Chapter Text
So, stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Guy goes to sleep and wakes up in a world he definitely didn’t go to sleep in. I don’t remember much from just before I came here, but I know I was in bed and then the next thing I know I’m waking up in a giant ass cavern. It was dark, cold and the whole place smelled like mint for some damn reason.
It wasn’t completely unprompted to be fair. I had the strangest dream of a character creator, but with all my dreams that part came and went followed and preceded by random bull crap. When I first awoke I thought I was still dreaming and promptly tried to fly only to jump and then fall face first into the floor of bone and chitin. The pain I felt snapped my mind into high gear as I realized the situations I was in.
The first few days, I think anyway, passed with nothing happening as I lost my mind to grief and worry in a corner of the Abyss I found myself in. I’d found a small section on the circular chamber where the wall was broken and the rock behind it was pushed back far enough I could squeeze in and sit.
In that little hole I stayed when I heard the call of the Pale King. It was the only thing it could be as I heard his words quietly chant in my mind.
Outside of my hidden hole I could hear the cracks and snaps of the other vessels falling from the ascent up and dying on the floor below. An hour passed as the sounds slowly stopped and the King’s words faded away.
In every RPG I’ve ever played I was a paragon, a hero, a light of hope for the weak because I loved helping people. It didn’t matter what hoops I had to jump through, if someone could live I strived to help them survive to the end of the game. If a character had to die then it was with a glorious final stand, facing impossible odds like every guy I’ve ever met dreamed of dying.
Despite that though I was a coward. Literal children were dying on the other side of the wall from me and I continued to cower in my hole, crying like a baby. It didn’t matter if I could help them or not, I hadn’t even tried. All my daydreams of being a hero and I couldn’t get past the fear of the King somehow looking down here and seeing me. Seeing a Vessel with intelligence and fear trying to stop other Vessels from trying to make the ascension.
After the silence stretched on I poked my head out of the hole in the wall I found myself in. A couple dozen of the little Vessels heads were dotted around the abyss, their stark white shells visible through the darkness. New tears began to fall down my face and I pushed myself back into the hole, forcing myself as far away from the opening as possible.
I didn’t sleep as the days passed by. Eventually my tears dried and I just sat there, numb to the world around me. All I wanted was for the shadows around me to swallow me and hide me away from the world.
I didn’t want to be here.
I wanted my bed and family.
I wanted to go home.
Time ticked by as I lamented both the loss of my old family, because I somehow knew there was no going back, and I wallowed in my sorrow at the loss of my new family. The numerous brothers and sisters that lay dead outside my hiding spot, the Father and Mother that would kill us all simply for a chance to beat a goddess... the sorrow I felt was soul crushing and I felt the time pass in large chunks without me realizing.
Eventually I felt my emotions dull. Things faded around me and I felt a calling to go to sleep. For only a few moments I let myself fade away, drifting off into the shadows around me like I had wanted. For those few moments everything felt peaceful, and the worries I had before felt so far away... Then I jolted awake again as my body felt like it was beginning to fall down some endless pit. My mind snapped to being alert and I noticed the room around me somehow seemed darker than a few moments prior.
The experience terrified me to my core. The first emotion beyond grief and anger that I had felt.
Why did it feel so familiar though?
While I was a coward, there was no denying that after what I did, but I didn’t want to die. There was something at the back of my mind, something that terrified me when I thought of meeting my demise. It hadn’t been there when I was a human. My chitin, which still felt wrong thinking about, rubbed against itself as I rose to my feet. The small sound sounded like a car crash with how silent the Abyss was.
Faced with dying in my hole or facing the world outside it I made my choice. Even if I couldn’t return to my family, to being human, I wouldn’t forsake my human spirit and just lay down and die. For the first time in this new life I felt a small bit of warmth as I thought, ‘I may be a bug now, but I will always be a human in spirit. As long as I remember my old family they will live on... I hope they’ll remember me too.’
With a small step I looked into the room once more and the same sight greeted me. A few dozen heads on the ground, the bodies of my siblings in this new life. The thought almost made me turn back around to my hole, but I pressed on.
The silence around me was deafening. If I was still human I would have been able to hear my heart beat. I could feel my heart in my new body beating, but it was as silent as my steps.
All around me I could see the bodies of my siblings slowly losing their white luster as the void stained their broken shells. Their bodies and the bones under them were stained black from exposure I’d assume. It was so saturated in darkness that I didn’t know what I was stepping on unless I looked down to see.
