Silksong Progress #13: What is Lost Lace?
I was incredibly moved by Silksong's finale when I first watched it. The arresting visual of Hornet and the Everbloom as the one spot of light and color amid the darkness, the stirring, evocative soundtrack (so hopeful, so different from either the mournful "Sealed Vessel" or the intimidating majesty of "Radiance"!), even the custom sprites Hornet gets for briefly holding Lace in that classic bridal/princess carry pose… there was clearly a tremendous amount of care and effort put into this sequence. It all added up into a beautiful and thrilling final battle that I won't be forgetting for a long while.
And yet, thinking about it more as I faced Lost Lace while playing myself… there were a few tiny details that didn't add up, and which I wanted to examine more closely.
See, everything about the Lost Lace battle paints it as this intensely emotional struggle. And yet, if we're to believe Lace's dialog, the only thing Hornet is fighting is a possessed husk. The opponent I was throwing myself against over and over didn't even have a unique name or personality of its own. It was just another void monster, dozens and dozens of which Hornet had fought before.
That's rather anticlimactic, isn't it? Hm.
Not only that, but on the surface, the narrative the battle tells is oddly contradictory.
In another subtle yet lovely touch, Lace's stagger sprites have progressively less Void on them as the battle goes on. The narrative these sprites tell is that Hornet's efforts are working! The Void is retreating from Lace!
And yet, in a seeming bit of ludonarrative dissonance, Lost Lace becomes a more and more difficult battle as the fight progresses. And sure, I can understand why a Secret True Final Boss would be this way - you want to give the players a tough and climactic fight. But compare this to the exquisite tragedy of the Cogwork Dancers. Team Cherry knows very well how to design a multi-phase boss that matches the narrative arc they are trying to convey.
So why is it that the story Lost Lace's attacks appear to tell is that the boss is getting stronger?
Hmmm…
Normally, I am inclined to take characters' dialog at face value, especially when they are speaking about themselves. Unless, of course, a story suggests that a character's words about themself should not be trusted.
And Silksong provides ample evidence that both Lace and Hornet are lying liars who specifically lie to make it seem like they don't care about anyone else. There's even a bit of cut dialog that makes this subtext for Lace into explicit text - but despite that exact line not making it into the final game, I think this read of Lace still rings true to the contrast between her actions and words.
So it's very possible that Lace isn't being entirely truthful when she says that what awaits deep in the Abyss is "me no longer." Everything else about her dialog there is encouraging Hornet to give up - on Pharloom, and on her. This, then, is Lace's most flagrant and desperate deception - that she is already gone, that there is no one down below left to save. "Go away Hornet, leave me to die because I'm already dead."
Though certainly, Lost Lace is not the same as Lace in a normal state of mind. So Lace may also be insisting that she does not consider what awaits below to be the same as herself. She is attempting to distance herself from this creature that puts her deepest emotions on raw and ugly display.
And I do think they are her emotions, not just mindless corruption.
Ever since the original Hollow Knight, the Void has been symbolically associated with despair and regret. The Knight's Shade separates from the player making mistakes in battle, the sealed Abyss hides the Pale King's deepest and darkest regrets, and Lost Lace is already thematically positioned via the conversation beforehand to be Hornet doing battle with Lace's bitter hopelessness.
But given that old tidbit from Confessor Jiji, and now what we see with Lost Lace in Silksong, the metaphor might be literal as well.
Perhaps Lost Lace is still Lace herself, just a Lace who is lost in her overwhelming despair and regret. And when read through that lens, the rest of the details of the Lost Lace battle finally fall into place.
While she shares several attacks with them, Lost Lace acts quite differently from the miscellaneous Black-threaded enemies and even Lost Garmond. Most notably: she talks! Lost Lace retains all of the battle barks from Lace's earlier battles, including the ones that sound like "comprehensible" phrases in bug language. There's a reverb effect on them, but they're still very recognizable!
Void alone does not talk. Rather notably so, in fact. Even outside the weighty Hollow Knight lore, though, consider how Lost Garmond has a few grunts but he does not do Garmond's normal battle cries.
Furthermore, Lost Lace doesn't just retain Lace's voice, the boss also displays her personality. She does that same little taunting laugh when Hornet dies! Hard to miss that given how often you'll probably see it while fighting her, haha!
Which then brings me to the last, most telling detail.
With each new phase, Lost Lace adds a new attack to her arsenal. But her final phase attack isn't a new Void attack. It's Lace's signature starburst flurry. She's pulling out all the stops to force Hornet to give up and let everything drown. "Let oblivion swallow us all."
As the battle rages on, the Void retreats, as we can see in Lost Lace's stagger sprites. But the girl underneath is still despairing, still too lost in pain and fury and self-hatred to want to be saved. By the final phase, Hornet isn't just fighting the Void, not anymore. She's increasingly fighting Lace herself, stubbornly clinging to this attempted suicide.
Yet Hornet and the player persist even in the face of that.
In order to save Pharloom, Hornet reaches out to the land's least loved daughter. She defeats not merely a random Void monster, but Lace's own hopelessness and regret taking over her physical form.
And so, when Lace surfaces afterward, she is fully cleansed of Void. She had lashed out in a cathartic expression of her pain, but that pain has been quelled now.
Taken all together, the narrative of Silksong's final battle is thus: Darkness and despair did not take this one. Through battle, Hornet convinces Lace that not only does she have life, but that such a life is worth saving.
Perhaps even, it is a life worth living.
