Chapter Text

“Huh” thought Darner, as he stepped off the tram. “It’s been a few days since my last mental breakdown. Good for me.” There were few buildings near the station, the biggest thing being lightbringers castle off on the horizon. Darner looked around. He didn’t have any venn to spend here, so he decided he’d try to set off. Darner walked across the dusty plains. “Watch out for wyrms” he said to himself, laughing. The utterance was a longstanding joke between him and his friends, said upon encountering a place that looked to have had been a place a wyrm might’ve called home. It brought his mind back to a simpler time. This time, however, it seemed to have called upon some unwanted attention. Whispers beckoned from behind a dune. Darner curiously went closer to the source of the sound. On the opposite side was a hole leading to a cave. Inside was a sign that said “shortcut to lightbringers palace. This tunnel bypasses wend ridge and mogi valley.” Darner stepped towards the tunnel when a moth stepped out from behind an ornate doorway. “My name is Alia, the one of minds eye. I have heard your concern about those... wyrms. I can see you are the one who can stop them. Come, step inside.” She said, and before Darner could refuse, he was pushed in through the door and onto a small bed. “Rest and I shall show you” she said. Darner attempted to deny, but he couldn’t resist. Was she... sedating him? He felt a prick as he tired out and, having no other methods of escape, closed his eyes.

“You see, there’s a kingdom known as hallownest once ruled by our kind, it was taken over by a terrible wyrm known as the pale king.” She was telling him about hallownest, as if he hadn’t lived it before. And worse, it was propaganda for the moths. Very outdated, at that. Darner tensed himself and tried to pull himself out of it. At first, nothing. But then, he felt all his surroundings shift to other forms as he was pulled from the throes of one dream and into another. It felt forcible, as if another entity noticed his struggle and had come to his aid.

darner had met the towering vessel before. or had he? he felt a familiar connection to this force but at the same time, there was nothing. He felt the being judging him, moving its massive frame closer until they are basically eye level. Well, from the young wyrms perspective, it like a young ant looking over the distance and seeing a small hill as a tall mountain. Then again, that might’ve been true. He had only seen the top portion of the being, there can be no telling what lies further below. The large being suddenly chuckled, an unnatural but soothing voice erupts from the abyss within. It seemed amused, when there was no clear reason to be so. Did he made a funny noise? or a funny face? Vessels cannot speak, much less express their emotions. This one had showed joy, so why is it still alive? Well, they were never alive to begin with.

That somewhat offended the dark giant and it shooks its head in discontent. It let out small grunt before focusing its attention on the small dragonfly. The giant vessel opened it's palm. Darner looked at it strangely. It was a faintly glowing King's Brand, but it had something about it.

Then, the voice echoed around Darner:

"We are not so different, you and I."

Darner now looked at the towering figure with even more confusion. Was this even propaganda anymore? didn't feel like it.

The echoing voice spoke again:

"I could not allow you to remember... However, I cannot ignore the danger you are in any longer..."

A dead air had set in. Darner's entire body felt cold, yet, strangely, he also felt warm.

"You'll be seeing me soon... I'll explain more later..." and with that, he was swept back out of that strange scene and was enthralled in the words of the moth. “You see, he is guarded by 5 powerful knights and a legion of guardsmen trained by another wyrm that you will need to take out.” The moth said. “I wish. Most of the knights are either dead or have fled and the head guard is potentially grossly incompetent.” Darner thought. Finally, he woke up. He hastily attempted to get the meeting over with as soon as he could. Every question was met with a hasty reply as he scrambled for the door. At the first moment he had an escape, he ran out of the room and down the caverns. He could faintly see a light at the end of the tunnel as he dashed away from the entrance. How much time had he lost? His cloak flapped as he ran all the way to the end. Finally, the castle was in sight, a wonder to behold. The intricate gates stood framing the gorgeous exterior like a painting of a landscape, except he was really there. Darner started to wonder if he should really do this, if the pale king had truly been a burden to hallownest and his riddance a blessing. Had all this desolation been over something horrendous he had blindly formed an attachment to? He stopped himself in the moment. It was too late for that, and he couldn’t judge someone that he hadn’t seen for so long. Shame and questioning and many other emotions swirled and danced in his mind like ripples on blue lake. It was time. Darner breathed in a sigh as a tear rolled down his pale cheek and glimmered in the light that glinted from off his blade. He was ready.

