Pale life spirals up every wall and every corner, budding and tangling, hanging from overhead, pushing up from the gaps, choking out the outside. Private, as all walled gardens should be.
"Late is your invitation," says the White Lady, all around and yet politely still withheld. Even this, the form she takes in her dreams, is not the extent of herself.
"Any kingdomfall takes patience," says Grimm, and takes a bow. A light breeze ruffles the flare of his cloak. It is pleasantly lonely here, and the strange space echoes with the shifting of the wind. "Time and I are old friends. It is a flattery the Lady would invite us at all."
"Mistake not my invitation for a welcome," the White Lady warns. Her tone is impersonal. "Beneath the cracks in this kingdom a darkness has grown."
"A funeral flame often casts a long shadow."
Grimm is not surprised by this revelation, and it seems the White Lady did not expect him to be.
Slowly, Grimm turns to face her. "This invitation comes with a caveat," he guesses. A pause, and his flame-red eyes narrow. "You wish for our interference?"
The air tastes of grit and smells of burning. Not befitting of a dream of the White Lady, he begins to realise, but the realisation is unhurried. No: sluggish, the Nightmare whispers to him.
He cannot make out her face, bright as it is with her Essence only barely withheld.
"A wish, no. Your benefaction I will require nonetheless."
The sound of the wind is subtly wrong. Not shifting wind at all: the shifting of roots nearby and around, whispering softly with pale light. Grimm takes a step back, and his foot hits something cool.
"I bound myself in penance and prevention. Perhaps it is too for these virtues I act now."
The breeze in his cloak, then, was no breeze either. The Root tangles, a snare pulling tight around his limbs. At once Grimm sobers and with a twinge of dread realises his mistake: this is not the dream of the White Lady. The scarce scenery not yet choked by plant life is tinged red and cloaked in fabric. He looks up.
The Heart hangs overhead, disappearing into an impossible knot of glowing white Roots, pulsing in rage.
How did he not realise?
Grimm flickers out like a candle flame and ignites to the side -
- no, he does no such thing. Icy Root coils tighter about him, burning-cold, branded (now he realises) with patterns he could not make out amid the glow of her. Grimm goes nowhere. The Heart seizes. He cannot move, cannot breathe, cannot think, sluggish, because her Essence breathes in like a sopor, because she was here long before you knew - when did she get here? Think! - demands the Ringmaster.
Not here. Bound like him, but deeper, bound like the Heart...
There is no way of telling when the White Lady invited herself to his dreams, because she has made him forget.
"What have you done?" he asks sharply, before there is a sharpness in his mind where she is reaching in.
"The embers will not mourn their reaper," the White Lady reassures him. "The purpose to which you are turned is that of the future. A purpose you value, even: Burn the father. Inside and amid the rest of you I see that much very clearly." She is rummaging, looking for something. This is not her domain, and she is clumsy with inaction.
"Let me go!" he demands, voice hoarser than ever, agonised and straining against her entrapment. "You have no understanding -"
"Still yourself and I will have enough." Hunting, splitting his mind apart - there. The knowledge of his disappearing act, excised and held to her pale glow and examined, plucked at like the string of some instrument until fire reflexively licks back. "A gift to pacify, given for Hallownest to scion grafted. You will doubtless be pleased with such a fate."
The flame is tested again, and finally the White Lady lances even that with ice - reflex tears him from Dream, tears a gate, and pours the Essence of him down. Into the dark.
"Goodbye, Nightmare. Your gift marks a courtesy I will not forget."
Grimm bursts from a teleport he did not willingly initiate, and falls to the cold metal floor in a putter of burnt-out fire. The bindings around him are yet burning-cold, but now severed from their Lady they dim into dead, ashen grey, the blinding white markings searing themselves dark.
Grimm lies limp and cold and still in a place far from the Troupe and the Nightmare stage.
Any Light is nothing, in the face of the Void; the brightest, the most recent that burned are lost ashes torn apart and buried in an endless sea.
But the Void remembers when this was not the case. Siblings many remember. Lost Knight recalled, returned remembers. Twisted roots of focus and will lash together. Claws, not paws. Face, not mask.
The Lord of Shades may rest, but they will not be sealed again.
When the Void rises to reach the top (easily, so easily, sparks of fury and glee alike that this is possible, not a one can fall and shatter even if they try), the bug on the platform is, at first, ignored.
A massive hand reaches over it and feels along the exit; there is something lingering, familiar. Fading Light imprinted, but not of the old commanding Voice, nor ancient-new screaming fury.
The Knight comes fully to forefront. Whatever was here is gone. The way out is not sealed, or attempted to be such by a fool. These important facts determined, the Lord of Shades turns attention to the fallen figure on the platform.
A flash of outrage and dark humor--perhaps this one is dead, another body intended to disappear into the dark. No, arcing above and peering closer shows that there's still breath left.
This one may yet be dying, though. Parts of them wishes to disappear again to rest, but if it's true--if it's true, perhaps things have changed more than they thought, in meantime. They hadn't intended to abandon the world above, as cowards before had, only rest. But for someone to even try disposing a body, rather then leaving it where it fell, indicates some form of fear for such a discovery...and foolishness...and any presence at all, in the empty and unsettling Ancient Basin.
Perhaps. Their imagination is wilder than it used to be, they've noticed in their snatches of being awake.