It didn’t help that the sensations through my chitin aren’t as clear as human skin was. I looked down at a raised arm as I walked forward, welcoming the distracting thoughts in my mind. It might be a matter of perspective but my body seemed more realistic, which made sense as this was no longer a game.
There was no hair on my body anywhere. The chitin plates that stretched between joints were solid and unyielding while the flesh underneath stretched in strange ways when I moved. It might be phantom sensations, but I still felt like I had bones inside me as well so I wasn’t sure I was technically a bug.
I don’t know what to do with that information, but I kept distracting myself by thinking about my new body for the millionth time instead of acknowledging the death around me. Each new muscle flexed as I walked across the stone ground. Even as I felt my body my eyes drifted to the empty stares of the shells around me.
Before I knew it I was on the opposite side of the Abyss. I hadn’t seen any of the floating platforms that acted as the King’s test and I had seen no survivors either. It made me wonder just how the Knight, Ghost, had escaped in the original game. I wonder just how all the vessels in Nosk’s Lair, Lost Kin, and the Greenpath Vessel got out too.
If they were already out then I was doomed. I couldn’t see any other Vessels moving in the darkness. Nor did I see any of the shades of the dead ones.
While I don’t think I could breath, my chest still rose and fell with the motion of breathing. I could feel air move through my body, but I didn’t feel any benefit from it. I assumed it was a leftover side effect of my human mind needing human motions. This is relevant because the thought that I was the last Vessel down here made me start to panic and my ‘breathing’ quickened considerably.
There would be no way past the door far above me. I didn’t have the ability to climb the platforms without the Monarch Wings or Manit Claws. The thought of trying without at least the wings was terrifying as I would just end up like the bodies around me. I also had yet to even see the damned platforms to try.
The only options left were the Lighthouse and its attendant, the room where the upgrade for Howling Wraiths was, or past the lighthouse and to the Shade Cloak statue. I didn’t have Howling Wraiths to upgrade it and I didn’t think I could talk...
‘Have I tried talking?’
“Hashhkkah.” The sound and the fact I have a mouth made me jump. It was a raspy sound, like what I assume a man dying of thirst would sound like. Working my mouth up and down it felt larger than before. Two rows of teeth, one on top and one of the bottom, but the rear teeth were flat, similar to my human teeth. Unlike my human teeth, every other tooth besides those rear ones were pointed like shark teeth.
I repeatedly opened and closed my mouth as I started walking along the edge of the Abyss. I would find a path eventually and take it. Without any reference point I didn’t know if I would wind up down the Lighthouse path, the spell upgrade path, or a new path that just wasn’t there in the two dimensional game.
My tongue was a shocker as I walked. I apparently had three of them, like I was some kind of fucking Graboid from Tremors, only they weren’t snakes. I shook my head at the thought of having snake tongues and continued trying to move around my tongues as I worked my jaw. All of it felt so weird, so alien, that it was mind blowing. The white chitin of my head met together seamlessly when I closed my mouth. When I opened my mouth it felt more like I was opening it down and to the sides more than just straight up and down.
I don’t know if my jaw bones were different or if it was just differently structured muscles, but it was weird regardless.
As I was feeling along the edges of my mouth with my tiny hands I came upon an entryway with a lot of spikes on the overhang above it. It was the path to the lighthouse and I started down it without another thought. While I wouldn’t be speaking to the Lighthouse attendant any time soon I could get the shade cloak, hopefully.
Having some kind of magic ability would make me feel twenty times better. I could test out its limits and I might be able to turn the dash into a miniature teleport that many fanfictions portrayed it as. If I could teleport then it was just a matter of training to escape this place.
I don’t know what I was going to do when I got out, but on that list was stop or kill the Radiance. I would need more information first, but I would stay away from the Dreamers. That means I couldn’t go to the City of Tears, the Archives, or Deepnest. How I was going to pull that off was another matter entirely.
Surprisingly there were stairs up to the first pit of liquid void. I stopped on the edge of the stone path to stare down into it. Much to my relief the surface was still and not a nightmare inducing bundle of limbs and tentacles grasping at whatever came near. I kicked a pebble into it and it was absorbed into the liquid without any ripples.
Looking across the gap I could see the other side higher than the edge I was at. I took a deep breath through my mouth, feeling the air move straight through me and seemingly disappear, and then I exhaled. I felt the air move through me, but again I felt no benefit from the action.
