knowledgeable. We're a prideful lot," he continues, passing out of the small forest of cast-aside Nails. "But that's a poor excuse. Sometimes a bug's just sour."

There are canals here and there, and Lemm's jumped these before, but right now he skirts along until the footbridges and walks them both the slow way.

"All that behind your mask, and a sour old bug needling you like I did..." He glances down to keep an eye on them, not that he expects to glean much from a visual inspection. "...No, we'll get you out of the rain, first." It's not far to the elevator, or to his shop.

[focusedvoid]

For something that contains the whole of the Void, the Knight doesn't have much weight to them.

The farther the walk, the further they settle. Shame rises in a prickly wave, quick to settle. It isn't the important part of this. They don't need it.

They're tired.

One of their miniscule claws taps clumsily against his, an agreement and hint of reproach. They don't need to express more. Lemm nearly collapsing in the Lord of Shades literal shadow--and this--is more than enough to judge his sincerity.