A curious traveller more likely. Lost and finding a sign of something, only to pass out in presence of so much Void.
Hm.
The edge of a claw the length of Grimm's body bumps against his side. Wounds should be checked for before they try bringing the shell somewhere marginally safer.
It is not like the Nightmare King to wake so stumblingly from sleep. But something touches him, and his wings are pulled too tightly about himself, and there is none of the awareness of Dream to step deftly out of - just the dark and the nothing of dreamless sleep, empty and cold, from which he stumbles alone.
The tightness is not his wings. He is lying on the ground, tangled and entrapped in sigil-carved Root. His body feels as lead.
Something huge and impossible nudges him, and he would dance away from that touch like firelight, but none will come when he calls.
(The bindings themselves are dead and cut, but where the Shadelord touches them the sigils flare slightly and whisper. The White Lady's doing, but certainly taught by another.)
He cannot move to stand, so he does not move at all. Grimm stays perfectly still as consciousness trickles back, and his eyes open a sliver. Their glow is dim, though in the all-permeating dark of the Abyss they stand out like embers.
The long shadow cast by Hallownest's passing looms large over him, investigating. He does not recognise this place, though he knows cold metal pressing up against the side of his face. Perhaps there is etiquette to follow, but he knows none. He is still waiting for the memory of what just happened to surface properly. Still sluggish, and worse for having his flame manipulated so jarringly by someone with no experience handling Essence.
It would be convenient to know what to do here, how to respond or to greet or whether to run. Grimm prods inward for advice, expecting something cryptic. He gets nothing.
His eyes snap all the way open, and he stares up at the Shadelord with no stage decorum at all. He just looks alarmed.
The Shades of Void and the Void that waited remember, in the little life and presence they had, of seedpod-eggs and the roots that grew from them, funneling darkness into wood-soft shells.
Familiar, unfamiliar, comforting and not. The whisper--the noise--the rest leaves the Shadelord's form bristling, waves of thorny tendrils curling down their sides and reaching up from the dark. Primarily not.
The massive claws, despite this, remain steady as their gaze.
The bug holds Light, but now, this holds threat matching old lantern and its lumafly companion. Different enough to be interesting. Different enough not to scream of never-forgotten betrayal.
There's some effort needed before the Knight shifts again, ignoring this to give greater attention to the Seal. It appears they are intended to find the being trapped inside more interesting than the bindings directly.
Foolish. Ignorant. Or--
The Knight made many errors in Greenpath, walking into Fool Eaters' maws. They made more many, many times in Deepnest.
Not everything's changed with their form.
They tap it again.
Again, the bindings flicker and whisper, Sibling-stress shuddering over them. But nothing flares too bright to terribly alarm; no spellwork attempts to wind itself up their claws. If a trap, it's failed to spring.
...They give the bug a courteous nudge onto his back. Specifically further from the edge, and so further from the many, many tiny grasping almost-paws reaching up from the rippling sea that came to rest just below.
The Roots binding him are dead and lifeless, already stiffening into the weaker facsimile of bone now that her glow has ebbed from them. There is something terribly wrong with him if he cannot even burn away this.
Groggily he assesses the situation in his mind, with a minute shiver at how unfamiliar the inside of his own head feels now, she has done something to him, he'll figure out what later - now is for reaction, and quickly.
The massive shadow prods him again, and the world twists a bit. Grimm stares up at them from the floor, eyes still wide and seeking sense. It appears that in his current state they could quite easily snuff out his flame with a single movement, and with all that Hallownest's demise took, Grimm would be unsurprised if their might did not come with mercy. He can sense what's down there, just on the fringe of his awareness - or at least he can feel the intent.
(Yes, he knew Hallownest's regrets had amounted to something. Being cast at its feet - so to speak - does not make this information of much use now.)
The shadow examines him and he doesn't know what for, which is troubling.
Slowly Grimm tears his gaze away and cranes his head stiffly and peers down at himself. At the sigils, hushing and dimming as their intended witness moves away.
Though he can only snag fragments of meaning here and there, from the strange position and the tangle of his bindings, a few things click unpleasantly into place. A gift to pacify, she'd said.
It is lucky diplomacy is something he's capable of doing without peer review. The gravity and precariousness of his situation crashes down on him like a rockfall, and Grimm hurries to gather himself enough to speak.
"You might forgive that I am unprepared for the stage," he slurs with some difficulty, and only now registers how much all of him feels weighed down - his faculties included. "Perhaps I might yet be of more use to you than the satisfaction of striking me down. Either way an honour..." His eyes close briefly, searching, remembering. "...to attend your call." Clumsy. The words aren't coming as fast as he'd like, not with only memory to rely on. And he is in no position to bow.
Brave to speak at all. Words they aren't certain they care for, even, though unlikely this bug truly knows that. This one looks nothing like a Godseeker.
The Lord of Shades fluidly curls around the edge, as though the facsimile of a body-shape is truly lain across the Void rather than the peak of their whole.
Looks nothing like a Godseeker. Sounds nothing like a Godseeker, in reverence or voice. The Abyss can't deaden how he sounds like someone who fell asleep shortly after consuming pieces of glass.
A trap, they consider again, of bug rather than binding. One clearly expecting attack first.
--Parts of them nearly preen at the threat they are and seem, if only for the novelty. The small Knight was rarely seen as such.