I hopped in place a few times, getting a feel for my leg strength. Barely putting any force behind it I easily jumped higher than my head. It was startling at first, but at least I had been expecting it. Slowly I put more force in my jumps, feeling out how much power I would need to put in to get across the gap without slamming my head into the ceiling or falling short.
Backing up a few steps I readied myself for what I was about to do. My small experience with parkour was all that kept me moving forward here. I took another breath to calm my nerves before I took off.
My small, pointed feet dug into the stone as I rapidly approached the edge. I could feel my heart beat increase even if it was silent. I kicked off the edge with all my strength, forgetting the amount I had decided I would need to get across.
As I sailed through the air I watched helplessly as I went over the first platform of the corridor. Ahead I could see the next pillar rising above my vision as I fell.
‘I went too far.’ The thought flashed through my head as I felt the Void engulf my body.
Whatever thoughts I had of what the Void would feel like were wrong. It felt like I was floating. The substance around me felt no different than the air I had been breathing, but when I failed my limbs I could feel it move and shift around them. My head looked up to the surface only to see there was nothing, no end to the liquid nothingness I had fallen into. I opened my mouth to scream and the liquid flowed in and down my throat, though I could barely feel the substance.
The next moment my head breached the surface and I started to suck in the air. The smallest of sensations of the Void running down my head was all I felt as I bobbed up and down on its surface. For a minute I just stayed there, slowly floating up and down in the liquid that by all scientific evidence I should be sinking to the bottom of. Since it felt so much like air my body had to be denser than the liquid, but here I was, bobbing up and down like a child kicking off the bottom of a pool. There was also the fact I inhaled a large portion of the Void and felt no different besides my mouth feeling a bit wet.
Looking around the reality of my situation set in. The two pillars on either side of me were completely smooth, I wouldn’t be climbing them. Stone walls blocked me in the other two directions, though they were a little ways away. Even if this was the real world and not two dimensional the room was small.
I tried kicking my feet to jump out of the Void, like Ghost did in the game, but all I did was bob on the Void a bit higher. Panic was starting to set in. I used my arms to try and gain some kind of height, scraping along the pillars in vain hope of catching on to something.
A minute passed of me trying to ride the waves I was making in the void and clawing at the pillars to try and reach the top. When my fingers were beginning to hurt something clicked in the back of my mind. A new sensation washed over me and a light filled the hole for a second.
Whatever happened shot me higher into the air and I was able to grab the ledge of the second pillar. The light disappeared as I pulled myself up.
I laid there on the hard stone, thinking of nothing but calming my racing heart. Being in a dark liquid that I could barely feel when having Thalassophobia was one of the most terrifying things I had ever experienced. The thought that I would have to cross a pond of the water to reach the Shade Cloak made me regret ever coming in this direction.
After calming down I sat up and looked ahead. There was a drop off before another pit of Void. I turned my head and flexed that sensation that I had felt before.
Two large wings filled my sight. My body lifted off the ground as light flashed in the cave once again. I fell back down quickly enough, but I was more confused than ever. Instead of the three pairs of wings that the Knight had gotten I had a single pair of large and very scaly looking wings of light.
Just what kind of fucking Vessel had my mind made when I was dreaming of that character creator? I had to find a mirror soon. I was now even more curious as to what the hell I looked like. My body was the same as the Knights, I think. It was lanky and covered in chitin like the Hollow Knight’s had been, but I was still small. I couldn’t reach atop my head and feel my horns either, my stubby arms just couldn’t do it.
I fell down the pillar to the stone below and easily made the next jump. With the knowledge that I had wings the small falls to the Void below didn’t seem as daunting. I continued following the path, jumping up stone pillars and walking around a few of the smaller pools of Void. The path was much longer than it had been in the game, but after a few minutes I could see the light of the Lighthouse ahead.
As I walked up to the building I noticed just how different it was from the game. Instead of the platforms that the Knight would jump up there was nothing by the smooth gray plates of some material that made up the exterior of the building. I didn’t see a door as I passed, but I did see the balcony at the top. The way up had to be inside, but I didn’t want to go up there anyway.
“Fuhk thaa.” I said allowed, my mouth not being cooperative with pronouncing the words. I could still feel some of the Void liquid in my mouth as well, acting almost like saliva, but much less noticeable.
