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]

Seer is quiet, unless you count the soft hum of contemplation now and then when they pass over a particularly prudent detail.

The part about Void gives her minute pause, and her head turns just slightly as if she might look over her shoulder at where the curtains lead deeper into her home, though she doesn't completely act on it.

She has said nothing of it yet, but she has had a few of her own suspicions before the Knight and their... and the Relic Seeker had come here. Now she has more pieces to the puzzle, and the shape it takes is much clearer.

Seer is, as she has been since they arrived, deeply thoughtful. Slow to react.

Lemm has been quiet, too, but there's a tension in him that wasn't there before they began their explanation. He keeps flipping between watching them write and fixing Seer with an unreadable stare - unreadable because he's doing his very best to mask what he's actually thinking. It's unfair to try to guess how she might react.

"The fury of a god is nothing to go unheeded," she eventually says, and it seems like she's choosing her words carefully. Still, there's no avoiding it now. "The fate that was cast upon this Kingdom is proof, as I'm certain you understand by now..."

She hesitates. Lemm is still staring at her, and some of the internal intensity has started to bleed out into his expression.

"By the shadow's hand Her light was extinguished," she says, simply. There. The boofly in the room has been addressed. "If you hold the same fury inside you, it may be a sheer thing..." Seer trails off, uncertain. This probably requires some input from the Wielder before she can continue.

Lemm clearly wants to say something. He waits, instead, with some effort; his hands have tangled themselves tightly in the fabric of the bag on his lap.

[focusedvoid]

The Knight doesn't care for the comparison. But in that moment, perhaps--they did tear the Fools apart from within in revenge for a wrong. It was simply not a wrong related to being forgotten, or against them at all.

I believe it somewhat less, they respond after a moment. At least more controlled. I didn't seem to reach beyond the Colosseum's bounds and it was finished quickly.
I know the Infection was reversible in early stages, but Myla is clearly not in early stages of anything.

Hopefully they don't need to die themselves to fix it. If it's the temporary sort, they will. If it needs to be permanent--well, they won't, and likely can't. What can drown a Void? Nothing that still exists, the Knight thinks. And they're not letting go what they have just yet. They'll find something else.

[capitalcurator]

Lemm does pipe up, now, before Seer can react. They have already said so themselves, but in case there was any doubt...

"It was accidental," he states, just to double down. "Reacted badly. Anyone would."

Seer inclines her head, the barest of movements. Be that as it may...

"Ah... But you or I could never back up our anger with such power, isn't that true?" The hand holding her teacup reappears from behind her wings and sets it aside, now gone cold. "As mortal bugs, we may only solve our problems from mundane angles." The Knight is flashed a semi-apologetic look. "It's not every day a deity asks you for counsel."

Lemm scoffs.

Seer gives a small beckoning gesture with the hand she's just freed up. "Come. Let me look at you. I don't have high hopes of seeing anything useful, but nothing ventured, hmm?"

[focusedvoid]

The Knight glances at Lemm. His reminder is--startling, somehow. They're unused to being defended. They lightly tip their head, indescribable emotion tightening their chest.

They stand and step in front of Seer, closer than their customary position, Dream Nail still held in their off paw.

Even if there's nothing to observe relating to help, they wonder what she'll see.

[capitalcurator]

He catches the look, though he doesn't react to it. Lemm is keeping rather a vicegrip on his thoughts and feelings right now.

Seer searches them as they approach. Her antennae give a barely-perceptible flag, just once, and she makes a soft noise somewhere between interest and understanding.

She reaches out with a slightly unsteady hand, and if they let her, she'll touch - just with her fingertips, like she's checking them over for something - the side of their face, the edge of a horn. Takes the front of a wing, lifts it away slightly, lets it slide off her hand all the way to the end. She will press at their chest with two fingers, firmly but not hard, where a bug's heart might be.

Lemm watches intently, stiff as a board.

[focusedvoid]

They allow it. They weren't sure what they were expecting, in truth.

Their mask feels like mask, if perhaps a little heavier than it should be. They allow their Wings to shift into what they truly are around where the tips of her fingers touch, the shadowy near-fluid of Void, though they keep tight control to avoid any clinging. Their chest has no heart that beats, but beneath the lightest coating of soft shell, the shape of the Voidheart is detectable.

Somewhere in the middle of this, the Knight is distracted and startled by a full-body shiver. Through the whole of their existence, the amount of times that's happened can be counted on a single paw.

[capitalcurator]

On the outside, Seer's examination could be mistaken for a healer giving an unfamiliar bug a short exploratory checkup. By the intensity with which she's peering at them, though, it seems unlikely that's all there is to it.

Her hands have a tremor or two caused by nothing in particular. She takes no notice of their shiver.

Lemm does, snapping to attention and going somehow even more tense than he already was. It passes too quickly to bait him into breaking his silence, but he's suddenly beside himself with the urge to put a stop to it. It is probably good that he's had some practice with restraint lately.