And the small Knight was, at times, impulsive. A trap to spring, and wounds the tangled netting of wood may cover to study; they pause only to hold a pointing claw steady, and snap the bindings from neck to chest in a single lash.
The shell beneath it is red. Not an internal light from the eyes, but catching just enough shine from the exit to be similarly noticeable.
Grimm feels the snag of sharp dark claw and braces himself for the pull - which is painless, and swift. Deft. Careful.
And the White Lady's bindings are gone. Grimm lets his limbs fall slack out of the tight pin of their wrappings, and then gingerly eases them out in a round, upward sweep of stretching arms disguised as a particularly theatrical motion to move upright. He wastes no time and doesn't even touch the floor with his hands, legs already manoeuvring beneath him to lever him up in one fluid move.
He, of course, takes a bow.
"You have my gratitude."
Out of the corner of his eye: there is a door behind him, open, less crushingly dark through there. ... He does not make a break for it. Grimm suspects there are moving parts at play. He can feel them shifting under his shell.
Grimm straightens up slowly, and his gaze finds the Shadelord.
"So, I am given." A declaration.
Now what might they wish to do with him? They must have been quite eager. None would dare to trap him for any less.
For one knocked unconscious and left at the edge of all-devouring darkness, he's quick to stand, yet not quick to flee.
...Given.
Discarded, they consider again.
Echoes of familiar, familiar, familiar rise and the darkness roils, rises, does not scream, cannot, but calls.
return, come home, the darkness is welcome, the Light is not; be free, come and rest, eddies of stained regrets of a body slumped in a lighthouse finally doused--
The Knight nudges their Siblings away. They can rest, they should. Not all who find the edge of this prison must. There is choice allowed to flee from the dark...even if this bug seems either too brave or foolhardy to try.
No obvious wounds, they belatedly note.
The Lord of Shades considers options. Sink back to rest, forget this happened--except they wouldn't, their curiosity of him and the world further has cut their half-slumber short already. Devour and drown for a moment of Sibling-satisfaction they know better than to entertain. Lash out and make flee, to get him out of the way, but still leave them with wondering.
A shining geo-cache right down a narrow tunnel, innocent and so screamingly obvious an ambush.
They understand the arrogance of their own next thought: if there's attack, they might as well give this one a chance.
The Abyss is a difficult place for a discussion. The Lord of Shades is a difficult being to discuss with. The ledge is a poor choice for battle.
A colossal hand reaches out, claws curling loosely, to again nudge him back.
Grimm turns his head up and peers around slowly, and considers his position again.
Fossil and oppressive silence, somewhere deep and down. Cold metal underfoot - a favourite of the Wyrm, if memory serves. And shade. So much of it the place echoes with that darkness. No lantern called him here.
(No lantern called him at all.)
The Shadelord's huge claws bump into him. Grimm allows himself to be pushed backwards, catching himself on his back foot. At the contact of Void to his shell, sigils he didn't notice before burn cold around his Essence, recognising. Affirming.
Grimm's eyes narrow at the realisation this brings. His bindings are not gone simply because the physical ones lie cut and dead on the platform at his feet.
Still. They have pushed him.
"Perhaps you wish to discuss this pact elsewhere," he suggests, trying to get a gauge on their intent. Even his hoarse hush echoes too-loud in the silence down here.
Something sparks against their darkness. They pause.
...Seemingly, nothing.
They continue until there's just enough space.
Pact. Noted, despite meaning little to them yet. And a nod, smooth and strange, neck stretching far enough to appear uncomfortable.
Titanic as they are, a fragment of the Sea can hold the whole. They don't understand it any more than the Knight understood how they could tuck important objects into their chest for safekeeping. It's possible. The rest they can accept and pursue later.
The Lord of Shades arcs and bends. In a black fog, the ropy tendrils crushing together, half-binding into themselves, the rest bubbling away until impossible to see. A burst of nothing, something that seems like it should be heavy making the reverse of reverberation.
The Knight lands nimbly on the ledge. The sound of not-shell meeting metal echoes, distorted and late.
Their paws appear normal. Their cloak-wings are still trailing off to tangle around the metal, and they loosen each with a little concentration. They can't observe their mask without recruiting another Sibling's eyes to look through, but it's solid and strong when they tap along each side from chin to horn.
(It's crawling with Void down the center. They don't feel there enough to realize.)
Despite that oddness, this is the correct scale. It seems they've already forgotten how small they used to be...else the bug they now peer upwards to see is simply particularly tall.
Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating! And the Troupe Master has nothing to compare it to. He watches keenly, unflinching, and as the small Vessel alights on the floor Grimm's eyes narrow just a touch.
In his position perhaps he should be more concerned than interested. The Void still visible in the middle of their mask ought to give him pause, and perhaps it does, but he cannot help some curiosity as he stares back at the darkness looking up at him.
Small as they appear, he has already seen what lurks beneath. Grimm is not foolish enough to take them at their face.
"Clever craft, but the truth will out..."
He lowers his gaze to the floor and dismisses the thought. There are more pressing things to consider, first. He is in a precarious situation.
"I care for the conclusion, not the stage," he tells them with a polite and encouraging little nod. "At your beck, then." Perhaps if he is cooperative right from the start, negotiations might be more favourable.