Without hesitation I slipped into the Void liquid the Lighthouse was shining over. I ignored the light shining down on my back as I bobbed towards the far wall. The odds of the bug up there looking out over the lake at all hours of the day were slim to none. I could send them some kind of help when I got out of here, if they were still alive. Isolated in this forsaken place is a horrible way to go.
Minutes passed as I slowly made my way across, a single black and white dot in a sea of light and Void. My eyes stayed locked on the hole in the far wall, where the black vines hung low and blocked the view of the path beyond.
I drank in the Void as my head became submerged. Despite barely feeling it the sensation was slightly refreshing, like drinking water on a hot day. Only the water felt more like smoke.
The vines were pushed aside as I made my way past them. The corridor beyond wasn’t very difficult to traverse. A few jumps and a lot of walking led me to standing before the large statue that held the bowl of Void that held the Shade Cloak. A small part of my mind was afraid that taking the cloak would lead to the Knight not receiving it, but I wasn’t about to be trapped down here forever.
I also hoped that I could do something to prevent that future from happening entirely.
Looking up at the fat bug statue a chill went down my spine. Like I was being watched and judged as I stood before this relic of the Ancient Civilization. It made me want to hide in the shadows like I had been so used to in my human life. I dismissed those old memories though as I moved closer to the statue.
I jumped with all my strength and then activated my wings when I reached the apex of my flight. I landed in the Void at the edge of the bowl. The surface of this Void actually rippled with my movements and I could feel the density of the liquid too. It felt so much more like water as I moved to the center.
My movements were slow, the Void lapped the edges of the shallow bowl I was in but didn’t go over the edge. A weight began to descend on my shoulders and for the first time I felt myself grow tired. I felt my face shift as my eyes started to close for the first time, I hadn’t even known they could do that.
The moment I reached the center my head tilted up outside of my control and all the Void that I had ingested shot out of my mouth. No panic came to my mind, no twitch of my limbs as a black ball formed around me. I curled in on myself, hugging my legs as my body operated on ingrained instinct and a black cocoon formed around me.
It had taken less than a minute for the cocoon to finish and then my mind faded away.
*****
I awoke to the urge that I needed to get out . My claws scraped along the surface of my prison, tearing away the dark substance that held me. I pushed my head and limbs against the edges of my cage and scraped against its surface with all the energy I had. I felt my horns tear through and I felt the cool air of the outside world wash over me.
My hand reached up to the tips of my horns and grabbed hold of the tear there. I pulled and felt the material give as the sides of my cocoon fell away to my sides and revealed the room around me. I was still in the statue room, but it was different. The shadows around me seemed darker, yet I could see into them like they weren’t there at all.
The vines overhead were more numerous than before somehow and they felt closer to me. Everything seemed different, from the size of the bowl I stood in to the way my body felt. I let my cocoon fall to my sides and into the bowl as my mind caught up to the strange series of events that had transpired.
‘What the fuck just happened?’ I thought to myself as I brought my arms out in front of me. They were longer now, thicker too. On the tips of each of my four fingers and thumb was a white claw that looked very sharp. I watched as my hand made a fist, but it didn’t feel right to my human mind as I had to lay my claws flat against my palm instead of letting them dig in like fingers would’ve. Flexing my hand forward with my claws now pointed in front of me seemed to feel better, but it made me feel like a child acting like a make-believe monster.
Moving up from my hands, my forearms were two pieces of pitch black joined almost seamlessly on the sides. I couldn’t see where the chitin ended and the black flesh underneath began, but I could feel it in my elbow as I moved my arm around. My biceps were the exact same as my forearms, armored with two chitinous coverings on top and bottom with a seam I could hardly see.
Following my limbs I looked down at my body and noticed I was much taller than before, at least twice as tall if not more. There was also some form of cloak around me now as well. Starting at the base of my neck it fell down to the back of my calves but the front only covered my chest before slitting off to either side. It was so black that I wondered if it was made of void itself.
Working my jaw I didn’t feel many differences there, but I seemed to have saliva naturally forming in it again. I turned in the bowl to look back towards the entrance and felt something drag along the bowl. New muscles and instincts flared and I turned to see a tail had grown out of the base of my spine. It was covered in circular chitinous plates that flared outward as they overlapped the next plate down the tail. Along the top were white spikes that looked like thorns off of a rose bush.
