Chapter 5.5
The Pale King teleported into their quarters. The moment her roots pulled back from the vessel and disappeared, he cut off the lesson and rushed to wait for her. Which in hindsight didn’t make a lot of sense. Rushing away to do nothing. He could have, should have, stayed and made sure the vessel understood what it was supposed to do while he was away.
She could not teleport like him, instead having to shift her main body through her extensive root system that spanned all of Hallownest. And those moments were the rare instances, when she felt like moving ‘quickly’. He could only hope she would emerge in their old shared chambers.
But she had not yet, and he was left with his thoughts. Thoughts fueled by runaway instincts spiraling so fast that his emotions could not help but be dragged along. He growled to himself, he was a higher being dam-it. He should be able to control his emotions. He CAN control his emotions, better than any scribe taken by their muse, but instincts… Just biology proving once again, its power was still greater than his own.
He endeavored to tamp out those instincts, but the vessel… It was like it was trying to break him. It was a small miscalculation on his part, but the way it jumped onto him. Clung to the bindings, and stared up at him with a blank expression…
Root had not emerged yet, maybe-
His scales flared unseen under his bindings as he growled to himself. The walls of the room and beyond shaking.
Note to self: growl quieter as current level was not just ‘to himself.’
It was just following orders, he was the closest vertical surface. But the way it looked up at him, like it was waiting for approval. For praise.
Yet he still sensed nothing even with direct contact. No emotions, thoughts, soul, or essence of its own. Even the simplest of thoughtless creatures had something. He could even sense baser instincts if he dug deep enough. Something that made any living creature react, usually violently, from the invasion of a higher being prying so deep into their mind.
And he dug for any trace of a mind within the vessel. Invasive enough that if he had done so on a tiktik it would have been solving college level mathematical equations by the top of the day. (If it did not fall into madness as its brain hemorrhaged itself to soup.)
There was nothing.
Just a pair of dead, void filled eye sockets staring up at him. From a body that was designed to look nothing like him or Root.
Its' little chin resting-
A hiss shook his chest as he pushed the thought from his mind. Just a vessel. Just his damnable instincts projecting what they wanted to see. The juxtaposition of feeling nothing but expecting something was maddening.
He had thought himself ready for this. He had spent seasons, cycles preparing himself for spending nearly every waking moment with another vessel. Ensuring it never sensed the emotions of a living being, that no living being would ever treat it like it was alive, to keep it pure and empty.
Root was taking too long. What was wrong?
Something shifted in his palace, in a room that only the two of them knew about.
Why was she there? Did that mean she found something? The setae all along his body dug into his scales. Threatening to break the setae off.
He teleported close, the hallway leading to the room, but found himself stuck there. That threshold bringing back memories he would prefer fogotten.
She had been so excited when he finally conceded to her constant requests. He had finally felt comfortable with the idea of having offspring. The logistics required some… creative thinking, but they eventually managed to get it to work.
That room was not built then.
It was supposed to be all of Hallownest. But the first try did not work. Not unsurprising considering what they had to do.
They made some changes to their approach. The space estimated down to just the parts they rules over. Yet a desirable outcome was still not reached.
More adjustments. The space now just the palace. It was becoming maddening nothing worked. Another adjustment. And finally settling for just that room.
That empty, detested room. The constant reminder of unfulfilled expectations. A remainder that even higher beings such as them, had… limitations.
With another wall shaking growl(no mortal should have been in the area anyway), he forced himself to enter the room. Attempting to empty his mind of any easily crushable expectations.
The room had not changed since he last entered long ago. Roots' plants growing from ceilings, walls, and even up through the bricks in the floor. Three windows allowed the occupants to overlook the courtyard. Letting in a soft light designed to fill the room even without the presence of two higher beings of light. Simple furnishing. A chest by the door. A wardrobe on the far wall. In the middle, a chair overlooking-
The final request of a long list of desperate bargainings with an uncaring force.
Just one.
It never gave them even that.
The White Lady stood by the windows, looking out. The light from the outside being overpowered by her own. His pulse betrayed his control at the chance of what her position could mean. He drew closer, his bindings unwrapping slightly to more match her size.
As he moved past the reminder, he noticed her crown of branches wrapping around the plants hanging from the ceiling and wall. Pulling them apart. Her roots pulling the ground flora out by theirs. But he could not sense her soul.
He stopped. His body falling into a stillness that caused great unease to the morals. Normally her soul would have been reaching out as much as her body. Branching across the room and burrowing into everything, but it was not. It was as hidden as his own.
That could mean any number of possible outcomes.