Old chains of God and Root cast away, the Void is never fully separate.
The Knight's body being their own again is still a buffer. The frantic fragments of emotion of their siblings are soothed once more. It's almost alone that they neatly step around the tall black-and-red bug to exit.
They'll be followed, or they're being deceived and won't. They'll find hints from either choice.
The Pale King's words whisper as they pass; as ever, they ignore it. Shadow Creeper shells decorate the way forward, dead where they walked or hung from the walls. A quick slash reveals a brown-black mess of Void and guts, no orange. At least part of that is as it should be.
...The tunnel seems oddly bright.
A long pause and examination reveals that, by technicality, it isn't. Absence of Infection is the only clear difference from before, and it should be darker for that lack. It appears their time at rest left them with mild disorientation.
The journey onward--to the Hidden Station, they decide--will be slower than they tend to go, considering they should reassess and rediscover their senses.
(That they're partly braced for claws tearing through their back is also a factor, albeit smaller.)
Grimm takes a liesurely walk just a little way behind them, wings cloaking him almost completely. With strides so much longer it's no rush to follow, though there is a distant, nagging feeling that he ought.
Perhaps the average bug might not notice something so subtle, but Troupe Master Grimm is acutely aware. He keeps his eyes down, thinking, and stays close. As they refamiliarise themselves, Grimm too is... familiarising.
He speeds back up to subtly close the distance again and glances at the dead Creeper as they pass. He has a feeling he knows what they half-thought they might see. His face is subtly downturned and his attention turned inward. He is barely in a position to lash out, not at someone who just loomed over him with the power of the Abyss. This, too, is frustrating.
He is rather more tense than he'd like. Never mind the rest - knowing so little is difficult to stand.
"Such is the manner, it is rare enough that fame precedes us," he probes conversationally. "I wonder what you know of me?" Did they choose their gift, or did she?
The Knight halts and turns. (This question is well-timed, as they've just come to a steep wall, and while they expect little challenge, they're still adjusting to their proper size. And they're not sure if the stranger's black-and-red cloak are also wings.)
A brief pause, and a small head-shake. They know nothing of this bug that they haven't only just observed, in form and in terms used. Including us, now.
Grimm suspected as much. It was her pick. Perhaps even a surprise, as much as he doubts she has any care for the novelty of that.
Very well.
"Then I must be introduced!"
A little of his flair returns, bit by bit, as he shakes off the shackles of sleep. Normally he would get some time to prepare. Normally he would be in the tent, or else surrounded by kin, either way a performance at the Master's choice and in familiar context. This is none of that, but the graces of a thespian endure.
Grimm takes another, far more theatrical low bow, bringing his face (and burning-coal eyes) closer to their level.
"I am Grimm. Master of the dread troupe, though of this arrangement it seems my kin were not a part. Alas the stage was never set, and the lantern never lit - a shame. The pyre of Hallownest would burn brightly..." A pause. He does not straighten up yet. "It is a strange kismet that brings you and I together at all." By the sound of a careful but sharp note in his voice, this is something with which he is none too comfortable.
The Knight is, unfortunately, a difficult being to read and to impress. Little of that means anything to them.
A troupe... They distantly recall the term for a wandering band of beings that sing and tell stories. The concept stands out in their mind only for merriment they supposedly brought with them that most wasteland travellers lack.
Grimm would be a poor singer. A storyteller, more likely. Or a concept they never learned of. They'd had only fleeting brushes with that type.
Less dramatically, the Knight dips their head back.
Strange indeed, yet no stranger than the rest of Hallownest.
They turn back around and briefly lift a paw. Up. A courtesy the Knight would rarely bother with, but he seems nearly as confused as they. A small warning before leaping.
The Mantis Claw is still there and functional. Their cloak--wings--Shade Wings--reach to grasp at roots and crevasses on instinct, leading their climb to be a jerky and graceless thing.
Grimm follows their gesture, and watches idly for a moment or two as they begin the climb. My, but it would be hard to forget they could tear him to pieces when their wings are doing that.
He would be glad of the opportunity to show off exactly what he can do, if not for the fact that most of what he can do is hidden away somewhere he can't quite access at the moment.
This also makes the next task somewhat more annoying than it should be. Grimm regards the high wall, expressionless.
"Trifling," he decides, though who this is for isn't clear.
Grimm is already learning not to reach for the flame. It is buried too deep wherever it is, and trying to throw himself into a teleport would not end elegantly. Still, he is to make an impression on this shadow, be it for better or worse - and it wouldn't do to fall behind. (Certainly not too far. The draw to follow is insistent.)
He flares his arms instead, sweeping the cloak of his wings away and behind, and leaps. With longer limbs and more of himself to throw into acrobatics, Grimm keeps pace easily, jumping to footholds the Knight struggled to reach without their Wings, and occasionally scurrying tight to the wall. He sails over the top edge only a moment behind them, wings catching the air and flaring out as he drops into a perfect pointed landing and snaps back into posture.
Grimm can keep pace. There's one point made. (What use have they for him, anyway? He isn't sure whether to dread the finding out, and for now there's nothing else to do but be compliant.)
The Knight tracks him by sound. Grimm's steps are less chaotic than the Weaverlings'. Fast. Keeping close. Their paw itches at his sharp movements, but he continues to keep from threat.