Seer is either oblivious or dutifully ignoring the crabby Relic Seeker glaring daggers into her from over the Knight's shoulder. (It's the latter.)

Her fingertips linger over the Voidheart, and she gives a contemplative hum before letting her hand trace the air along their arm to their hand - the King's Brand is ghosted over, just so, and she takes a quiet breath here, too. Seer traces next to where they're gripping the Dream Nail, and her palm hovers over the talisman thoughtfully.

She draws her arm back under her wing.

"Ahh... Wielder..." She sounds awed. "Such an expanse within you, what fathomless dark! For a mind to be lost in such a sea..."

"Can they sit down now," Lemm grinds out, about as measured as he can manage.

...Fair enough. Seer gives the Knight a clear nod to let them know they're dismissed from being prodded at.

"I've learned much. But it's as I suspected: I can't make clear sense of you. That darkness obscures all those minds, and there are so many..." She looks a little glazed.

[focusedvoid]

The Knight's hasty step back is mainly to give Lemm a quick pat on the hand. They're fine

They are fine, basically. A part of them is soothed, matched with strained. Confusing, contradictory. (As dreams and darkness can be.) They give the calm more attention as they settle down.

You might sense the Godseekers and my siblings. There are many of both. more of the latter. I don't understand what you're doing, but I can ask my siblings to 'move'? I'm not sure if it's possible.
I do not like asking the Godseekers for anything, and am unsure if I can 'move' them either, but I can try both. I'd need to leave and sleep for them.

[capitalcurator]

(He's a little flustered by it. Was he being so obvious? Yes! Extremely so!) Lemm does at least ease up when they're back on the floor. It is... probably rude to stare like that at someone who is trying to be helpful. He makes himself look at the floor instead.

"Precious little of you is anything I'm used to looking at," Seer admits, and shakes her head. "But I did feel that foreign presence there... A second sea within the first. Heavily obscured... I don't expect to glean more detail."

She sighs, thinking on it. It really is unprecedented. Still...

"The Dream Nail has grown powerful and precise in your hands, Wielder," she says carefully. "If a more likely aid exists, I don't know of it."

"Are you asking them to poke themselves with the thing?"

"...Ah..."

She doesn't look like she knows exactly what she's suggesting.

[focusedvoid]

The Knight holds it up in both paws, this time. They think...they wonder, if they focus on where Myla is within--

--that almost activated the Dreamgate. They quickly set the Dream Nail back into their lap.

Where is their last Dreamgate? Likely the Junk Pit, or whatever's left of it. They should fix that. Set one up in their house for now, actually.

The Dream Nail is precise, and I am getting better, but I'm still unpracticed in my own realm. I can try it more in there? It seems to work mostly as it does in waking.
I don't recall if I've tried it on Myla inside Godhome. I know I haven't in the Void outside of it. if she agrees to go. That could do something.

They offer a half-shrug to Seer and Lemm both.

[capitalcurator]

Seer's notice snaps to the Dream Nail when the Essence barely starts to flicker, though she says nothing of it. Lemm is obviously unaware.

Seer nods at their musings. "Intent will matter just as much as the talisman you're using. If your anger claimed this bug and hid her away, then whatever guides your use of the Dream Nail... Perhaps it must come from a place of calm?"

This is said with more confidence, at least. It is hard to give advice on something she has never witnessed before, but some things seem universal.

"Practice, at least, is always wise."

"None of this is tremendously specific, is it?" Lemm points out.

Utterly unoffended, Seer gives them both a tip of her head. "Ehh."

[focusedvoid]

They give another one-armed shrug, in Lemm's direction this time. I didn't come expecting step-by-step instructions.

Once again, their mind skitters to Hornet's cryptic threats and similar. The Knight's claws curl inward to poke lightly at the King's Brand.

No, it's never that easy.

They're less stressed than they were at the start, regardless. Seer is still acting mildly odd, but that's hardly as uncomfortable as bowing. They are odd. An odd being, an odd god coming to request her assistance. She could have panicked instead.

Beautiful/grotesque/confusing, they write with wry humor. And then: I'll need time to think this over. I need to consider 'calming'. My time in Hallownest has not been such often. I don't yet know what exactly to practice either.

Lemm has more mundane questions if he still wishes to ask. and Seer still wishes to answer. This odd bit of writing is presented away from their other writing, to them both. It's true, and a blatant subject change for the moment.

[capitalcurator]

The quip gets a little half-nod. "Hmm..." They don't seem like they want to tackle this with her input right now, so she makes her exit with another vague suggestion she doesn't expect an answer to: "You might try meditation. Now, Relic Seeker - "

Having been idly distracted by the Knight's writing, Lemm jerks to look at her.

"- you seem disoriented!" She sounds deliberately good-humoured. "I am curious... What questions do you have for a Seer?"

...As always Lemm isn't pleased to have that pointed out. He wonders, briefly, what she can see of him - that's not a helpful thought and is crushed quickly.

