The Knight had planned to go back to the Ancient Basin.
On their way out, they don’t think about the direction they choose, and the sight of their Sibling’s memorial statue hits them like a tram.
It was an uncomfortable thing before; now, foreign memories surge and nearly floor them on the spot. The Hollow Knight’s shame tears through them, what thin walls they built in their visit with Lemm unable to withstand, and the Knight flees as the former would if they were unburdened by ‘should/should-not/do-not’ locking them into place. (Offering of truth to the King, to look at their vile cowardice flaunted so before an ally--)
By the time the lurching horror is smothered, they find they’re in the Crossroads.
They can’t be here. Not least because their Wings have grown and tangled around them like nightmarish and clumsy armor, neither Shadelord or the Knight in physicality, but somewhat in-between.
Even if they calm and visit--and return home, the people of Dirtmouth are likely to be…displeased, yes, but even more concerned, and not let them disappear again without full explanation so easily. Full sleep first.
The world is far too shaky. They could call the Old Stag, if not for the chance they might simply fall or melt off him. If literally falling asleep on Lemm is any indicator, they shouldn’t drag him into their Void, but it would be rude. As well as inconvenient.
The Knight winds their tendrils in and pivots away from where they stopped somewhere below the Stag Station. Hot shame is smoothed into silence. Their Sibling was no coward, and neither are they. Tactical retreats, especially when impaired, are necessary.
The Lake. That was functional for all that waking half-beneath its water was uncomfortable.
They scramble past Salubra’s with so little subtlety her laughter falters. They throw themselves into the next cavern before she might consider investigation.
There are Tiktiks in the ceiling where they were planning to rest. They nearly slice them through before remembering there’s no need for that, and sweep the Dreamnail instead of their standard one.
Other bug…don’t get nest… the Tiktik nearest thinks, turning to peer up at them before skittering the opposite way.
Well.
They flutter and land heavily to the next platform and settle.
There’s no need to wait. Their shell overflows with darkness until the Lord of Shades is a massive black arch, back half and claws dipping into the water.
In little time, Godseeker welcomes them.
They bow to the her, who prattles on with praise. They leave her behind. Communication can wait. They’ll…rest a little more, on their private bench. With Myla, who’s also there.
The strange discarded flower ‘prototype’ is there as well. They slump beside her, both wordless in their differing states of waking and sleeping.
Perhaps they’ll take on a Pantheon. (Not the fourth or fifth.) Something to distract them, in a little while, when they're done staring at the shiny--but not shining--metal petals.
Seer sits in quiet contemplation in her home, head slightly bowed as her attention is left to float. Time passes around her for the most part, in a mundane, non-magical sort of way.
Certain duties may go unneeded for a long time, but that does not mean those duties stop. The last Seer of Hallownest has been assessing her relationship with her duties as of late, weighing the importance of them against the future. Some she may soon leave behind.
Others, like keeping the graves, remain important. Besides that... it is just as much a habit as a duty, to sit and observe and keep a measure of things. This part of her occupation has always suited her very well.
"Is everything all right?" asks one of the bugs recovering in her home. They have noticed the way she has gone strange and stiff, but they are tentative when they're questioning her and suspect they won't be getting a straight answer (as they are learning, this is often).
"Mmm... I suppose I should go and find out," she says, cryptically, with her antennae twitching. It would be a shame to flout expectation. Then, to reassure, because they are fragile and maybe she's being unfair: "Nothing to do with you! You might mind the place while I'm gone, if you like."
Seer gets to her feet, flapping a hand at them and tutting when they try to help her up. She wastes little time dallying. There is a shudder waiting in the air, Essence (and something else) tangling unpleasantly about itself and eddying around her thoughts, seeping in from somewhere to the west - somewhere, yes, she knows exactly where. And who.
She passes in silence through passages and between graves. There is a thread she is following, or a signature - something that has been there for a little while and only just made itself known. This she will address later. Currently it makes a very handy compass.
Seer slows as she emerges from the tunnel, Blue Lake glistening ahead of her. And, like last time, she sees before she sees. She steps very softly across the sand, halts at the water's edge, and stares for a little while, thinking.
"Huh," she says. "Well, you don't have to make it easy, I suppose."
Seer turns to look behind her at the tunnel, and around at the shore, slowly pivoting in place until she is certain she is (almost) alone. Then she sits herself down in the sand, because she has a feeling this is going to be something she ought to sit down for. Her antennae creakily raise and fan out.
Out beyond Godhome, just past the fringes of the Lord of Shades, the soft-edged shape of a Moth is loosely implied in their direction.