She found nothing. Great for Hallownest. Bad Unchanged for them.
She found something. Bad for Hallownest. Great Good for them.
She found not enough. Disastrous for Hallownest. Monstrous of them.
All of them had a reason for her to mourn.
He could reach out his soul to hers, comfort her in a way that words and actions never could. But it had been so long since he had done so. So long since he had connected to her so deeply. If he did that now, after all this time, with how his emotions were running amok, it would only make her feel worse to be flooded by his. Words and actions would have to do.
Pulling his setae from the floor, he continued forward.
It was not a clean, quick, or bilateral decision to stop trying. She insisted there must be something she could do to make it work. Maybe if she had just one seed pod… Maybe if she held on past the normal point of release again…
No matter what they tried, no matter the changes they made to the forms, no matter how good he got at genetics and DNA manipulation, when working in the domain of biology, biology had final say. And it would not budge on this matter.
He was the one that finally put a stop to the attempts. He was at his wits end and was barely holding his composure as it was. Another attempt and he might not be able to stop all of Hallownest feeling his emotions. He had seen many a god do that, and the outcome was undesirable for his civilization.
But she was not willing to give up yet and kept pushing him. And for the first time he experienced what the mortals later explained to him was something called an “emotional meltdown.”
An attempt to physically coerce.
A tail striking out. The severing of a branch.
More roots emerging from the ground.
Bindings falling away. Scales and barbs flaring out.
The physical and mental debris of their fight caused many injuries in the palace that day. Many debilitating and irreversible for mortal and god alike.
Bringing his main body even with hers. He reached out his tail to one of her roots. Gently prying it away from its decimation of the ground flora, and wrapped his tail around it. More of her roots quickly curled around him.
“There is nothing there,” her voice defeated and quiet. “No mind. No emotions… It is void of anything. It is not our child.”
After living this moment so many times in numerous ways, it should no longer have stung. But it still did. The hope that should have died from its injuries long ago, took another agonizing blow that he hoped would finally kill it. (He was really started to hate that word.)
For now it twisted his insides, retreating into itself and leaving behind an emptiness that stung like the void itself. His tail slackened, but her grip on him tightened in response.
It was god versus god. Neither willing to back down from what they wanted. The fallout threatening to spread beyond the palace grounds if it did not end quickly.
Her roots pulled up rocks and structures alike. “It is one more attempt! The expenditure of your resources is negligible compared to my own. You having nothing to lose!”
His scales flared out, soul blades materializing along his length from instinct as he launched his counterstrike. “Has nature not made it clear enough for you!?” More of her roots tore up the ground around her as he continued.
“Then allow me to summarize the lesson I have mastered long before you have even became cognizant of its existence: A plant and an animal cannot produce viable offspring! You will never have my progeny!”
She recoiled as if he had torn apart of her core away. All the confidence and defiance gone in an instant. He could have stopped there, but he was a god of combat before. A fight was not finished until your opponent was unable to get up.
“Do not touch me again until such intent is gone from your motives. If such a feat is beyond your capabilities, then you are to leave my territory.”
He felt her soul recoil from the blow. All the emotions he had been pushing through their shared bond over the cycles finally reaching her through the new wound.
He did not regret what he did that day, even now. It was the only way to get through to her at the time. He was done. There was nothing she could say or do that would change that. Generations passed before their relationship returned to some semblance of what it once was.
“Thank you,” saying that to someone after such news made the moment feel disjointed and the words insincere. “You have my sincerest apologies for my weakness, and having to ask this of you. I understand if you wish to leav-“
With a speed one rarely sees from a plant, her roots wrapped around and pulled him off the ground. The unanticipated movement startling him, his body curling around any root or branch in range for stability. Roots curled around scales, pressing him to her core. Her head dropped next to his, pressing down into the soft spot at base of his neck.
“My dear wyrm. I can manage my grief,” her embrace tightened. “It is you who I worry for. Your kind is not designed for this.”
Their early attempts made that abundantly clear. But the Hollow Knight plan flaunted it in his face on a daily basis.
Wryms had one offspring per breeding attempt. One that they spent hundreds of cycles feeding, protecting, and raising. Strong emotional bonds had to be formed for the offspring to make it to adulthood.
Roots species, they had hundreds, possibly thousands of offspring per breeding. The death of a good few of them was expected. When that came to light in one of her many offers to breed, his mind practically shut down at the idea of what his instincts would do with hundreds of offspring to raise. Or even a single one dying. And he would practically be raising an army on his own with the detached nature of floral parenting.
His instincts never got a chance to deal with that dilemma.
The vessels were not his. They were never alive.