The new appendage captivated me as I spent a minute just staring and moving it around. It had a surprising amount of flexibility, but it didn’t seem like it was long enough to make use of it. The tail only barely touched the floor, but I could feel it shift around naturally as I made slight movements with my body.
‘Kinda looks like a dragon’s tail...’ The thought made me bring my hands up to my horns as I had a flash of realization of what I had done in the dream. I felt my two horns and followed them as they swooped back along the top of my head before turning upwards. The tops of the horns had large plates of chitin that formed spikes as they overlapped the next plate along them.
‘A Vessel-dragon hybrid... my subconscious is a fucking edge lord.’ I thought to myself as I let out a low groan.
I was not ready for the small white flames that appeared in front of me. The sight of fire right in my face made me stumble back and trip over the edge of the bowl. My world tumbled as I fell off the side of the bowl and landed face first on the ground below.
A minute passed as I just laid there, unmoving and uncaring of the world around me as I took in my situation... ‘I could have used my wings there...’ The thought almost made me sigh again, but as I was still laying face down I held back the urge. I did not want to scorch my own face.
Pulling myself off of the stone I rose to my feet and got a feel for my new size. I felt my tail stretch out and raise my cloak before lowering again as I straightened. The sensation of my balance being assisted by the limb was both strange and not. It was more the fact I knew the sensations should be strange and it wasn’t that made the whole thing weird.
Standing straight I took a breath and let it out. A small white flame appeared in front of my head for a moment before disappearing. Taking a deeper breath I expelled the air as fast as I could. The flame again appeared in front of me and stretched out over a wide area. It only extended a few feet in front of me before it disappeared as I stopped breathing.
I stared into the air where the fire had been. My mind was torn between two different thoughts. The idea of a bug and dragon hybrid for a Hollow Knight Vessel was so ridiculous and stupid that it made me cringe at the idea. It would essentially be a walking Gary Stu...
‘But I can breath fucking fire now.’ I thought to myself as a smile spread across my chitin covered face. It was the first smile I had felt since I arrived in this pit and nothing could take this moment of elation away from me. The last time I had felt this much joy had been when I first fired a Barrett M82A1 and hit a target over five hundred meters away on the first shot. That feeling of holding something so dangerous and being in complete control, it’s something that can’t really be described.
I couldn’t exactly follow the four major rules of gun safety since this was a breath attack, but what I could do is find whatever I’m doing to make the flames and control it.
‘And the Pale King is called a Wyrm and that's a type of dragon, so maybe it isn’t that stupid.’ I sat down on the ground, my tail instinctually moving aside and slightly curling around my legs. Various muscles and things twitched in my chest as I began to search for what exactly was causing my fiery breath. Minutes passed without any progress. Every time I breathed a flame would be produced, its size depending on how hard I exhaled. I also figured out that if I barely had my mouth open the flame was a tight cone instead of blanketed over a wide area.
Seems obvious in hindsight, but the more you know.
While I was searching my chest for an off switch I began looking over my now taller body. My legs were the most obvious change. Instead of being straight they now went backwards from the knee joint before attaching at an elevated heel joint. Digitigrade, if I remember the terminology right. My search for the muscle in my chest abated for just a moment as I moved my new chitinous paw around and felt the tendons and muscles pull in my leg. I flexed the two large, curved claws on my new... paws? Feet? Hooves? I’ll stick with paws. I watched and felt as the two claws on either paw stretched and stretched and curled as I flexed the new muscles.
I expected to have the same weird sensation from earlier of this being wrong, but my human side was surprisingly silent about this.
The cloak I now wore seemed to be a part of me as I went to push it aside to try and look down at my chest and it just moved on its own. That had felt chilling as the cloak felt like it was made of Void with how it touched my chitin but I could barely feel it. Testing my new control of my cloak I found that I could make it disappear and reappear at will. One moment it’s there and the next it simply stops existing, no fading out or anything just gone. It brought to question if it was a part of me or not, but I’d figure that out with time.
With the examination of my new body complete I went back to trying to turn off the flames I let out with each breath.
There wasn’t a precise way to tell time down here, but it had to have been over an hour that I sat there, slowly breathing out flames. The only thing I discovered was the air didn’t seem to be stored in my chest. It wasn’t long after realizing this before I began to feel tired. Being only the second time I’d ever felt tired, physically anyway, I made the leap in logic that the flames were using my Soul to be produced. Since Soul wasn’t a physical thing in my body I had yet to find how to get the flames to stop.