Void is Void. Godhome is no longer Godhome, despite its internal goings-on changing little. The Lord of Shades is all; the dark inside, around, beneath. There is no near, no far. There is, and there is not-but-yet-is, all wrapped within itself without being contained or constrained. It holds together differently than in eons past, but there's none left to remember what-once-was. There is only now, with the Void Focused.
Altered Godhome is a sunken speck in the deep, where the Strongest likes to linger in and the bravest like to cluster by.
The sluggish melting of the physical Shadelord into the Lake continues.
In other words, the Knight is oblivious.
Siblings are the ones to notice a flash of wings and purple-tinted light first. They respond accordingly: the impression of unending darkness splits into dozens of bright-eyed forms that scatter back and away.
As a part of her flickers closer to the Lord of Shades, the shiver that runs through Seer is becoming familiar. She can work through that, easily, though it doesn't mean it comes naturally. Many things do not. The trick is in making it look like they do, and luckily her actual body is back on the lakeshore.
Anyway, she should maybe have guessed - Seer learned to do this a certain way, but it's not appropriate here.
She takes a deep breath, lets it out in a thoughtful little hum, and the bright Essence shaped like a Moth dims. Less of her. Less of anything, until it's a faint, muggy outline with wings tucked down and antennae drooping.
The dim, hazy, detail-less shape of Seer alights partly on the lake surface and partly in the nowhere-space at the outskirts of the Void, and treks quietly forwards on foot, coming to a stop just before it turns into trespassing. (All of this is an impression. Impressions are important, when you're working with Dream. Real space doesn't factor here, but an impression makes things easier to understand.) And there she will wait.
Seer is a neighbour dropping by for a visit. This is different than a Seer projecting light and guidance and really that's how she should have led. Also, she has what might count as proof she's not a stranger; she nudges at that strange thread in her mind, idly figuring it out as she goes and drawing attention to it for the Siblings to pick up on, too.
(It feels like nothing at all, which is why she didn't notice it before. Interesting. She's still not sure how she feels about it.)
Siblings fluctuate in and out of Seer's sphere of awareness. The most fearful dive and flee, and the boldest trading places to watch her from the edges. It's not any (well, not much) Light-related reasoning they're not happy: they do know her. They can't share in the way the Knight does with them, or the way the Knight did with her, but they know she hurt Strongest Sibling in a way that rushed through all of them. But then they were happy? It's a mix that leaves many cranky and confused.
Though they don't come closer, none of that stops their protective hovering. Some of them even literally so--where the Lord of Shades is thickest in the Blue Lake is naturally the dimmest, and a few pairs of eyes cautiously creep up.
(Most, Greenhorn included, are immediately distracted and look back down to prod at the water they're half-in. It's a new substance, thinner and softer than liquid Void. It moves easier!)
The Knight left a moderately cross Myla to sitting alone, and yet again deviated from their own ideas. They wandered into a part of the realm that technically belongs to them, but seems not to. They spend time peering listlessly into the dark beneath the Lifeblood veins, half-searching for that other one. Whatever, whoever it may be. It would be interesting to find out. Dangerous, potentially.
A tug, and they wonder if that's it, but...no, it isn't here, as their Siblings' bubbling annoyance indicates.
They whirl and blur their way to the edge of the silvery water, querying: the giant creature with the blue eyes?
Seer is not getting the invitation she would like. This is perfectly understandable.
Her projected self wanders at the fringes where Void meets Dream, looking. To come up beside a presence so vast is like standing too close to a walled city; she can see nothing inside, only circle and trace the outside of their mind looking for hints.
In reality, the water of the lake laps quietly at the shore's edge, and for a moment she recognises an echo she isn't really hearing. This is not much to go on. Plenty of people dream of water. There's too much Void in the way, and it obscures too well. All she has is the strange thread they left with her, the agitated Siblings, and the sense that something is needed.
She's worked with far less.
"Wielder," she murmurs softly, cheerfully, like a curious caretaker observing a child's activities, "what are you doing with yourself?"
Her physical voice is far away, but the question itself sinks gently into the Lord of Shades like sugar dissolving in water. Seer remains still in all senses of herself, and watches the Siblings with gentle interest.
That's from outside. Not outside Godhome, fully outside. The Knight brakes in the middle of a Crystal Dash (they could move faster, instantly, but this is habit--and physical movement is a distraction, and such is preferred just now).
Shining water and pillars waver in front of their eyes; they're waking.
Greenhorn and the others shiver and look up at her, sending ripples that startle them all. They don't know what they want to do about it, but they didn't expect her to talk! But the water shaking between their ragged tendrils don't make that familiar whistling noise of wind, which splits their attention.
Beneath them all, eight eyes slide open.
The Lord of Shades painstakingly pulls together. Black that unfurled into tendrils that melted to ribbons that spread to an expanse of shadows returns to something more like a form.