Up and forward, up and on, through the Ancient Basin.
The sign indicating the White Palace's former place falls once more to their Nail, bouncing against the wall to roll somewhere behind them. Their perception finds the area somewhat brighter than before as well.
...Or.
Not their mind and dark playing tricks alone, they fine, when they climb into the cavern and stop.
The White Palace's scant remains are more.
The broken gate that held nothing behind it is still standing crooked as it was. Past its rubble, a path. Farther back, towering walls of grey. Cracks crawl along broken spires (each curving upward in shape of the Pale King's crown, the Knight note with creeping annoyance), and black pours out in gushes and motes. Darkness. Theirs.
(The screaming buzz of circular blades, the distant dead denied grief of one who choked on the Void of his own volition, coward, place of pain, in what is theirs, in what is them--)
The Pale King's dream had been a silver splinter in their shell, and they'd flicked it out to land where it started.
Grimm forgotten, their path shifts to the (not-so-)White Palace's ruins.
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"Late is your invitation," says the White Lady, all around and yet politely still withheld. Even this, the form she takes in her dreams, is not the extent of herself.
"Any kingdomfall takes patience," says Grimm, and takes a bow. A light breeze ruffles the flare of his cloak. It is pleasantly lonely here, and the strange space echoes with the shifting of the wind. "Time and I are old friends. It is a flattery the Lady would invite us at all."
"Mistake not my invitation for a welcome," the White Lady warns. Her tone is impersonal. "Beneath the cracks in this kingdom a darkness has grown."
"A funeral flame often casts a long shadow."
Grimm is not surprised by this revelation, and it seems the White Lady did not expect him to be.
Slowly, Grimm turns to face her. "This invitation comes with a caveat," he guesses. A pause, and his flame-red eyes narrow. "You wish for our interference?"
The air tastes of grit and smells of burning. Not befitting of a dream of the White Lady, he begins to realise, but the realisation is unhurried. No: sluggish, the Nightmare whispers to him.
He cannot make out her face, bright as it is with her Essence only barely withheld.
"A wish, no. Your benefaction I will require nonetheless."
The sound of the wind is subtly wrong. Not shifting wind at all: the shifting of roots nearby and around, whispering softly with pale light. Grimm takes a step back, and his foot hits something cool.
"I bound myself in penance and prevention. Perhaps it is too for these virtues I act now."
The breeze in his cloak, then, was no breeze either. The Root tangles, a snare pulling tight around his limbs. At once Grimm sobers and with a twinge of dread realises his mistake: this is not the dream of the White Lady. The scarce scenery not yet choked by plant life is tinged red and cloaked in fabric. He looks up.
The Heart hangs overhead, disappearing into an impossible knot of glowing white Roots, pulsing in rage.
How did he not realise?
Grimm flickers out like a candle flame and ignites to the side -
- no, he does no such thing. Icy Root coils tighter about him, burning-cold, branded (now he realises) with patterns he could not make out amid the glow of her. Grimm goes nowhere. The Heart seizes. He cannot move, cannot breathe, cannot think, sluggish, because her Essence breathes in like a sopor, because she was here long before you knew - when did she get here? Think! - demands the Ringmaster.
Not here. Bound like him, but deeper, bound like the Heart...
There is no way of telling when the White Lady invited herself to his dreams, because she has made him forget.
"What have you done?" he asks sharply, before there is a sharpness in his mind where she is reaching in.
"The embers will not mourn their reaper," the White Lady reassures him. "The purpose to which you are turned is that of the future. A purpose you value, even: Burn the father. Inside and amid the rest of you I see that much very clearly." She is rummaging, looking for something. This is not her domain, and she is clumsy with inaction.
"Let me go!" he demands, voice hoarser than ever, agonised and straining against her entrapment. "You have no understanding -"
"Still yourself and I will have enough." Hunting, splitting his mind apart - there. The knowledge of his disappearing act, excised and held to her pale glow and examined, plucked at like the string of some instrument until fire reflexively licks back. "A gift to pacify, given for Hallownest to scion grafted. You will doubtless be pleased with such a fate."
The flame is tested again, and finally the White Lady lances even that with ice - reflex tears him from Dream, tears a gate, and pours the Essence of him down. Into the dark.
"Goodbye, Nightmare. Your gift marks a courtesy I will not forget."
Grimm bursts from a teleport he did not willingly initiate, and falls to the cold metal floor in a putter of burnt-out fire. The bindings around him are yet burning-cold, but now severed from their Lady they dim into dead, ashen grey, the blinding white markings searing themselves dark.
Grimm lies limp and cold and still in a place far from the Troupe and the Nightmare stage.
Most strangely, he does not Dream.
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--For a moment, only.
Any Light is nothing, in the face of the Void; the brightest, the most recent that burned are lost ashes torn apart and buried in an endless sea.
But the Void remembers when this was not the case. Siblings many remember. Lost Knight recalled, returned remembers. Twisted roots of focus and will lash together. Claws, not paws. Face, not mask.
The Lord of Shades may rest, but they will not be sealed again.
When the Void rises to reach the top (easily, so easily, sparks of fury and glee alike that this is possible, not a one can fall and shatter even if they try), the bug on the platform is, at first, ignored.
A massive hand reaches over it and feels along the exit; there is something lingering, familiar. Fading Light imprinted, but not of the old commanding Voice, nor ancient-new screaming fury.