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Meadowhawk felt strange in the clutches of the beast. They both felt one and the same and yet also entirely separate. Meadowhawk was Meadowhawk and the shadelord was the shadelord. Void flowed around him and touched his inky black skin, caressing it. Pure vessel came running through the door to battle the massive creature from the darkness. How had it known that it had emerged? It slashed at the beast and used all the spells it could. It wielded the nail with precision and grace but it still wasn’t enough. The god of gods wrapped its tendrils around the pure vessel and it too was absorbed. Meadowhawk was out of options. The pitch dark being sent whispers of despair into Meadowhawks mind. “Submit. You can do nothing now. If you hadn’t wanted to be consumed, you shouldn’t have returned to this place. You have done nothing. They all hate you and think of you as lesser.” It said to him. Meadowhawk closed his eyes and at that moment a memory came to him.

Meadowhawk stood there, dejected, in front of his nail that lay on the floor. Darner was attempting to show Meadowhawk how to do the dance of the sabre, a traditional ceremony that was a rite of passage for the royal guardsmen. It was a test of all the tactics they had acquired and took incredible precision and skill. Meadowhawk looked at his nail as it lay there on the ground, as if he were expecting it to do something that he could not. Darner kneeled down to him and spoke as he stared at the floor. “Listen, nobody may ever know what is truly the limit of what you can do. As long as you don’t give up and put in your all, you can do anything.” Darner said to him. The wyrm picked up the nail and placed it in the young vessels hands. Meadowhawk felt invigorated, like he was finally something, someone. Darner knelt down and stroked him softly before pulling him into a warm embrace and whispered “I love you forever and want everyone else to love you too. I know you can do so many things, some that even I can’t do. I believe in you, and I want to make sure the world does too.”

“NO! I will not submit to you. Go back to where you came and don’t come back!” Meadowhawk shouted at the darkness, and before he knew it, he was standing at the ready in a strange, dark room, an incarnation of the shadelord standing before him. It had a long, tall, curving body that had many tendrils and 2 clawed arms that sprouted from it. It floated in the air without legs to support itself and on its face were 4 pale white eyes that contrasted with the darkness all around the room. Meadowhawk got into the ready, leaping and striking and dodging all the tendrils that it sent up at him. However, there didn’t seem to be much effect on it. He slashed and swirled around the being, but it didn’t seem to have any effect on the being. A loud noise rang out as a large vessel appeared behind him. It had a spiked crown like the pale king and a wide frame. It appeared to be adorned with a cloak of some sort. Had Meadowhawk seen him somewhere before? It seemed impossible to tell. The vessels mask cracked as a shade poured out and began to swirl around Meadowhawk, enveloping him in a cloud of pure darkness. The shadows began to fade to reveal Meadowhawk having changed to a new form. He had become a being similar to a silhouette of himself with glowing white eyes, larger, spiked horns and numerous void tendrils coming from all over his body. Was he... void given form? They clashed, tentacle against tentacle. Meadowhawk whipped his appendages as he dodged the blows of the creature. Each hit twisted it like breath twists a puff of smoke. He had never used void as a weapon before, as Darner had never taught him how. How did he have this much control? At last, the abyssal incarnate relented. “Fine. I shall leave for now, but I shall return, stronger than you could ever hope or dreams. Mind and shell can be pierced by void.” It then burst into many separate shades. One of these vessels stood out from the rest. Had it achieved becoming a void entity like he had? And the mask... he had seen it before. Was this... the vessel that had accomplished the restoration of hallownest? They looked eachother in the glowing eyes. It seemed to communicate to him that it was not them that had attempted to consume him. That they had no control over the lord of shade. How did they do this without words? The y faded away as Meadowhawk awoke to the abandoned shells of the other vessels. Beside him was the hollow knight, once again. “Why did you come down here?” The pure vessel asked Meadowhawk as he scrabbled around for the charm that had adorned his mask, which he had dropped. “I-I’m sorry. I woke up and was angry at your father for doing this and at Darner for allowing it. I don’t know what I wanted, I just had the urge to come here.” The smaller vessel replied, his hand clasping on something else he found. It was the flowers, still intact. “It’s okay. I know it was horrible and I felt angry too but... we should forgive this. I understand how you feel, I felt that way too. That’s one of the consequences of being impure.” The tall vessel replied. “Thank you. Have this.” Meadowhawk said, handing the hollow knight one of the flowers from his bouquet. “Let’s go deliver the rest of these”