“You said so yourself. It is not our child,” his voice was flat. He should not feel anything. Those instinct should have fallen silent the moment the eggs were consumed by the void. He should be no more connected to them then connected to his shed scales.
“Do you truly believe that?” Her eyes meeting his.
Eyes were not a part of a wyrms natural biology. There were no instincts built around them. Yet when she looked into his, it felt like a fast track to his most private thoughts.
He turned away from her gaze. Not willing to discover if there was merit to that belief when such thoughts needed to be hidden from everything.
Not that she needed to make eye contact to read him.
Her soul was engulfing him as much as her body was. With this level of contact, she could have forced open the soul connection. Opened the floodgates, revealing all his doubts and desires to her in an instant. But she did not. She only offered what comfort she knew he would be comfortable with when it came to this topic.
They had spent enough time together that she knew what he was feeling. That was even before their first attempt. The display of wyrm instincts she observed after that final failure, the fight, and the subsequent make up after, made her the only expert at reading him. Yet he still refused to show it to her so directly. That final, single strand of refusal was the only thing keeping the Hollow Knight plan going.
They were not his, they were just empty vessels.
“Are you sure there is no other than can train the pure vessel?” Her embrace tightened as her voice did.
“All attempts for mortals to train the vessel have ended in failure. It has to be me,” he voice grew distant with the mantra he had to repeat on a near daily basis.
Even when mortals could shield their emotions and thoughts, to appear stern and uncaring in the presence of a vessel, the vessel always failed. It would always go rouge. Refuse to follow orders, attempt to leave the palace, sneak into more populated area, destruction of property, attack its trainers, attack random mortals, attacked him, attack itself.
Somehow the void would pick up on something within the mortals. Some tick or weakness that it would imprint upon and taint the vessel. Creating some kind of paradox that caused the vessels to break down in unpredictable ways. It needed to be contained, reigned in by a Higher Being of light so it would not grow out of control. So it would only grow in ways it was supposed to. In ways that would not break it.
Roots' body stiffened, the tips of her roots fidgeting against his shell. Her roots, while slowed, curled around him in any way they could.
“What of the first vessel?” Her voice nearly a whisper.
Every mental or spiritual path still left open between the two of them was slammed shut in an instant.
His nerves where already frayed, reliving the past, they did not have enough to hide his coming reaction in more than one way. He unwrapped himself from her branches and crawled down to the floor and out of her reach. She made no move to stop him.
“I was careless,” his voice was flat and formal. Addressing a crowd of mortals that did not need to know more than the bare minimum.
“I let my instincts overpower my judgement.”
The vessels looked nothing like him. Nothing like Root. It was designed that way in an attempt to minimize any instinctual connections. That utterly failed.
When he first saw the vessel, his instincts roared to life and pushed his better judgement to the wayside. It was tainted by void to the point where there was barely any higher being left. But, his instincts knew. That was his, and it was adorable. His instincts did not care it was only his in the past tense. And outright ignored that it had no future.
The void is empty of anything. No emotions or thoughts. What would be the harm in allowing his strained and misguided parental instincts an interim to act upon?
And so he did. Treating the vessel like it was his offspring. He praised it when it did well, embraced it when he felt like it, doted on it when it got hurt, and brought it everywhere with him. Even to public meetings. It was hidden from the view of mortals with spells of course. Sitting on his tail when it was not curled around the vessel.
Aside from the latest attempt, that vessel lasted the longest. When he realized it would have to grow, that he would have to force a molt, he knew he had to start working on how to do that. But he did not start working on it. Not right away. He would avoid the task, and the few instances when he picked it up, it was short lived. It made his mind linger on why it needed to grow. What the vessels ultimate purpose was. His parental instincts refused.
“I will not let that happen again.”
But the calculations stopped the day his foresight showed it attacking his staff. The void preventing him from seeing the reason or the exact way in which it happened, so he went to investigate himself. Only to find the vessel… self-immolating in its chamber.
It took his mind a fraction of a moment to figure out what it was seeing. It was never a foreseen outcome, he was not prepared for it. In that time it got another strike in. When he finally realized what it was doing, he leap forward to stop it, to heal the damage it had done to itself, but it was already to late. Its mask cracked in two.
Lunging forward he grabbed the mask before it got halfway to the floor and began stitching it back together with soul. But he was to fast and too focused. He did not notice that the body that was melting away was forming again just above the mask. By the time he had, his light had burned away most of the void. Pieces of what once might have been a body floating in the air before him. A quarter of its wings, a single arm, half a mask with a single eye staring at him. Before they too fell away to nothing from the void loss caused by his light.