The Knight comes fully to forefront. Whatever was here is gone. The way out is not sealed, or attempted to be such by a fool. These important facts determined, the Lord of Shades turns attention to the fallen figure on the platform.
A flash of outrage and dark humor--perhaps this one is dead, another body intended to disappear into the dark. No, arcing above and peering closer shows that there's still breath left.
This one may yet be dying, though. Parts of them wishes to disappear again to rest, but if it's true--if it's true, perhaps things have changed more than they thought, in meantime. They hadn't intended to abandon the world above, as cowards before had, only rest. But for someone to even try disposing a body, rather then leaving it where it fell, indicates some form of fear for such a discovery...and foolishness...and any presence at all, in the empty and unsettling Ancient Basin.
Perhaps. Their imagination is wilder than it used to be, they've noticed in their snatches of being awake.
A curious traveller more likely. Lost and finding a sign of something, only to pass out in presence of so much Void.
Hm.
The edge of a claw the length of Grimm's body bumps against his side. Wounds should be checked for before they try bringing the shell somewhere marginally safer.
no subject
The tightness is not his wings. He is lying on the ground, tangled and entrapped in sigil-carved Root. His body feels as lead.
Something huge and impossible nudges him, and he would dance away from that touch like firelight, but none will come when he calls.
(The bindings themselves are dead and cut, but where the Shadelord touches them the sigils flare slightly and whisper. The White Lady's doing, but certainly taught by another.)
He cannot move to stand, so he does not move at all. Grimm stays perfectly still as consciousness trickles back, and his eyes open a sliver. Their glow is dim, though in the all-permeating dark of the Abyss they stand out like embers.
The long shadow cast by Hallownest's passing looms large over him, investigating. He does not recognise this place, though he knows cold metal pressing up against the side of his face. Perhaps there is etiquette to follow, but he knows none. He is still waiting for the memory of what just happened to surface properly. Still sluggish, and worse for having his flame manipulated so jarringly by someone with no experience handling Essence.
It would be convenient to know what to do here, how to respond or to greet or whether to run. Grimm prods inward for advice, expecting something cryptic. He gets nothing.
His eyes snap all the way open, and he stares up at the Shadelord with no stage decorum at all. He just looks alarmed.
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The Shades of Void and the Void that waited remember, in the little life and presence they had, of seedpod-eggs and the roots that grew from them, funneling darkness into wood-soft shells.
Familiar, unfamiliar, comforting and not. The whisper--the noise--the rest leaves the Shadelord's form bristling, waves of thorny tendrils curling down their sides and reaching up from the dark. Primarily not.
The massive claws, despite this, remain steady as their gaze.
The bug holds Light, but now, this holds threat matching old lantern and its lumafly companion. Different enough to be interesting. Different enough not to scream of never-forgotten betrayal.
There's some effort needed before the Knight shifts again, ignoring this to give greater attention to the Seal. It appears they are intended to find the being trapped inside more interesting than the bindings directly.
Foolish. Ignorant. Or--
The Knight made many errors in Greenpath, walking into Fool Eaters' maws. They made more many, many times in Deepnest.
Not everything's changed with their form.
They tap it again.
Again, the bindings flicker and whisper, Sibling-stress shuddering over them. But nothing flares too bright to terribly alarm; no spellwork attempts to wind itself up their claws. If a trap, it's failed to spring.
...They give the bug a courteous nudge onto his back. Specifically further from the edge, and so further from the many, many tiny grasping almost-paws reaching up from the rippling sea that came to rest just below.
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Groggily he assesses the situation in his mind, with a minute shiver at how unfamiliar the inside of his own head feels now, she has done something to him, he'll figure out what later - now is for reaction, and quickly.
The massive shadow prods him again, and the world twists a bit. Grimm stares up at them from the floor, eyes still wide and seeking sense. It appears that in his current state they could quite easily snuff out his flame with a single movement, and with all that Hallownest's demise took, Grimm would be unsurprised if their might did not come with mercy. He can sense what's down there, just on the fringe of his awareness - or at least he can feel the intent.
(Yes, he knew Hallownest's regrets had amounted to something. Being cast at its feet - so to speak - does not make this information of much use now.)
The shadow examines him and he doesn't know what for, which is troubling.
Slowly Grimm tears his gaze away and cranes his head stiffly and peers down at himself. At the sigils, hushing and dimming as their intended witness moves away.
Though he can only snag fragments of meaning here and there, from the strange position and the tangle of his bindings, a few things click unpleasantly into place. A gift to pacify, she'd said.
It is lucky diplomacy is something he's capable of doing without peer review. The gravity and precariousness of his situation crashes down on him like a rockfall, and Grimm hurries to gather himself enough to speak.
"You might forgive that I am unprepared for the stage," he slurs with some difficulty, and only now registers how much all of him feels weighed down - his faculties included. "Perhaps I might yet be of more use to you than the satisfaction of striking me down. Either way an honour..." His eyes close briefly, searching, remembering. "...to attend your call." Clumsy. The words aren't coming as fast as he'd like, not with only memory to rely on. And he is in no position to bow.
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The Lord of Shades fluidly curls around the edge, as though the facsimile of a body-shape is truly lain across the Void rather than the peak of their whole.