There's a blur of purple on the shore.
Their head breaks the surface. The Lake rolls little waves against its shores with the shift of it. Their Siblings drift to meld, or to hang beneath their massive head, shadow in shadows.
Seer. Belladonna. Fluffy poison one, ah.
They weren't expecting--or prepared--to meet anyone like this.
...They aren't awake enough to consider what they should do next. So they only stare.
Seer feels the shudder in the water, and she pulls back from her little investigation a little quicker than she means to. All at once she's back in herself, sitting by the lake with the Shadelord's waves stirring at the shore by her knees. She is slouching more than usual, and quickly straightens up (though not by much) - and attempts to de-fluff her antennae, to middling success.
It's interesting to watch, the way the Lord of Shades comes back from whatever they're doing. A foray into Dream - the motes were twinkling all over the place like tell-tale confetti - but what kind she can't fathom yet.
Seer does not get up. She is still testing how she feels about addressing a Higher Being this way, as with everything else, but by request...
"Ahh, there you are," she calls casually across the water as they take shape. She's not really the type to shout - it's a good thing Blue Lake carries a voice, because she isn't projecting her thoughts any more either. "You look surprised to see me, Wielder! That answers one or two questions..."
Hm. And raises far more.
The Dream they'd once been trapped in had been a difficult lock to pick, but she'd had plenty of practice. This one, she suspects, will not be quite so hard. At least once she has the Void part figured out.
"Don't mind an old Moth, then," she advises helpfully, and sticks a hand out from behind her wings to make a shooing motion. "Carry on."
So she's still talking to them. They listen with the difficulty of the just-waking, added with many Siblings dubiously prodding at them. Yes, that's Seer. No, they don't know why she's here. Questions answered in their sleep, whatever that may mean. Were they dreaming loudly, somehow?
They lift a massive hand and...leave it hovering a moment, forgetting what they were doing with it mid-movement. They watch the waterfall flowing between their fingers.
After, experimentally, they set it over their topmost pairs of eyes, mimicking exhausted bugs. It gives no satisfaction.
They use another to flick their claws at her. They aren't going to sleep further with her staring at them. What does she want.
She recognises that motion for what it is, and the puzzlement sets in further. They look tired, so why then - well, anyway, they're not going back to whatever they were doing.
"Hmm. Forgive the interruption," not how she'd choose to say that to a god, "but I could sense you from all the way in my home! I suspect this has something to do with it."
There is a slight, markedly polite little prod at the... at whatever they've left with her. The little glimmer of something that feels like nothing.
"Although now I'm looking at you I'm getting the impression you didn't mean to call me here. Huh! Just as well I came!"
The second hand joins the first until their full face is covered. They can still tell where Seer Belladonna is, which they're now uncertain as to why, exactly. They're also aware of the Tiktik nest and a few Crawlid, but those are dull blips compared to her presence.
Alright. Once again, Higher Being nonsense has...occurred. Somehow. Alright. Alright.
They drag their hands down and unwind from the platform until the full of them is in the water.
Staying there, sinking there, is terribly tempting. But Seer Belladonna is right there. They likely have something to discuss.
...And now they want to turn around and pretend this isn't occurring.
Unfair of them. Irresponsible of them. They sink a little and slip forward, as a boat would.
A very large boat. A very large boat that is taking on water, slowly falling beneath the surface, with a few darting passengers protesting with whistle-wind noises and vanishing into the dark.
About two-thirds of the way there, the full Lord of Shades disappears and a pair of familiar pale horns rise up in place.
That feels quite a lot stronger than they likely expect. She is mindful not to flinch, though she doesn't touch that again.
That about confirms it, though. The Lord of Shades knows not what they've wrought! - is the way she turns it about in her head. That's what a Seer with a flair for the dramatic might have to say about it, but she suspects that won't go down well at present.
Seer holds steady as the black shape that erased the Light slides eerily towards her. She waits until the sharp flicker of reasonable unease passes along with their disappearance under the water - only then does she take a couple of small steps back from the edge of the lake, not a retreat, just giving them room. They don't want to be feared and it won't do to let that win out. (Nothing she can do about the bristling. Their presence is rather... charged, at the moment.)
Their smaller self is a relief. This too is politely quashed.
"You didn't mean to..." she guesses, almost casually. "Well, no one said being a nascent god would be simple."
After her initial try at getting their attention, she's not going out of her way to send anything like that now. She just waits, patient, to see how they'll handle themselves. They seem a little sluggish.
Such a small form isn't conducive to fast swimming, so it's a long few moments before they step onto shore and immediately pull out a paper.
A mistake, as they're still sopping wet, and the paper is just as immediately soaked where their paws hold it.