He was left standing alone, holding a partially healed mask, a void stained nail, and the word ‘impure’ written in its blood void on the floor. Leaving him to experience the twisting agony of his parental instincts witnessing its one ‘living’ child die.
“Hallownest cannot afford another failure.”
He had to leave the room. Quickly. Staff were waiting just outside the door and he could not release the emotions here. The room was to small for him without his bindings and the palace not stable enough without his logical mind in control.
Mask in place, and another in hand, he left the room. Then the palace. Out beyond the wastes where no one would get hurt. Reinforcing the mental block between himself and his people.
He wished he could say he let his emotions run wild. That he decided when he would let them take over. But that would have been a lie. The moment he was far enough away from Hallownest his instinct driven emotions took full control. And no amount of reasoning on his part helped quell the spiraling emotions down.
It killed itself!
It was never alive.
There was blood everywhere!
That was not blood it was void.
It was crying!
The void was leaking out due to the damage.
How could you let this happen?!
It should not have been able to do that!
You failed to keep it safe! You let it die!
The moment they disconnected from her branches they were dead! This is no different!
This was your fault!
This… was my fault.
It was segments before his emotions burned themself away, leaving a familiar emptiness that he had not though could have gotten any bigger.
He returned to Hallownest. He should have immediately started the plan again. The dream infection was still spreading. People were still dying. But he could not.
“I saw what it did to you. Many did,” she reached for him.
He had stabilized his blessing after the fight so he could leave or emote without causing severe problems. But it always left the citizen with a sense of unease when he did. So he expected some of that when he returned.
But he had been gone long enough that the unease turned to panic that he had abandoned them. The White Lady had stepped in to calm them. Promising he would return, while herself not knowing.
When even her doubts of his return became to strong she tried to connect to him through their shared soul. He had not noticed she did that until he came back and saw her soul scarred after the storm of emotions she had inadvertently stumbled into.
The emotions he attacked with her on the day of their fight, a single precision strike to her mind. What she inadvertently soul linked to, emotional mutilation akin to walking into a meat grinder. Leaving her mentally scarred in ways neither of them thought possible. Her species had no equivalent neural pathways for what he was feeling at the time of the connection. No precedent for the instincts, no defense or rational to deal with them. So their shared bond carved them into her.
Even after having her mind rewritten, she tried to help him upon his return. Attempting to urge him to take time to recover. She swore she was fit to rule in his absence. More fit them him at least.
She could lead Hallownest, create the next batch of vessels, even choose and begin training the next pure vessel while he was away. He just needed to start the process before he went. But that was not an option for him. Loss of a (perceived) child did not make one eager to make a replacement.
He refused her offer. Partially. He needed the distraction of ruling, but he had to call on her aid on the days the distraction was not enough. She did not push him to try again, for which he was eternally grateful.
To no surprise, and his great shame, many lost their lives in the wait for him to try again.
It had been the job of others to train the vessel since the first. He would only pop in occasionally to ensure the vessel was on track. He would ask the workers how the training was going, he rarely looked at the vessel itself. Still unwilling to deal with the memories the new ones brought up.
He pulled away from her touch.
“Can you afford to pay that price again?” Her voice filled with the comfort she was unable to give him with her embrace.
“Too many have already payed the ultimate price for this one sided holy war,” he looked out the windows of that cursed room. (He would have to seal it completely, if not destroy it outright.)
The people of Hallownest would be the only children he could have. As he was not willing to leave it to change that. If he had to witness the void puppeted corpse of his stillborn child be sacrificed to stop the carnage, then so be it. He can survive some emotional wounds to keep his people safe.
“This is my recompense for failing them.”
It was just a vessel. A tool to be honed and used. There was no mind, no will, no voice of his offspring left within the void filled stillborn. Not that there was any before the void. Any feelings he had about it were misguided and would fade with time.
The only solace he could take from this horrid plan, was that Radiance would die slowly. Fade away into nothing as she was forgotten by time itself. Her cries of rage and desperation dying in the uncaring void that would be her prison. She made this a war and was too cowardly to face him directly, so he would make her suffer.
If he had to shut his emotions down completely, change himself so he could feel nothing but spite, then he would. He would not feel despair as another vessel failed the climb. No joy as his people created another technological advancement. No regret when the training became to much for a vessel. Nor pride as the people continued to develop their culture. He would become the cold unfeeling god-king if it meant keeping his kingdom alive.
“There is no cost to great for me to pay to keep my people safe.”
It was just a vessel, and he was a god. It was a tool to be molded and deployed as it was needed, and he would feel nothing for what happened to it.