Looks nothing like a Godseeker. Sounds nothing like a Godseeker, in reverence or voice. The Abyss can't deaden how he sounds like someone who fell asleep shortly after consuming pieces of glass.
A trap, they consider again, of bug rather than binding. One clearly expecting attack first.
--Parts of them nearly preen at the threat they are and seem, if only for the novelty. The small Knight was rarely seen as such.
And the small Knight was, at times, impulsive. A trap to spring, and wounds the tangled netting of wood may cover to study; they pause only to hold a pointing claw steady, and snap the bindings from neck to chest in a single lash.
The shell beneath it is red. Not an internal light from the eyes, but catching just enough shine from the exit to be similarly noticeable.
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...Were. And not with him, exactly.
Grimm feels the snag of sharp dark claw and braces himself for the pull - which is painless, and swift. Deft. Careful.
And the White Lady's bindings are gone. Grimm lets his limbs fall slack out of the tight pin of their wrappings, and then gingerly eases them out in a round, upward sweep of stretching arms disguised as a particularly theatrical motion to move upright. He wastes no time and doesn't even touch the floor with his hands, legs already manoeuvring beneath him to lever him up in one fluid move.
He, of course, takes a bow.
"You have my gratitude."
Out of the corner of his eye: there is a door behind him, open, less crushingly dark through there. ... He does not make a break for it. Grimm suspects there are moving parts at play. He can feel them shifting under his shell.
Grimm straightens up slowly, and his gaze finds the Shadelord.
"So, I am given." A declaration.
Now what might they wish to do with him? They must have been quite eager. None would dare to trap him for any less.
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...Given.
Discarded, they consider again.
Echoes of familiar, familiar, familiar rise and the darkness roils, rises, does not scream, cannot, but calls.
return, come home, the darkness is welcome, the Light is not; be free, come and rest, eddies of stained regrets of a body slumped in a lighthouse finally doused--
The Knight nudges their Siblings away. They can rest, they should. Not all who find the edge of this prison must. There is choice allowed to flee from the dark...even if this bug seems either too brave or foolhardy to try.
No obvious wounds, they belatedly note.
The Lord of Shades considers options. Sink back to rest, forget this happened--except they wouldn't, their curiosity of him and the world further has cut their half-slumber short already. Devour and drown for a moment of Sibling-satisfaction they know better than to entertain. Lash out and make flee, to get him out of the way, but still leave them with wondering.
A shining geo-cache right down a narrow tunnel, innocent and so screamingly obvious an ambush.
They understand the arrogance of their own next thought: if there's attack, they might as well give this one a chance.
The Abyss is a difficult place for a discussion. The Lord of Shades is a difficult being to discuss with. The ledge is a poor choice for battle.
A colossal hand reaches out, claws curling loosely, to again nudge him back.
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Fossil and oppressive silence, somewhere deep and down. Cold metal underfoot - a favourite of the Wyrm, if memory serves. And shade. So much of it the place echoes with that darkness. No lantern called him here.
(No lantern called him at all.)
The Shadelord's huge claws bump into him. Grimm allows himself to be pushed backwards, catching himself on his back foot. At the contact of Void to his shell, sigils he didn't notice before burn cold around his Essence, recognising. Affirming.
Grimm's eyes narrow at the realisation this brings. His bindings are not gone simply because the physical ones lie cut and dead on the platform at his feet.
Still. They have pushed him.
"Perhaps you wish to discuss this pact elsewhere," he suggests, trying to get a gauge on their intent. Even his hoarse hush echoes too-loud in the silence down here.
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...Seemingly, nothing.
They continue until there's just enough space.
Pact. Noted, despite meaning little to them yet. And a nod, smooth and strange, neck stretching far enough to appear uncomfortable.
Titanic as they are, a fragment of the Sea can hold the whole. They don't understand it any more than the Knight understood how they could tuck important objects into their chest for safekeeping. It's possible. The rest they can accept and pursue later.
The Lord of Shades arcs and bends. In a black fog, the ropy tendrils crushing together, half-binding into themselves, the rest bubbling away until impossible to see. A burst of nothing, something that seems like it should be heavy making the reverse of reverberation.
The Knight lands nimbly on the ledge. The sound of not-shell meeting metal echoes, distorted and late.
Their paws appear normal. Their cloak-wings are still trailing off to tangle around the metal, and they loosen each with a little concentration. They can't observe their mask without recruiting another Sibling's eyes to look through, but it's solid and strong when they tap along each side from chin to horn.
(It's crawling with Void down the center. They don't feel there enough to realize.)
Despite that oddness, this is the correct scale. It seems they've already forgotten how small they used to be...else the bug they now peer upwards to see is simply particularly tall.
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In his position perhaps he should be more concerned than interested. The Void still visible in the middle of their mask ought to give him pause, and perhaps it does, but he cannot help some curiosity as he stares back at the darkness looking up at him.
Small as they appear, he has already seen what lurks beneath. Grimm is not foolish enough to take them at their face.
"Clever craft, but the truth will out..."
He lowers his gaze to the floor and dismisses the thought. There are more pressing things to consider, first. He is in a precarious situation.
"I care for the conclusion, not the stage," he tells them with a polite and encouraging little nod. "At your beck, then." Perhaps if he is cooperative right from the start, negotiations might be more favourable.