So I had to figure out a way to feel my Soul, the magic of this universe, so I didn’t tire myself out by simply breathing. I took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds. I felt the air churning somewhere, it was both in me and it wasn’t. Figures that the mysticism of this world would be as confusing as the lore.
I don’t know how long I held that breath for, slowly churning it wherever it had ended up. I could feel something leaking into it, being infused with the breath, but I couldn’t get it to stop. No matter how hard I tried to flex or imagine the two things separating they refused to follow my will.
‘Just fucking separate already.’ I cursed in my mind.
Just like that I felt the two substances, the air I had inhaled and the Soul I was naturally infusing into it, separated. Like half of the breath I had been holding suddenly vanished. When I let it out and saw none of the flames.
‘...’ Steady breaths left me as I felt my right eye twitch, none of them having the white flames I could make, ‘I just had to tell it to separate? What kind of sense does that make!?’
I took a deep breath, ‘Mix.’ and when I let the breath out there was fire again, ‘Oh god damn it... I’m going to be shouting spell names in my mind like a fucking anime character. That’s fan-fucking-tastic, Separate.’
Feeling annoyed I stood up again and started making my way towards the entrance. My steps were surprisingly silent and I let my cloak close and cover the majority of my body. My tail twitched and adjusted on its own as I moved, instinct keeping me balanced.
I moved across the Void lake with little fanfare. The light still shined on, but it seemed different, dimmer. I knew I had spent a long time in that cocoon, a week at minimum, but it could have been much, much longer.
It was probably much longer.
The Lighthouse shore was the exact same as last time. Black rock gave way to an even darker liquid that defied the laws of physics. I could feel the Void evaporating off my body as I walked towards the building.
I’d left the keeper alone when I last passed through, but if it had been over a week, if it had been months then they might need help. How they died in the game was never specified, but I always assumed it was either starvation or they took their own life from isolation. My escape from here might turn into a rescue operation.
‘All my siblings are dead because of my cowardice, I refuse to let another die because of my inaction.’ The thought passed through my mind with such conviction I surprised myself. My teeth grit and my hands balled into fists. I had power now, magic, and I would not let fear hold me back any longer.
The door at the bottom of the Lighthouse opened with little sound. I found myself at the bottom of a spiral staircase with a number of crates and lab equipment around me. Boxes of supplies and beakers of Void went past me as I walked straight to the stairs. I had no need of food, water or whatever else lay in them.
Slowly I climbed the stairs, the small sound of skittering, like chitin on stone, was all I could hear, ‘They’re alive at least. Not moving too fast either so I don’t think they know I’m here.’ my thoughts turned to just what I would say to them then, ‘I’ll try and speak slowly and calmly. I’ll say, excuse me and then tell them my name is Shadow before... my name is Shadow ...’
I stopped on the stairs and thought about my name, ‘That isn’t my name. Why does my mind fill that in as my name? My name is Shadow . Damn it! No it's not!’ Not for the first time I lamented I was dreaming when I made this new body. What kind of ROB (Random Omnipotent Being) lets you make the body of your new life while you’re asleep?
A growl left my throat as I continued climbing. I calmed myself and accepted that my subconscious was an even bigger edgelord than I thought before focusing again on what I’d say, ‘Okay, name’s Shadow. I’ll start off with-’
“Who’s there!?” The male voice snapped me out of my thoughts and made me realize my growling had been fairly loud.
‘I hate it here.’
“Hello?” I tested my voice and was pleasantly surprised it wasn’t raspy. It was deeper than my old voice though, but I quickly continued on, “I was sent by the Pale King to check on you.” The lie rolled off my tongue easily as I continued my climb, the entrance to the top was in sight.
“Oh.” The voice was quiet but I could hear them let out a sigh, “I didn’t think I would have any visitors. Please come on up.”
I could hear the bug as they quickly began to run around the top floor. The sound of shuffling papers and something being moved painted a picture in my head. They were quickly trying to clean up the room above. It made me a little sad that they were going through so much effort for an establishment that just left them here to die.
We all make our choices though, I didn’t think less of them for it or question him. He probably thought of himself as a hero, sacrificing himself for the kingdom he loved, even if that love wasn’t reciprocated.