A long pause as this registers.
They let it go, where it drops to the sand with more of a slap than a flutter.
The Knight circles around to stand, and then sit, next to Seer Belladonna. They belatedly think they could've simply shaken their paws off, but it's a little late for that.
They still flick them once or twice, staring at the sand, and lean over to carve with a single tiny claw: what happened
She observes without comment. She's here on Seer business, and it starts with watching and listening. That and asking the right questions.
She does, however, sink back down into a seat amicably beside the Knight. She is also here on personal business. The two things are not mutually exclusive in the first place.
"...Ahh..."
How to explain? She doesn't know exactly what happened, is the thing. She can't even precisely tell the moment this strange little pocket in her Essence appeared. (In her Soul? In what? Hard to discern the details when it comes to Void.)
She doesn't need to be exact. The gist is there.
"...It seems you've left a part of you with me! At least that's how I'm looking at it," she admits. They might as well know she's not playing with a full deck here either. "I hardly mind. But the alarming part is you not being aware, I'm sure you can agree." She dips her head like she's speaking candidly to them, not that there's anyone else around to hear. It's a friendly gesture, then. "I found my way to you because of that, but that's not why I'm here. How are you feeling, Wielder?"
The Knight tips their head to her in a nod, and study what they can see that isn't hidden beneath her wings. The grogginess is all that keeps severe tension at bay, though she appears fine. They can still feel...something, perhaps. They lightly prod it before they sweep away their previous line.
are you harmed?
Ah. Lemm had asked something similar, later on, hadn't he? Concerned about the melting. The Blue Lake is serene still when they take a moment to stare across it. I was sleeping. the mess happens every time.
Lightly prod. That should be all it takes for Seer to just agree, and if it were anything else perhaps she'd peel back the fog for them willingly. As it is, she offers them only a modest sliver: she is nervous. This is still more than her physical self relays, calm and practical as usual.
"Not at all. Though I ask you to be delicate while you have one hand in my heart! So to speak."
That's... kind of one way to put it. She tilts her head, still measuring. It's not quite right, but it's close.
What they have written is... also close. Her response is a thoughtful hum.
"...Were you?"
Then another hum, more doubtful this time, and her head tips the other way like she's trying to see their words from another angle.
"Ah, well I don't know what sleeping Void feels like. You're a mystery to me, Wielder. But that's not quite what I meant." Seer's voice softens into one of quiet concern. "Did something happen to you?"
Minutely twitching, they draw back and slam a not-entirely-metaphorical door shut. No touching that, then.
And that is a highly concerning question. ...Understandable, though. They nod.
many exhausting events. There are a few grains sticking to their smooth shell. It's too soft for many. They carefully brush it off on their wings and determine they're dry enough for not fully ruining paper.
Shouldn't you be more concerned about yourself? If there is Void in you, there may have been Infection, they write bluntly. I apologize for this and if anything uncomfortable was shared.
There, well, she debated on just keeping the whole of it to herself, but that seemed like a very good way of making them more curious. As it is, all's well that ends well.
"Hmm."
Therein lies the trick to this: she now knows they're concerned about her, that they know a link between Infection and the little sliver of Void planted in her, and that there was something uncomfortable that might have been shared. Very good. It's not much more than she knew already, but it's a good step forward.
"Ah, don't worry about me, Wielder. What Light there was in me was there inert..." This was almost melancholy, but Seer trails off suddenly.
A hand in her heart, indeed. The Void is inert until they start picking at it. Now there's a parallel she doesn't know what to do with right now, and she decides changing the subject is wiser.
"You were distressed," she explains, much more simply now that she's sure of which direction to take this in. "I'd have come looking for the source of that either way." In a tone that might be read as very gently teasing: "I don't suppose you knew you were making that mess, either?"
(the Oldlight was in her, was in all, as the Vessel failed and She reached and tore Her traitorous lost children and on and on)
--and stop before they can face her fully. Their paw presses against the eye that has a crack radiating up it and presses against phantom pain. Once again, they wish to be anywhere but here.
The Lord of Shades makes a mess of most things, they write flatly.
Seer mentally recoils. That was not supposed to happen - she hadn't meant to share that at all. Her guilt -
- no, she hadn't, that was not hers, it was someone else's, but how similar and how terrible. She can guess...
Seer resists the reflexive urge to press, to reach out - trying to reach the source of that through the Knight would be an exercise in foolishness. One task at a time. Seer takes a slow, easy breath, and exhales in a soft hum. She sets aside the reflection of regret and keeps a safer distance. Focus. Now is not the time to be drawn into a storm, not with the Knight sitting beside her lost in their own.
"...The Lord of Shades," she begins slowly, still carefully putting herself back on the rails, "was born yesterday. Reborn, at least. How long have you had to learn your Nail, Wielder?"