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The Knight's body being their own again is still a buffer. The frantic fragments of emotion of their siblings are soothed once more. It's almost alone that they neatly step around the tall black-and-red bug to exit.
They'll be followed, or they're being deceived and won't. They'll find hints from either choice.
The Pale King's words whisper as they pass; as ever, they ignore it. Shadow Creeper shells decorate the way forward, dead where they walked or hung from the walls. A quick slash reveals a brown-black mess of Void and guts, no orange. At least part of that is as it should be.
...The tunnel seems oddly bright.
A long pause and examination reveals that, by technicality, it isn't. Absence of Infection is the only clear difference from before, and it should be darker for that lack. It appears their time at rest left them with mild disorientation.
The journey onward--to the Hidden Station, they decide--will be slower than they tend to go, considering they should reassess and rediscover their senses.
(That they're partly braced for claws tearing through their back is also a factor, albeit smaller.)
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Perhaps the average bug might not notice something so subtle, but Troupe Master Grimm is acutely aware. He keeps his eyes down, thinking, and stays close. As they refamiliarise themselves, Grimm too is... familiarising.
He speeds back up to subtly close the distance again and glances at the dead Creeper as they pass. He has a feeling he knows what they half-thought they might see. His face is subtly downturned and his attention turned inward. He is barely in a position to lash out, not at someone who just loomed over him with the power of the Abyss. This, too, is frustrating.
He is rather more tense than he'd like. Never mind the rest - knowing so little is difficult to stand.
"Such is the manner, it is rare enough that fame precedes us," he probes conversationally. "I wonder what you know of me?" Did they choose their gift, or did she?
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A brief pause, and a small head-shake. They know nothing of this bug that they haven't only just observed, in form and in terms used. Including us, now.
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Very well.
"Then I must be introduced!"
A little of his flair returns, bit by bit, as he shakes off the shackles of sleep. Normally he would get some time to prepare. Normally he would be in the tent, or else surrounded by kin, either way a performance at the Master's choice and in familiar context. This is none of that, but the graces of a thespian endure.
Grimm takes another, far more theatrical low bow, bringing his face (and burning-coal eyes) closer to their level.
"I am Grimm. Master of the dread troupe, though of this arrangement it seems my kin were not a part. Alas the stage was never set, and the lantern never lit - a shame. The pyre of Hallownest would burn brightly..." A pause. He does not straighten up yet. "It is a strange kismet that brings you and I together at all." By the sound of a careful but sharp note in his voice, this is something with which he is none too comfortable.
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A troupe... They distantly recall the term for a wandering band of beings that sing and tell stories. The concept stands out in their mind only for merriment they supposedly brought with them that most wasteland travellers lack.
Grimm would be a poor singer. A storyteller, more likely. Or a concept they never learned of. They'd had only fleeting brushes with that type.
Less dramatically, the Knight dips their head back.
Strange indeed, yet no stranger than the rest of Hallownest.
They turn back around and briefly lift a paw. Up. A courtesy the Knight would rarely bother with, but he seems nearly as confused as they. A small warning before leaping.
The Mantis Claw is still there and functional. Their cloak--wings--Shade Wings--reach to grasp at roots and crevasses on instinct, leading their climb to be a jerky and graceless thing.
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He would be glad of the opportunity to show off exactly what he can do, if not for the fact that most of what he can do is hidden away somewhere he can't quite access at the moment.
This also makes the next task somewhat more annoying than it should be. Grimm regards the high wall, expressionless.
"Trifling," he decides, though who this is for isn't clear.
Grimm is already learning not to reach for the flame. It is buried too deep wherever it is, and trying to throw himself into a teleport would not end elegantly. Still, he is to make an impression on this shadow, be it for better or worse - and it wouldn't do to fall behind. (Certainly not too far. The draw to follow is insistent.)
He flares his arms instead, sweeping the cloak of his wings away and behind, and leaps. With longer limbs and more of himself to throw into acrobatics, Grimm keeps pace easily, jumping to footholds the Knight struggled to reach without their Wings, and occasionally scurrying tight to the wall. He sails over the top edge only a moment behind them, wings catching the air and flaring out as he drops into a perfect pointed landing and snaps back into posture.
Grimm can keep pace. There's one point made. (What use have they for him, anyway? He isn't sure whether to dread the finding out, and for now there's nothing else to do but be compliant.)
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Up and forward, up and on, through the Ancient Basin.
The sign indicating the White Palace's former place falls once more to their Nail, bouncing against the wall to roll somewhere behind them. Their perception finds the area somewhat brighter than before as well.
...Or.
Not their mind and dark playing tricks alone, they fine, when they climb into the cavern and stop.
The White Palace's scant remains are more.
The broken gate that held nothing behind it is still standing crooked as it was. Past its rubble, a path. Farther back, towering walls of grey. Cracks crawl along broken spires (each curving upward in shape of the Pale King's crown, the Knight note with creeping annoyance), and black pours out in gushes and motes. Darkness. Theirs.
(The screaming buzz of circular blades, the distant dead denied grief of one who choked on the Void of his own volition, coward, place of pain, in what is theirs, in what is them--)
The Pale King's dream had been a silver splinter in their shell, and they'd flicked it out to land where it started.
Grimm forgotten, their path shifts to the (not-so-)White Palace's ruins.