It brings me so much joy to post this, because not only has reading this fic been one of the wildest rides but it's also the work through which I really got to interact and connect with @grollow / @ashyronfire — a wonderful, terrifying writer and equally wonderful friend. I commented quite a lot on that story, ahahaha. And although it's ending now, it's a good one and definitely not the end of those characters' tales. I hope I did this chapter (multiple chapters, actually) justice with this cover :]
So if you want and get the chance to, go read this time-travel, angsty, funny, angry Hollow (Batman) fic and be prepared to cry. Find it here on Ao3!
She's one of my favorites. I'd love to see what you do with her.
CW: mild self-harm
The blasting wind sliced through her ruff, splaying it open and inviting the chill in, flattening her antennae to her head, scouring her eyes until they burned. She tucked her tattered wings more firmly behind her, ensuring their edges did not catch the gale, though it exposed her brittle shell to the elements.
It was cold, in the dark, on top of the world.
She was ill-prepared, no cloak or headscarf, not so much as knitted gloves to keep her hands from stiffening. She did not often leave her home, now. There were no more mourners to comfort, no more rituals to oversee. Her duties to the living were over, and now her only task was to guard the dead in their graves, beneath the kingdom’s eternal twilight.
This should not take long. The dead would wait.
Tucking her satchel more firmly under her arm, she hobbled forward, fighting both the force of the wind and her own aching limbs. This would be the last time she was able to make this journey, perhaps. She should not be here at all, as every blinding pulse of the spell-stones along the path reminded her. This place was not hers. This was no-mans-land, the scorched earth between two battlefronts, decrepit and crumbling under the oppressive dark sky that would nevermore see its sun.
She could not quite bring herself to feel the grief she had once held so close. It seemed she felt little of anything now, only this slowly growing weight within her shell: the burden of age, of regret, of things she had never truly let go of, and knew she never would.
Her memories were falling away, though she knew that she should try to prevent it. That she should clutch them tight, no matter how much they hurt, pressing them close like a fistful of embers, keeping her pain alive, branding her regrets into her very shell. With the gray monotony of every long, wearing day in the silent graveyard, the vivid scars of the past were fading.
Perhaps that was why she was here. It was obedience as much as rebellion—reopening the wound, falling back into her old sins. She was not allowed to forget. She was not allowed to leave the pain behind.
The sting of grief dug beneath her shell like a claw, fresh again for an instant, as she passed below the first crowned stone arch. She had only the records of her ancestors to tell her what it had been like to worship here, in the light of the dawn; she had been born into a sunless age, after her people forsook one light for another, drawn away from the glaring brilliance of their own goddess towards the cold, remote glow of a new-forged reign. That she had not taken part in their betrayal was of no consequence; she had enabled another, when she and her peers whispered of what their forebears had abandoned.
And now she was the only one who remembered this, and remember she would. Memory was her crime, and memory was her penance, as none but her remained to endure it.
She reached the peak, panting, dizzy, and slumped to her knees, ducking her head, allowing herself a moment to breathe. The cliff yawned below her, with the distant glow of soul at her back, as motes of light shed from the seals danced upward between the gaping arches, vanishing into low, ragged clouds that blew ceaselessly past, never offering so much as a drop of rain to the cracked and empty stone.
She did not speak. She had no prayers to say. At the feet of her silent goddess, kneeling before the last remnant of the deity that had created and then destroyed her people, she brought her numb hands to her chest and buried them in her fur, grasping tighter until the roots of it ached, until she could begin to feel something like what she should, until the pain was sharp and real, not dull and worn down to nothing.
Against the deadening of time, she would remain. Against the pull of ages, she would remain. Against the wearing weight of duty, she would remain.
She would not rest.
It was forbidden.
It was this thought that brought her back from the cold, from the exhaustion that beckoned her. She shivered, leaned one shoulder against the statue beside her, and reached for her satchel.
What she had brought was not a proper offering. It was valuable, but crude, unrefined, no fine idol or handmade effigy. She had not the tools nor the skills to shape it, or the freedom to find someone who could. The hunk of pale metal was unreasonably heavy in her hands, glowing brightly enough that it cast shadows on her shell, with a burning-cold core that she felt even past the numbness in her fingers.
A god-touched thing for a forsaken place. A reminder that this had once been something more than a forgotten monument: a precious place, a place of meaning.
Perhaps whoever found it here would pause to wonder.
The seer stood, one hand braced against the carven stone, and took brief shelter in its winged shadow.
Then she put her back to the wind, bowing her shoulders as it snatched at the cover of her wings, and strode back toward the quiet comfort of her graves.
Oh, thank you kindly @ashyronfire! i’m sad that you couldn’t initially know who drew those, even though i watermarked it and everything, because yeah, people (reposters/art thieves) suck BIG TIME
Anyways, I’m glad you like my old Hollow Knight art haha
How about I shake it up, do some non-hk content for once. Keep ya on your toes.