They both need grounding. Seer slips out a hand and touches lightly at their shoulder, consoling.
"You are unpracticed in this just as you were in dreams. Hmm, and speaking of dreams, I fear I may have proven myself a poor teacher... What were you doing when I came?"
She's unflinching in the face of ill-received comfort, at least. That is starkly ordinary, and if the situation were a tad lighter Seer might have even been amused. As it stands, she's taking things a little more seriously.
She had been considering taking her hand back right away, but for now she just gives them an encouraging nod.
"I realise now that I woke you... but too I'm realising that letting you get right back to it may not be the way forward! Humour me for now, Wielder. All will make itself clear quite soon."
Their shoulder gets a friendly little squeeze, a cool attempt at prompting them to continue.
They could pull out of her grip and dive back into the Lake. Or Crystal Dash across it, to go rest elsewhere. These ideas are turned in their mind with no real passion. Guilt would bring them back later anyway.
Right. She asked something. The idea of writing sleeping alone is quashed, though the desire this time is significantly stronger.
As she suspected, a realm, and - if she remembers correctly from their fateful letter - not a particularly simple one.
"...Mmm." She sounds rather unhappy about that. "Do you visit this place very often, Wielder?"
Her hand lifts from their shoulder, and instead comes to rest over her chest, over the seam where her wings fall about her. She looks like she's thinking hard.
no subject
On their way out, they don’t think about the direction they choose, and the sight of their Sibling’s memorial statue hits them like a tram.
It was an uncomfortable thing before; now, foreign memories surge and nearly floor them on the spot. The Hollow Knight’s shame tears through them, what thin walls they built in their visit with Lemm unable to withstand, and the Knight flees as the former would if they were unburdened by ‘should/should-not/do-not’ locking them into place. (Offering of truth to the King, to look at their vile cowardice flaunted so before an ally--)
By the time the lurching horror is smothered, they find they’re in the Crossroads.
They can’t be here. Not least because their Wings have grown and tangled around them like nightmarish and clumsy armor, neither Shadelord or the Knight in physicality, but somewhat in-between.
Even if they calm and visit--and return home, the people of Dirtmouth are likely to be…displeased, yes, but even more concerned, and not let them disappear again without full explanation so easily. Full sleep first.
The world is far too shaky. They could call the Old Stag, if not for the chance they might simply fall or melt off him. If literally falling asleep on Lemm is any indicator, they shouldn’t drag him into their Void, but it would be rude. As well as inconvenient.
The Knight winds their tendrils in and pivots away from where they stopped somewhere below the Stag Station. Hot shame is smoothed into silence. Their Sibling was no coward, and neither are they. Tactical retreats, especially when impaired, are necessary.
The Lake. That was functional for all that waking half-beneath its water was uncomfortable.
They scramble past Salubra’s with so little subtlety her laughter falters. They throw themselves into the next cavern before she might consider investigation.
There are Tiktiks in the ceiling where they were planning to rest. They nearly slice them through before remembering there’s no need for that, and sweep the Dreamnail instead of their standard one.
Other bug…don’t get nest… the Tiktik nearest thinks, turning to peer up at them before skittering the opposite way.
Well.
They flutter and land heavily to the next platform and settle.
There’s no need to wait. Their shell overflows with darkness until the Lord of Shades is a massive black arch, back half and claws dipping into the water.
In little time, Godseeker welcomes them.
They bow to the her, who prattles on with praise. They leave her behind. Communication can wait. They’ll…rest a little more, on their private bench. With Myla, who’s also there.
The strange discarded flower ‘prototype’ is there as well. They slump beside her, both wordless in their differing states of waking and sleeping.
Perhaps they’ll take on a Pantheon. (Not the fourth or fifth.) Something to distract them, in a little while, when they're done staring at the shiny--but not shining--metal petals.
no subject
Certain duties may go unneeded for a long time, but that does not mean those duties stop. The last Seer of Hallownest has been assessing her relationship with her duties as of late, weighing the importance of them against the future. Some she may soon leave behind.
Others, like keeping the graves, remain important. Besides that... it is just as much a habit as a duty, to sit and observe and keep a measure of things. This part of her occupation has always suited her very well.
"Is everything all right?" asks one of the bugs recovering in her home. They have noticed the way she has gone strange and stiff, but they are tentative when they're questioning her and suspect they won't be getting a straight answer (as they are learning, this is often).
"Mmm... I suppose I should go and find out," she says, cryptically, with her antennae twitching. It would be a shame to flout expectation. Then, to reassure, because they are fragile and maybe she's being unfair: "Nothing to do with you! You might mind the place while I'm gone, if you like."