"They might not be for a Seer," he admits, somewhat gruffly. He loosens his deathgrip on the bag, now that he realises he's doing it. "For a Moth, though, I've quite a few. Depends what you're willing to share."

She doesn't fidget much in the first place, but there's a noticeable difference when Seer goes still.

"...Aah..." She's contemplative, at first. Eventually she asks: "A Relic Seeker... Your lot are historians?"

"This one is." There is an implied can't speak for everyone.

"Then I'll have to disappoint you."

Lemm frowns. "You said you didn't have secrets."

"Secrets are different, I think, from things that simply ought not to be remembered."

...Lemm has never looked more deeply offended in his life. Blindsided by that sentence, he can't seem to form a response. Seer in turn just stares mildly back at him.

The Knight may actually have to step in here. There is a solid chance Lemm is about to take that personally.

[focusedvoid]

Meanwhile, the Knight has quietly taken their map out. They're genuinely trying to look for a 'calming' place to start, though they expect it won't be that simple. It's a step into feeling like they're doing something.

(They give the Junk Pit a Token Marker. It might be worth seeing if anything's left there.)

Mato...Mato welcomed them to his home to meditate. They mostly used it as a time to relax in a friendly presence. That is, at least, a type of calming. But would it be safe? For Mato? He doesn't even know what they are.

...Yet. His devotion is to the Nail Arts, not any Higher Being that they can tell. Somewhat to Sly; that's not comparable.

The Shell Marker is chosen for its red, and they pin it on his hut and in their mind. Future consideration. Explaining to him wouldn't be any sort of calming, but it might work eventually, if they choose to. If.

Abrupt silence pulls their attention back up.

They review the words they'd just half-listened to, and the look on Lemm's face.

She doesn't have to answer anything, they remind him. But, to Seer: You requested I uncover much of Hallownest's history. Implied lightly: it would be only fair to share some of hers.

[capitalcurator]

It is a worthwhile reminder for Lemm - though he's still obviously incensed, he carefully withdraws from what might have been an unfair reaction. He's still too used to getting his information from objects, not people, and the rare times he did the latter it was from behind a counter that he owned. This is not that. He is in someone else's home, and he's asking favours. (Offering to pay her for this information seems... crass.)

Lemm gives an irritated grunt, though he directs this aside and to no one in particular. A hand flicks up to indicate give me a minute, and he glares at the floor while he thinks about how to proceed.

In the meantime, Seer offers a bit more context. "Old crimes are sometimes better left in the dark, I'm afraid! To commit it to history, to be remembered... Ahh, no. No, that wouldn't do." A thin, placating cheeriness runs through her tone. "I know what you'd ask, Relic Seeker. I don't say these things lightly."

Lemm lets a fresh wave of anger roll through him, and reels himself in again with an exasperated sigh.

"You're hitting a sore spot," he admits, which is about as far as he can safely explain. Then, in a last-ditch effort to excuse himself: "Apparently so am I. I'm not a fool."

Seer's bearing has changed minutely, everything held a little lower, attention a tad more fractured. She understood the Wielder's implication just fine, and of course they're right...

"The memories of my Tribe were always to fade with me. And now She is gone... It was a necessary thing," she adds, with a nod to the Wielder, "though I lament it all the same. Hallownest rests at last! But the memories I carry are tired, and I the same... Relic Seeker Lemm, do you understand what you ask of our history?"

"With... respect," he stiffly tries out, "I've wrestled enough regrets out of this old Kingdom to know exactly what I'm asking, and I can't make proper sense of them without yours." Lemm casts a muted look in the Knight's direction, and deliberately stays vague. "There're things that ought to be known."

"Ah..." Seer peers curiously between them. There is a tenuous possibility that there's good enough reason to tell, then, if it isn't just for a historian's sense of duty. But it still depends -

"Maybe I'll ask you as - as Lemm, first," he stutters out, suddenly on the back foot. He gives a light cough and begins fidgeting immediately. "What you said about being something different to different people - s'a different thing, isn't it? I'm just asking because I'm curious. And we'll decide later whether a Relic Seeker gets to handle the information."

To drop his title and his calling from the conversation removes the problem. Seer would tell the Wielder, would tell an ordinary bug; she only wouldn't tell a historian. It also strips Lemm uncomfortably bare of the impersonal rote and abstraction of his job. Not for history, or for his work: just because he is curious. Personally so.

He looks agonised.

Whatever exists between the Wielder and this bug is important enough that he would make what seems to be a fairly huge concession. And he's right; it does change things. Seer dips her head.

"Yes... Yes. Very astute!" Eyes gleaming, Seer gives an approving hum. "For you, then, not for remembrance... Would either of you care for tea?"

[focusedvoid]

Deliberately, the Knight keeps what Lemm would call quiet.

They would push. They're fairly used to watching such conversation from the outside, besides, their own understanding--or lack thereof--not holding influence. They could. They understand how they're important to both, in different ways, and it would be unfair to leverage that just now. It's an interesting exchange all the same.

No need to waste any on me. I couldn't drink it, is all they finally write. But thank you.

[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.