Enderman Moment is my longest work so far, and it’s only on chapter 1 of 3? I really really like this story. It was inspired by some asks I had gotten months before. As much as I adore a good dynamic romance, and I’ve been on that kick lately, I have a really soft spot for unusual friendships. Platonic bonds that mean a lot to said relationship.
The basic premise is a grade-school autistic villager girl becomes friends with an enderman because it hears that’s she’s referred to as having enderman moments (refusing to make eye contact.) and it wants to know why they’re alike. Friendship slowly builds.
It’s a fluffy feel good thing, but the human/nonhuman friendship is something that really speaks to my own neurodivergent soul. And I think it does to others as well. There’s something about being such a weird human that you relate better and have more affectionate connects to a nonhuman entity.
(I’m gonna write in some other themes into as well, all around relationships and all that. But the biggest thing is that it is a story structured around neurodivergent struggles and joys.)
The story is actually really close to my heart and probably the closest I’ll be to writing something that speaks to/heals my inner child. I had a hard time making friends growing up, I wanted to have a funky special nonhuman friend in the form of characters from shows or whatever. Minecraft was also something I enjoyed as a child, so of course I’ve always had affection for the mobs, especially endermen.
I can’t wait to write more of it one day, and I hope it’s something’s others like as much as I do.
dksafljsadlkfjalskjf thank you! I'm going to ramble a bit about two parts in chapter 4 of In Defiance of Time bc I remember when I released it I was scared that I'd given away too much about both Ghost and Grimm, even though at the time I hadn't had it entirely all planned out on Grimm's end, but I had some solid broad strokes already set, that being:
Grimm is NKG's kid who was initially meant to be a vessel for NKG but oops is his baby
NKG loves Grimm
NKG spoils the everloving shit out of Grimm
And I think it was either when writing chapter 5 or chapter 6 where I started to realize the whole deal in detail with the ritual and where I was going on that front, but I remember writing Radi's scene where it's initially like "My brother's vessel and The Shade Lord's vessel", which was technically true and I debated keeping up that sort of descriptor, but like she wouldn't think that in her own thoughts, so it switched to, "Ah yes, my nephew and The Shade Lord's vessel" and at that part even while drunk I remember going "ah shit, is everyone going to figure out that Ghost is TLoS and Grimm isn't a proper vessel and instead NKG's kid?" lmao, like I was really sweating that part bc I wanted all the elements to be there, but I get worried that my little hidden things end up being too obvious lmao
And then later on I was worried everyone would catch that Grimm gets spoiled by everyone including NKG when he dropped the line "I'm going to say something I've never said before, so Higher Beings help you if you refuse: please?" when begging Ghost to let him fight in the colosseum with them lol but I was a little less worried about that one.
There are other little tidbits hidden in chapter 4 too but they haven't been explicitly revealed yet in the story lol but ty!!!!
⭐ but talk to me of wyrmthread because I see you mention this a lot and I don't know what it is. Tell me your passions on this dsfkjdsg
AAAAAAAA i get to talk about my blorbos!!!!
SO basically WyrmThread is the ship name of my two OCs Quezal, a wyrm and Chantilly, a former Troupe Master (i have the headcanon that all the Grimms aren’t the same person but different people each time while NKG and the Heart stay the same ofc)
(Art by unregisteredcookie :3)
In my HK OC story Codex Xihuitl these two meet after Quezal accidentally lights a Nightmare Torch in the desert she lives in. Shit kind of happens due to his backstory and the Ritual is in jeopardy of failing because there is no more charm Grimmchild until they decide to see if making a kid would work instead
So they do, they have a son, Chantilly dies and Quezal goes on with her life and taking care of her son
Until she realizes that she doesn’t want to give him up once the Troupe calls for a new Master and makes a near impossible deal with the Heart to bargain for his life.
To not spoil the rest of my story and to maybe get some interest in reading it she does succeed in getting her way with keeping her son and ofc like any wyrm who has too much hubris she manages to find a way to resurrect Chantilly (because I became too attached to their relationship so I retconned his death to be less permanent sjfjakxj) and they live on to be a p happy family ruling the Empire she amassed with her as Empress and him as her Lord consort :3 yayy They go on to adopt another kid (which turns out to be a vessel that escaped the Abyss) and now they’re a family of four
The kids as adults ^^ (art by chipper-smol)
WyrmThread is basically Cringefail girlboss and her malewife, Quezal is a no nonsense shoot before thinking type of person while Chantilly is a hopeless romantic and loves her sm
They’re both slightly unhinged but you know in a good way, in a get horny at the sight of blood on their bodies type way yknow something not too bad rkfkskkf
I love these two so much its unreal and I will be elaborating on them more in my story!