Seer gets to her feet, flapping a hand at them and tutting when they try to help her up. She wastes little time dallying. There is a shudder waiting in the air, Essence (and something else) tangling unpleasantly about itself and eddying around her thoughts, seeping in from somewhere to the west - somewhere, yes, she knows exactly where. And who.
She passes in silence through passages and between graves. There is a thread she is following, or a signature - something that has been there for a little while and only just made itself known. This she will address later. Currently it makes a very handy compass.
Seer slows as she emerges from the tunnel, Blue Lake glistening ahead of her. And, like last time, she sees before she sees. She steps very softly across the sand, halts at the water's edge, and stares for a little while, thinking.
"Huh," she says. "Well, you don't have to make it easy, I suppose."
Seer turns to look behind her at the tunnel, and around at the shore, slowly pivoting in place until she is certain she is (almost) alone. Then she sits herself down in the sand, because she has a feeling this is going to be something she ought to sit down for. Her antennae creakily raise and fan out.
Out beyond Godhome, just past the fringes of the Lord of Shades, the soft-edged shape of a Moth is loosely implied in their direction.
no subject
Altered Godhome is a sunken speck in the deep, where the Strongest likes to linger in and the bravest like to cluster by.
The sluggish melting of the physical Shadelord into the Lake continues.
In other words, the Knight is oblivious.
Siblings are the ones to notice a flash of wings and purple-tinted light first. They respond accordingly: the impression of unending darkness splits into dozens of bright-eyed forms that scatter back and away.
no subject
Anyway, she should maybe have guessed - Seer learned to do this a certain way, but it's not appropriate here.
She takes a deep breath, lets it out in a thoughtful little hum, and the bright Essence shaped like a Moth dims. Less of her. Less of anything, until it's a faint, muggy outline with wings tucked down and antennae drooping.
The dim, hazy, detail-less shape of Seer alights partly on the lake surface and partly in the nowhere-space at the outskirts of the Void, and treks quietly forwards on foot, coming to a stop just before it turns into trespassing. (All of this is an impression. Impressions are important, when you're working with Dream. Real space doesn't factor here, but an impression makes things easier to understand.) And there she will wait.
Seer is a neighbour dropping by for a visit. This is different than a Seer projecting light and guidance and really that's how she should have led. Also, she has what might count as proof she's not a stranger; she nudges at that strange thread in her mind, idly figuring it out as she goes and drawing attention to it for the Siblings to pick up on, too.
(It feels like nothing at all, which is why she didn't notice it before. Interesting. She's still not sure how she feels about it.)
no subject
Though they don't come closer, none of that stops their protective hovering. Some of them even literally so--where the Lord of Shades is thickest in the Blue Lake is naturally the dimmest, and a few pairs of eyes cautiously creep up.
(Most, Greenhorn included, are immediately distracted and look back down to prod at the water they're half-in. It's a new substance, thinner and softer than liquid Void. It moves easier!)
The Knight left a moderately cross Myla to sitting alone, and yet again deviated from their own ideas. They wandered into a part of the realm that technically belongs to them, but seems not to. They spend time peering listlessly into the dark beneath the Lifeblood veins, half-searching for that other one. Whatever, whoever it may be. It would be interesting to find out. Dangerous, potentially.
A tug, and they wonder if that's it, but...no, it isn't here, as their Siblings' bubbling annoyance indicates.
They whirl and blur their way to the edge of the silvery water, querying: the giant creature with the blue eyes?
No, the weird fluffy poison one!
...What?
The darkness stirs.
no subject
Her projected self wanders at the fringes where Void meets Dream, looking. To come up beside a presence so vast is like standing too close to a walled city; she can see nothing inside, only circle and trace the outside of their mind looking for hints.
In reality, the water of the lake laps quietly at the shore's edge, and for a moment she recognises an echo she isn't really hearing. This is not much to go on. Plenty of people dream of water. There's too much Void in the way, and it obscures too well. All she has is the strange thread they left with her, the agitated Siblings, and the sense that something is needed.
She's worked with far less.
"Wielder," she murmurs softly, cheerfully, like a curious caretaker observing a child's activities, "what are you doing with yourself?"
Her physical voice is far away, but the question itself sinks gently into the Lord of Shades like sugar dissolving in water. Seer remains still in all senses of herself, and watches the Siblings with gentle interest.
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Shining water and pillars waver in front of their eyes; they're waking.
Greenhorn and the others shiver and look up at her, sending ripples that startle them all. They don't know what they want to do about it, but they didn't expect her to talk! But the water shaking between their ragged tendrils don't make that familiar whistling noise of wind, which splits their attention.
Beneath them all, eight eyes slide open.