When my head crested the top of the stairs I saw them shoving a bunch of papers under a bed before quickly turning to face me. They looked similar to how the body did in the game, but more filled out. Their limbs were thicker and I could see the individual chitin plates like my own. On top of their head were two antennas that twitched slightly and there were a few gray stains on their white shell.
As I reached the top of the stairs I noticed I was slightly taller than them.
“Welcome to the Lighthouse.” he said as he held a fist over his chest and bowed down. His eyes had my full attention as they were balls of white light covered by the shell of a compound eye. The little lights seemed to act like the actual eyeball instead of the multifaceted shell over it.
Putting aside the strange look of his eyes I copied his motions and bowed similarly, “Thank you for your hospitality. I am Shadow, how have you been holding up?”
Their shoulders relaxed and I suppressed a smile that I had fooled them successfully, “Very well Sir Shadow.” they started off, possibly assuming I already knew their name, “I have stayed stalwart in my duty keeping the Lumaflies well tended to and the Void has stayed silent for the entirety of my duty.” a twitch in their antenna and some instinct in me focused on it.
There was hardly any facial expression with how chitinous faces were, but something in the back of my mind was telling me he was lying. In my previous life I had always had an uncanny ability to read people. I hadn’t expected that to carry over to bugs though. It was becoming more and more obvious that my metamorphosis had changed my mind as well as my body, but I put that thought aside as I spoke, “There is no need to lie. If you require a replacement please speak the truth. This task is much too important for you to lose yourself in your isolation.”
Again, their antenna twitched and they stayed silent. His hands came around in front of him and he seemed like he wanted to say something, but thought against it, “No, I am fine and I will fulfill the task the King has given me.”
“Hmm.” I looked at him and watched as his stance became stiff. He would fight me on this rather than listen. I would sooner subject himself to an endless isolation than admit he needed help, “If that is your choice I will not fight you on it. Tell me though, can you remember how long you’ve been down here.” I didn’t like manipulating people like this, but I had grown very good at it in my human life.
“I have served here faithfully for two years, three months and five days sir. My mind is sound and whole.” he stated with some edge to his voice.
I nodded my head. I wouldn’t get anymore out of him here without seeming suspicious, “Then I will take my leave. Not all of us have such resistance towards the Void.” praise them while demeaning yourself, an easy way of getting people to agree with you, “It will be a long time till another check in is made, but another will be made.”
His slightly relaxed shoulders told me he had been worried I would be the only chance he had to leave, “I will be just as sound in my mind and body then too.” he stood straighter and nodded his head, “Have a safe trip back to the surface.”
With his statement my short trip here was over, “Good luck, and may the King watch over you.” I bowed again, just as low as before and rose.
He matched my bow before saying, “Goodbye and safe travels.”
A simple nod of my head and I turned and made my way back down the stairs. I would need to send help for the poor bastard when I got out of the Abyss. Even if it is his choice, ‘ No one deserves to die alone .’ ... The strong thought froze me on the stairs for a moment before I pushed it out of my mind and continued on.
I had to wonder, such isolation combined with my short visit, how long would it be before he dismissed my existence as just a figment of his imagination? He had been pacing when I first started ascending the stairs, how stable is he? How long till his mind turns on him?
My foot slipped off the step and landed on the next one down. The small fall startled me and I suppressed a groan, ‘Fuck stairs, wish I would have just jumped off the balcony up top. Then I’d already be at the bottom.’
The shadows around me darkened, surprising me as I felt myself sink into the ground. Around me the walls of the stairs grew larger as I felt myself fall into my own shadow.
Any vocal response I had was cut off as I looked around the new world around me. Everything was pitch black and outlined in white. There was a hum in the air that drowned out all noise, like an old fluorescent light. I felt myself move through the world, through the stairs and stone that the Lighthouse was made of and stop on the ground floor. My body moved on its own as I found the darkest shadow in the room and began to rise from it.
The sound stopped as my head poked out of the darkness. My body rose out of the shadow and I felt the exhaustion from my low Soul grow worse. I blinked a few times as I stood there in the shadows. I took a step forward and began thinking just what this new power was.
‘I can move through the Shadow Realm-’ I felt the pull of the shadows, but I quickly repeated the name in my head and the pull stopped, ‘... and my name is Shadow... god damn it me.’ I brought a hand to my face and pressed my palm between my eyes. I wasn’t sure if I picked these powers or not, but I wanted to change my name even more now.
The door opened and I shut it behind me. I was done with today.