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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no subject
...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.
no subject
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.
no subject
...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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.)
no subject
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.)
no subject
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.