The Lord of Shades painstakingly pulls together. Black that unfurled into tendrils that melted to ribbons that spread to an expanse of shadows returns to something more like a form.
There's a blur of purple on the shore.
Their head breaks the surface. The Lake rolls little waves against its shores with the shift of it. Their Siblings drift to meld, or to hang beneath their massive head, shadow in shadows.
Seer. Belladonna. Fluffy poison one, ah.
They weren't expecting--or prepared--to meet anyone like this.
...They aren't awake enough to consider what they should do next. So they only stare.
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It's interesting to watch, the way the Lord of Shades comes back from whatever they're doing. A foray into Dream - the motes were twinkling all over the place like tell-tale confetti - but what kind she can't fathom yet.
Seer does not get up. She is still testing how she feels about addressing a Higher Being this way, as with everything else, but by request...
"Ahh, there you are," she calls casually across the water as they take shape. She's not really the type to shout - it's a good thing Blue Lake carries a voice, because she isn't projecting her thoughts any more either. "You look surprised to see me, Wielder! That answers one or two questions..."
Hm. And raises far more.
The Dream they'd once been trapped in had been a difficult lock to pick, but she'd had plenty of practice. This one, she suspects, will not be quite so hard. At least once she has the Void part figured out.
"Don't mind an old Moth, then," she advises helpfully, and sticks a hand out from behind her wings to make a shooing motion. "Carry on."
Worth a try.
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They lift a massive hand and...leave it hovering a moment, forgetting what they were doing with it mid-movement. They watch the waterfall flowing between their fingers.
After, experimentally, they set it over their topmost pairs of eyes, mimicking exhausted bugs. It gives no satisfaction.
They use another to flick their claws at her. They aren't going to sleep further with her staring at them. What does she want.
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She recognises that motion for what it is, and the puzzlement sets in further. They look tired, so why then - well, anyway, they're not going back to whatever they were doing.
"Hmm. Forgive the interruption," not how she'd choose to say that to a god, "but I could sense you from all the way in my home! I suspect this has something to do with it."
There is a slight, markedly polite little prod at the... at whatever they've left with her. The little glimmer of something that feels like nothing.
"Although now I'm looking at you I'm getting the impression you didn't mean to call me here. Huh! Just as well I came!"
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Which reinforces that there's something there.
The Lord of Shades is motionless.
...
Fuck.
The second hand joins the first until their full face is covered. They can still tell where Seer Belladonna is, which they're now uncertain as to why, exactly. They're also aware of the Tiktik nest and a few Crawlid, but those are dull blips compared to her presence.
Alright. Once again, Higher Being nonsense has...occurred. Somehow. Alright. Alright.
They drag their hands down and unwind from the platform until the full of them is in the water.
Staying there, sinking there, is terribly tempting. But Seer Belladonna is right there. They likely have something to discuss.
...And now they want to turn around and pretend this isn't occurring.
Unfair of them. Irresponsible of them. They sink a little and slip forward, as a boat would.
A very large boat. A very large boat that is taking on water, slowly falling beneath the surface, with a few darting passengers protesting with whistle-wind noises and vanishing into the dark.
About two-thirds of the way there, the full Lord of Shades disappears and a pair of familiar pale horns rise up in place.
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That about confirms it, though. The Lord of Shades knows not what they've wrought! - is the way she turns it about in her head. That's what a Seer with a flair for the dramatic might have to say about it, but she suspects that won't go down well at present.
Seer holds steady as the black shape that erased the Light slides eerily towards her. She waits until the sharp flicker of reasonable unease passes along with their disappearance under the water - only then does she take a couple of small steps back from the edge of the lake, not a retreat, just giving them room. They don't want to be feared and it won't do to let that win out. (Nothing she can do about the bristling. Their presence is rather... charged, at the moment.)
Their smaller self is a relief. This too is politely quashed.
"You didn't mean to..." she guesses, almost casually. "Well, no one said being a nascent god would be simple."
After her initial try at getting their attention, she's not going out of her way to send anything like that now. She just waits, patient, to see how they'll handle themselves. They seem a little sluggish.
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A mistake, as they're still sopping wet, and the paper is just as immediately soaked where their paws hold it.
A long pause as this registers.
They let it go, where it drops to the sand with more of a slap than a flutter.
The Knight circles around to stand, and then sit, next to Seer Belladonna. They belatedly think they could've simply shaken their paws off, but it's a little late for that.
They still flick them once or twice, staring at the sand, and lean over to carve with a single tiny claw: what happened
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She does, however, sink back down into a seat amicably beside the Knight. She is also here on personal business. The two things are not mutually exclusive in the first place.
"...Ahh..."
How to explain? She doesn't know exactly what happened, is the thing. She can't even precisely tell the moment this strange little pocket in her Essence appeared. (In her Soul? In what? Hard to discern the details when it comes to Void.)
She doesn't need to be exact. The gist is there.
"...It seems you've left a part of you with me! At least that's how I'm looking at it," she admits. They might as well know she's not playing with a full deck here either. "I hardly mind. But the alarming part is you not being aware, I'm sure you can agree." She dips her head like she's speaking candidly to them, not that there's anyone else around to hear. It's a friendly gesture, then. "I found my way to you because of that, but that's not why I'm here. How are you feeling, Wielder?"
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are you harmed?
Ah. Lemm had asked something similar, later on, hadn't he? Concerned about the melting. The Blue Lake is serene still when they take a moment to stare across it. I was sleeping. the mess happens every time.
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"Not at all. Though I ask you to be delicate while you have one hand in my heart! So to speak."
That's... kind of one way to put it. She tilts her head, still measuring. It's not quite right, but it's close.
What they have written is... also close. Her response is a thoughtful hum.
"...Were you?"
Then another hum, more doubtful this time, and her head tips the other way like she's trying to see their words from another angle.
"Ah, well I don't know what sleeping Void feels like. You're a mystery to me, Wielder. But that's not quite what I meant." Seer's voice softens into one of quiet concern. "Did something happen to you?"
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And that is a highly concerning question. ...Understandable, though. They nod.
many exhausting events. There are a few grains sticking to their smooth shell. It's too soft for many. They carefully brush it off on their wings and determine they're dry enough for not fully ruining paper.
Shouldn't you be more concerned about yourself? If there is Void in you, there may have been Infection, they write bluntly. I apologize for this and if anything uncomfortable was shared.
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"Hmm."
Therein lies the trick to this: she now knows they're concerned about her, that they know a link between Infection and the little sliver of Void planted in her, and that there was something uncomfortable that might have been shared. Very good. It's not much more than she knew already, but it's a good step forward.
"Ah, don't worry about me, Wielder. What Light there was in me was there inert..." This was almost melancholy, but Seer trails off suddenly.
A hand in her heart, indeed. The Void is inert until they start picking at it. Now there's a parallel she doesn't know what to do with right now, and she decides changing the subject is wiser.
"You were distressed," she explains, much more simply now that she's sure of which direction to take this in. "I'd have come looking for the source of that either way." In a tone that might be read as very gently teasing: "I don't suppose you knew you were making that mess, either?"
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(the Oldlight was in her, was in all, as the Vessel failed and She reached and tore Her traitorous lost children and on and on)
--and stop before they can face her fully. Their paw presses against the eye that has a crack radiating up it and presses against phantom pain. Once again, they wish to be anywhere but here.
The Lord of Shades makes a mess of most things, they write flatly.
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- no, she hadn't, that was not hers, it was someone else's, but how similar and how terrible. She can guess...
Seer resists the reflexive urge to press, to reach out - trying to reach the source of that through the Knight would be an exercise in foolishness. One task at a time. Seer takes a slow, easy breath, and exhales in a soft hum. She sets aside the reflection of regret and keeps a safer distance. Focus. Now is not the time to be drawn into a storm, not with the Knight sitting beside her lost in their own.
"...The Lord of Shades," she begins slowly, still carefully putting herself back on the rails, "was born yesterday. Reborn, at least. How long have you had to learn your Nail, Wielder?"
They both need grounding. Seer slips out a hand and touches lightly at their shoulder, consoling.
"You are unpracticed in this just as you were in dreams. Hmm, and speaking of dreams, I fear I may have proven myself a poor teacher... What were you doing when I came?"
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A small twitch. They don't shrug her from their shoulder.
The results they start writing, but fail to continue. Seer's gentle words...
(Are echoes of Lemm's, once, and their own thoughts with his, and after rest.)
They grate.
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She had been considering taking her hand back right away, but for now she just gives them an encouraging nod.
"I realise now that I woke you... but too I'm realising that letting you get right back to it may not be the way forward! Humour me for now, Wielder. All will make itself clear quite soon."
Their shoulder gets a friendly little squeeze, a cool attempt at prompting them to continue.
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Right. She asked something. The idea of writing sleeping alone is quashed, though the desire this time is significantly stronger.
Resting in Godhome.
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As she suspected, a realm, and - if she remembers correctly from their fateful letter - not a particularly simple one.
"...Mmm." She sounds rather unhappy about that. "Do you visit this place very often, Wielder?"
Her hand lifts from their shoulder, and instead comes to rest over her chest, over the seam where her wings fall about her. She looks like she's thinking hard.
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...They suppose it's odd to hear of, knowing they trapped Myla there.
When I sleep. I don't know how else to reach it easily.
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